Questions About Design Ideas

[EldinnerPlate]

Ok, so while making my hack, I was thinking about not having any kind of magic(except for healers since I can't really do without those) or anything supernatural in my game. Now I'm not too far into the hack, so before I go any further I would like to know the community's opinion on some design choices. Those choices are no magic, and no fliers. I feel that if I took both of those out, it would make the game a bit more realistic, which is something I just personally like, but I know it's not for everyone.

If you could let me know what you think in the poll I would appreciate it. Comments explaining why help too. Thanks in advance!

[Brendor]

It really depends on what you want and what your plans are for the game. If you don't want either or you think it won't work with your ideas then remove them although I personally think removing them makes the game less interesting unless you're planning on replacing them with something

[AstraLunaSol]

It may get boring with less unit variety, that's my only issue, also knights would become much more difficult to kill unless you have effective weapons. Lack of fliers may also contribute to uselessness of bows (even more than they usually are).

[King Calamity]

Magic units add a second type of damage, giving you a good way to harm units with high defense. Fliers can get just about anywhere fast, and are a good way to throw the player for a loop just when they get a good defensive position. If yo're going to take them out of the game, you should think of all the reasons they're there in the first place, so you can compensate for it when they're gone. There's also the issue of how to promote healers (unless you actually want them to be purely support units, like dancers or bards.) I'm also unsure of the idea of removing most magic for the sake of realism if you're keeping healing magic, which I see as the most detrimental to a realistic setting.

If it were me, I'd keep magic and fliers, but make them very uncommon, maybe even going so far as to make a class exclusive to one character. This could even give the game a neat classical feel, like a folk tale or epic: Magic is feared and mysterious, wyverns and pegasi are legendary creatures few people have even seen.

[EldinnerPlate]

Like you all said, my main concern was the game being very boring due to lack of classes. Since no one picked it would make the hack better if they were gone, I think I will just build off Calamity's suggestion and make it rare.

Edited January 15, 2014 by Eldinnnn

[Crimson Red]

going to second what Brendor said and the general notion that there should be some kind of replacement, just removing features without adding anything new isn't very enticing in a general sense

[EldinnerPlate]

I hear what you all are saying so the idea I have so far is to make each form of magic very rare. However, an even more ambitious goal is to slowly replace magic in the game with a specific weapon(light->staff, anima->some type of alchemy bombs, staves->herbalists, and I have no idea what I can do with dark magic). For example, I already had a little monk sanctuary planned out in my hack. They will use light magic until I get motivated enough to make a monk/staff animation, which will then replace light magic. That will all take a loooot of work though so for now at least I will keep magic in the game.

As for fliers, at least wyvern riders, I guess having some kind of lizard with wings be trainable and rideable doesn't sound totally impossible. Luckily the place that would have fliers wouldn't come in until later in the story so I don't have to worry about that too much.

Edited January 15, 2014 by Eldinnnn

[Jubby]

you could have arrows lit on fire which is a legitimate thing that like actually happened :P

That'd still kind of eliminate the mage classes though.

Instead of fliers you could have like, scout/runner/hunters? Who can run far distances and are less affected by terrain than cavs...

You could also potentially have some type of siege weapon classes, rather than just the occasional ballista. A catapult would take care of an armoured knight just as well as a mage would, methinks :P

These ideas still would require a fair bit of rebalancing of everything else though.

Just some random musings, do with them what you will. ^_^

[zahlman]

I feel that if I took both of those out, it would make the game a bit more realistic

Well, why exactly is that? Just what kind of setting are you trying to create?

[cyron]

Ok, so while making my hack, I was thinking about not having any kind of magic(except for healers since I can't really do without those) or anything supernatural in my game. Now I'm not too far into the hack, so before I go any further I would like to know the community's opinion on some design choices. Those choices are no magic, and no fliers. I feel that if I took both of those out, it would make the game a bit more realistic, which is something I just personally like, but I know it's not for everyone.

If you could let me know what you think in the poll I would appreciate it. Comments explaining why help too. Thanks in advance!

For healing you could make it be more like using herbs and poultices (you could maybe try and make the healing run of skill or something), and for class variety use the 3 magic ranks you now have free for additional physical weapons, maybe a simple weapons category with like slings clubs and daggers, a polearm category and for the 3rd i cant think of one of the top of my head.

edit: to add utility to archers you could make them effective against armored units because arrows can pierce armor (with a good angle the proper arrow)

also i seem to recall a patch that let units have weapon ranks in both magic and str based weapons but they ran of the same stat, if you can find it a patch without magic would be a good place to use it

edit 2: it occurred to me that you would likely need asm to make the second set target defense not resistance

Edited January 15, 2014 by Wintersmith

[Chocolate Kitty]

For healing you could make it be more like using herbs and poultices (you could maybe try and make the healing run of skill or something), and for class variety use the 3 magic ranks you now have free for additional physical weapons, maybe a simple weapons category with like slings clubs and daggers, a polearm category and for the 3rd i cant think of one of the top of my head.

edit: to add utility to archers you could make them effective against armored units because arrows can pierce armor (with a good angle the proper arrow)

also i seem to recall a patch that let units have weapon ranks in both magic and str based weapons but they ran of the same stat, if you can find it a patch without magic would be a good place to use it

edit 2: it occurred to me that you would likely need asm to make the second set target defense not resistance

no it wouldn't actually, that's just a tag in the item editor module.

[cyron]

no it wouldn't actually, that's just a tag in the item editor module.

oh thats helpful

[EldinnerPlate]

Well, why exactly is that? Just what kind of setting are you trying to create?

It's not that the setting wouldn't permit magic, I just like everything to be explainable. I don't like that magic could be used as a scapegoat for things. Of course, I could still have magical units without having to make magic have any other impact in the game except in combat, but I would rather just not have anything that I can't see as realistic in the hack if possible.

Edited January 15, 2014 by Eldinnnn