Features you want the most?

[yayswords]

You are not removing items because my name and signature.

I am glad to hear you're looking at stagger. Currently it promotes running one of two somewhat extremes of setups: A durable one, that can recover from a brutal pummeling, or an aggressive one, that can hit fast and hard and stagger the enemy first. Because once a team is staggered, it better bunker up (at least spam some heals) and try to survive until the stagger is gone, 'cause stagger is good at preventing the victim from returning the favor. Although don't get me wrong, this aggressive setup I'm running is the most fun team I've used.

[Jaeger]

It's true that poison is traditionally DoT, but I'd rather not have to many DoT effects that only differ by element. I'm trying to be a bit more creative when it comes to status effects this time.

The current idea for equipment is to make all weapons in a category identical, but with more difference between the categories. The items would only differ in their amount of enchantment slots and their enchantments of course.

RPGs without equipment are truly quite rare, but they do exist. Xenosaga II and Devil Survivor are two examples. It was quite refreshing really. Too bad that Jack is convinced that everyone would suffer a collective heart attack if we take away their toys. Though I'm not sure if I'd really disagree with that assessment.

I'm currently playing Devil Survivor and the lack of items didn't bother me all that much. In a way, it's actually a good thing since the game encouraged planning ahead with a suitable party instead of relying on overpowering equipment.

That being said, equipment is not bad in itself, it's just that the available choices are not particularly interesting. A lot of RPGs, equipment progression tends to boil down to weapons hitting harder, armor mitigating more damage, and not much else. Having elemental affinities for weapons in Loren helped, so even a weapon that did less raw damage could be effective against the right enemies. Besides raw damage, maybe some weapons can cause status effects, attack multiple targets, or hit multiple times. Wild Arms 3 didn't have a traditional weapons progression, instead the characters stick with their personal weapons that can be upgraded with parameters of your choosing.

[jack1974]

Wild Arms 3 didn't have a traditional weapons progression, instead the characters stick with their personal weapons that can be upgraded with parameters of your choosing.

That's one way to do it that I like much, or at least have very restricted options (like Amukiki must use sword+shield, Loren must use two longswords, Karen polearm only, etc) so is easier to plan/design the weapon progression.
There isn't really a right or wrong way to do it, as said I'm more worried about the "marketing" point of view. Loren 1 = over 200 weapons bla bla. Loren 2 = 1 weapon each member! <crowd booing>

[jack1974]

OK I'm quoting an email from Anima with a cool idea - basically not eliminating items but reducing the inventory slots:

Say we have 13 equipment slots (like in Loren) and 16 characters. That makes for a total of 208 slots and of course 208 items that have to be equipped.
Of course you could only focus your attention on the A team, which lowers it to 'only' 78 slots.
That's still pretty insane and means that individual items become pretty much unimportant because of the sheer number of them.

If we reduce it to Mainhand, Offhand, Ranged, Armour and maybe amulets we have only 80 slots in total and 30 for the A team.
That's still a lot, but the three weapons slots are rarely all used by a character. If we leave out amulets as well and count the three weapon
slots as two for the average, then we reduce it to 48 slots total and 18 for the A team.

While that looks like a sharp reduction in complexity and options, it might actually increase both. The less item categories we have the more work can be used to make the remaining items unique.
It also allows the player to focus much more attention on her item selection since she isn't overwhelmed and tired of the huge amount of slots.

I approve the idea, since in sequel there are going to be even more characters, and Loren after all is not one of those MMORPG where you collect thousands items. Having less item will also let us design more unique stuff.

[Neverr]

OK I'm quoting an email from Anima with a cool idea - basically not eliminating items but reducing the inventory slots:

Say we have 13 equipment slots (like in Loren) and 16 characters. That makes for a total of 208 slots and of course 208 items that have to be equipped.
Of course you could only focus your attention on the A team, which lowers it to 'only' 78 slots.
That's still pretty insane and means that individual items become pretty much unimportant because of the sheer number of them.

If we reduce it to Mainhand, Offhand, Ranged, Armour and maybe amulets we have only 80 slots in total and 30 for the A team.
That's still a lot, but the three weapons slots are rarely all used by a character. If we leave out amulets as well and count the three weapon
slots as two for the average, then we reduce it to 48 slots total and 18 for the A team.

While that looks like a sharp reduction in complexity and options, it might actually increase both. The less item categories we have the more work can be used to make the remaining items unique.
It also allows the player to focus much more attention on her item selection since she isn't overwhelmed and tired of the huge amount of slots.

I approve the idea, since in sequel there are going to be even more characters, and Loren after all is not one of those MMORPG where you collect thousands items. Having less item will also let us design more unique stuff.

IF I may offer my opinion that worries me honestly. If I read it right, a reduction in the amount of items we can equip is a loss of customizability, even if the items themselves become more unique in properties it kind of takes a turn away from the whole old rpg style of allowing you to build your character from the bottom up. I'd prefer less pretty items in favor of more items to equip as it feels like I have more control as a player.

Not to bash on the following games if anyone likes them, just my personal take on it.

