Game Flow Idea + Question

[guest509]

  Agreed with Z.

  Seriously. Some systems give no interesting decisions. Some lead to fiddly game play with running back to stashes and what not.

  I have to admit I did like the orginal Diablo method of sort of tetris style fitting things in your inventory. Then it got tedious as hell and become just NOT FUN. I ended up filling up on crap, going back to town and selling it, then going back.

  Some games fix this by having your pet run back for you...which was neat but hardly fixes the problem. The 'problem' being fiddly game play this is only marginally 'playing' and more like a chore you must complete in order to play.

  World of Warcraft is chocked full of such things. But the social aspect of shared misery trying to complete the repetitive grinds are what make the game addicting, in part.

[Legend]

  I was more thinking that choosing the different dungeons to attack from a main menu style screen might make for a cool game flow.

Cave Noire for gameboy does this. It's a kinda roguelike/puzzly hybrid. The roguelike elements are very lite though. You have a main screen in which you choose which of four dungeons you want to enter. Each one has a different goal and once you beat it, you can enter it again with a slightly more difficult goal or choose another dungeon to enter.

[requerent]

  Some games fix this by having your pet run back for you...which was neat but hardly fixes the problem. The 'problem' being fiddly game play this is only marginally 'playing' and more like a chore you must complete in order to play.

The Zelda direction is one way to go-- make only pertinent items available.

I personally detest the ToME approach of item drops. 99% of the equipment you find is completely useless... but inventory management is an opportunity to make the game feel more strategic. I feel like decisions should result in a "more difficult now, less difficult later" - or vice versa.

[guest509]

  I really like the way Realm of the Mad God handles garbage items. You can store your items in a bank, give them away to other players, destroy them or just leave them sitting in environment to picked up by other players.

  The bank is account based, not character based. So each character can put things in or take things out of the bank. It persists through death. So if you die and need to restart with a different character you can go to the bank and take out items for the new character. I think it works great. The best items are hard to obtain and are destroyed when the character dies.