DevDiary 4 - Character Progression

[Reloecc]

20 hours ago, Kordanor said:

The issue with having different skills for different weapon types is that from a gameplay perspective you would restrict the characters and push them into some directions. You have that in some RPGs where you can use a sword or a blunt weapon, always use sword, and then will never be able to use a blunt weapon properly even if you find the best one, just because the transition is not worth it.

This issue apply when you have limited character count to play with. But in JA, where having 15 soldiers is not uncommon, you can (or should) find somebody who finds use in freshly dropped blunt weapon.

But I agree with you and I don't think multiple Marksmanship stats are needed. Weapon type specialisation could be tailored into perks.

[Grim]

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Good points Reloecc.

[votadc]

Talents being individual seems a good idea for cheap mercs to limit them in the late game. For example missing eye talent that has maximum markmanship capped at 70. Or overkill for Reuban: he will spend an extra turn chopping an already dead enemy or firing his gun against an already dead enemy....but his salary will always be very low.

[Solaris_Wave]

While the inventory system probably isn't something to be covered in this thread, it has been lightly discussed with regards to having the ability to carry more grenades. Therefore, I thought I would raise the question again about whether some items will be smaller than others and allow more to be carried? If JA3 will stick with inventory slots and not use a grid to place items in (with the item icon indicating size and the grid size depending on whether it is a backpack or belt, for instance), will certain weapon magazines be larger than others? Rifle magazines are wider than SMG magazines, so less should be able to be carried. I know Strength will affect total weight of items carried but some items are just larger in general. If you were carrying .50 BMG sniper rifle magazines, even if you were wearing pouches on your vest, or elsewhere, that are designed for them, you simply could not carry as many of those as you could carry magazines for a pistol.

Also, what about loose ammo? How will shotgun cartridges work in the inventory system? Unless they are in a magazine or drum for certain shotguns, they will be loose. I don't know whether you can wear bandoliers, carry ammo bags for loose rounds but will it be a case of having, say 10-20 max cartridges in a slot or some other method? This would also apply to things like 40mm grenades, loose revolver cartridges if you don't have speedloaders, loose cartridges for lever-action rifles, and bolt-action rifles if you don't have stripper clips.

[Haemimont_Boian]

19 hours ago, LoboNocturno said:

It sounds like we will have this time a wide selection of customization for I.M.P., so there will be many portraits that we can choice from or even able to do our own facial features,hair,skin colour,body type and outfits etc.... ?

Hope our I.M.P. character will be having a visible portrait as well, i was assuming already why there was no portrait in 1 of the trailers where the tactical Grand Chien map shows up were a merc called Time without a picture.

Regarding I.M.P. customization, please don't set your expectations too high here. We much rather have more mercs than more aesthetic options for the I.M.P. merc and ultimately these are made using the same resources. Although you can choose a portrait that has associated looks, as I said above, there is no in-depth customization.

[LoboNocturno]

4 hours ago, Haemimont_Boian said:

Regarding I.M.P. customization, please don't set your expectations too high here. We much rather have more mercs than more aesthetic options for the I.M.P. merc and ultimately these are made using the same resources. Although you can choose a portrait that has associated looks, as I said above, there is no in-depth customization.

Oh ok though there would come also a wider customization similar to XCOM2. Anyway hope there will be more then enough variable portraits for both male and female. And most importantly hope you will give more voice options this time also in different accents, cause in Jagged Alliance 2 you had only 3 options all in American accent.

[WILDFIRE]

I like the idea of having special talents for every merc. The mercs must feel unique and the more features we get in this field the more we get real personalities. That combined with their special quirks, conversation options and behavior can help to make the characters really diversified.

 

I guess we get a merc who is a real chatterbox?, so it is totally natural that he has the talent to talk his way out of conversations and has the ability to change the mind of his conversation partner. Or think about a hunter merc who has the ability to tame wild animals who will fight on your side.

 

A merc who is a weapons expert for example could have connections with black market weapon dealers, so that he could organize a special heavy weapon every week or month. There are so many possibilities to create unique mercs not only for combat. Characters who have the talent to organize resources or are leading personalities to train militia could also be very valuable. This will give the game and the characters more depth.

