Elder Scrolls VI was recently announced, and so i thought I'd take the opportunity to give my opinion as to what i hope it will be like. I'll be making comparisons to Skyrim and Oblivion, as those are the previous two entries in the series, but also just some general thoughts.
Skills and leveling
Between the two, i much prefer Oblivion's skill and stat system over Skyrim's, as it's more in-depth, feels more realistic, and allows more variety. However, there were some things from Skyrim i liked, so preferably i would want a sort of combination.
In Oblivion, you had attributes such as strength, endurance, intelligence, agility, and so on. Each one determined your level up speed of skills like swords, axes, bows, magic, movement, sneaking, and so on. When you used a skill enough, you leveled it up, and at certain levels you would unlock new abilities such as shield bashing. I would keep this general system, however, i would instead make leveling up a certain skill, such as one-handed, give you a one-handed skill point, which you could spend on perks. There would be no boring perks such as in Skyrim, that just do things like increase damage. Just new abilities or effects.
I would also like to see more attributes be more useful. Here's an example:
Strength: Determines melee ability and carry weight.
Intelligence: Determines magic ability.
Agility: Determines movement speed, attack speed, stamina, and parkour.
Stealth: Determines sneaking ability.
Dexterity: Determines lockpicking, pickpocketing, and critical hit chance.
Endurance: Determines max health.
Vitality: Determines health regen speed.
This is just an example to get the idea across, not an exact suggestion. Additionally, there would still be the different skills determined by these attributes, such as one-handed swords, two-handed axes, destruction, mysticism(which i would re-add as a magic school), and so on. However, there's something specific i wanted to mention. You might notice that the agility skill determines parkour.
Parkour would be a new skill that would act similarly to speed from previous games, but more precise. Rather than determining just speed, it would determine how fast you could run(within reason), how much stamina you use and how quickly you regenerated it, how high you could jump(to a point, so you couldn't mimic a giant's blow), and how well you could climb. Climbing would be a new ability you could use to grab onto ledges and climb trees and mountains(mountain climbing would require ice picks).
With this, players would be able to climb onto people's roofs, attack enemies by landing on them, climb trees, jump over obstructions, crawl through narrow passages, and do other cool parkour moves. This would be especially great for ninja-type players, as it would allow them to do more than just sneak up behind people and stab them in the back.
Additionally, parkour would make traveling more fun, as simply running could be interactive. Something that could be seen as either a downside or a bonus, however, would be the loss of jump spamming to climb up hills.
When you level up in Skyrim and Oblivion, your enemies level up as well, which, while providing consistent challenge for the player, kind of defeated the purpose of leveling up in the first place. What's the point of getting more health when you level up if all your enemies also get more health? How i would fix this would be to make leveling up strengthen both you and the enemies you face, but you would have a slightly higher increase than them.
As for leveled loot, i would mostly remove it. Instead of bandits getting better armor, shops selling better weapons, and dungeons having stronger loot as you level up, i would make it so shops would sell the strong stuff right off the bat, but you wouldn't be able to afford it early on, some bandits would have good gear right off the bat but be too strong to defeat early on, and dungeons with powerful gear would either be guarded by much stronger enemies, or be accessible early on but with the best loot inaccessible without gear or abilities you would get later on, such as being at the top of a cliff you need a high parkour skill to climb, or a door with a strong lock.
Combat
In Skyrim, melee combat was pretty unsatisfying. You swung your weapons too slowly, often attacking repeatedly in an exact horizontal line, And the animation made it look like you weren't angling your weapon towards the enemy, but just moving it around in front of you. Combined with the contact animation of blood splattering or dust puffing being a small dot by the cursor instead of a line where you actually would have struck with a slash or swing, it barely even felt like you were fighting. In Oblivion, you swung your weapons quickly(although perhaps a bit too quickly), aimed them forward at the enemy, and didn't swing in perfectly horizontal lines. This made the combat much more enjoyable, and should definitely be emulated in ES6. There would also need to be better sounds for combat, to make it feel like you were actually hitting enemies, rather than a dull "thunk" or "splut".
I would also like to see more attack options. For example, you could choose whether you slashed with your sword or stabbed, and you could do different attacks in different situations, such as being behind an enemy, landing on an enemy(ground pounds would be awesome), pushing an enemy over when they're staggered, and so on.
Archery was done pretty well in skyrim, and i feel like there's little need of improvement, save to make it so enemies can't dodge arrows with a superhumanly fast movement. Magic is much more complicated, and so i'll touch on that later.
Kill cameras, or cutscene kills, were a very fun addition, and the only thing i would change is to make them be able to be activated manually. For example, you could have a toggleable option that always performed cutscene kills when the conditions were met, and perhaps you could even choose which one you did.
Dual Wielding
Dual wielding was touted as a big improvement over Oblivion, but it was poorly implemented, such that your actions were actually more limited rather than less. For example, spells took up one hand each, whereas in Oblivion, you could cast spells even if your hands were full. Additionally, your shield can only be equipped in your left hand and your sword defaults to your right hand, which is unnecessary.
