DQ RPG Suggestions:

Hi all!
I love RPG maps and I must say I am loving DQ so far! It have so much potential!
Below I will lisk many different things that I think could improve our fun.
Please, I am suggesting many things and making many critics. Don't take it the wrong way, I am making them in a constructive and positive way because I think this great map can be even greater!





#### SHOPS, ITEMS AND QUESTS ####

We have a very limited variery of items. Shops could sell raw DMG and ARMOR items and the dropped ones could be more interesting. Also shops could sells some basic orbs and items for mages.
We could make items that gives stat bonuses, reduces cooldowns, increases regen, life steal, "mana steal", items for mages that improves breath, spells and/or INT, items with special effects (auras, stun, slow, confusion, invisibility, frenzy) and anythign else our creativity allows.
We need more Orbs too. Mages really lacks items late game from what I saw.
There could be even "Set Items", that gives extra bonuses when used together. Like: fire claw, fire orb and flaming scales (armor) would increase your fire damage (good for fire dragon).





#### REVIEW STATS & TALENTS ####

Some stats and talents seems a bit off. An easy example is the regen Talents: they would only help in the very early game and at the point you get them, you regen way more from your stats. Would be better if they were put before HP/MP Boosts and scaled both as flat value and %. Same could be told about many others. Like HP/MP boosts: you "waste" 10 levels to get what you would with just 10 stats, so a % value would be better, or maybe both.
I will plan with more time and draw a proposal for a new Talent three. I will do for fun. I love creating stuff.

As for stats, some are way more benefitial than others. Agility gives too low dodge to be effective and movility isn't great, as the actual numbers tells it's way more worth to stay still attaking with high dps than to attack and run.
Int is complicated to evaluate so far, because spells could use some tweaks.





#### REVIEW SPELLS, MORE SPELLS & DRAGON TYPES ####

Each dragon type would have more skills to choose, but could get at most 7 skills (limit on command cart, considering Patrol command was removed).
That means we could have up to 11 different spells to choose from, maybe each dragon "upgrade" opens 2 more spells or so.

Breath: each dragon type now have a breath spell. They are a toggle that once turned on, turns basic attacks into long ranged spells that consumes mana on each "attack". The breath improves automatically on each upgrade.



FIRE DRAGON:
Play Style: Fire Dragons are the raw damage dragons. On melee range they hot body burns near enemies and it's attacks turns enemies on fire. As spell caster, they use their massive area burst damage to melt their foes. As all it's spells and attacks leaves victims on fire, they are also good for attack and run tatics. It's an all arround dragon.

Skills: (all leave targets buring, possible a % of max HP per sec)

"Passive": improved regeneration and damage on lava.

Zergling
-Fireball becomes Fire Breath: it deals damage and burns target.
-Fire Egg becomes Fireball: works same way.
-Fire Egg: leaves a fire egg on ground. It explodes after 10s. If an enemy gets close, it explodes with such force that knocks enemies back.
-Boiling Blood: each time you take damage, melee attackers takes a % of that damage back.
-Fire Claw: rework so it have a greater base damage and lower base cost to relly less on Int, making it useful for non mages.
-Fire Spikes: spikes thrown burns targets. Have a greater base damage and lower base cost to relly less on Int, making it useful for non mages.


Speedling
-Improved Fire Breath - Line: the breath is now a line of fire that damage all enemies on contact.
-Lava Pool: an area is covered with lava for some seconds. Enemies on it takes damage over time and are set on fire (as all other spells). The size increases with skill level. Trigger it's "Secret Passive".

Pygalisk
-Improved Fire Breath - Line: the breath have a wider line.
-Montem Scales: the dragon's body generates so much heat that enemies near takes damage over time, but are NOT set on fire. The damage and radius increases with level. Scales with both INT and HP (more HP, "bigger" the dragon is ).

Brutalize
-Improved Fire Breath - Cone: the breath now become a cone attack, being much wider that the breath of it's last form.
-Fire Nova: unleash a radial emission of fire that damages and knocks back all enemies.

