What would you CHANGE about Wiz8?

[Nydlari]

quote:

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Originally posted by madmarcos:
purely my opinion but...

1. move away from turn-based, player-reliant combat. go AI scripting, etc. human should get involved only to change figting parameters, cast specific spells, etc.

2. no more 1st person perspective for entire party. of course suddenly graphics processing becomes more burdened, but i would REALLY love to be able to see my party kick ass

3. more NPCs. bigger meatier towns

4. more drama.

hate to say it but the era of the classic CRPG is gone. wizardry has other RPGs beat when it comes to character classes, races, skills, and spells. but it needs to evolve.

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I have to disagree with 1 and 2 completely. I hate iso perspective games, it's what ruined Baldur's Gate for me. If you're realy RPGing 1st person is the way to go; however, for a party based game, it should just be first person to 1 character at a time, not the entire party. This way you could more strategicaly (sp?) place your characters during combat.

As for getting away from turned based, you have the option to go to real time combat in this game, and that's the way it should be, adjustable to fit the play style of the person playing the game.

[timokonski]

1. I think that there needs to be an option that allows the party to cast a series of non-combat spells (light, armorplate, enchanted blade, xray, detect secrets) at once by assigning them ALL to a hotkey, and by pressing that key it will cast them at a level determined by the player. This would save a TREMENDOUS amount of time while just exploring and trying to build up magic skills.

2. Also, I think there should be an option (if there is already please let me know what is is) in the main menu to skip the animated movements of the monsters. As for me, I like to fight ALOT and it drives me crazy watching a group of 20 or more walk and move one at a time (I dont have the fastest computer in the world either!!!). I would like to see them move from point A to B without having to watch them!!!!

[Knip Dyolf]

madmarcos

quote:

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purely my opinion but...
1. move away from turn-based, player-reliant combat. go AI scripting, etc. human should get involved only to change figting parameters, cast specific spells, etc.
2. no more 1st person perspective for entire party. of course suddenly graphics processing becomes more burdened, but i would REALLY love to be able to see my party kick ass

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Ughhhh!!!!! You want to get rid of the two basic elements so important to the success of this game?
You dont work in politics do you madmarcos? They seem to do a good job of telling people what they want when they dont really want it.

quote:

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hate to say it but the era of the classic CRPG is gone. wizardry has other RPGs beat when it comes to character classes, races, skills, and spells. but it needs to evolve.

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I thought Wiz 8 was evolving. That was the idea of the 3D graphics. At least you mentioned that Wizardy is a CLASSIC.
Still, a good posting madmarcos....takes guts to knock Wiz 8 in this forum LOL.

judee

quote:

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If it had been another BG clone, I wouldn't be sitting here playing it till all hours of the night, that's for sure!

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Truer words never spoken judee.
I havent had such sleepless nights since playing Wiz 7 and I have bought a lot of (crappy) rpg games in the meantime, most after reading so called expert rave reviews. What total letdowns.
With Wiz 8 I only had the demo and this forum to make my decision on whether to buy it. Both have not failed me

[Spooks]

I agree that the story element, at least, needs to evolve. I have yet to tear up or get the least bit emotional about anything other than my characters in the game. I remember beating Torment and having to just sit there and stare at the screen for about 10 mins after so I wouldn't ruin the moment. It just deserved that few minutes of silence for a great game.

Thank goodness for first person tho. Making my party and getting into the monastery was like putting on yer favorite sweater. Was about time someone did it again, and did it well.
(sigh) I hate to sound like I partially agree, but moving from first person would help some. I can't have my fighters move up to engage w/o dragging the magic users along with me, and when fighting monsters with extended reach, I have to move my party 2 feet to close to melee with my heavy hitters every time I kill one off. Fighting 12 Rock Crabs last night was annoying as hell. And you WILL end up doing mostly melee cuz every darn monster I come across now is immune to magic. Full power lightning bolts doing 20 points of damage, whoop dee do.

If I could think of one other thing to improve, it's the dialogue bar. Mine is bigger than my house. While BGII didn't have the style of play I prefer, the dialogue method there was much preferred. Altho I'd keep the entry bar doohickey that let's you type in things to say. They could still use that for side quests, easter eggs, etc.

[MaskedFrog]

Personally I am very happy with Wizardry 8. I completely disagree with madmarcos. What he proposes would turn Wizardy 8 into a BG clone. I thoroughly enjoy the first person perspective as it lets me see what my party sees. I do not need to see my party hacking and slashing on the screen because I can see it in my own mind.

