(you face large numbers of enemies that just attack you. No tactics, no special attacks. YAWN.)
Precisely! I have a couple of suggestions, food for thought or what-not. A standard Roguelike might have an event like this:
The player is a caster-class. As they enter the next room they spot a goblin. Out of mana, the player retreats momentarily, allows a few points to regenerate, enters the room and slays the goblin with a fire arrow.Acceptable, and maybe a complete Roguelike, but not at all unique and hardly interesting. Consider this different scenario.
The player is still a caster-class. They walk out of a corridor and into a large dining hall. A particularly vicious goblin spots the player and begins to attack. The player is low on mana and has perhaps enough for two spells, though history indicates this goblin will probably withstand three or four.
Instead, the player launches a fire arrow at a nearby table, lighting it on fire. The goblin approaches and is adjacent to the player. Using his last spell before being attacked, the player casts a telekinesis spell and mentally throws the flaming table into the goblin from the side, at point blank range, killing him instantly.Interaction with an even slightly detailed environment and "clever casting" for mages are usually great ideas. I think to think of wizards as the sort that would rely on their brains, so they should be capable of more than a few brute force spells. Incursion did this pretty well; an easy, level one spell called "[Nostrums?] Magical Aura" would give the illusion of an item being extremely powerful and desirable, no matter what it actually is. Monsters would try to take the item (or weapon!) and use it (or wield it!) You could trick them into equipping a cursed, weak weapon and attacking at a significant disadvantage. It requires some forethought and a bit of cleverness; always good things to have in a game!
Some simple physics would be good, too. Dwarf Fortress' combat isn't extremely complicated, but the effects of simple actions have a multitude of effects. Hitting somebody and sending them flying into a wall / off a cliff / into their friend can be both fun and useful, for instance. If I remember, the first "Ys" (an action/rpg) got significantly higher scores after a minor upgrade caused knock-back when you hit an enemy. It's simple, but strangely fulfilling to see your attacks have more effect.
(Edit: Uh... sorry. That wasn't a wall of text the way I imagined typing it.)
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Topic: Roguelikes (Read 4087 times)