Hybrid Reaver
-Rain of Fire: cover an big area with a rain of fire, dealing massive damage on enemies inside.
-Fire Mastery: improves the damage over time that each spell triggers and reduces spells cooldown.



ICE DRAGON:
Play Style: Ice dragons are tatical and usually cruel. They preffer to use it's cold attacks to slow it's foes or to freeze them in ice prisons to slowly devour they frozen flesh. They despite melee combat, but when it's required, they can use it's claws to freeze their foes. They focus on spells or ranged attacks: their ice spikes are deadly sharps and hard as diamonds and it's spells can trap many enemies at once. Best at dealing with a foe at a time. Their spells and spikes have usually longer range than Fire Dragon's.

Skills: (all leaves targets with cold letargy, applying a small slow on attack and movement)

"Passive": improved regeneration and damage on snow or high montain areas.

Zergling
-Ice Breath: damages and applies a weak slow.
-Ice Shard: send out a shard of ice that can critically hit. Damage and critical chance increases with level.
-Ice Crystal: leaves an ice crystal on ground. It explodes after 10s. If an enemy gets close, it explodes freezes it for some time (like stun,but better visual).
-Cold Blood: each time you take damage, melee attackers are greatly slowed.
-Ice Claw: melee attacks slows targets (normal slows that all spells applies) and have a chance of Freezeing them (chance increases with level). Have a greater base damage and lower base cost to relly less on Int, making it useful for non mages.
-Ice Spikes: spikes thrown applies a greater slow and have a small innate critical chance (stacks with DEX). Have a greater base damage and lower base cost to relly less on Int, making it useful for non mages.


Speedling
-Improved Ice Breath - Line: the breath is now a line of cold air that damage and slows all enemies on contact.
-Ice Wall: creates a wall of ice that generates a snow area arround it (triggers the "Secret Passive"). Enemies need to damage the wall to pass through it. The wall is so cold that enemies too close will take damage and be greatly slowed.

Pygalisk
-Improved Ice Breath - Line: the breath have a wider line.
-Ice Shield: the dragon's scales are covered with a cristaline Ice Shield (amount based on INT and HP) that also gives an Armor bonus while it lasts. The Ice Shield refills faster if the dragon stands still (concentratres) and very fast on snow areas. When the Shield is full, the dragon can choose to explode it. This will consume all your Shield (along with mana) and will send smaller Ice Shards on all directions: the shard's damage is based on the shield amount and can critically hit (chance increases with level).

Brutalize
-Improved Ice Breath - Cone: the breath now become a cone attack, being much wider that the breath of it's last form.
-Ice Nova: unleash a radial emission of ice that damages, freezes all nearby enemies and greatly slows the farther ones.

Hybrid Reaver
-Ice Prision: permanently freezes all targets in a huge area. Bosses will be frozen for a limited time. Imprioned enemies takes massive damage over time.
-Ice Mastery: increases the Slow amount on all effects, increases the critical chance on spells that have it, increases the Freeze time, increase Ice Shield regeneration and reduces spells cooldown.



EARTH DRAGON:
Play Style: Earth dragons are the biggest dragons: heavy, slow and have incredible strength and toughness. They have great melee abilities and tankness. They lack long range attacks, but once they get close to their foes, they will become a pool of blood in few seconds.

Skills:

"Passive": improved regeneration (flat and % bonus is better) when borrowed (they come with it).

Zergling
-Stone Body: Earh Dragons receives bonus to STR and VIT, but great penalty to DEX (can go negative) and Movement Speed.
-Ice Shard: send out a shard of ice that can critically hit. Damage and critical chance increases with level.
-Earth Bound: Earth Dragon leans to move when burrowed. The speed increases with level. Upon unburrowing they stun nearby enemies (care with burrowing time to avoid abuse).
-Tough Body: Earth Dragons have increased Regeneration.
-Stone Claw: melee attacks have a chance to knock back enemies. Also, Earth Dragons are used with their heavy weight and get a reduced miss chance that increases with level.
-Stone Spikes: spikes thrown are heavy and travels 30~50% of the usual distance (increases with level), but the extra weight makes them scale also (and partially) with Strengh.