The lack of customization within games like Diablo 3, Dungeon Siege III, and the later stages of everquest 2 (mmorpg) all worked on stripping the ability of choice in favor of granting us a more 'unique' flavor to what was still there. And I could not help but find it heavily disappointing. Honestly a big part of what drew me into Loren was the fact that barring limitations of character classes I could pretty much do whatever I wanted with my characters. Give them two hammers and full leather armor with rings and ammy's that boost speed, so I could have an extremely hard hitting fast warrior, or a mage who focused on nothing but defense and support with his gear. The enjoyment factor was putting all of these different items together to make the whole of a character. Even if a smaller, or just one item granted the same stat points/efficiency in the end, It'd take away from the, "I did it my way and made my own character" feel and replace it with "Well I'll just use these two items for this preset fighting style". That's just my take though, since I play this game for the retro rpg style as much as I did for the story itself. Hope you reconsider!

[jack1974]

Well is not exactly how you describe. For example, the armor: having waist, wrist, trousers etc was cool but to make each item I'd have to spend x4 the amount.
The customization could still be there but done differently, the main problem with so many items is that either I find a way to make a pseudo-random item generator, or it would be hard to make it.
Example, you can have a series of item giving +1 Defense but nothing else, another set having +1 Speed, and so on. I know that you can combine the four of them mixing them to have a lot of different combinations, like +2 Def +2 SPD, or +3 SPD +1 DEF and so on (always assuming 4 armors slot).
But in reality, that +1 DEF or even the +2 DEF won't have such a big impact in the game itself. Will change very little. So the idea would be that with less armors but custom designed, you would have to think about which one to use for every battle.

Anyway is just an idea. There could still be like 2-3 armor slots instead of one. Is just brainstorming for now

[Neverr]

Yeah. And I totally concede of the statistical comparison of the two as I stated before. They really accomplish the same thing in the end on paper. It's mostly just the aesthetic feel of being able to manually equip each item yourself instead of just a suit of armor pre-made for you. Just my thoughts though. I'm sure even if you went the other route you could pull it off, it's not game breaking by any means.

[yayswords]

Item slots would be less overwhelming (not that I find them so per se) if we had some quality sorting of equipment. I wouldn't have to mouse over every set of pants I come across to see if they are better than mine if there were things like item level and/or rarity coloring.

(yeah, I played WoW for a long time )

[Anima_]

If that's the case, then I'll comment on what you might do. I don't think having a limit on items works well in RPGs. If say you fight a boss that hits hard or regenerates, then you might need items as a backup healing/support. Setting a limit can really suck if your healer is down on mana.

I'm sorry but I can't parse that in any other way than this: Restricted resources in an RPG are bad, you could run out!
But isn't that kinda the point of having restricted resources in the first place? In Loren you could get away with never using any healing spells since they are easily substituted with items and those potions were cheap enough that you could have enough to hit the item limit (Happened actually, probably won't happen again, it's much higher now.)
That kinda makes the Healers superfluous.

In terms of better mechanics, some balancing could work better for characters. Even if Saren was suppose to be a healer/defender, his weak attacks always annoyed me when he's a warrior of all things. And the rouges attacks might hurt alot at times in terms of damage, almost all of their specials needed situational statuses that bosses sometimes aren't even affected by, making their abilities useless. Mages were OP for the reason that they had access to all the elements. This made them practically too useful for any situation. Chances are these issues were already talked about/addressed, but I might as well say them if they haven't

While Mages still can gain access to all elements they will lose effectiveness if they do. Saren/Elenor will be fully capable members of their chosen class, don't worry there. Rouges(currently called Skirmishers) will have abilities that will work even against bosses. They will also be your go to gals if you like high damage numbers. (And there will be support to get them in the frontline.)

[Neverr]

If that's the case, then I'll comment on what you might do. I don't think having a limit on items works well in RPGs. If say you fight a boss that hits hard or regenerates, then you might need items as a backup healing/support. Setting a limit can really suck if your healer is down on mana.

I'm sorry but I can't parse that in any other way than this: Restricted resources in an RPG are bad, you could run out!
But isn't that kinda the point of having restricted resources in the first place? In Loren you could get away with never using any healing spells since they are easily substituted with items and those potions were cheap enough that you could have enough to hit the item limit (Happened actually, probably won't happen again, it's much higher now.)
That kinda makes the Healers superfluous.

Restricted resources can be done without limiting items as well though. Using potions as an example, allow us to have whatever amount and type of potion we want, but limit it with a cooldown so no one can just spam potions, or from a lore and realistic standpoint, lower the effectiveness of spamming potions over and over or even give it an adverse effect. This way healers in this situation become not only desired but perhaps necessary depending on the situation while still allowing the player to choose whether or not to use a potion/whatever else without putting a virtual cage around the player pushing a specific way to play a game. There is a large portion of the community who enjoys hoarding items, while I am not one of them I can still understand the desire to fill up as much as possible. It's purely because people enjoy options, stretching room.

I actually very much agree with restricted resources as I am a big advocate of survival type games, but within that type of game play nothing is worse than being limited to specific avenues pre-built by a developer. To put it in laments terms - In a game I want to play the game, not follow the games guidelines on how to play!