My Suggestions for Legend of Grimrock 2

[Ixnatifual]

Exploring outside environments is a great wish for me as well. In grid-based RPGs I've seen two examples of how to do this.

In Lands of Lore: Throne of Chaos the outside environments were pretty similar to dungeons in terms of layout. It was simply a matter of tileset magic. Instead of a typical wall graphic you had the graphic of impassable trees, and instead of a ceiling you had a sky. The outdoor areas didn't have lots of puzzles and traps. It was mostly combat or travel between dungeon areas.

The Ishar games took a different approach. It had very open (and incredibly beautiful!) environments that were a joy to explore at the time. Enemies would roam the areas as you appeared and you'd fight them. Little villages and houses would be scattered about with trainers, taverns, shop and quest-important NPCs to talk to. Around the enviroments would sometimes be hidden treasure, giving you added incentive to explore.

I suspect it would be difficult to make interesting grid-based combat in the second style for LoG. With so much space it seems it would be pretty easy to dance around groups of monsters indefinitely unless some type of "surround pack" AI was implemented. But if AH can do it, I think it's well worth. Think of exploring the world, finding a creepy dungeon entrance in the forest, then going to a nearby town for buying food supplies and torches and a bit of weaponry to prepare for your dungeon trek. I'm a huge fan of that.

I also tend to agree with an "all attack" type of hotkey. I find in combat I'm finding my eyes fixed mainly on the bottom right of the screen rather than on the main screen, which I think is a bit of a shame. Magic should probably still be manually casted, so you don't "waste" mana whenever you attack this way.

I've never been a huge crafting fan in RPGs. Mixing potions is cool, so keep that, but crafting weapons and armour in general isn't that interesting, I find. I prefer finding the items in dungeons or buying it from merchants with hard-earned gold looted from my enemies (prereably a mix of both!). Crafting the Blackrock Sword in Ultima 7 was great because it was such an epic conclusion to the trials on the Isle of Fire, but I wouldn't have wanted to craft all the other stuff I was using at the time.

Lands of Lore: Throne of Chaos did the compass thing you suggest, but I actually think the LoG way is fine, too. It might be slightly more inconvenient, but it's more realistic, which fits with other stuff such as having to eat food.

I think the following features could make LoG2 one of the best RPG games of all time.
- outdoor areas, hopefully open if the combat challenges can be solved for such an environment.
- shops for selling basic supplies, alchemical reagents and gear.
- a simple NPC dialogue system (Neverwinter Nights style - but not the "cinematic" crap of some stock NwN2 dialogues.) This allows for plots to solve or just random fluff banter.
- additional classes and skills.
- expanded editor allowing for all of the above. Allowing players to literally create their own world to explore, complete with quests, towns and dungeons. Customizable classes seems like it would be an easy thing to do as well. Imagine the endless fun once the community gets busy.

[djordall]

sorry for my english, I am french ^^
I really enjoyed this game ! I am found of old rpg (Eye of beholder, Lands of lore, Wizardry...) I played the most of them in abandonware, so... I have also a few suggestions that could make gameplay experience even greater without ruining realism of progression.
... for Grimrock II, of course ^^

1) having a secondary weapon configuration and being able to switch one from other with a short key (exemple : dagger for a bow)

2) quivers for arrows and bolts (no need for throwing weapon... not realistic)

3) books in where we can regroup spells list, and recipes (you still find parchments, but you can click on the book to put them in)

4) a cleric class would be great (with healing spells, buffs, etc...)

5) spell launcher is fairly good... (make me think of the one of Ultima underworld) but it would be great to be able to memorize a spell that we often launch

6) Why not add magic items that need to be identify (by a spell or scroll) to know their specific power ?

7) I am not found of the "talent tree" all in a line ; a better tree (with branchs) could give more customization possibilities.

8) It would be great to meet some pnjs, in the next adventure... with a few side quests, merchants, etc...

9) a few more portraits would be good.

10) traps not only on the floor, but also on the walls, and ceiling (blades poping up from the walls like in Prince of Persia, and beams falling from the ceiling) so we have to be more alert when we explore than just looking at our feet.

Well... I am sure we can imagine other things to make an even greater adventure, but this game is allready excellent !
I love these old dungeon crawlers games. It adds a strategic dimension in combat that doesn't exist in realistic rpg. And more tension and suspens as you progress in dark tunnels. Level Design is also more interesting ;there are no vasts plains (reallistic, true, but boring) that you must cross with the autorun key with sometimes a monster or two to break the routine... so, the exploration is always fun.
Congratulations for the good work !

[Jirodyne]

sorry for my english, I am french ^^
1) having a secondary weapon configuration and being able to switch one from other with a short key (exemple : dagger for a bow)

2) quivers for arrows and bolts (no need for throwing weapon... not realistic)

3) books in where we can regroup spells list, and recipes (you still find parchments, but you can click on the book to put them in)

4) a cleric class would be great (with healing spells, buffs, etc...)

6) Why not add magic items that need to be identify (by a spell or scroll) to know their specific power ?

7) I am not fond of the "talent tree" all in a line ; a better tree (with branchs) could give more customization possibilities.

8) It would be great to meet some pnjs, in the next adventure... with a few side quests, merchants, etc...

9) a few more portraits would be good.

10) traps not only on the floor, but also on the walls, and ceiling (blades poping up from the walls like in Prince of Persia, and beams falling from the ceiling) so we have to be more alert when we explore than just looking at our feet.