Speedling
-Improved Stone Body: the dragon grows bigger, further increasing STR and VIT and increased the penalty to DEX and Movement Speed.
-Epicenter: unleashes a shockwave that drags all enemies in the radius (increase with level) into his direction.

Pygalisk
-Improved Stone Body II: the dragon grows bigger, further increasing STR and VIT and increased the penalty to DEX and Movement Speed.
-Brutal Attacks: the dragon is to big and attacks with so much force that it also damages all enemies arround his target. Area increases with level.

Brutalize
-Improved Stone Body III: the dragon grows bigger, further increasing STR and VIT and increased the penalty to DEX and Movement Speed.
-Living Meteor: the dragon charges for a bit and then uses all it's massive strength to jump. The distance is based on it's STR. Upon landing, it will smash all enemies under it, dealing damage based on (height) and HP (size and weight).

Hybrid Reaver
-Fissure: the pinnacle of the earth spells. The one that makes Eath Dragons with magic focus so feared. Their domain over earth is so big that upon concentrating a bit, it can open a fissure to engulf all enemies in the area. Instantly kill all enemies affected. Bosses and other Heroes takes MASSIVE damage.
-Earth Mastery: the bound to earth is so big that the dragon move way faster burrowed than upon earth. When burrowed the dragon can also walk "over" (under) cliffs and cast spells. They can also feel the minerals compounds on earth, and gains bonus gold.




It's late now. Tomorrow I will post concepts for Eletric Dragon (fastest dragon) and Water Dragon (support one and best with magic).

Hope you guys enjoy.

Erh... how can I edit my posts?
For when I update this one.

Editing is disabled on this because people have been known to post bad ideas, wait for people to correct, and then claim it was their idea to begin with. I shall add you to a special group that will allow you to edit your posts in this section.

On another note, Love the ideas

Hello, I am really glad that you have taken an interest in Dragon Quest RPG. I have worked for well over 10,000 hours on this game while going to school and working full time and I am really happy to have another fan.

Most of these ideas, especially the "Add X" or "Make more Y" ones, are already on my plate of things to-do.

For example, making more items. I of course when originally planning this game was going to have billions of awesome items of all different types that do all sorts of things. But the reality is that it takes well over an hour just to make and test 1 new weapon. So when I sit down and work on DQRPG for however long (usually 1-4 hours), I usually spend it fixing bugs and what not.

Another example of how things really aren't that easy is creating new dragon types. Yes this is going to happen, but it will take around 100 hours of work to add 3 more choices. Why does it take so long you ask? Well. On top of the normal things you would expect like creating the 15 new units and actors and weapons and what not, I have to manually search all the games code for instances where I check for "dragon types" and change them to incorporate the 15 new dragons. I also have to create 21 new abilities(each taking 3-5 hours) and then I have to make all the talents work with the new unit types. Then I have to make sure that there is no bugs.

As for balancing mages and melee characters and stuff. It is extremely hard to test these by myself, when I see people bring it up I usually take a look.

I would hope that you continue to post your ideas here and let me read them, but I would also encourage you to try and create a game of your own. When I first made Dragon Quest RPG, there was no other RPGs on Starcraft besides a half working Merchants RPG and a broken final fantasy RPG thing. So I decided to lead the way forward with Dragon Quest RPG. I would encourage you, like I apparently did with many others, to go and create your own game, whether it be with the SC2 editor or another means of creativity.

I hope you don't take this response as negative. I am just explaining, as I have done for a year and a half now, that things aren't as simple as add more X and change Y.

Thank you,
Hero

I just wanted to add that I will be looking at some of your skill ideas when the time does come, so don't think that I am saying "F you GTFO". I just want you to know that I too have a creative mind, I just don't have the time to make all my dreams come to fruition.

I have no idea how the ditor of SC2 works.
I used to work with the SC 1 editor and Neverwinter Nights Toolset only.
Thought things were simpler.

