SureAI

Okay, those who wish can now donate via PayPal.

We'd use the donations to cover our own expenses and it'd be greatly appreciated.

Strange, despite having subscribed to the topic, I didn't receive a notification for this last message. Good thing I thought to check manually.

I donated 60 €; Nehrim was largely worth them, as I actually enjoyed it more than I did Oblivion or Skyrim. I am not comparing with my enjoyment of Morrowind, which has objectively horrendous gameplay in many respects, but retains a special place in my heart as my first experience of sandbox RPG.


A key element of my personal enjoyment of Nehrim was the immersion. The story and the world building were very good. But those work best when the gameplay does not work against immersion. While I'm here, I'd like to offer my opinion about gameplay elements I liked in Nehrim, especially where they differ with the Bethesda games. I hope these elements don't change for the worse in Enderal and I shall try and explain why I hope so, and why I strongly dislike the way they are handled in TES. My fear, of course, is that the latter may influence Enderal's design more than they should.

Take it for what it's worth, since I've met many people who really *like* the way those things are handled in TES. The rant below only represents my personal perspective.


The absence of enemy/loot level-scaling.

This is paramount to me. The whole point of leveling up and gaining new abilities is to be better at solving certain problems. If the problems get harder on their own (or change to brand new problems), you never get to see your new ability shine and lose the sensation of making progress. As the Red Queen says, "Now, here, you see, it takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place".

It also ruins immersion. I expect the world to be somewhat dangerous, but I don't expect tons of impossibly powerful creatures to roam the roads and hills at any time... especially if you used to meet rats there not long ago. (eg. Morrowind; leave Balmora at level 1, have your ankles chewed on by some cuddly worm-like creature whose name I forget. As a level 20 pure mage on the other hand... meet instead a Winged Twilight, capable of reflecting your spell's damage and killing you instantly). How would people even survive at all in such a world? Not only does it break gameplay, it breaks immersion by reminding you that it's just a game centered around YOU, the player, and trying (badly) to cater for YOU, rather than a coherent universe which you happen to be visiting and playing a part in.

Nehrim's choice of XP and zone-based difficulty was near-optimal in my opinion. The high starting difficulty is a Good Thing. The sensation of power at end-game is also good. Most importantly, getting better at something never makes life strictly harder for you, which preserves the motivation to *get* better. Your (major) actions may affect the world, but your internal statistics should not.

The zones need not be clearly delineated, however. If I find the secret entrance to the Tomb of Gloomy Doom, I should not be surprised if the things that slumber inside the murky depth turn out to be very dangerous, even if the zone in which the Tomb is located is generally considered perfectly safe.

In short, the universe should be consistent: if you go out of your way looking for trouble, you should occasionally find it in spades.



No fast-travel, costly teleport

Teleportation in Nehrim has a cost -- a non-trivial one at lower levels. It does much to preserve the sensation of distance, which is completely lost in Oblivion and Skyrim, as 1. everything is just a short walk away (and perhaps a click on the map), and 2. quests send you at every corner of the world. In a medieval-like setting, you don't expect people to travel much; most folk are born, live, and die in the same place. Quests given by commoners in a given village should *generally* be of local interest. When every edge-of-the-map dirt farmer acts like they pop in to the Imperial city every Tuesday, immersion is broken (especially combined with enemy scaling which makes surviving the roads an epic challenge).

Again, it's a matter of consistency: if something is dangerous, few people should do it, or expect *you* to do it, and it should be acknowledged as such in lore and dialogue.

There again, Nehrim's solution was near-optimal. At low level, travel is a big deal (whether in money or in blood). At higher levels, when you start to know the area like the back of your hand, have outgrown your average bandit, and your concerns have become more global, the cost becomes reasonable.

The occasional unavailability of the teleportation service was also a nice touch, reminding the player that it's a luxury.


Giant crabs are cute!

Enough said.




Now a minor gameplay point which I thought could be improved in Nehrim, and hope might be in Enderal.



More love for pure mages!