When dual wielding weapons, such as swords, there wasn't really any reason to attack with your left hand. Clicking the left mouse button attacked with your right hand, and clicking the right mouse button attacked with your left hand, but it only had one animation, which was slow and weird. The only time you actually get a benefit(other than having two weapons to enchant rather than just one) is when you click both mouse buttons at the same time, which deals a bit more damage. I would change it so left clicking alternates with each hand, attacking faster than just holding one sword, right clicking would cross your weapons and block, and clicking both buttons at once would be roughly the same. This would keep the dual wielding, but still allow you to block at the same time.
Sneaking
Sneaking in Skyrim was pretty ridiculous, as once someone found you they could sense your location through walls, yet if you were sneaking directly in front of them they wouldn't notice you if your sneak skill was high enough.
In ES6, i would make sight a more important feature. If someone can see you, sneaking would not work. However, i would also bring back the chameleon enchantment, which would camouflage you while sneaking by making you somewhat transparent. Higher levels would allow you to be closer to an enemy or in higher light levels before they see you. Additionally, invisibility potions would be more useful, as they would force enemies to follow you by sound.
If you were behind an enemy and not making noise, they wouldn't be able to detect you even if you aren't sneaking, and if you ran behind a wall NPCs would have to regain line of sight before following you again, allowing you to start sneaking again once discovered.
Once your presence is discovered, all nearby enemies would be on alert, wandering around and looking for you. If you stay undetected for a certain amount of time after that, they would assume you had left and relax again. Attacking or killing one of them, however, would cause them to stay on alert until you actually left the area(although this might be too frustrating).
In Skyrim, if you shot an enemy while sneaking, they would wander around for a while, and, if they couldn't find you, they would sit back down with an arrow in their skull and say "Must be my imagination". I would change it so attacking an enemy would immediately cause them to look for you, as usual, but they would go to another room if they couldn't find you. Also, if they found the corpse of one of their comrades, they wouldn't say "I'll find whoever did this" and promptly forget about it. They would instead cry out in alarm, causing all their allies to start searching for you. If they still couldn't find you after that, they'd go back to normal, but be more alert, making sneaking more difficult. This would require you to dispose of the bodies after killing them, perhaps by using a disintegration spell or enchantment.
Werewolves and Vampires
I would include both werewolves and vampires in ES6, but with some changes.
First, werewolves would look different. In Skyrim they looked more like hairy humans with vaguely wolfish heads. I would change them to be quadrapedal and more wolfish, with slightly glowing eyes and thicker fur. Additionally, your race would change your look in wolf form, as well as having a minor impact on your stats. For example, kahjiit werewolves would have longer, thinner tails and shorter faces, orc werewolves would be more muscular and have protruding bottom teeth, high elf werewolves would be slimmer and paler in color, dark elf werewolves would be slightly smaller, black, and have red eyes, etc.
Contracting and curing lycanthropy would also be different. Instead of doing a quest, you would have a chance to become a werewolf when attacked by werewolves, which would naturally spawn at night occasionally. Also, you would be able to cure yourself with a potion or other renewable item, allowing you to be infected and cured as much as you want.
Transformations would also be changed. Instead of being able to transform only once per day, you would be able to transform whenever you like, and transforming back would automatically reequip your gear. You would be able to transform and retransform whenever you like, even in the middle of battle, but you wouldn't be able to move during the transformation until the animation had finished.
Leveling up as a werewolf would be done by gaining a very small amount of xp while in wolf form, gaining more when attacking things, and gaining even more by devouring things. Skills might include nearby wolves aiding you in battle while in wolf form and not attacking you(and potentially being able to be tamed) during the day, gaining a small amount of health when doing a bite attack in combat, regenerating health faster, and so on.
Additionally, parkour skills would be greatly increased when in wolf form.
Vampires would also be changed a bit. To start, there would be no vampire lord form, and perks would be able to be gained simply by feeding off people, as well as gaining a small amount of XP when using life drain spells and abilities.
All your stats would be decreased by 30% in sunlight, unchanged when indoors or underground, and increased by 30% in moonlight. Upon becoming a vampire by being attacked by another vampire(after the traditional cure period), you would gain a 20% increase in agility and dexterity stats, which would result in being able to attack and move faster, as well as have more stamina. Sneaking ability would also be improved.
Fast Travel
First off, i think ES6's world should be about the same size as Skyrim, as making it any bigger would just add more empty space. In Skyrim, the world was huge, but most of it was just barren. A bandit fort, a cave, maybe a small shack, and then nothing until you reach the next town. Very little of Skyrim was spent traveling, as fast travel was not only convenient, but necessary most of the time. The world was just too huge to traverse normally, but fast traveling just made it seem smaller, and the whole thing just felt like teleportation. So in ES6, i think fast traveling should be removed.
In it's place, there would be a few fast travel points, similar to the carriages. However, each on would only connect to one other fast travel point(FTP) and could only be used once both points were discovered. So for example, in the picture below, point A and point B are connected, and point C and point D are also connected, allowing fast travel between the two.
