by Zyl » Thu Dec 18, 2014 6:53 pm
Hello! Greetings from France. I love the game, very well-crafted, polished and detail-oriented, intuitive, with a good gameplay and story integration.
So, some suggestions!
1/I love the morale mechanic, and how each character has their own personnality. That said, I found the game a bit lacking when it comes to their relationships with their fellow survivors. Their being forced to survive together should help develop strong bonds (or tear them appart). So with that in mind, my idea is some sort of friendship or respect system. Each character starts with some sort of opinion on the others, depending on their personnality. For exemple, Zlata would almost universally be liked by the others, while Roman would draw some suspicion for his aggressiveness. Anton and Cveta might like each other given their common background as teachers, etc.
From that point, their relationship might progress depending on the events. For example, nursing a character back to health, feeding them, or talking them out of depression would greatly increase a relationship, as would bringing back some supplies the other needs (smokes, coffee, bandages, meds...). On the flip side, they would lose respect from committing acts the other disapproves.
Once two characters like each other enough, they might become friends, which would be mentionned in their journal ("I have grown to care for Arica. I respect her." ; "I am glad Cveta is here, I know I can count on her during tough times.", etc). Good overall relationships between the survivors would increase morale, and vastly diminish the chances of a character running away from the shelter. But losing someone they have come to care for would make them at least twice as sad as normal. It could also help develop a more human side to the selfish characters (up until Roman goes crazy because his friend died). And perhaps the epilogue could mention how they kept tabs on each other after the war ended and they returned to their life?
On the flip side again, if the characters' relationships become bad enough, there would be a lot more fighting, running away, and general grumbling, but they would not be very affected by their death.
2/More characters! I loved the dog idea I saw somewhere, but I guess it would be rather complicated. If you do think about a dog one day, please think about the possibility to eat it. And become severely depressed because eating your best canine friend was the only way to survive the winter.
An outdoorsman would be nice. Someone a bit more resilient to winter and sleeping on the floor, and maybe slightly more apt with the traps than the others?
A little old lady who used to have the most beautiful garden in Pogoren, with the ability to grow herbs and vegetables more efficiently? (I like the "useless" characters, having once finished a game with only Cveta left.)
I also would have liked it to be able to "recruit" survivors at night, or have them come to your shelter after some requirements have been met during quests. Like the supermarket girl, the sniper junction dad, or the hungry homeless guy.
3/As someone said, more options to achieve quests would be nice. I would have liked to be able to propose the "come guard my house, I'm afraid of thugs and I have a teenage daughter" lady to come and live with me for a few days, or nurse the guy wounded by a sniper back to health. Hosting (nigh useless) strangers would make life much more difficult for a few days (what with having to share the supplies and beds), but give a far better reward (and morale boost) when/if the quest ends successfully. And it would make temporary survivors to add some diversity to the cast.
4/As someone already suggested, I think, I would also like it if there were some reprisals to messing with the military or thugs during the Night, if they see you stealing for example. Even if you manage to get back to the shelter, they might track you down and attack, that sort of things.
5/If we're catching rats in the traps, and there are rats on some maps, and some NPCs are able to kill them... why couldn't we hunt them for a bit of food?
6/I think boarding up the house should have some effect on the temperature. Or rather, not boarding it up should make it far more difficult to heat it up.
7/Looters raiding the house at night should have a chance to die and leave us with some equipement if your group is really sufficiently armed and on the selfish side.
8/Maybe a possibility for the characters to overload themselves (add two or three more items than their max) when scavenging, at the cost of movement speed (and thus safety if the map is dangerous) and energy?