[DougS2K]

12 hours ago, anon474 said:

I don't know if the devs have the resources to implement this, but I think an LBE system similar to 1.13 where the slots exist irrespective of strength stat (and strength stat can just dictate encumbered status that permits things like stealth maybe, permits things like vaulting maybe, debuffs travel time and how quickly mercs run out of energy and need to sleep, how much AP it takes to move 1 tile, can mercs run in combat, maybe if they have a perk they can run despite being overencumbered...) would be best. It's very fun, it's very fun to mix and match to see which precise combination of slots you want on your character, and which vests have the most slots in general. Itemization potential here is very high.

So I would agree with solaris here. It's not a deal breaker to have a very general "1 slot 1 item" inventory system, and it's perfectly understandable if the resources aren't there to develop this system but it would be nice.

The LBE system from 1.13 or something similar would be amazing. Right now the inventory system looks pretty plain from the videos we've seen. I loved tweaking loadouts in 1.13 especially the customizable chest rigs. Spent tons of time just setting up loadouts for each merc for their role.

[Reloecc]

1 hour ago, DougS2K said:

The LBE system from 1.13 or something similar would be amazing. Right now the inventory system looks pretty plain from the videos we've seen. I loved tweaking loadouts in 1.13 especially the customizable chest rigs. Spent tons of time just setting up loadouts for each merc for their role.

I also like LBE system.. but to a point. If you have 20 types of vests and you only want use one, because only that one can hold 8 mags, 4 nades and medkit, other options are just clutter. Also I am afraid molle system is not really suitable for a wide audience. I am happy for the fact that weight matters. LBE could be modded (??:) later for the core fans.

[DougS2K]

6 minutes ago, Reloecc said:

I also like LBE system.. but to a point. If you have 20 types of vests and you only want use one, because only that one can hold 8 mags, 4 nades and medkit, other options are just clutter. Also I am afraid molle system is not really suitable for a wide audience. I am happy for the fact that weight matters. LBE could be modded (??:) later for the core fans.

Valid point. I don't think we will ever see anything like 1.13 added when it comes to gear but hopefully mods can bring that a long later like it did for JA2. 

[Kordanor]

9 hours ago, LoboNocturno said:

Oh ok though there would come also a wider customization similar to XCOM2. Anyway hope there will be more then enough variable portraits for both male and female. And most importantly hope you will give more voice options this time also in different accents, cause in Jagged Alliance 2 you had only 3 options all in American accent.

Each additional voice basically kills one additional character. Because the biggest chunk of cost will no doubt go into the voice acting of all the lines. So I'd rather have just 3 voices instead if losing out on one more character for each voice option.

 

Regarding the IMP btw:

In the stream it was mentioned that the IMP will not have a talent selection, but will have one additional trait compared to others. So you can make him unique that way (like being the only night vision machinegunner or something like that)

[LoboNocturno]

12 hours ago, Kordanor said:

Each additional voice basically kills one additional character. Because the biggest chunk of cost will no doubt go into the voice acting of all the lines. So I'd rather have just 3 voices instead if losing out on one more character for each voice option.

 

Regarding the IMP btw:

In the stream it was mentioned that the IMP will not have a talent selection, but will have one additional trait compared to others. So you can make him unique that way (like being the only night vision machinegunner or something like that)

Maybe in some other games where the character has to talk a lot, as example in JA2 the characters didnt talked that much either, in JA1 even much less. Of course some characters talks more, some less, lets see if they increased the speeches in JA3? (Which i strongly assume.)

Voice acting the most expensive ? Also depends who you hire as the voice artist, could go there for cheaper options which would bring very good results too (you just need people with interesting voice & accent who reads the given lines with a lil flavour), myself could do good voice acting for Jagged Alliance 3 sake for free. The I.M.P. characters doesnt need to talk that much either, so to add up a few more options should not be a problem i think.