1) isn't really too much needed. You can always have the inventory open waiting and can switch the weapons out instantly when needed. People say the "2 second saved" is a lot an a life savior... but I don't think it is. If that 2 seconds really means your going to die, your doing something wrong, not learning, or just having bad luck.

2) I agree with this only if it auto picked up all arrows, and not just the ones you shot. Cause the system right now only picks up arrows you shot, and only if they are still equipped. If you shot, say, all normal arrows and then switched to fire arrows. When you kill the enemy, the game won't auto pick up the Normal arrows.

3) This would be nice, but with how many bags/boxes/containers you can pick up, you can easily have the mage carry them all if needed. Not like he will be carrying anything else heavy to take up room xD

4) I think a cleric class with healing would kinda break the game as was pointed out before. With little to no healing through this game except by potions which are limited, the monsters can be set. But if added in a healing class, that is totally optional, The game would have to be made harder for that party. Which would make the parties that go through WITHOUT the healing class, have even more of a hassle. I do think there should be a lot more classes tho. Personally wouldn't mind seeing Necromancer But if they did add cleric, it should have the buffs, and protection spells instead of the mages, with mages getting more offensive spells.

6) It would have to be balanced kinda, for the parties that wouldn't have a mage with the right spell. But I can see this working, if the effects were random. If it was always the same items, in the same spot like in this game, then what's the point?

7) While I do agree that the skill system could use some work, it does work for this game. Kinda. Sure some skill trees are useless... Like Mage's Staff defense, or Unarmed, or Athletic... But most of them work!

8) I believe you mean NPCs, Non-Playable Characters, and it would indeed be nice for some side quests to do around dungeons instead of just straight go to the end and kill everything along the way, maybe find some secrets.

9) Could be done, but should be a very last resort after game is like 99.9% done. We can import our own ports after all, so it isn't that big of a deal.

10) This I would love to see more of. More traps, more ways to trigger them, Heck if it could be done, I wouldn't mind if the traps could be randomized every time we start a new game, so every run through is a new experience!

You have a lot of great ideas, and no matter if your take on it how some things should be done, or mine. I would love to just see the game expand into something bigger, greater, and new.

[Thels]

Personally wouldn't mind seeing Necromancer

I'm actually agreeing with every single comment of your reply, except for this.

How would you imagine for it to work? Currently, the monsters explode into sparkles without leaving anything worth animating. Also, what if you did raise something into a skeleton, where would it be? Walk around on the map and follow you? What if you wanted to turn around and backtrack? It would be in the way.

[Ixnatifual]

I'd totally like to see more heal/defensive oriented casters. It shouldn't be too difficult to make them "useful" like a Mage rather than mandatory. There's a limit to how much they'd be able to heal anyway, since there's a finite amount of mana.

[Ixnatifual]

Personally wouldn't mind seeing Necromancer

I'm actually agreeing with every single comment of your reply, except for this.

How would you imagine for it to work? Currently, the monsters explode into sparkles without leaving anything worth animating. Also, what if you did raise something into a skeleton, where would it be? Walk around on the map and follow you? What if you wanted to turn around and backtrack? It would be in the way.

You could just have loads of other necromancy spells instead of raising skeletons.

[Thels]

Well, the first thing I think of when I hear Necromancer is animating the dead. Of course they have additional options, but to me they often feel complementing and not the source of the necromancer.

It would be nice to have some alternatives to the direct damage offensive spells. A skill tree that would focus on debuffing/fearing/paralyzing enemies could be cool!

[Ixnatifual]

How about summoning spirits/ghosts? Could be a "monster" that follows you and attacks enemies. Since they're incorporeal, they wouldn't be in the way and when attacking they simply occupy the enemy's square and take swipes at them for a duration, then disappear after dealing a certain amount of damage.

I do agree commanding a horde of zombies and skeletons is one of the coolest Necromancer features.

[Jirodyne]

Necromancer doesn't deal with just summoning. They deal with the Dead, and Darkness. So, curses, hexes, debuffs, life stealing, and over all creeping sounding spells to normal people. Diablo 2, Guild Wars, and Dungeons & Dragons as a few example, have some summoning for Necromancers, but their main job is debuffing, and hurting enemies indirectly, or over time. Summoning undead is usually cause the Necro Class is so weak alone and needs a shield to protect it. With a group of 4 people, that isn't needed as much.

[Thels]

Necromancer doesn't deal with just summoning. They deal with the Dead, and Darkness. So, curses, hexes, debuffs, life stealing, and over all creeping sounding spells to normal people. Diablo 2, Guild Wars, and Dungeons & Dragons as a few example, have some summoning for Necromancers, but their main job is debuffing, and hurting enemies indirectly, or over time. Summoning undead is usually cause the Necro Class is so weak alone and needs a shield to protect it. With a group of 4 people, that isn't needed as much.

Darkness (curses, hexes, debuffs) would qualify as the black arts.

Necromancy is only one branch of the black arts, directly related to the deceased. If you include black arts, but nothing related to the deceased, it's not a necromancer.

A practitioner of black arts could be interesting, though. But would you focus an entire class around it? Perhaps it would work to have a caster type that has one or two skill trees based around buffing your allies, and one or two skill trees based around debuffing your enemies, rather than devote an entire class around it.