Little Ideas

[WolfsQuill]

Hey, guys! I actually typed this out in a Word document instead of straight onto the forums, because this is the result of a lot of musing and wondering. Basically, this is a collection of all my questions and ideas that I’ve had for Fractured! Since I typed it out while I was thinking (although I went back through for editing) some of it might sound a bit stream of consciousness. Anyway, start!

Swimming
I don’t mean full-on swimming with underwater worlds or anything, even if that would be cool, because I do understand that would be awkward with the way the camera and movement works. But, I had several ideas for how water or deep rivers could affect gameplay.

1. First is the obvious. Casting a lightning/electricity-based spell at a pool of water or a drenched person would cause more damage, whereas a fire spell would cause less. We saw a bit of this in one of the gameplay teasers.
2. At minimum, my initial idea was this: let’s say you’re running away from an enemy, whether that be an NPC or another player (for this example, let’s say an Infernal) and you come across a deep river. You know there’s a bridge further up the bank, but you’re low on health and that puts you at greater risk. It would be really cool if, instead of having to run to the bridge anyway, you could jump in and swim across the river. But since an Infernal has an affinity to fire, diving in may cause more harm and would encourage the pursuer to either give up altogether, or head to the bridge.
3. And then I thought, what would those penalties be? Maybe something like a “Drenched” state, which makes you move slower since your clothes are heavy, an “Uncomfortable” state caused by the “Drenched” which makes you fidget and causes a penalty to stealth, and/or if you’re in a cold area a “Chilly” state which could progress to “Hypothermic” if you don’t warm up. On top of that, you might still be being pursued so lighting a fire may not be in your interests. On the other hand, the “Drenched” state could increase your resistance to fire and (if Tracking becomes a thing- more on that later) muddles your scent so it’s harder to find you. Also, soaked clothes tend to be darker, so it could another “Drenched” perk could be a boost to… camouflage? At night?
4. Breaking it down by race is a bit harder. Beastmen were the most difficult for me. I figured that their fur would give them a boost against “Chilly”, but fur tends to matt when it’s wet, so maybe the “Uncomfortable” state would have a steeper penalty. Also, fur/hair doesn’t dry as quickly as skin, so it would make sense that the “Drenched” state remains longer. Humans are sort of my neutral ground that I’m basing things off of right now. Demons are more difficult. I figured the Infernals would take heavier penalties for being “Drenched”, but may “dry off” faster than the other races. Also “Chilly” wouldn’t really affect them as much, or maybe it would just progress slower. The Vampires and Nightmares are kind of iffy for me at the moment.

Tracking
This one actual occurred to me as I was writing out the Swimming portion, but here we go. I figured that if we’re going to have a full hunting system, tracking would already be in there, but it couldn’t hurt to add in my two cents.

1. As far as natural wildlife or NPCs go, I’d imagine there’d be footsteps that we could follow and little ‘sparkling’ clues to interact with that would say something like “these branches have been broken recently” which would indicate the quarry was in a panic/hurry, while “recently” would indicate they were close by.
2. I also thought that, if we do get Animal Taming, there could be specific animals that would aid/add abilities to tracking. Like a bird that could guide you from the sky, or a hound of some sort that could track scent. (This is where Swimming comes into play. Since walking/swimming in a river can cause a scent to literally be washed away.) It would also make sense if there were strong smelling plants (or even feces) that a player, or even the quarry, could roll in to hide that scent.
3. The issue with this popped up at the words “dynamic RPG”. If this is an honestly living world, then- while there may be a certain degree of “set paths” that any NPCs take- it would make sense if the NPCs varied their routes, backtracked, or veered off in random directions. For example, while tracking a wild beast of some sort, what if you thought it was heading for its den, but then it smelled some weak prey and went that way instead. If this was a case, you’d need a reliable way to track the quarry. The most obvious idea is “footsteps”, but asking the engine to generate and keep all those footsteps active on the map all the time just sounds like a disaster waiting to happen. Plus, what if we through in the ability to track other players. There would be chaos!
4. So, my solution is a “hunter’s vision” of sort. A hotkey or ability to focus your senses to “illuminate” the tracks in the immediate area, while it would be up to the player to actual identify what is relevant. That would keep tracking in cities difficult and mean that any/all tracks could “exist” in the world, without having to be generated and there for everyone who’s on all the time. And yes, I was thinking in terms of the Witcher 3’s “Witcher Senses.” (Although fun fact: if you look closely in the Witcher 3, you’ll see that those tracks are actually there for you to see without your senses.)
5. I would imagine there would be ways to improve your ability to pick out which specific trails you were looking for. Animals would be easier in that each species could have distinctive prints, but tracking a human on Syndesia would be more difficult, so perhaps you could “learn” how to correctly examine tracks and then, for a short time, those particular set of tracks would be a different color to help you spot them. Although, I’d imagine that any form of teleportation would simply be a dead end. It’s kind of hard to track that, but perhaps someone experienced in arcane arts could manage.
6. And, of course, I’d imagine your race would affect how good at tracking you are. Beastmen would probably be the best trackers by virtue of they’re walking, talking animals, and perhaps demons could have the best night vision? But maybe they have difficulty with animal taming, which is where humans would have an advantage over the demons. Whereas for the Beastmen, Animal Taming for the sake of tracking is a bit redundant, with a few exceptions such as birds.

Village/Town/City Sieges
Less of a full thing and more of a question. In the Housing & Towns Q&A, it was pointed out that a blacksmith would not fight as well as a trained guard during a siege, and that- since NPCs improve skills over time- it wouldn’t be very wise to risk your highly trained blacksmith. My specific wonder would be if we could create safe houses in the middle of town, or somewhere defensible. Essentially, simply a reinforced building where all non-combatant NPCs could take shelter, rather than have them simply cowering in their homes where they could be picked off. Also, someone I know had an interesting question. Are any buildings taller than the others? If so, can we place archers on those taller buildings and sort of “stack” the town that way; with the taller building towards the middle?
Well, that’s all for now. Maybe I’ll dream up something else later.

[PricelessShingle54]

wow buddy u type a lot hahaha! keep it up

[WolfsQuill]

@pricelessshingle54 why, thank you. thank you very much.