Say the player wants to get to point D. Normally, they would walk there, but they're closer to point C than D, so they walk to C and fast travel to D. That way, you could connect different parts of the world together and have players commonly traversing between those points, rather than just teleporting to whiterun every time they want to buy or sell stuff. Additionally, i would make fast travel be something like entering fast travel point A, which takes you to a long(but not too long), winding cave tunnel, possibly with some enemies in it, and exiting the cave would take you to point B. This would make it seem more like you're actually traveling instead of just teleporting everywhere. In addition, the parkour skill would make traveling in and of itself fun.
A similar approach is used to great effect in Hollow Knight. In Hollow Knight, there's several stag stations you can use to travel to any other stag stations you've discovered, similarly to the carriage system in Skyrim. However, they weren't everywhere, so when you wanted to get somewhere, you would go to the nearest stag station, travel to the station closest to your destination, and walk from there. The overall effect was that you still had to travel, but you didn't need to go quite as far. That said, Hollow Knight is a metroidvania, not an open world RPG, but i still think this approach would work, and that ES6 would benefit from a somewhat metroidvania travel style.
There were also some quests in Skyrim where you had to travel a lot, such as going to kynesgrove to fight a dragon, or going all the way across the map to castle volkihar to fight the vampires in the dawnguard DLC. However, if you actually tried to run the whole way, it would take hours, the NPC's would likely get stuck, and nothing interesting would happen. I would change it so traveling would become part of the quests themselves, so for example, on your way to fight an evil mage, you might get ambushed by some of his minions, or you might meet a story NPC, or something else. This would make the quests with traveling much more fun.
World
Skyrim was large, but as previously mentioned before, most of it was just empty space, and what features there were were small and generic. Every bandit fort looked like every other bandit fort, every cave was the same as every other cave, and so on, like bethesda made one version of every kind of place and just copied and pasted them over and over, which, come to think of it, might be what they did. In ES6, i would like to see more interesting locations and landscapes, even if it means a smaller world. For example, you might find a forest where the trees are so dense little light can penetrate the canopy, or a cave with luminous crystal growths, or a swamp with trees growing in the water, or something else cool. Ideally, each location would be different, so you might have rocky badlands in one area, lush meadows in another, forest in another, swamps in another, and so on. Each place could also have it's own enemies and resources, so some alchemy ingredients would only grow in swamps, some enemies would only appear in forests, etc. An example of this idea done well is in the Minecraft server mineZ, where each location is interesting and unique. Every city had it's own architectureal style, every dungeon was differently themed, and there were unique landscape features such as a huge ravine, a dark forest, a rocky plateau, a swamp, a hilly area, even a meteor crater and a huge underground cavern system with several cities inside. Each place was interesting and unique, and seeing that in ES6 would be a huge benefit.
Additionally, buildings and towns shouldn't require loading screens to enter or exit. This would not only increase immersion, but also allow for things like climbing through windows, windows being transparent, and not having the entire outside world freeze just because you're indoors. Enemies would also be able to follow you through doors, which would increase immersion as well.
Enemies
For the most part, enemies in Skyrim were boring and generic. Every enemy that used weapons or spells, like draugr, bandits, forsworn, assassins, falmer, thalmor, or anything else were exactly the same and had all the same attacks, every dragon was the same, most of the animals were the same, etc. In ES6, i would change this so each enemy would have a unique attack style, AI, and strategy. For example, bandits might all rush you at once with one staying behind to attack from a distance, undead might be tough but slow and swarm you, goblins might surround you and take turns attacking, then retreating, and so on. This, along with making each enemy have different damage resistances and attack styles, would make fighting interesting rather than just repeating the same thing over and over again.
That ends part 1, part 2 will follow soon. If you liked this article, please consider sharing it, and as always, comments of any kind are greatly appreciated!
This post is a lot more serious than what i usually make, but i think its a good time to share this. Recently, i've been going through a hard time. I've been stressed out, worried, and depressed. It felt like things would never get better. But i realized something. When i focused on others, it helped me. When i read about other people's problems, i forgot my own and wanted to help those people. Helping others helps me. So i'm making this post in the hope that not only will i be able to rise from my suffering, but that others will benefit from reading this as well. So this is what i have to say to everyone who's suffering or has suffered in the past.
First, you're not alone. Not only have plenty of other people been through what you're going through, but there are plenty of people out there who care about you. They say that strangers are just friends you haven't met yet. To a point, this is true. You won't get along with everyone in this world, but there are a ton of people that you would be great friends with if you met them. And there are plenty of people who care about you even though they don't know you. I have never met some of the people who will read this, but i do care about you. I don't want anyone to have to suffer, to have to feel alone. No matter your circumstances, you are never truly alone. There are others who care about you even if they don't know you exist, and also, God is always with you.
