Last night I was actually thinking about how most worlds are rather static. They’re in a normal stable setting. Or a post-apocalyptic setting. Rarely there are games, or stories in general, that are about a setting which is transitioning from one period of time into the next.
A transitioning world means that old beliefs and ethics are changing. That could lead to entrepeneurs trying to take advantage of it and become the new bill gates so the speak. It could mean groups of people fighting here and there for control over a piece of land. Some rich guy from the old world could try building a blade runner-esque city for the few survivors and leading them into the new world. It would also give a lot of cults and such a foundation to get a firm foot into the newly forming societies. Basically a world in transition offers a lot more story and overall potential.
I think it would also be a nice addition if you could gather a group of people on your side that you can equip to a degree. These people will then search around and scavenge goods for trade or crafts giving you a cut to the profits. Would be a nice idea being able to be able and become a kingpin as well over time if you’d choose so
A rescuable military engineer (with a cool foreign name like Vauban or Menno Coehoorn :D): this guy would improve the town’s defenses by adding a watchtower near the barricade/s and possibly upgrade the sentries’ rifles, assuming the player can pay him for his services/provide him with the necessary materials.
A cleric/priest rescued from Ch’thonic cultists: this NPC would provide all sorts of “blessed” items, such as off-hand books, or maybe some holy item components, such as “Hell’s Bane Ammo” or the like.
Well, good luck with this new feature Crate team!
Younghappy
WOW!!! what an update, you should do some more, as that was a really impressive update!!!
while this town is the main focus for a lot of the game it seems, (from what I read) there could be other areas that could be improved too, like a water mill, if you repair it, you can help the flow of water around and to this town too, or maybe unblock a dam, that been used by the enemy for other purposes and in doing so, hindering places like the starting town, (lack of very little water) I think there could be a few uses for this rebuilding, especially if its possible to do this in the modding tools as well
so a great update and thanks
well no wonder that the alpha has been delayed, but I still hope it comes out soon, but with changes like this, it’s going to be awesome to test and play
Agreed. Although graphics are always sweet eye candy. It is also nice to get some insight in design and mechanics. Might even allow the community to come up with some additional ideas here and there.
just thought of something, I also hope that you can have choices on who you take back? for example, you find a weapon smith, do you help him and allow him to make high end weapons later on? or do you help later on in your travels, a armour smith, but you only have room for one? this kind of thing would help with replay value, so you can’t save everyone, there will be a limit to the amount of people you can save and have in the town, so each will have advantages and disadvantage
I think this will help in replay value, and would help to make the town look a bit different each time, depending on who you save
as you should be able to save everyone, otherwise that will just be too easy, and will get dull, as you have everyone you want, but if there are choices on advantages / disadvantages to who you save, then the game might tuern out different, new optional missions could be added, depending on who it is
for example, you save an armour smith, once he settled in the town, and you meet him again to sell loot, he then mentions, he might have heard of a rumour of a fairly rare piece of armour, so you need to hunt for it, and once you have all the pieces he will construct it for a discount fee. but if this had been the weapon smith, it could be a powerful rare weapon, and so on
you this could open up new quest chains on depending on who you save and take back
I love it when things I do ingame have an impact on the world I play in visually. I remember when WoW introduced Phasing and loved that too.
I do have a question though… how will this work when playing in multiplayer?
With WoW… if I was in a group and the other person hadn’t completed the same number of quests as me in the zone, I couldn’t see them when I was in a different “phase” than them. It was really annoying.
With D3, however, we could see each other… but the town we were in reflected our own level of completion.
I’m wondering how it will be in GD?
Will the town take on the status of the person hosting the game? Or will it be different depending on how far each individual player has completed?
Will we still be able to see each other in these different towns? (I’m assuming yes since the game doesn’t use phasing/central servers…)
This sounds great. One question: Will there be tactical decisions involved in upgrading the settlement or is it purely a matter of collecting as many people as you can? What I mean is, does the village have limited spots available to force you to possibly choose between a gunsmith who will provide you with better shooty type weapons to sell or a mage type that may have rare mystical trinkets and staves or can you just keep collecting more people and cramming them into the settlement?
In the first post, mr. Jalex said, we can decide to bring the saved NPC’s back to town. What are the consequenses of not bringing the NPC’s back to town? If the “penalty” is simply one less merchant in the town, then the choice is pretty meaningless, cause, why wouldn’t we decide to bring the NPC back.
If for example, we stumble upon a pack of monsters attacking a merchant NPC, and we decide not to help him/her, wouldn’t be a better consequence of our choice if an NPC dies after taking enough beating and drops some crazy unique item which can’t be obtained otherwise. If we decide to help him, he/she will automatically return back to town and after a while open up a shop there with some nice items, but we won’t find/obtain that crazy unique item, never again.
I really hope the town will have limited amount of spots for NPCs, it would make the game more interesting and will have a lot of replay value, and should make the town look different too depending on who we bring back, stuff like this would add tones to the gameplay
I don’t know how many hours and gold I spent on improving that little castle you get in NWN2. And how I built the perfect home for each Terraria NPC. And how I upgraded everything in my Dragon Tower in Divinity 2…
You know what else would be great? Being able to own your own little living quarter in Devils Crossing - even better would be your upgrade-able living quarter. It’s the perfect money-sink It could also provide some extra-storage space for items, but otherwise it’s purely cosmetic in nature.
Another Idea would be to increase the amount of lamps/lighting in town with every upgrade it gets. So it would start off rather shady and uninviting, with only the central area lit, but gradually become a bright and shiny place. That might quite effective and shouldn’t require all that much work - you just need to add a few light sources.
Another possibility would be to have some optional mini-quests that allow you to hook up villagers, so that over time you get some couples living there.
For example you could try to help the smithy win over the bar maid - they fall for each other and finally move in together. First he’d be extremely thankful to you, then he’d start to regret it, then he’d start drinking and sulking about how you destroyed his life! XD Well maybe that’s a stupid idea.
What else would be nice… repairing fixing some stuff that really seems helpful to the villagers. Like a water cistern, a small potato field, getting some chickens which then would run around everywhere, a tannery, a whater wheel, a soap cookery, a smokehouse for smoking meat, a distillery for making alcohol. (Well the “usefulness” of the last one may be questionable).
On a more mechanical level it would be great if you could get upgrades like workbenches that unlock certain game mechanics. Like combining/upgrading charms and relics, or allowing to remove them again. Upgrading magic items to rare items (for a price, with random new properties), etc.
But that’s stuff you should tie to the main quest or upgrade automatically when the player reaches a certain level, because it’s an important part of the overall progression.
Thank you Jalex for a wonderful update (hope there still got a few pieces left of Zantai ramain to be reanimated)!
I like (a lot) about the idea of the rebuild and evolvable town. Maybe not every NPC will turn into merchant, like to see some helping around the town like rebuild or defend… Or maybe can turn into follower?
It would me AWESOME if the alpha will release during this coming Chinese New Year, I can play (all day long) during this long holiday leave period!
