Just as the title suggested, this thread is created to get everyone's thoughts on big complex interior environments that are rarely seen in today's games. The most we get in today's triple A titles are 500 square meter 3 story complexes filled with pretty much nothing.
My personal wishlist of elements for a castle level would be:
1. All kinds of traps and secretive passages. Leading to secret chambers and treasure rooms. Even some contains a bit of lore that can't be accessed from anywhere else.
2. Headless ghosts and undead knights.
3. Huge well decorated dinning hall.
4. A self-contained underground dungeon, leading to a catacomb.
5. Monsters that used to be people who were living and working here.
6. Really dark places with not much music and the only sound you can hear is the growling of monsters.
7. A giant chess board.
8. Maze like garden guarded by possessed trees and Minotaurs.
9. Optional puzzle gates leads to other areas. (kinda serves as shortcuts), the puzzle here should mostly be inventory puzzles, like put an apple on Isaac Newtons' head.
10. Secret shop, instead of common currency like gold, the shopkeeper only takes Roses or dead rats.
Another thing I want to address here is how to keep players motivated, make them want to explore.
We have quests, gold rewards, potential to get better equipment, exp.
Maybe there should be something exclusive at the end of dungeons? Or maybe major bosses are always at these places. (rather than hanging in towns or wandering in wilderness).
Or maybe many types of weapons can only be found in dungeons and castles? i.e, blacksmith only have long swords for sale, so if you want a katana, or a rapier, you have to go into those dungeons.
One last thing I would like to know is what's the planned gear progress like?
In MMOs and most ARPGs, you throw away things as soon as you get something better.
That devalues your pickups. Because most gears are just not viable.
In older rpgs, gears are harder to come by, and a magical club with +3 strength will take 500 swords to skeletons' faces to get. This makes players appreciate their effort more. However, it still limits player's choices.
I'm a big time fan of dark souls' gear progression system. You can use what ever you want, and everything is upgradable. So theoretically you can upgrade your starting weapon to max and it will not be much worse than things you picked up in the game world. This sounds like players can just stick with their starting weapon and ruins the variety. Trust me, it does not. In fact, it gives players more options. Players can always keep a few weapons at hands and switch them around to cope with combat situations.
In a game like borderlands, sure I have 4 weapon slots, but I would mostly use only 2 weapons because they are the best drops I got, and anything other than them are useless. If I want to spice up my play-style, I would have to farm for hours to get all the situational weapons.
My personal wishlist of elements for a castle level would be:
1. All kinds of traps and secretive passages. Leading to secret chambers and treasure rooms. Even some contains a bit of lore that can't be accessed from anywhere else.
2. Headless ghosts and undead knights.
3. Huge well decorated dinning hall.
4. A self-contained underground dungeon, leading to a catacomb.
5. Monsters that used to be people who were living and working here.
6. Really dark places with not much music and the only sound you can hear is the growling of monsters.
7. A giant chess board.
8. Maze like garden guarded by possessed trees and Minotaurs.
9. Optional puzzle gates leads to other areas. (kinda serves as shortcuts), the puzzle here should mostly be inventory puzzles, like put an apple on Isaac Newtons' head.
10. Secret shop, instead of common currency like gold, the shopkeeper only takes Roses or dead rats.
Another thing I want to address here is how to keep players motivated, make them want to explore.
We have quests, gold rewards, potential to get better equipment, exp.
Maybe there should be something exclusive at the end of dungeons? Or maybe major bosses are always at these places. (rather than hanging in towns or wandering in wilderness).
Or maybe many types of weapons can only be found in dungeons and castles? i.e, blacksmith only have long swords for sale, so if you want a katana, or a rapier, you have to go into those dungeons.
One last thing I would like to know is what's the planned gear progress like?
In MMOs and most ARPGs, you throw away things as soon as you get something better.
That devalues your pickups. Because most gears are just not viable.
In older rpgs, gears are harder to come by, and a magical club with +3 strength will take 500 swords to skeletons' faces to get. This makes players appreciate their effort more. However, it still limits player's choices.
I'm a big time fan of dark souls' gear progression system. You can use what ever you want, and everything is upgradable. So theoretically you can upgrade your starting weapon to max and it will not be much worse than things you picked up in the game world. This sounds like players can just stick with their starting weapon and ruins the variety. Trust me, it does not. In fact, it gives players more options. Players can always keep a few weapons at hands and switch them around to cope with combat situations.
In a game like borderlands, sure I have 4 weapon slots, but I would mostly use only 2 weapons because they are the best drops I got, and anything other than them are useless. If I want to spice up my play-style, I would have to farm for hours to get all the situational weapons.