I totally like this game, and want to see it develop and succeed. But around level 10, I lost my initial addiction rush. So here are some ideas, based on past addictions to other games. I get that some of these involve big game-design choices. These ideas are not well-developed, I'm just brainstorming some ideas. Feel free to maul them, or improve them, or suggest something else. =] Permanent choices, different builds A level 10 elf warrior is a level 10 elf warrior, there's no individuality to them. There's no development tree, no need to specialize or make permanent choices. Levelling up needs to be something I plan for and look forward to! What about: - Permanently stick power tokens to slots, only allow changes when a character levels up. - Choose between hps, power tokens, or opening a new slot, at each level up. Imagine a dwarf warrior that just goes with HP, never opens a slot, and plays with a short deck. Or a "glass-cannon" low-hp human mage that opens a second staff slot and buys power tokens early. You get the idea. Danger of death "Hard core" death option, at character creation. Any death for that character is permanent. I'm sure Melvyn would approve. As in other games, items won with non-hard-core parties would not be useable by hard-core parties. I feel this goes with "Permanent choices", above, to make me want to replay early stages over and over with different builds. Any fool can grind out a high-level party, but a high-level hardcore party is proof you're a pro. =] Item upgrade locations "Forge", upgrade lv6 unc "rickety polearm" -> lv7 unc "lunging spetum" for a fee. "School", upgrade lv6 cmn "novice sparking" -> lv8 cmn "apprentice sparking" for a fee. Or perhaps combine two lv6 items to make one lv7... One-adventure-use items "scrolls" Making items disposable gives low-level parties the chance to play with high-level effects. It's the old "scroll vs rod" thing. If I can try out a scroll of fireballs, I'll know that a staff/amulet of fireballs is an item worth looking for! This can add to the excitement - I can't just retry after a failure, I'll have used up that special scroll I chose to use.
I had been pondering this as well. Seems simple enough to implement, but would require another asset pool for the hardcore items/characters, as you've stated. A few issues though, there are aspects of the game that (some people believe) are too random. Would an average hardcore player be upset if they lost a high level character to not being able to roll higher than a 1 when holding 3 parrys for instance? Or just not drawing an attack for two consecutive rounds while the enemy beat on them with 1 hp?
If there were going to be a hardcore mode I'd prefer a hardcore party option where your characters get a res if the team wins a mission (i.e. it's okay if a character dies so long as you win). I could enjoy seeing how far I got with that using just drops that the particular party found (allow shopping but only with gold got by selling that party's loot).
A hardcore mode has been suggested, and I'd back that up - however, this should be optional - either unlocking after completing the game, or a checkbox you tick when entering an adventure (sort of a non-quest quest). While I'm not sure if upgrading items would work in general, I'd be all for an artifact item you can level up based on specific drops (or even treasure items?) - compare to item system in King's Bounty for instance. Crafting could also work something like this - have a few items not be droppable at all, rather than being crafted by blueprint ites you can find as random drops from the sp campaign (and not from chests) . Also, if a limited trading system is allowed (just for these random parts) - this could be one of the things I believe wouldn't hurt the game by being traded.
How about allowing actual Role-Playing? All you need to do to implement it is add an RP chat room in the game and an RP board to the forums. There's another game I play, that was effectively abandoned by its devs years ago, has essentially no MP options, yet many players continue to play just for the RP. And that game was never intended to be anything like an RPG. I wouldn't use it myself (I'm worthless at RP), but I've already seen one person give an in-character review of a custom module, so I'm sure there would be some interest.