There where light armor sets for mages (which restricted stamina and therefore spellpower), but no real clothes sets. While mixing armor and magic is perfectly legitimate, another playstyle is the *pure* mage, who should not wear armor at all, and instead seek to maximize spellpower so as to stop enemies dead in their tracks (whether by overwhelming magical damage or powerful magical defense) before they have an opportunity to do any damage. The danger (and excitement) comes from what happens when he fails to do so in time.

It would be nice if there were real mage's robes in Enderal, focused towards untrammeled spellpower, with no concern for non-magical defense. (I ended up modding some in for Nehrim -- they had some minor stamina enhancement, which boosted spellpower).

As an aside, I maxed Destruction fairly quickly (halfway through the game, I think), and then had no means to further improve. I think slow/costly improvements would be better than no improvements at all.

Also, the high-end Shock spells were overpriced. I added to them the same stagger as for the high-end fire spells, and that seemed to balance them in my opinion.

Thanks for your feedback and your donation!

I think you may rest assured, since we have pretty much taken over all of what you liked about Nehrim, and even improved some of it - And by improving we mean expanding the features without changing the core principle. The only thing we did change was that teleportation spells do not consume a teleport rune on usage anymore. They are avalaible in mid-to endgame, though, before that, you'll have to rely on flying mount services. According to Johannes, a lot of people disliked the teleport runes. Maybe we should start a poll on it.

You're very welcome, and thanks for the answer!
I wouldn't go as far as to say I "liked" the runes themselves. Expensive little buggers. I liked the effect they had on the gameplay, which is not to say there may not be better ways of getting that effect. Flying mounts* at low level, teleport later might work even better.

In any case, stringent gameplay and lore restrictions on teleportation seem important to me, because I have trouble suspending disbelief when it's not: too many events involving powerful characters raise the question of "why didn't (s)he just teleport?".


* Flying mounts sound really cool, especially if you actually see the flying part... with the dragon flying mechanism already in Skyrim it might even be possible ? I remember how dearly disappointed I was upon realising that the Silt Striders in Morrowing never actually... stride.


Anyway, thanks for your continued work, both in what is already accomplished and in what is to come! (I just realized I had forgotten to write an explicit "thank you" in my previous rant; that was an oversight!).

I hope that Enderal will have the mark/recall spells. In fact, I would like to have the ability to place more than 1 "mark"; I am capable of suspending my disbelief quite readily!

I like those too, but they make dungeon design that much more difficult: a trap that collapses the entry to the dark mine in which you just set foot, for instance, would be meaningless instead of breathtakingly scary. Which is why I opined that it should be restricted, in gameplay and in lore. For instance it may need a clear line of effect to the sky (solves all dungeons), work only along some "ley lines" (that may require differing amounts of skill to navigate), be stopped by "magic radiation", or... whatever.

The idea is that when the dungeon design requires that you can't teleport to preserve its thrills, it should not be obvious that the only reason you can't is really because it's a game and the designer just didn't want you to, but instead it should feel like the logical consequence of the way teleportation works in a coherent, consistent universe.

It has been far too long since I played Nehrim for me to remember whether and how teleportation fits in the lore.

It actually looks like we've managed to implement a RealTime-Flying system. But don't take my word on that.

And as for the Mark/Return: It's already implemented, but as you said, it was necessary to restrict it in certain parts of the game. However, we always tried to have a proper explanation in terms of lore ready. Ah, and this time Teleport comes with a cool animation!

That sounds really good...

I have a ton of other questions, but I'll stop derailing this donation thread and just patiently look forward to the release.

Have nice days, and make a good game!

Hello, I couldnt find any donation page/button. So I donated money on PLEDGIE dot com
Noticed the last donations where from 2011, so Am i sure the money gets to Sureai??

Hi,

The donate button is on the left of the Enderal page http://sureai.net/projects/enderal/ ; and possibly elsewhere.

As for the pledgie, I asked a few months ago about it on this very thread : http://sureai.net/forum/viewtopic.php?p=53922#p53922 . It seems it is still legitimate, unless this changed in the meanwhile, but not the recommended way of contributing.