[cactusfriend]

Dark Steambot Souls Chronicles: World Tendency Edition
aka
Bumpy Souls

-NPCs are still cryptic and not too verbose, however your interactions with them will be far beyond 'yes/no' and whether or not to kill/loot them.

-The World Tendency idea from Demon's Souls is expanded and obfuscated to the point of insanity. Moon phases, weather, et cetera all affect the tendency of the area that you are in. This is in service of each character/playthrough being unique and never 'cookie cutter', as well as preventing completionist/min-max gameplay. Of course, the equipment available would have to be very balanced and unique ones would only be coveted for their looks/play style.

-Recent status ailments (even if cured, though the amount of time you were affected before cure can change this) affect character tendency. Also, the amount of time your health is low, or the types of equipment you use.

-World/character tendency will have a large impact upon character interaction as well as the usual, such as item discovery and monster difficulty/behavior.

-Various side-quest/side-game/mini-games are available and playable versus other players as well as NPCs, the outcome of which affects * tendency. Weapon enhancement could also be a mini-game with risk of upgrade failure/lowered effectiveness involved, as well.

-In this world, soul economy is more fully-realized and players/NPCs can give pay one another for jobs such as assassinations/item retrieval/trade. This comes into play for:

-Mechas/battle suits/something highly customizable that is piloted in order to fight and/or travel. Parts/core degrade over time, require maintenance (like weapon/armor repair, but more involved [mini-game or pay a NPC or player to repair]. The 'D* 'Souls' idea of 'failure stakes' comes into play here as it's not a simple matter of just paying a set amount of souls to repair equipment based upon degradation. Degradation can happen during battle and depending upon the equipment, can manifest in various ways, such as decreased maneuverability or efficiency. When something is totaled, it is totaled. Some, but not all boss fights would require the use of said mech or mech-like thing, and there'd be side-quests involving such as well.

-Plot/world so complex that it'd be nearly impossible to become all-knowing of it in one playthrough, or even two. Each 'character arc' would only illuminate the area of the world/plot that said character has chosen to specialize in/frequent.

-Framerate/bugs abolished through years of testing before release! Testers' memories wiped during this intense period! Muahahaha.



A lot of these ideas would make it not a 'Souls' game at all. I know this. I just want to go drastic as I think the games are mostly fine as-is.

[cactusfriend]

[cactusfriend]

That's only a 'problem' for those people who waste even more time working really hard to game the tendencies...not for everyone who plays normally and enjoys each character/playthrough's unique story/items.

[cactusfriend]

[cactusfriend]

Haha - I love it. Good point - a better way to discourage min/maxing would be for there to be no 2-3 'obvious game-winning/breaking' builds. In fact, I really dislike the idea of 'builds'. It'd be great if everyone's play style could be represented and they didn't have to try to shove it into some sort of paradigm in order to be competitive. I know, I know - I'm heavy-dreamin'.