Some sugestions
Hi. I decided to write some sugestions after playing flare for quite some time. I played probably all arpgs released on PC. From Diablo through Throne of darkness to Sacred. Most sugestions are going to be gameplay oriented. I guess some of theme were already suggested here, but will write them here anyway.
1.) Better mouse movement - This bothers me the most. Game plays fine while controling with keyboard. But moving and fighting with mouse is really problematic because your character always moves at 45°, while in games like diablo II your character can move freely at any angle.
2.) Scalable UI / Static sprite size - I dont know much about programing, but i guess this is dificult to do because most 2D games are not duing this. Basicaly, the size of all ingame sprites changes with your resolution. This makes game almost unplayable at higher resolutions, because everything becomes really tiny. And lowering the resolution makes UI too big. It would be nice to have the the UI scale option, or have all ingame sprites have the same size at every resolution.
3.) Checkpoint selection - I personaly kinda like the teleporter room, but having just simple list of unlocked teleports, like in Diablo II or Sacred would be nice too. Traveling like that will be a little faster, because there will be no need to go into teleporter room first and then to the teleport you want.
4.) Multiple drops per enemy - I might be wrong, but it seems that each enemy can drop only one item when killed. This doesnt seem right in arpg. I really enjoy killing boss and seeing multiple items drop on the ground. It would be good too if modder could chose the maximum amount of items dropped from monster too.
5.) Random item/monster generation - If im correct, there was random item generation in previous versions. This is really important feature for most arpgs. It keeps people replaying the game and trying to get the best item with best prefix / sufix. Current system, where creator can make unique items should stay in the game too.
As i said, i dont know much about programing, but creating random weapon drop for monster could look something like this:
List of prefixes:
1- sharp
2- heavy
3- fast
List of sufixes:
1- of fire
2- of ice
3- of destruction
loot line in moster txt:
# dagger
loot=32,p(1,3),s(2,3),10,40
Monster will have 40% chance to drop the dagger. Dagger will have 10% chance to be enchanted. Game will choose randomly from prefixes 1 and 3 and sufixes 2 and 3.
Similiar thing could be aplied to enemies. There would be chance for enemy with sufix to spawn instead of normal one (Like elite or champion monsters in diablo). These enemies will have higher chance to drop loot and will have random abilities coming with their prefix / sufix:
1-Frozen: enemy has + 10 resistance to ice and doeas +5 ice damage
2-Quick: enemy has 20% higher attack rate and 30% higher speed
3-Rich: Has +50% chance to drop loot
These are just some basic ideas, but you get the idea.
6.) More responsive NPC AI / multiple enemy forms - It would be pretty cool to have enemies react to players actions. For example, if player attacks mage with fire weapon, the mage will cast fire shield on him self. If player has armor weak to ice, the mage will cast ice based spells. It would be also cool to alow for more enemies "forms". If enemy has less than 40% of his HP, he will start using new powers and his atributes or even sprite could change. This could make boss battles or some enemy encounters (wyrm is flying at first stage, and falls on ground at second stage) more interesting and less predictable. It would be also nice to have more behaviors for multiple enemies. Goblins could run from you if they are alone, but they will attack you if there are more of them or if your health is low.
7.) Selecting powers with mouse wheel - Just what it sais. Scrolling through powers on your right mouse button with mouse wheel will be nice adition.
8.) Equipment uses powers automaticaly - I might be mistaken, but it seems that if you equip item with power asigned, you unlock that power and can put it on your hotbar. This ok in some cases, it would be usefull to be able to chose from this or auto casting that power. Lets say you find sword of fire ball. After hiting an enemy, your sword will have set chance to cast that spell. Or armor of healing. After getting hit, your armor will have 5% chance to cast heal on player.
9.) Some kind of socketing system - I always enjoyed socketing gems or rune words in Diablo II. Again, this encourages player to play the game multiple times and makes game much more deeper.
And a little sugestion to leveling - Leveling seems too slow and level cap is too low. I find it more enjoyable to level more often.
Personaly, i would raise level to cap to atleast 50 and changed the amount of atribute points to 3 or 5. I would lower the required EXP to level and I lower the bonuses gained from leveling acordingly, raise the weapon / armor requirements acording to those changes too. It would take basicaly the same amount of time to get at max level as it did before and your character would as strong as before, but the game will be much more exciting, becouse player will level more often.
That is all for now. I feel like i forgot something, so i will probably add to this list later. Thanks for your time and hope I helped to inspire developers atleast a little.
Thanks for taking the time!
1) The game is definitely designed for keyboard movement. Our pathfinding is based on 8 directions too, so it would be a major change to make mouse move smoother. I don't have the time or interest to do this. If someone else wanted to do it, they should talk to me and the dev team and we'll discuss ways it might be possible.
2) Larger/smaller UIs are possible with mods. We include the mini screen option ("minicore") but not the large screen option yet. The current art looks terrible at 2x zoom so I don't know if I'll ever officially finish rendering the "hdcore" set.
I usually play at a smaller resolution and make it fullscreen. It sacrifices some sharpness for a playable scale. That's good enough until we have art worth seeing at HD sizes.
3) I think we can sort of do this by abusing the NPC system. E.g. talk to a teleporter object/person and instead of a list of topics to talk about you get a list of destinations to warp to.
4) Bosses with lots of treasure can be done with treasure chests or other map events.
5) Make a long enough item list and it feels random. I personally don't like the prefix/suffix system. Even in Diablo or WoW those were just temporary items until you got the named epics.
So this one's my personal preference, and keeps Flare 1.0 simple. I expect Flare 2.0 to support a full prefix, suffix, random item system.
6) This kind of thing will be added over time. Internally we have an EnemyBehavior interface but only one implementation, a "Standard" behavior used by all the current enemies. We'll add more behavior types as we add them to actual games.
7) Might be possible. If we add new bind actions for "Previous Power" and "Next Power", it could be doable. What order would the powers show up in? This doesn't seem like a high priority to me, but maybe because I didn't use that feature in other ARPGs.
8) Good ideas, I need to think about these. Maybe there's a way to do this with the current code already. Maybe with power item mods, kind of like the way using a "Bow" item changes ranged attacks to look like an arrow.
9) We debated a generic crafting system (e.g. combined two items to make one new item) that would handle socketing and similar. But it's arguably out of place in an Action RPG. More combat action, less boring manual labor please. So we'll probably see this in 2.0.
10) Re:stats/levels, that's just a design choice. I like slower levels and each point having meaning. The engine can handle a game with 50 levels and 5 stats per level though.