When things get bad, you might feel hopeless. Like there is nothing that can be done to help you. Like in the end, nothing will matter, in the end, you'll just feel bad again. No matter what people say, no matter what you read or hear, it won't help
you. Advice and supporting messages will lose their meaning, and literally nothing will lift you from your hopelessness. I think everyone feels that at some point. I know i have. Sometimes even prayer and medication can't make things feel better. Sometimes, the only thing you can do is just wait. Wait for the suffering to stop, wait for things to get better. Maybe they won't get better soon. Maybe they won't get better years from now. But at some point, they will get better, and you will be glad you decided to keep going. To those considering suicide: Please don't do it. Not only does it cause suffering to those around you that love you, it ends your chance to have things improve.
Your life will end eventually, so you might as well get as much joy out of it as you can. If you can't find joy, you can at least help others to. And again, things will get better. I know that right now, you feel like that's impossible. But they will. You might feel alone, like no one cares. I promise you, people do care. Even people who don't know you. If no one cared, why would people make suicide hotlines to help those who feel hopeless as you do? Why would people post inspirational stories and articles? Why would i be writing this post if i didn't care? Helping others does help me, but only because i know i am helping others. If i wrote this post and never posted it, it wouldn't help. I would know that no one would be helped by it. At some point, nothing you hear or read will help. Medication won't help, prayer won't help, everything people have said or written about times like this won't help.
You will feel like you will never be happy again. You might read stories about other people who suffered like you did, and managed to find happiness. You will ask why these people were given joy and you weren't. You will feel that everyone, even those who have suffered worse than you, had at least one thing you don't. Even posts like mine won't help. Just keep going. If things really are as bad as you feel, you have nothing to lose from keeping on, but everything to lose if you decide to take your own life. I know that what i said was probably said badly, or just seemed pointless. Maybe you read this and are shaking your head because i haven't helped you. All the same, i pray for you, and i hope with all my heart your life improves.Maybe i can't even comprehend what you're going through. Maybe i don't know anything about your situation. But i am trying to help, and even if i've failed to cheer you up or give you hope, know that i, and millions of others, care about you and truly hope you can find joy. God bless you all.
Minecraft 1.13 was just released, bringing with it a completely new world generation engine, tons of new mobs and blocks, and the deterioration of Jeb's grammar skills. Named the "Update Aquatic", caused Jeb to start speaking like yoda it has.
Two new variants of air block have been added, cave air and void air. Both are exactly the same as normal air, and were added solely to increase the game's complexity for no reason.
A new type of ice has been added, spawning rumors that Jeb is secretly being sponsored by ice companies. In a recent interview, Jeb fervently denied this, while coincidentally announcing the completely unrelated addition of iced potions, ice water bottles, and iced milk. "Ice™®©, by the way, is a delicious way to spice up any drink," Jeb remarked as he sipped his cool, refreshing, ice water.
Underwater bubble columns were added, with the ones produced by magma blocks pulling things downward and the ones produced by soul sand pushing things upward, because that makes sense. This change has led many to speculate that Jeb has never actually been outside.
Conduit blocks were added, which are crafted with nautilus shells, attack hostile mobs, and gives nearby players the "Conduit Power" status effect, which prevents players from drowning, gives underwater night vision, and increases mining speed, because putting electrical things in water does that. This was added in response to allegations that Jeb couldn't come up with any more random things which made no sense than he already had, prompting him to reply "Hold my iced beer," shortly before he announced the addition.
Coral blocks were added, along with coral fans, which follow the coral blocks around asking for screenies.
Kelp and seagrass were added, bringing with them lots of health benefits a unique(read: ugly) animated texture that makes players nauseous when they look at it.
Sea pickles were added, fueling speculation that Jeb is pregnant.
Bark blocks were finally made craftable after a short 7 year period of being in the game, but unobtainable.
Tridents were added, which function completely different from the gum.
Dolphins were added, and, like many additions in this update, give players a status effect, due to complaints that the UI wasn't cluttered enough.
A new undead mob, Drowned, was added. Amazingly, they're a unique mob with their own spawn egg rather than another variant of zombies, proving Jeb still knows how to make those.
Fish were added, although for some reason fishing still fabricates fish from the void rather than catching the mobs.
Turtles were added, which drop seagrass, because obviously that is what turtles are made of.
A new world type, buffet, was added. This causes the world to consist entirely of food blocks, except cake, because Jeb doesn't like lying.
New enchantments:
Channeling: Used on tridents to make them spawn lightning when thrown at an enemy.
Impaling: Used on tridents to make them deal more damage to aquatic mobs, i mean, mobs aquatic, despite the fact that we already have no less than 7 different enchantments whose sole purpose is to deal extra damage.
Sharpness But On A Wooden Sword: Increases damage of wooden swords.
Sharpness But On A Stone Sword: Increases damage of stone swords.
Sharpness But On An Iron- you get the idea.
Other sharpness enchantments:
Sharpness When It's 5 O Clock In Real Life
Sharpness But Only If You're Wearing A Red Shirt
Sharpness If You Have Seeds In Your Inventory
Sharpness But Only On Items With A J In Their Name
Riptide: Used on tridents to make them turn into pens when not in use.
Loyalty: Used on tridents to make them trust their user more, allowing you to keep them as pets. They are fed with trident food and can be bred with Anvils.