 

Yes i saw it on the stream last night, lets see how it will be, sounds interesting though. Cant wait for the combat diary.

[Kordanor]

They mentioned in the past, that they are not going for the cheapest option, but try to find people with the right accents and whatnot (that was in the gamescom stream). And actually there are plenty of lines to record. JA2 already had several lines (ofc not as much as a protagonist in Mass Effect or so) and in JA2 they also had voice actors doing multiple characters, most likely to save costs. And JA3 will have much more dialogue.
Why do you think there are "only" 40 Characters? Certainly not because of the portrait art. 😛

I am not saying that 90% of the costs for a character is the voice acting, but it's likely the biggest single position, probably before creating the unique character model (which also must not clip and whatnot).

[WILDFIRE]

To add some talents to my post here are my ideas:

- Marauder: Can find more or rare items on enemies

- Negotiator: Can solve conflicts in a peaceful way (conversations)

- Mechanic: Can repair weapons and cars

- Tracker: Can spot enemies and wild animals in a big perimeter 

- Boxer: Can deal huge damage with his fists in close combat

- Pharmacist: Can create effective medicine out of cheap resources

- Jungle guide: Knows the jungle and the weather conditions. No disadvantages in combat by the weather.

- Team leader: Influences the squad in a positive way. A morale buff for the whole team.

- Radio expert: Can monitor the radio of the enemy and knows which sectors will be attacked in the future.

- Merchant: Can get cheap prices in all the shops

[LoboNocturno]

@WILDFIRE Interesting stuff, boxer (or MMA) most definitely should be there, in JA2 i think Bull was the best boxer if am not mistaken, used Bull & Blood a lot in Kingpin`s MMA fights. Myself as a boxing fan and who had experience with it as well would be nice to see some more decent hand to hand combat effects, just imagining a heavyweight merc with a boxer perk would destroy nearly anybody with 1 or 2 punches (the boxer merc could throw a 2 to 3 punch combo or swing a powerful overhand right with more AP applied), at least to knock them out for few turns. Would be surely epic to have it in JA3.

 

Tracker makes also lots of sense, could be given to the playable native character. The question is how deep will be the wild life in JA3 ? Hope there will be at least a few animals that could come across our way but not only that, there should be animals as well just for the cosmetics in the nature such different kind of wild birds are flying and tweeting around, to have around swamp area frogs singing, cicadas or other insects should be singing as well just like in real life back in Africa, the nature and animal sounds are much more important than the game`s music for me. I hardly play with the music on anyway. It would be cool though if you hear some local African musics when you go around a town to a entertainment center or bar etc....

 

Pharmacist makes also lots of sense, a doctor or there could be a local healer which provides medicine from herbs or antidotes against venomous animals.

 

 

There could be some unique perks as well for some mercs that could bring some uncomfortable moments, like back in JA Rage where Ivan was a alcoholic and could not do without it, Shadow having a weak immune system and needed a drug, Grunty was suffering now and then from light heart attacks etc, it was cool.

[DougS2K]

On 3/29/2023 at 6:57 AM, Haemimont_Boian said:

I.M.P. portraits were not ready at this time, but rest assured there will be a (selectable) portrait on release!

Any idea or plan on how many portraits will be available to choose from? I find a lot of games nowadays will give you like 4 options or so but that never seems to be enough. Would like to see at least a half dozen to a dozen even if some of them share the same character model.

[DougS2K]

14 hours ago, anon474 said:

It's not difficult to do at all, firstly it only has to exist player-side, second it's just more UI and UI isn't that hard to make. It's not the easiest thing to do in the world...but it's not that hard either. Maybe devs aren't willing to invest resources in it, maybe they have a less UI-heavy very UI-centric "lots of menus and items" vision of JA that they want to make. But I think it would be a good idea. Lots of people play PoE and similar titles, people aren't scared of lots of stats.

Yeah I'm sure it could be easily done for them. I don't see a lot of talk about it or it being a requested feature though so I was beginning to think it was just me that would like to have it. haha I'm the type of person that likes to be organized and have things setup a certain way so details like this are always a bonus for me. It would be interesting to know if they've even talked about this or even thought about it. 

