Enemies and stuff

[i.n.s.a.n.e]

Hey guys,


Will there be any enemy ressurecting its allies? Like Fallen Shamans in Diablo 2? It was sooo annoying and also sooo much fun. =)

Any chance for some kamikaze enemies? It would be awesome. =)

Please, I also highly recommend to read the following, as there are so many great ideas...pretty please. =)

Originally Posted by andreyy

First a question. Was it only me, or the whole, basic Titan Quest questline was the same, monotonous thing throughout, gameplay-wise, and it started to differ a bit with the Immortal Throne chapter and a tad more with the higher difficulties (immunities and all that stuff)? That's what I'd like to change.

1) World. I'd like to see more random and not random encounters. A chance to stumble upon a fight of a guard patrol with monsters. Some actual patrols walking around! A caravan trying to fend of an attack. Traps and ambushes in random and fixed places. I know it's not a free-roaming RPG, like Oblivion, but it also shouldn't be a desert with a set of spawn points.

On a side note. You're discussing random world generation in other threads. My opinion is - do it 50:50. The most "healthy" way, imo, would be to make a set of premade locations linked with randomly generated landmass. Why I'm writing this here? Because random encounters would be best suited for the randomly generated areas.

2) Quests. First of all, compare TQ and TQ:IT. TQ had barely any quests with NPC interaction. Then, in Elysium, we finally had some WAR. Everyone likes war (in games, ofc). Everyone likes to fight along with some allies. To have a bit more chaos on the screen, more action.
Another thing to consider are quest types. Again, compare the basic game and expansion. In TQ they were all the same, in IT they improved a little. I'd like to see defence, guard and escort quests (with the NPC interaction, mentioned above). Siege (perhaps some big siege quest, where you'd go through several parts of it). King of the Hill. Heck, Aeon of Strife (more often associated with DotA).

3) Monsters. They should annoy the player in different ways. Reborn, ressurect their allies. Teleport around. Explode on death. Kamikaze units. Multiply themselves (mirror images, clones, BLOOOOB!). Run in unusual patterns (not that it would do something, except for avoiding arrows, but just the eyecandy would be cool). Stun, slow and poison in many different ways. They should use some physics spells - push and pull you, smash you against the wall!

4) Bosses. Most of the point 3) applies here. One of the thing I'd suggest, is to make some of the boss fights commence in stages. Example: you enter some Necromancer's filthy cave. The entrance closes and you're swarmed by skeletons from all sides, digging out of the ground. You need to take care of all the entrances, gates, altars, portals or whatever they would come out of, by closing, collapsing, destroying them. When you do that, you proceed to the Necromancer's chamber and fight the actual boss in the new environment. Boss fights shouldn't be just grinding. They're bosses, after all, fights with them should be a blast, something refreshing! So much more physics, than you'd usually deal with, more environment/landscape interaction, etc.

It all comes down to a single word. Variety. I wish you the best of luck with the game development.

Thanks!


Cheers,

i.n.s.a.n.e

[8Ryan8]

I agree, some quests in tq u didn't need to do much such as the one just ahead of helos all u nedd to do is kil 3-5 satyrs and chat with and u get a reward. I'd like to see better in GD. thanks

[Aensland]

Yeah, I'd like to see more variety in the enemies' approach in ARPGs like this.

What about an actual village raid? We always read about it "this town was attacked" blah blah but we never actually SEE it in action. Sure, there were a few enemy monsters attacking the town entrances in TQ but that was a pitiful handful, not a real raid.

I'd like to see a proper monster raid. Like a "defend the village" quest, where you and several NPCs have to stop enemies from breaching your defensive line outside the village. Enemies spawn endlessly from several points and attempt to overrun your position. Quest ends successfully when you survive the timer, quest reward depends on how many NPCs left alive. Quest fails if you die before the timer finishes or if any mobs pass the exit line.

(This is also incentive to see some enemy AI which tries to reach the goal instead of stopping to mob the player. Also plot branching opportunity, e.g. if you fail then maybe certain NPCs won't be available in town, or others replace them, etc.)