Chests and trapped chests can now be placed next to double chests, causing players everywhere to weep in joy, and then just weep, as they remember that this should have been in the game roughly 8 years ago.
Silk touch can no longer allow players to collect silverfish eggs, due to players complaining that the enchantment was "too useful".
Zombies, skeletons, ocelots, and wolves will seek out turtles and turtle eggs and destroy them, prompting PETA to boycott minecraft. In an interview, Jeb was asked if this was because he secretly hates turtles. He responded "Of course not, i love the little pieces of garba- i mean adorable sea creatures."
Customized world types were removed after accusations that they were "racist".
As usual, development of 1.14 is already underway, as well as 1.15 and 1.16 being in the planning sessions. Jeb has stated that Minecraft will continue updating until after Elder Scrolls 6, Cube World, and Half Life 3 have been released, although not necessarily immediately after.
John: Hello, and welcome to the kentucky derby! I'm John Smith, here with Bob Jones to discuss the race! Hi Bob!
Bob: Hi John.
John: So tell us, Bob, what exactly is the kentucky derby, and why are people so hyped about it?
Bob: Well John, the kentucky derby is a horse race.
John: Amazing! Now tell us, Bob, what exactly is a "horse race"?
Bob: Well John, it's a race where a bunch of horses ride around in a circle and whoever gets to the finish line first wins.
John: That's fascinating, Bob! Now Bob, what are the "jockeys" in this race?
Bob: They're the guys on top of the horses, John.
John: Thanks, Bob! And now, what are those numbers next to the horses?
Bob: They're the odds.
John: And what might those be, bob?
Bob: They say how much people think each horse will win. People bet on the horses.
John: I guess that's why they don't call them "evens", haha! And for all those watching at home, you might be wondering what the winner will get, huh Bob?
Bob: Probably.
John: Yes, the winner of this race is going to recieve one million dollars, which is likely more than you all watching at home will make in your whole life, haha!
Bob: Yep.
John: Now, Bob, why exactly are there jockeys on top of the horses?
Bob: They tell the horse where to go so they don't end up going the wrong way.
John: That would be annoying, huh Bob? Haha!
Bob: Yep.
John: So why are we giving the money to the jockeys instead of the horses, seeing as they do all the work?
Bob: Because horses don't use money.
John: They'd probably try to eat it, haha Bob!
Bob: Yep.
John: Alright, now we see the horses going to the gate!
Bob: Yep.
John: Now, you all watching at home might be wondering why we don't just start at the beginning of the race, right Bob?
Bob: Probably.
John: Well Bob, it's because now we get an exciting chance to review each horse in detail!
Bob: Oh joy.
John: Alright, we have a horse here! It's brown!
Horse:...
John: Yes, this horse is indeed excited about this race!
Bob: He's going the wrong way.
John: On to the next horse! This horse has a unique name and equally unique backstory, just like all the other horses!
Bob: At least this one's going the right way.
John: And now, the horses are going to the starting gate!
Bob: Except for the one going the wrong way. oh, and the one the jockey just fell off of.
John: And here's the countdown! 3...2...1...and they're off!
Bob: Yep.
John: And we have a bunch of horses running around in circles, one of them's going to win, but we don't know which one it is! This is exciting!
Bob: yep.
John: And one horse is in the lead! Right behind it is another horse, with yet another in third place! They're running... they're running... whoah, they're still running! Bet you didn't see that coming, huh Bob?
Bob:...
John: They're turning... still turning... and look! One of them is in the lead! Wow! This is exciting!
Bob: You're overdoing it, John.
John: Thanks, Bob! And they're into the home stretch! One of them is in the lead! A bunch of them are behind it! And one just passed them in the opposite direction being closely pursued by it's jockey!
Bob: (facepalm)
John: And they're at the 30! The 20! The 10! The five! The one! The 30!
Bob: You already said 30.
John: This time it's millimeters! The 20! The 10! The 1! The zero! And look! One of the horses won! Amazing!
Bob: Bet no one saw that coming.
John: Yep! And now, everyone forgets about this race and begins hype for the preakness, where what'shisname will attempt a triple crown victory! Stay tuned!
Bob: Actually, don't. For your own sanity.
A lot of computer and video games have one particular part of the playthrough that is least looked forward to because it's boring, difficult, frustrating, or annoying in some other way. In this article, i'm going to be making a list of some of these. Now, this is only going to encompass things that are mandatory for completing a playthrough, not extra bonus features that are optional.
Warning: Contains spoilers for Hollow Knight, Dig or Die, Minecraft, and Terraria.
Collecting essence and the White Palace, Hollow Knight
The majority of Hollow Knight is very fun and reasonably fast paced. However, once you get the dream nail and exhaust all the exploration options, you need to collect 2800 essence to access the White Palace. Essence is dropped rarely by all enemies, spawned throughout the nearby area after using the dream nail on a whispering root, or gotten from defeating dream bosses. Unfortunately, it's only very rarely dropped from normal enemies, whispering roots only give around 20 each, and dream bosses give around 100, are difficult to find, and can be frustrating to fight. Additionally, it's possible to not have enough after beating all the dream bosses, which means you have to hunt down whispering roots and slowly accumulate enough essence to access the White Palace.