If there is a way to export/import things, and you want to share the boulder, I could help creating new items.
I also have a good time with game balance things. If you have interest I could help further developing Talents.

It's a great map, a great work. You obviously have many peopel that want to see this finished. Why not grab some allies?

This is my application booster to blizzard, so i am going to continue to work on things solo. The sc2 editor its very complicated, and is better focused in by a single person so that i know exactly what is happening at all times. One of the ways i Ann able to create so many, currently in the 500s, updates is because i am very God at organizing my work space in such a way that everything makes since.

I would however love if you could come up with some ideas for the rest of the talents that aren't created in the skill tree. Eventually i would like all of them to be there. The talents that are already there serve there purpose for low level characters, health regen for example. Consider this. The first tier is for levels 1-25. Second is for 5- 50. Third its for 10-75 and 4th is for 15-100. Because of the high range in talents, keeping only the final tier very powerful is important. Other wise players will be much to strong by level 20.

In the next 3 days at most I shall post some proposals then.

Btw, what you say about talent's effects improving with each dragon upgrade?

That would help scaling better with levels. So, skills of the first tier would help low level dragons, but would also keep up when upgrading.



And about helping with items, I am not aware if the SC @@ Editor have this feature, but the NWN Toolset allowed you to export individual things from one map as a different file and them import into another map.
Like, you could use a raw dirty map (fast loading) only to create items and then export them to import in the true map.

Come up with a data chart for all 36 talents at each of there 10 levels with the 5 different dragon evolutions, and I will see if I can implement that. So you only need to do like 1800 bits of balancing. Should be quick as cake.

Something like:
Name|E1-L1|E1-L2|E1-L3|E1-L4|E1-L5|E1-L6|E1-L7|E1-L8|E1-L9|E1-L10|E2-L1|E2-L2|...|E5L9|E5L10|

Strength of the Dragon(E1)|1|2|3|4|5|6|7|8|9|10|
Strength of the Dragon(E2)|2|3|4|5|6|7|8|9|10|11|
Strength of the Dragon(E3)|3|4|5|6|7|8|9|10|11|12|
Strength of the Dragon(E4)|4|5|6|7|8|9|10|11|12|13|
Strength of the Dragon(E5)|5|6|7|8|9|10|11|12|13|14|

Just do that for all the talents and send it to me. I will than go over it with you and see if I like it. Then we can test it against the enemies with all the different stats and builds. Let me know when you get done with it.

Alright.
Will play arround with this and also try something that could be simpler and save you time.

Btw, mind if I create some extra talents?

I think running the idea for talent by Hero would be better. If he wants you to, you can probably create it after that.

And just so you know, your not the 1st to offer help for this.

I was

Not sure I understadn what you meant Greed. =P

Tell Hero what talents you would want to create before you do because if he doesn't want or like them you don't waste your time. Even so he might just want to do it himself.

Oh!
Who is Hero? =P

I was understanding "Hero" as the main character of the map. Was confused. Lol.

Anyway, I already calculated a proposal that seems simpler than flat values for each level for each dragon upgrade. Attached.





Let me know what you think of this perspective.

I am Hero. Creator of Dragon Quest RPG.

Do it again, but don't remove any of the talents that I already did or their effects.

Also I would suggest the requeriments as the following:

-Tier 2: 5 points in the previous talents of same column.
-Tier 3: 10 points total in the previous talents of same column and 5 points into any other talents of same category (Defensive, General or Offensive).
-Tier 4: 15 points total in the previous talents of same column and 10 points into any other talents of same category.

*Red Face*

Didn't know. I saw your nick as "Admin".

Ones that can't be done (reasonably):

Increased drop rate
Holding spell key charges it

Ones that I don't like:

Draco Sensus
Draco Incitatio
Deflective Scales
Magnus Scopus

Ones I do like:

Int -> health
% invlun on hit when low health
potion drop

Like I said, don't replace ones I already made. Consider them set in stone. The other places are free game though.

oh man, if magnus scopus was accepted, ranged would be so op