Or what about escort quests, where an NPC walks from one village to another and you have to prevent them from being killed. Seems to me to be trivial to implement, you just need the target to walk from one place to another. If there's a problem with the pathfinding algorithm, create a "waypoint" flag object which the player can carry and drop. The escortee will automatically head for the waypoint flag, and if the player is carrying it, follow the player. This allows you to maneuver them around obstacles and dead ends, and if we see a large fight ahead, we can drop the flag so the NPC waits there safely while we go clear out the monsters.

It's the little things like these beat the monotony of simply killing anything that moves, which is pretty much what ARPGs are suffering from.

[Josho]

Those types of quests were in the Immortal Throne expansion as I recall Aensland, so no doubt they would be easy to implement.

[Aensland]

Heh, would you believe that by the time I bought the expansion I'd already burned out on TQ, and only half-assedly played it one time before forgetting about the game, so I pretty much don't know a whole lot about the expansion.

Just goes to show how great TQ was eh. Never bought any expansions of other games when I grew tired of them.

[medierra]

We don't currently have any enemies that can resurrect fallen allies but we have enemies that continually summon more minions... I know it isn't quite the same thing but the end result is fairly similar. I'd like to have actual resurrecting but we need to create new tech for it and, given the overlap with summoning, it is a low priority right now.

In terms of quests, I'm not sure yet what we'll be able to do. The good news is that we have a pretty awesome foundation to work with. We have a completely new quest system that is easier to use and also more powerful as it has hooks to tie in with Lua scripting. We also have a faction system.

The only thing we don't have is a lot of time to build quests. So, I think it may be that the initial release has more limited quests, sort of along the times of Torchlight but perhaps with a couple that are multi-step / more complex. I'd like for the game to actually open with an enemy raid on the town, where you fight alongside the NPC guards to repel the attack. We'll have to see what we can do - the capability is certainly there. So to some extent, my hope is that this will allow people to create some truly awesome mods. I actually suspect that modders may be able to take the game even further than we can.

[Gumshoe]

Will there be any failable quests? I.e, go save X citizen from monsters in Y area in T time, where the reward is larger than normal (esp. loot), but if you don't complete it you don't get the reward. Or save X town, with no time limit, but if all NPCs die while you're there you fail and the town is lost and you get no merchants etc from it?

I think that would add to replayability if you miss a few quests the first time, especially if they're random encounters.

[i.n.s.a.n.e]

Originally Posted by medierra

We don't currently have any enemies that can resurrect fallen allies but we have enemies that continually summon more minions... I know it isn't quite the same thing but the end result is fairly similar. I'd like to have actual resurrecting but we need to create new tech for it and, given the overlap with summoning, it is a low priority right now.

In terms of quests, I'm not sure yet what we'll be able to do. The good news is that we have a pretty awesome foundation to work with. We have a completely new quest system that is easier to use and also more powerful as it has hooks to tie in with Lua scripting. We also have a faction system.

The only thing we don't have is a lot of time to build quests. So, I think it may be that the initial release has more limited quests, sort of along the times of Torchlight but perhaps with a couple that are multi-step / more complex. I'd like for the game to actually open with an enemy raid on the town, where you fight alongside the NPC guards to repel the attack. We'll have to see what we can do - the capability is certainly there. So to some extent, my hope is that this will allow people to create some truly awesome mods. I actually suspect that modders may be able to take the game even further than we can.

Hey,

Thanks for update Med, good news. Summoning enemies is similar and also a good thing. =)

What about the exploding ones? =)

[Aensland]

I agree with Gumshoe, but most quests tend to be standalone. Fail quest X and you can still do quest Y. There should be quest lines where you only get the next one if you succeed in the previous one. Or even quest branches, kill target 1 and you proceed to quest A, kill target 2 instead and you proceed to quest B (kill both and you fail the quest lol).

Back on topic, hell yeah summoning exploding minions. Didn't D2 have them? Those Act 3 buggers at the end of Kurast. They were awesome to hate because they were challenging, kill them and you get loot, if they explode by themselves then no loot.

[mithrial]

Failable Quests may be frustrating but if you can restart it any time then I'm good.