Which brings me to the next part: The White Palace itself. Basically, it's a really long platforming/parkour session, where precise movement and perfect timing are mandatory. If you don't finish it, you can't fight the true final boss and get two of the endings for the game. People who aren't good at parkour or don't have enough patience to get through this part won't be able to complete the game, and the fact that it comes right after the essence grind only makes it worse.
Building a rocket, Dig or Die
In Dig or Die the goal is to build a rocket to escape the planet you're marooned on, but the majority of the playthrough consists of exploring, fighting monsters, and upgrading your gear. However, once you get the final auto-builder, you need to make a rocket to escape. This means that you have to spend hours mining deep underground looking for rare ores, climb high into the sky to collect a giant rock core(which constantly regenerates, attempting to crush you), and worst of all, use explosives to mine diamonds in a volcano, which causes an eruption that only a teleporter(powered by a rare thorium generator) can let you escape from. The teleporter and the generator are both destroyed in this process. You also have to return to your house(or another well-defended position) before night falls, so factoring in travel time, you have very little time to waste all for one chance at getting a needed resource. Additionally, once you finally do get the rocket built, you have to sit inside it doing nothing while you get swarmed by monsters, forcing you to build a fully autonomous defense system capable of surviving being destroyed for a full minute. And how do you build this system? You guessed it, rare ores. After a certain point, the majority of your time is spent mining,
Collecting ender pearls, Minecraft
The goal of Minecraft(other than just building and having fun) is to find and activate a portal to the end dimension, and kill the Ender Dragon. Unfortunately, to even find these portals, you need eyes of ender. These are made from blaze powder(obtained from blazes in the nether) and ender pearls(obtained from endermen in the overworld). Blaze powder is easy enough to get hold of, but unfortunately, the same is not true for ender pearls. Ender pearls are an uncommon drop from an uncommon enemy, meaning you could go days without even seeing an enderman, and once you finally do see one, you have to beat it in a fight just for a chance at a pearl.
Once you get eyes of ender, you throw them into the air and they'll drift towards the stronghold, which contains the end portal. Unfortunately, they have a chance to break once you throw them, and you'll need to throw a good amount of them to make sure you're on the right path. Then, once you finally get to the stronghold, you'll need up to twelve eyes of ender just to activate the portal, meaning that you need around 16 ender pearls just to be safe. Then, once you get to the end, it's possible for you to spawn on a small island a good distance away from the main island(both of which are suspended in the void), so you'll probably need another ender pearl just to access the main island(throwing ender pearls teleports you to where they land).
But the journey doesn't end there. The Enderdragon is constantly healed by ender crystals, which are located at the top of giant obsidian pillars. Building up to them or shooting them with a bow are the two main options for destroying them, one of which carries the risk of them killing you(as they explode when destroyed) and the other of which takes a lot of arrows and good aim. Finally, once you've destroyed all the ender crystals, you can actually fight the dragon. Unfortunately, it flies around randomly, sometimes staying away from you for several minutes at a time before finally charging. Additionally, sword enchantments deal no damage to the dragon and it's rarely in melee range, which means you will need a powerful bow and even more arrows. All this while avoiding the swarms of endermen which constantly spawn on the island, which will attack you if you look into their eyes. All in all, it's extremely frustrating and can take real life hours or even days to complete.
Mining hardmode ores, Terraria
In Terraria, defeating the Wall of Flesh boss(which takes a lot of preparation on it's own) will cause the world to convert to hardmode, spawning new, stronger enemies and new biomes. Upon entering hardmode, the first thing you will want to do is upgrade your gear to be able to survive the new threats easier. Unfortunately, that takes the form of a lot of mining. Hardmode ores, cobalt, mythril, and adamantite(sometimes replaced by palladium, orichalcum, and titanium) spawn each time you destroy demon altars, which also spreads the corrupting biomes faster. Cobalt requires the strongest prehardmode pickaxe to mine and is rarer(depending on how many altars you smash) than any previous ores. To continue, you need enough cobalt for a pickaxe(at least, more if you want to make armor or weapons out of it), which you then need to collect mythril. Mythril is even rarer than cobalt, requires more to craft things, and requires a cobalt pickaxe to mine. Upon getting a mythril pickaxe(which you need to make at a mythril anvil), you use it to mine adamantite, which is even rarer and even more is needed, as you need to make a forge, weapons, and armor. All for it to become obsolete as soon as you beat the next boss.
Games are much more enjoyable when the annoying bits have been taken out and the whole game is fun to play. If you're a game developer, i would strongly encourage you to look at your game and see if it has "that one part" that players won't like. If so, either provide an alternate option, or remove that part entirely.
Plot armor is a term for the idea that the main character(and sometimes others) can't die because that would end the story. However, the characters still get into difficult and dangerous situations, so the author needs to make them survive somehow. Unfortunately, this usually involves something called "deus ex machina", which is when something happens in the story without any sort of explanation, such as the hero getting rescued right in the nick of time.
