Collecting suggestions for TSE-3

[DBAce9Aura]

@Mark Pay: I know you really wouldn't want this to exist in TSE at all, but here it goes anyway.

Elemental: It's a "one size fits all" damage category. What it covers is pretty self-explanatory (attacks based around fire, ice, etc.). The hook to it is its versitality (fire attacks work wonders against undead enemies, while some other elemental attack would work against large enemies).

[alspal]

please limit/remove enemies that heal them selves or respawn! argh

[Arran_Dengate]

I loved the combat engine in TSE2, but I found that individual skill chains weren't needed (especially on higher difficulty levels) - only the party chains were really helpful. I think with a bit of change to the interface, choosing individual skills could be easy enough that skill chains wouldn't help anyway.

(For example, the interface in Sonny was pretty good this way. Prepare for a godawful plot, though.)

The chi system, and the various bizarre abilities of opponents, were great fun.

I liked the damage multiplier, but felt that it wasn't explored to the full extent - for example, skills that freeze the multiplier at the current level for a round, or double the current level, would be interesting.

Plot was fantastic in TSE2, but I can certainly understand why it took so much effort!

[kfedex]

My biggest problem with the game is that nobody else plays it. The game is great. The music is amazing. But when I'm like, dude, I just beat The Spirit Engine 2, everyone is like, What?
My advice. Get out it there so I can actually talk with my buddies about it. If you can't do it yourself, you might want to find someone who can, if for no other reason than to get more money in your wallet for all the effort you put in.

[Enojek]

1) I suggest the use of skill trees. So when organising your skill set you can decide between two or more groups of skills. For example: Different elements of magic, different types of magic (support, attack) tanking skills and possibly even summoning skills. I <3 SUMMONERS!!!

2) It would also be a good idea for each character to have an innate special skill or property unique to that character.

3)Buyable pets or hired mercenaries to fight along side you, I know the previous TSEs have the occassional guest but having a lil' buddy on a more permanent basis would be awesome.

4)I like the idea of sidequests, so I think it would be great to include job agencies or guilds that give regular missions.

5)Everybody loves some good old fashioned secret areas and easter eggs, they could be unlockable via sidequests or reaching a certain level or status.

6)More variety in weapons, like axes, maces, wands, bows etc.

The only reason I suggest so many changes is because The Spirit Engine has proved it has so much potential and is a solid, innovative series. It could easily accommodate change and retain its depth of storyline and concepts.

Keep up the impossibly, fantastic work!

[Mark Pay]

As always, thanks for the great input.

Enojek - There was originally going to be a pet in TSE-2, from the plains of Chapter 2. He was cut pretty early on though, to keep things simple. I am strongly considering mercs for TSE-3.

kfedex - I know, I know. I really don't like marketing, TSE-2 is a hard sell and most of the portals offer bad deals. I should be doing more though.

I've got TSE-3 on hold for the moment whilst I work on something else and figure out what to do with the combat system. Adding certain types of complexity to it has not helped with the playability, so I need a rethink.

[Moonbiter]

First, congradulations for your titanic feat. I think I can safely say that what you have created here is the best Jrpg ever made. The only other that comes close is Mother 3. And while the afore mentioned wins out (narrowly) in story, TES2 is by far the better game. The way you pared the genre down to it's pure essentials, story and tactical combat, is simply sublime. The icing on the cake being that the tactical combat requires actual tactics, every encounter a perfectly considered gem. Danmn, now I'm gushing.

Onto my thoughts on what you could do with TES3. Skill chains as they are now are essentially fine, except there doesn't seem to be any reason to use them over the grand flexability of just slecting individual sills from moment to moment. I think the best solution would be to add effects to the final skill in a chain based on the skills that precede it. The chain would have to be completed for the effects to count. As an example.

Generic Piercing Attack->Party Heal->Generic Multiple Target Concussive Attack.

This could change the Multi target attack's type to piercing and add a small life drain effect. As a balancer a slight speed penealty to every skill in a chain could also be applied

The key concept here is that you could still use the fast and loose play by the seat of your pants style of choosing the skills to use form moment to moment, or give up that flexibility for ridgid calculated plans thought out ahead of time.
These would ideally be equally viable, taken over the game as a whole giving players more of a choice in how they approach combat.