[Solaris_Wave]

Excellent suggestions!

[LoboNocturno]

13 hours ago, DougS2K said:

Any idea or plan on how many portraits will be available to choose from? I find a lot of games nowadays will give you like 4 options or so but that never seems to be enough. Would like to see at least a half dozen to a dozen even if some of them share the same character model.

In Jagged Alliance 2 alone are 16 (8 males, 8 females) portraits for I.M.P. so am expecting a lil wider selection of portraits this time since it was mentioned there would not be a proper customization for I.M.P. like in XCOM 2 as example where you can change the look completely, facial looks, skin colour, different type of hairs, gear and could even change the pattern and colour of your outfit which was pretty cool imo so since that wouldnt be in JA3, hopefully they will offer us at least some more portraits (12 or 15 for each male and female would be manageable, i mean to add some more portraits should not be a hard stuff overall) and am expecting also a few more voice options with few different accents (i would honestly like my character to have Spanish accent since am Latino) would make our own character even more flamboyant.

[Solaris_Wave]

I am wondering if the amount of available portraits will be tied to the possible models of the I.M.P. character as they will need to match, especially with the faces. That would rightly limit things a little.

Voice options would be easier to vary and I agree that it would be an excellent idea to try to include non-English accents. There may very well be a capacity to that. If there are a few different English speaking voices and for both genders, expectations might be there for other accents too, which means hiring more voice actors, which means more money.

How many would that be? Would that mean that people want two genders of the following:

• American accent
• British accent
• French accent
• Spanish accent
• German accent
• Russian accent
• Japanese accent
• Indian accent
• Chinese accent

 

That is only including what I have mentioned. There might have to be a limit but how do you do it without alienating anybody? Not only that but some people might not like the idea that they have to speak English, even with an accent.

Edited April 1, 2023 by Solaris_Wave

[Rui Carrer]

I'm arriving a bit too late I guess, but just wanted to say how impressive is Haemimont's work so far! Dense level of customization and a huge capability to create unique characters.

My only concern regarding the game is the balance between the elements of realism and overall fun.

[WILDFIRE]

@Rui Carrer: I also love the Devs work so far but I also hope they find the right balance between realism and fun.

 

The same applies to the design of the mercs. They should be grounded in reality, tough and serious but some should also have their own funny, crazy side.

 

I hope in the end we get a good mixture of realism and fun.

[DougS2K]

On 4/1/2023 at 11:53 AM, Solaris_Wave said:

I am wondering if the amount of available portraits will be tied to the possible models of the I.M.P. character as they will need to match, especially with the faces. That would rightly limit things a little.

Voice options would be easier to vary and I agree that it would be an excellent idea to try to include non-English accents. There may very well be a capacity to that. If there are a few different English speaking voices and for both genders, expectations might be there for other accents too, which means hiring more voice actors, which means more money.

How many would that be? Would that mean that people want two genders of the following:

• American accent
• British accent
• French accent
• Spanish accent
• German accent
• Russian accent
• Japanese accent
• Indian accent
• Chinese accent

 

That is only including what I have mentioned. There might have to be a limit but how do you do it without alienating anybody? Not only that but some people might not like the idea that they have to speak English, even with an accent.

No Canadian accent for us Canadians eh? What's that all aboot? Sorry for interrupting, Ill go back to my igloo. 😛

[elenhil]

2 hours ago, Rui Carrer said:

My only concern regarding the game is the balance between the elements of realism and overall fun.

Personally, *my* concern is whether the core gameplay is up to JA2's standard. No amount of XCOM2-like customization and progression goodies can replace a solid tactical (and strategic) layer.

[DougS2K]

2 minutes ago, elenhil said:

Personally, *my* concern is whether the core gameplay is up to JA2's standard. No amount of XCOM2-like customization and progression goodies can replace a solid tactical (and strategic) layer.

Ultimately this is what matters. I mean, look at JA2. It doesn't look pretty especially considering the graphics games have nowadays in comparison, but the gameplay is just oh so good.