» Thu Sep 09, 2010 7:32 am
Unbelievable sense of character progression from "Might and Magic VII: For Blood and Honor"
Any time I felt I'm the master of the land, I would find another place that I felt like a newbie there and had to develop my group even more to be able to survive there.
And this can be achieved by doing this:
Any small increase in a skill should have a significant and visible effect on the effectiveness of that skill, so when you advance your one handed skill from 6 to 7, you should suddenly feel that you can kill those rats a lot easier.
Any small change in our attire should affect our effectiveness in a significant and visible way, so upgrading from "Rusty Iron Dagger" to "Iron Dagger" should let us kill those cave bats a lot easier.
Any small change in level should have a significant effect on monster's attack and defense effectiveness, and there should be a world of difference between those rats and "Frost Atronach" for instance, and another world of difference between those atronachs and dragons for instance.
Better items and spells should be hard to find, but, when found they would be like treasures for us.
The world should be divided into different levels of difficulties, so there should be newbie areas, low level areas, mid level areas, high level areas, and extremely high level areas that only characters in their 70s levels could hope to survive there. And those areas should be connected in a gradual way to each other, on the geographical topology of the land.
In each area you should usually encounter danger and reward related to the difficulty level of that area, and there should be a lot of places for any character to find that are suitable for their level of progression, but if a player dares to enter a higher level area and could survive there to loot a container or two, and run away to places more suitable for his level, then he would probably find rewarding loot to keep like treasure.
But later in the game, he could enter those higher level places and master them as he should.
merchants at higher level areas, are better at bartering and harder to please, and would pay less for the loot, but might have better items for sale, and those better items would have exponentially higher prices, so there would be a world of difference between, a rag dress and a normal working class dress, and another world of difference between that normal dress and a noble silk dress.
High level items are harder to find, but are worth a lot more than lower level items, but on the other hand they would seem cheap compared to the even higher level items, and so on...
And in order to survive in higher level places we have to constantly try to advance our skill levels, and find better gear, and advance our character levels to hope to survive in those higher level places.
Radiant Story quests would decide where to send us that provide enough challenge but would not seem impossible for our current character, but if the place seem impossible to conquere at first, gaining a few levels in our skills and character level, and finding some better gear would let us return to the place and conquer it.
In this world, any small change in any factor would have exponential effect on the matters, and in this world any small advancement on any factor that we can advance in our character would be gratifying and the sense of progression would be immense.
While playing MM7, I had such an experience, and I'm always looking for similar experience in other games.
In that game, whenever I could master an area, and felt like a great conqueror, I would feel like a newbie player the instance I entered a higher level place, because of that exponential increase of effectiveness of skills, enemies and gear, and I had to develop my group even more to hope to survive in the higher level area.
And I hope to experience this immense sense of progression yet again, and I have a mind to make an overhaul for skyrim and try to recreate that exponential feel of progression for anything in the game, if it possible and within the power of CK.