Plot armor is necessary for most stories, but when it's that obvious, people tend to get bothered by that, so here's some ways to make your plot armor less obvious.
1. Don't put your characters in a situation if you can't see a logical way for them to get out of it alive.
Many authors put their characters in ridiculously dangerous situations, like locking them in a room with a nuclear bomb set to go off, guarding the room with giant, fire-breathing wolves, and putting the whole building on an island in the middle of the pacific ocean surrounded by starving sharks. Then they make up some half-baked explanation for how the hero survived because he managed to defuse the bomb with a mere second left before detonation, single-handedly fought off the wolves with only a screwdriver, and was miraculously rescued by a helicopter that conveniently just showed up despite never having been mentioned before. This is bad writing.
To avoid this, only put your plot-important characters in situations that you can think of a reasonable way to get them out of, like locking them in a room that has a window for them to climb out of, or poisoning them with a slow-acting poison that leaves plenty of time to find an antidote. Basically, if you can't think of a way someone could survive this in real life, you shouldn't put your characters in that situation in the first place.
2. Don't give your characters supernatural levels of luck.
Many stories, such as the How To Train Your Dragon books and Harry Potter, have their protagonists survive through a combination of extreme cleverness and irrationally high luck. For example, if the protagonist is fatally wounded, and their only hope is to take an experimental treatment that has a 99.999999999% chance of killing them, you know they'll take it and survive. Instead, don't let them get injured that badly, or if you must, time it so they have access to medical attention immediately after receiving the injuries and draw out their recovery. When your heroes survive tons of experiences of which each one should have killed them, it becomes obvious that the only thing keeping them alive is plot armor. To avoid this, make it so that they would have had a decent chance of surviving even if they didn't have plot armor. otherwise, don't put them in that situation.
3. Don't make your characters survive suicide missions unelss it's through their own cleverness.
This is shown many times in Stargate, where the main characters will go on "suicide" missions many times and survive each of them. It's even lampshaded(noticed by the characters themselves) in Atlantis, when Sheppard says(paraphrased), "I've been on tons of suicide missions before." They're called suicide missions for a reason: They will kill you. How many times did you hear of kamikaze fighters surviving their attacks? Exactly. (In case you didn't know, kamikaze fighters were Japanese pilots in world war II that crashed their planes into targets, killing themselves in the process.) But if you insist on this sort of thing(which you probably do, or you wouldn't be reading this article), make there be a decent chance of survival, and let your characters figure a way out themselves.
An example of this would be a character planting a bomb behind enemy lines and then figuring out a way to stay alive afterwards, such as setting the bomb on a timer and hiding it, then taking shelter in a place that's far enough away from the explosion to be unaffected, or maybe escaping by stealing a car and driving to safety. This is much more believable than the character surviving against all odds through sheer luck alone, as that rarely happens in real life.
4. If your characters are going to be rescued, hint at that ahead of time.
Here's the situation: Phil is trapped, his back against the wall, down to his last bullet fighting evil mutants. Suddenly, his allies break through the enemy line, gunning down the mutants right before they can kill Phil. If this rescue happens out of the blue, however, with no warning, it will seem like a cop-out. Instead, mention earlier in the story that Phil's friends are going to go on a mission in the same area as Phil at around the time he will need saving. This is known as foreshadowing. This way, it will show that you planned the rescue all along and make it seem plausible for it to happen just as Phil needs it the most.
5. Don't make your characters beat the clock at the last second.
This is shown in the classic "Defuse the bomb with 1 second left" cliche. It's a blatant example of unnatural amounts of luck, which, as i've said before, should be avoided. Instead, have your heroes finish whatever time-sensitive thing they need to accomplish maybe 20 seconds before they need to, or even a few minutes. No, it's not as dramatic, but everyone knows they'll survive anyway, so you might as well make it believable.
6. Don't make your villains incompetent.
Many works make their villains stupidly insist on killing the heroes themselves, giving the heroes a fair chance, or monologuing their evil plans so the hero has the information he needs to win(called "bond villain stupidity"), or giving the bad guys terrible aim(called "stormtrooper marksmanship") and constantly just barely miss the heroes so as to keep them alive. This should be avoided at all costs.
First off, the villain likely isn't going to have any specific vendetta against the heroes so as to insist on killing them himself, and even if he does, he's not going to give them chances to escape. No one who gets to a position of power high enough to have an entire army at their beck and call is going to give the heroes chances to escape unless it's absolutely necessary.
As for minions with atrociously bad aim, just scrap that altogether. If they can't hit what they're aiming at, they're not going to be recruited as soldiers. In fact, most untrained people would have better aim than stormtroopers, death eaters, or what have you. Instead, make your heroes never get in the line of fire at all, have something to block projectiles(like a shield or bullet-proof vest), or just never give the bad guys any reason to shoot at them in the first place(like pretending to be on their side from the beginning and only fighting them while undercover). Alternatively, you could have them get hit, but not fatally, such as being shot in the shoulder or foot. It will require some time to heal, but it will make it seem like they don't have plot armor, or that it's not very strong.