As for the age of classic CRPGs being gone, I disagree. I enjoy Wizardy 8 because it reminds me of my I started playing CRPGs in the first place. Most of today's games with a few notable exceptions have sacrificed story and gameplay for graphics. This is just my humble opinion. And yes I did play Wizardy 1 on a first generation PC AT.

As for things to change in Wizardy 8, I really cannot think of anything at this time. This is why I was addicted to it from the beginning.

[madmarcos]

***looks around to see how much ass he has left to sit on***
actually i wasnt proposing any 2D sprite-based iso-view alternative. but what about 1st person perspective of my lead character and being able to see the other 5 in my party around me, fighting, casting, etc.? Deus Ex was my 3rd favorite game of all time, System Shock # 2 (you want to talk suspense, drama, and subplots! oh my). both were first person perspective RPGs. of course Warren Spector was involved, so its hard to not be a great game having all 6 members of my party squatting on my shoulders as i run through corridors... well, its nice for tight and total control of my party, but its kind of anti-immersive.
oh well, hope this makes my opinions a little clearer.

[Morgalas Everhate]

Its difficult for any development team to come up with the right mix of drama(story) with method of execution(fighting). Wizardry 8 did a fine job overall with both elements but could have polished it up a bit better in those two aspects. For example, I found the BG series an excellent CRPG mainly because of compelling story line, the graphics, animation and background art was good but looking at the isometric view of characters no bigger than your thumb kinda lacked. BG sorta compensated for that with management of color schemes and type of armor you wore changed the appearance somewhat.
Wizardry story line is good but could use a bit more meat to it, just to make it more compelling or dramatic. A touch more is all I mean. Graphics wise look at the monsters and thier movements and various stages of hurt appearance. WOW!!! You see missiles fly out and spells being launched too, but you don't see sword swing or fist bashing. You could say 2 out of 3 in this regards aint bad.

I say if they had implemented a the 1st person shooter like they did, but being able to look through the eyes of any separate character would have been really cool. They already had party formation implemented so why not keep that formation but you can look through the eyes aof any character and control not only that persons actions directly but the whole party from that perspective much like how it is run now. This was lets say you look through the eyes of your Mook ranger, you would see your bow being drawn and arrow shoot much like a Quake 3 fighting but also you could pan around your camera view and see from the eyes of your Mook ranger, watch your Human Monk lay a punch to the enemy. You could look back and see your Faerie Mage gesturing as he/she begins there spell casting, then just like how it is now you see the Shrill Sound Spell emiting from the Mage. Or you could keep swaping from eye to eye and watch/perform the battle from any character's point of view. Each character could have 5 or 6 battle animations like weapon swings across, then swings downward, then diagonally up or whatever.

This doesn't seem too far beyond what the Wiz8 engine is already capable of since most of it is already available, ie the camera paning , single party view point, missile/spell animation, great looking character/monster graphics/animations, party formation factors in battle.

Thats my rant. This, little more meat on bones, with the story line and combat perspective would have made this wonderful game a touch better and by far would have raised the bar for CRPG standards much higher than they already accomplished.

[fossil]

Lots of things I would change:

- In combat movement. My other party members should not lose attacks because my fighters need to take 1 step forward in order to engage in hand to hand combat. Other characters also lose the advantage of initiative since your partys movement is determined by the slowest members speed. This severely limits control over ones party. Not saying I would want a BG type perspective, just would like to have some control over where my individual party members go in combat and not have it penalize my other characters.

- Non offensive-offensive spells. Why can I cast a fireball two inches in front of my party and it will not affect my party? Further how does that same fireball know not to affect that Rapax I cast turncoat on? Would like to see the offensive spells react in more "realistic" ways (yes, I do understand and appreciate the irony in asking for a "fantasy" world to be more realistic).

- Right-click info. This is just a small thing, but it would be nice to be able to see my spellcasters spells and at the same time be able to use the right-click info window at the same time. This way when I realize my mage doesnt have any spell points left in Earth magic I can easily determine what would be the next best type of magic to use without having to exit out of the spellbook menu.

- Automap. one word, blech. A few features that would have been nice. an "isolate layer" option, so I can easily determine where they heck I am and where I want to go. I have also missed quite a few "places of interest" because the automap seemed to show I had already been there. A few extra symbols on the radar screen would be nice also only having an "N" to tell tell me which direction is north has caused me to end up going in the wrong direction many times. A few extra letters, "SWE" would have gone a long way and not required a lot of extra effort. Also seemed to spend a lot of wasted time clicking back and forth between automap and the game screen. I attribute this to the confusing way it shows up (confusing to me, maybe not to others), I just found it tedious to navigate.