[Mark Pay]

Thanks Moonbiter. I really like the way you're thinking. Definately something to seriously consider.

[DBAce9Aura]

Here's an idea that would likely be on everybody's "Must Have Features for TSE-3" list. But instead of limiting this idea to just this game, I gonna suggest this for the entire RPG genre in general.

*Level Up/Gain EXP during battle: Part of what I like about leveling up during battles is that you don't have to wait until after the battle is over to earn EXP. Another plus to this system (this applies to you, Mark Pay) is that the developer(s) don't have to assign EXP values for enemies, saving them a lot of work. Successfully using an attack/support/etc skill rewards the character with EXP, just like in those Tactical RPGs.

So what do you think?

[monsoonasiian]

I think that the story should be really dark and sinister, make sure to have lots of twists. I really liked the idea of the sword trying to convince Kaltos to kill his friends and travel to the spirals. I like the idea of the spirals its mysterious and i am glad we never went there, it was better kept a secret.

What I did not like about Spirit engine 2 was how the boss encounters were easier then some random encounters, the bosses were quite easy to reach as well, which made it less of a journey and left me kinda unrewarded.

The Spirit engine bosses were a little more exciting like Taz Tez, Grenal, Cross bone, and Nemu the Demon, I also found the Huge robot after finishing the arcane library was very kool, would have been nice to fight it.

I did like Vsing Urtat very refreshing, I thought In world 7 there should have been a boss fight where you vs an ancient tree or a forest spirit. The Ghost fights in The ship was very nice a good way of explaining what they feared the most.

It would be cool to have journals or tomes which provide information about the story, people or locations, I like to read about the story and understand the game, also meaning less dialogue for people to read and if their interested they're s something for them to read. The tomes should be found on bosses book shelves or on tables.

One more thing Josh must be kept, each world had its own voice through music it kept me excited, I had many different emotions going through the game like a sense of relief when i reached dragon gate, after escaping the the dank hell hole, all that cheerful music was very comforting. I was some what down after portavale was destroyed and the music did the job. Make sure to have Josh working with you Mark He is a very good composer.

Keep up the good work guys.

[alspal]

[monsoonasiian]

I get where your coming from but the way Mark does it makes me so excited and wanting more

[Withnail]

I really enjoyed TSE-2 - it's one of the best games (indie or otherwise) I've played recently. Thank you for putting in the time and effort of making it!

One thing I loved about this version and would love to see in the future was the interaction between the characters and the narrative. As far as I know, the way that TSE handles this by grouping the characters by personality/worldview is unique, and it's one of the strongest elements of the game.

I especially love the way that certain groups of characters interact with each other and with the storyline - like how Kaltos/Charlotte fall in love, Mericious/PyanPau bond over theological debate, and having Grace in the party makes Batiste's anger personal.

I liked the more "epic" storyline of TSE-2, but if you're moving towards a more "short story" format for TSE-3, I would definitely suggest to keep the level of character interaction and character-specific dialogues as the previous version, because that was one of the strongest if not the strongest element of TSE-2.

Moving towards a short-story format might actually help a lot with this - it seemed to me that a lot of the parts that made the specific characters and their interactions unique (the dialogues when they first meet, the stay at the inn, the fight with ick thelloth, the character-specific subplots and unique dialogues, and the ending) might also work on a more "compressed" time-frame, since they were very spread apart in TSE-2.

My last idea for character interaction (and you might already have done this in TSE-2 - I've just played through with the Kaltos/Charlotte/Enshadu party everyone loves and with Mericious/PyanPau/Grace) would be to have two "personalities" develop unique relationships/interactions (like the ones between PyanPau/Mericious and Kaltos/Charlotte) and the third personality develop an individual storyline. This would let every playthrough be unique while cutting the writing time down to something more manageable.

That's my two cents. Once again, thanks a lot for making this great game!

[Mark Pay]

[ROD]

Minor issue: though there´s so much wonderful music in TSE2 something is missing (at least I´m missing it): a musical theme. There have been two in TSE, at starting title and at the main menue screen.