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Basically, I'd like to take five minutes of your good time so you can answer these questions. I'm making a Coldstone game (and I'm sure many of you are) and this information would help most of us when designing are games.
Thanks.
------------------ Ladies and Gentlemen, as you know we have something special for you at Birdland this evening. A recording for Blue Note Records... Let's take it back to the concrete streets, original beats and real live MC's... "I don't know how radical you are or how radical I am. I am certainly not radical enough; that is, one must always try to be as radical as reality itself" - Lenin
Favorite aspect about POG? The multiple quests that are in no particular order. I enjoyed being able to work on the knight's quest, without having to bother with the shield quest. Or being able to work through the skills quests. The basic element here is having the freedom to work on whatever I want, when I want to, as opposed to a strictly linear progression(in order to get to C, you have to do A, then B. You can't do B first, then do A.). That make sense? I also liked "meaningless" quests. Knight's quest for instance. You don't need it to win the game. Nor the skills quests, nor the divine lamp quest. They are in there not to win the game, but to make winning easier, or just for the sake of fun. A like side tracks.
Least favorite? Ok, stay with me here, I'm not contradicting myself. My least favorite aspect of the game were the depths of the quests. I like brain teasers, and about the hardest things for the quests in POG were trying to locate where something was, and then being a high enough level(or being able to run fast enough) to get there. Ie, the whole hack & slash mentality. Now, this isn't a complaint, because I know POG wasn't designed to have real brain teasing puzzles in it. But for a new game, they would be nice.
Something that should have been skipped when designing POG? Not a flame, but when you design your game, skip having non-native speakers write the dialogues for the languages the game is released in. Ie, if you release it in english, have a native english speaking person write the dialogues(or translate them if a non-native person writes them originally). Poor spelling and grammer really is irritating, and you will lose a lot of potential players and reviewers by skipping so small of an item as this.
Something that was left out? The ending. I really really really wish you could finish the game(awaken the giant), and continue questing. You wouldn't be able to travel past HG, since that isn't made(a sequel, we presume), but being able to continue on running around and enjoying yourself.. maybe finishing earlier quests that you neglected to do, would be very nice. I also think Gidolan Keep should have been made, and once the Giant was awakened, be enterable. I think this would have been a nice finishing touch to an otherwise enjoyable game.
Also, I kept looking for an NPC called "AAC." Figured it would be roaming the hills of High Garendall, and when you talked to it it would say something to the effect of, "Don't even think about it! I could kick yer scrawny butt from here to the Minotaur's Cove." or, "Need help? For $10 you can send me your file and I'll get you out of any jam!" I still think he's out there, just can't find him. Maybe in Trinity...
One last comment for you. It is my belief that the best games are where you start with an idea and flesh it out. It sounds trivial, almost blatantly obvious. But you would be surprised at how many games you can play and at the end say, "What was the point of the whole game?" I like story, I like action, I like to wrack my brains with solving puzzles. I really like multiple ways to solve the same puzzle.
So there ya go. My 2 cents.
------------------ Shoot 'em with everything you've got. If anything still lives, shoot 'em again.
Nonlinearity. Stark Bledfast stated it well. I too love multiple solutions.
Also, I loved the tunnels. Good transportation is vital in such a large gameworld and this method encouraged exploration while fitting nicely with the feel of the story.
The square by square version of the world. I realize that this is pretty fundamental to the game and that it allows for many of the games strengths (ie the size and depth of the game world), but I found that the little pauses for loading the next screen interfered with the flow of play. The square by square design also leads to some unfortunate game play anomalies; not the least of which is attacking a monster to the end of a board and being kicked over to another screen. 2 seconds later, when you return, all those monsters are right back in place. It's a hack and slash fest game, so killing them again isn't a big deal - it just breaks the illusion a bit more.
I actually have some naive suggestions to address the issue. I'm no programmer, but it seems that if the game were multithreaded, the levels could load as you approached the border of a map. Another possibility is that the levels could be loaded in groups of 9 - a 3x3 grid with the character in the middle square. This would effectively preload any possible 'square' one went to next. The 3 x 3 square would then load in the background over a slower period of time and allow seemless play. As long as the loading took less time than a walk across a screen, there woud be no waiting! Again, this is a naive suggestion from a non-programmer, so if it seems implausible then it probably is.
no.
I would have loved to see character graphics that and animations that matched my character. Even having a portrait with the right armor et al on the stat screen would have been nice.
An on-screen version of the map would have been GREAT.
I agree with the two responses above with extra dittos on the grammar/spelling thing. AMATEURISH! And my avatar? At least in Cythera there was a female body...I am not a man!
VOLUME CONTROL
I have OSX, so I don't have the problem other people seem to have of not being able to change volume once in the game, but I like to be able to, say, hear music over the clashing of blades and screaming of Liliths. My solution is just to pump up the pre-amp in iTunes, and turn down the main volume, so that the music is louder, but sometimes I'd like to be able to just mute POG and listen to music, etc.
Greg
I enjoy the relative ease of playing the game and how easy it was to learn the ins-and-outs. I also enjoy the ability to run around and get the candy (i.e. gold and weapons) at any time in the various quests.
I don't see anything that should have been left out.
I agree with the comments posted on what needs to be improved. As a former copy editor, the language portion did bother me. I get distracted by typos such as "taht." A simple spell-check program would have at least caught such mistakes. I also would have liked to have a female-appearing character and have been able to go into the city in the final quest.
Am looking forward to an update or somesuch advance.
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1- My favorite aspect of the game was having so many quests and being able to kill monsters and gain experience.
2- My least favorite aspect is also the pauses between screens, locating certian caves or areas, and that i had to keep taking detours to get to certian places.
3- Something they should have skipped was once again, having French guys do the dialouge and probably having no editors becuase there were more errors and bugs than i could count!
4- Something that was left out was a GOOD map, going into Gidolan Keep, and going to more than 4 towns.
------------------ " Don't waste your magic on weak monsters."