- Merchants. A little organization of their stock would have gone a long way, also automatic consolidation would have been nice. No need to have forty spots taken up by Bullets(5).Also a little memorization of where I was would have been nice. Got frustrating to have one character selected and find an interesting item for another character, if you click on the new character the list goes back to the top, it also will forget any filters you have set if you go into the character view screen.

- Knock down drag-em out fights, every single time. It seems almost every fight takes a lot of resources and spell points to win. I prefer the strategy of needing to know when to cast a lot of spells of when I need to "save" them for a later fight. As is it seems the best strategy is to throw everything including the kitchen sink at the oposition during every fight.

I have a few more but have someplace to be. Hopefully no-one will get their panties in a bunch over this stuff, after all its just one persons opinion. It seems a LOT of people love the game just the way it is, honestly I wish I felt the same. I still like the game, but if I could I would definately change some things.

[fossil]

Lots of things I would change:

- In combat movement. My other party members should not lose attacks because my fighters need to take 1 step forward in order to engage in hand to hand combat. Other characters also lose the advantage of initiative since your partys movement is determined by the slowest members speed. This severely limits control over ones party. Not saying I would want a BG type perspective, just would like to have some control over where my individual party members go in combat and not have it penalize my other characters.

- Non offensive-offensive spells. Why can I cast a fireball two inches in front of my party and it will not affect my party? Further how does that same fireball know not to affect that Rapax I cast turncoat on? Would like to see the offensive spells react in more "realistic" ways (yes, I do understand and appreciate the irony in asking for a "fantasy" world to be more realistic).

- Right-click info. This is just a small thing, but it would be nice to be able to see my spellcasters spells and at the same time be able to use the right-click info window at the same time. This way when I realize my mage doesnt have any spell points left in Earth magic I can easily determine what would be the next best type of magic to use without having to exit out of the spellbook menu.

- Automap. one word, blech. A few features that would have been nice. an "isolate layer" option, so I can easily determine where they heck I am and where I want to go. I have also missed quite a few "places of interest" because the automap seemed to show I had already been there. A few extra symbols on the radar screen would be nice also only having an "N" to tell tell me which direction is north has caused me to end up going in the wrong direction many times. A few extra letters, "SWE" would have gone a long way and not required a lot of extra effort. Also seemed to spend a lot of wasted time clicking back and forth between automap and the game screen. I attribute this to the confusing way it shows up (confusing to me, maybe not to others), I just found it tedious to navigate.

- Merchants. A little organization of their stock would have gone a long way, also automatic consolidation would have been nice. No need to have forty spots taken up by Bullets(5).Also a little memorization of where I was would have been nice. Got frustrating to have one character selected and find an interesting item for another character, if you click on the new character the list goes back to the top, it also will forget any filters you have set if you go into the character view screen.

- Knock down drag-em out fights, every single time. It seems almost every fight takes a lot of resources and spell points to win. I prefer the strategy of needing to know when to cast a lot of spells of when I need to "save" them for a later fight. As is it seems the best strategy is to throw everything including the kitchen sink at the oposition during every fight.

I have a few more but have someplace to be. Hopefully no-one will get their panties in a bunch over this stuff, after all its just one persons opinion. It seems a LOT of people love the game just the way it is, honestly I wish I felt the same. I still like the game, but if I could I would definately change some things.

quote:

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Originally posted by madmarcos:
purely my opinion but...

1. move away from turn-based, player-reliant combat. go AI scripting, etc. human should get involved only to change figting parameters, cast specific spells, etc.

2. no more 1st person perspective for entire party. of course suddenly graphics processing becomes more burdened, but i would REALLY love to be able to see my party kick ass

3. more NPCs. bigger meatier towns

4. more drama.

hate to say it but the era of the classic CRPG is gone. wizardry has other RPGs beat when it comes to character classes, races, skills, and spells. but it needs to evolve.

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No No No No! This is what makes this game such a blast to play! You're not watching a group of characters kick monster tail (which *ahem* you can do watching Saturday morning cartoons LOL), but you're right down there with you face in the battle...that's what makes it so cool and that is where those CRPG's that "evolved" lost a lot of potential buyers. They may have a bigger market, but they are catering to kids...kids who DO watch groups of characters kick monster tail on Saturday morning cartoons.


The only thing I would change about this game is the amount of time there is in one day so I could play it longer.


fossil,
In your main window, you can left click (& hold) on your character's portrait and see how many points they have in each magic book. Hope that helps you some!