DarkMeph wrote:
it is the strain of having to live in a dungeon? While they have people looking down on them from above as they think are we part of some game to these people.



DarkMeph

Who watches the Watchmen? lol

@Nosferatiel, @DarkMeph, @Tredecim



About the suicide option: I must admit we chose this solution for the moment to make it easier (just a button and we play the death animation).

It's currently a minor feature which only allows to accept a new hero in place of another.

(And it's a classic solution for a "team rogue-like", as in Organ Trail for example)

But I really like all your proposals, very good inspirations if we have the possibility to improve this feature





@Doshaburi



I didn't mention in this document a feature that we want to add for the heroes: a variable of moral (in the meaning of courage and not alignment as you suggest) but nothing has been decided yet.

You're right though, we want to play with different "personalities" and I'm keeping in mind your list of ideas! However, we want to avoid displaying a "righteousness" bar.

Would your characters appearance change if they did action that affect the moral compass? Thank you saying that you like my idea and for explaining the suicide option.



DarkMeph

What is the point of view of the player? Are we one of the characters, or we are an omniscient spectator?



Maybe the player could be the ship's AI which had damaged memory banks and does not know everything about every character, or maybe it did never have any info on some of them in the firstplace. The player-as-AI helps the heroes from a strategical point of view, using intercomms and locator devices, thus the 'player vision'.



If the player's knowledge is the same of one character's knowledge or a damaged/limited AI knowledge, then we will not know whether the other characters' stories are true or false... unless we can decrypt data from their badges (usually taken from their corpses, and IF we have some decryptor device available), or find some data log, or something else like an endless 'mental raping' device which extracts the victim's memories.



It would be interesting to have the character stories detached from their looks, and have them randomly generated. Let's say a character story is composed of 3 to 5 sequences. They are then combined with some substring replacement for adjustment of names and places. The characters would have a 'true story' and a story they tell, which may or may not be the same.



There could even be schizophrenic heroes which tell a different story every time.



Each character should have hidden attributes about their true nature, which would affect how much they enjoy and perform specific tasks. That a-simple-guyshould be inferred from in-game subtext. A violent murderer faking as an 'ive-been-framed-I-am-just-a-simple-guy' might give himself out when it ravels at stabbing an enemy... "Ha! take that, silicon-based scumbag lifeform! And that! And that! And that! and THAT! *splorrrgshht* Muhehehehehehe"

@DarkMeph



For production reasons, we can hardly change the characters appearances: currently, we have 200 sprites by appearance, thus 200*30 characters = 6000 poses with only one appearance by heroes ^^.





@Brazilian_Joe



The player controls a team of heroes with a top down view. She is almost omniscient, but she can't view the entire level, only the powered rooms and where her heroes are.

In the same spirit, she knows the "public" biography of her heroes but she discovers some secret elements during the games.



I like the idea of the player who is the AI of the spaceship I don't know if we need a justification but it's a good proposal.



About the character and the story: we hesitated but we decided to make heroes with a specific appearance, name and backstory. I talk about it in Three Questions about the Rogue-Like in DotE:

Please note that we have made the choice to not push the procedural generation to its maximum. For instance, the playable heroes will be pre-defined (but there’ll be plenty of them!), just like monsters. What we seem to be losing in terms of diversity, we will earn it in the form of knowledge and attachment: little by little, the player is going to get used and learn how to master these heroes, they will know the monsters’ behaviours and how to get rid of them. This will also allow us to provide a more efficient work on the visuals, background stories, personalities and the uniqueness of each hero.

I see your point about the characters changing. 6000 poses that must be one hell of a work out lol



DarkMeph

6k poses.. whew D:



Topdown is always welcome for tactic stuff

Death of a hero, forcing a hero to "commit suicide", leave or similar eviction technique should have a negative impact on the party/game or notable consequence for doing so unless the party has an agreed reason on their departure such as unfortunate "somehow tripped on to a mine" incident or "mad man syndrome" - unless of course someone is performing summary execution commissar style to "spur on the rest of the men". The consequence could go along the lines of attacking the party, *sabotage, a deadly return or none at all; then the hero in question could show up in a future as a New Hero event or never show up again but become a merchant or wanderer in another expedition. These reactions could be based off of personalities.

I think that too much pressure is put on the Dust resource. It may happen that players never use the character skills to hoard dust.

To mitigate this, i would like to propose a different mechanic for Hero Skills.



I think that heroes should have 'Action Points' to activate their skills.

Those points would only regenerate partially, after each TURN (i.e. Open Door).

Some heroes could have enhanced action regeneration, or may use an equipment which speeds it up.

Some skills would consume more than one Skill Point.

Player may use Dust to completely refill the Hero's Skill Points.