Plot armor is necessary for most works unless you want an "everyone can die" scenario, which requires more characters and more effort. But this is no reason to make it so blatant as to be boring, ridiculously implausible, and predictable. People enjoy stories more when they don't have to suspend disbelief as much, so making plot armor less obvious makes the story as a whole much more enjoyable.
Wizard duels in fiction are a staple of the fantasy genre. Unfortunately, they often suck. In this article, i will attempt to show why this is the case, and how to avoid it.
The main problem lies with a lack of imagination. Wizards are basically reality warpers, and yet they spend most of their time during fights shooting fireballs and raising magical shields to block their opponents fireballs. Boring. What is this, laser tag?
Instead, they should be using the environment(and their imagination) to it's fullest potential. For example, turning the floor beneath their opponents' feet to ice. Heating up something their opponent is holding to make them drop it. Creating a smoke cloud around their opponent's head to prevent them from seeing. Heck, they're wizards, why can't they just forcibly stop their opponent's heart with magic?
In star wars, they have something called "force shields" that prevent jedi from being directly acted upon by their enemy's force powers. This is why jedi don't usually just choke each other in fights. Perhaps the same thing could apply to magic duels.
But even with that, there's still a ton of options. Why shoot fireballs when you can just set your opponent on fire directly? If you can't do that, set the area around them on fire. Ambient heat will still do a number on them. Collapse the ceiling above them. Blow something up near them and nail them with the shrapnel. There are so many options, but they're never used.
In Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, the most exciting wizard duel of the series takes place. It involves snape fighting mcgonagall, and actually has some clever ideas. Mcgonagall shoots daggers at snape, snape turns them into birds and makes them attack mcgonagall instead(or something, i don't quite remember it, but it was something like that). And then we get treated to boring "stupefy"(stunning spell) "protego"(shield spell) loops. Oh, well. At least we got one good fight.
A common trope in wizard duels, and one that, in my opinion, conveys a severe lack of imagination, is the battle of will. This is basically like the harry potter and voldemort's wands connecting and they have to "concentrate" really hard to force their opponent to lose. However, it's unclear what exactly they will gain by doing this.
Inevitably, the hero wins, without having to use almost any creativity at all. Unfortunately, this is common in many forms of battle in fiction, not just magic fights, but that's for another post.
What about defense? In magic fights, things could go south very quickly for people that can't think on their feet, so how would you defend against some of the attacks mentioned above? Well, if the floor turned to ice, you could dry it, removing the layer of moisture between it and your feet and thus removing the slipperyness. If they blew something up near you, you could use a simple shield to block the shrapnel. If they created a smoke cloud, you could dissipate it with a gust of wind.
Something many people fail to take into account is that at least half of any battle is psychological. Trickery and deception have been used countless times through history, to great effect. For example, in the american revolution, several soldiers disguised a log as a cannon to scare british troops into surrendering. They didn't even have to fire a shot. The best way to win a fight is to ensure that there won't be one.
In a magic fight, this might involve manipulating your opponents' mind, making them too afraid to fight or too sleepy to concentrate. If there's something that prevents you from directly manipulating them, you could make it into a colorless gas cloud that your opponent will breathe without even realizing it. We can do that even without magic, so it should be relatively simple to do it with magic.
Everything has a weakness, you just have to think differently. For example, in Stargate Sg-1, the military encounters a super soldier that is immune to all their weapons, and even explosions. How they eventually defeated it? Well, the first time, they used tranquilizer darts to make it lose conciousness, and later, they developed a weapon that literally causes them to have a heart attack. Now that's creativity.
Imagine that someone has armor that is too hard to be penetrated by any weapon. How would you kill them? Here's some ideas: Drowning, hunger, thirst, suffocation, falling from a great height, heart failure, sickness, etc. Heck, you don't even need to kill them. Just encase them in a viscous, jello-like liquid and they won't even be able to move.
So that's my ideas on how to make magical fights more interesting. It got a little rambly there at times, but i hope it was still helpful. If you have any responses at all, please leave a comment with your thoughts on this article, such as perhaps what you liked, didn't like, what i could change, etc. Thanks for reading this, and have a good day!
That wasn't an order, by the way. Having a good day is optional.
Hello, close family member, friend i shamelessly advertised to, or possibly random person who clicked on this link by accident! I’m PlasmaMuffin(also known as neoselket), and i run this trainwreck i have the gall to call a blog.
I have attempted to put this blog on wordpress and tumblr, but i decided to move it here because those sucked.
On this blog the posts you will find may include, but not be limited to:
Overly sarcastic reviews
Insulting stereotypes
Funny stuff i found
Lame jokes
Increased heart rate
Random serious stuff like writing, lucid dreaming, philosophy, etc.
Dog pictures
Dry skin
A partridge in a pear tree
Results not typical. Do not read this blog if you are prone to heart attacks, sore throats, or live in Alaska. See store for details. Use at your own risk. All rights reserved. Do not distribute. Just say no to drugs.
Also check out my sister blog(literally, it’s written by my sister) at mortaldrivel.wordpress.com
