What would you suggest Big Huge Games and 38 Studios do differently?

• Reduce exposition heavy characters to one per quest hub, eliminate all exposition redundancy
• Remove alchemy from crafting.
• Add a combo counter system.
• Link combo counter system to buffs previously found in alchemy, as well as to character progression systems.
• Add health/mana orb drops system (fallen enemies 'drop' instantly consumed health and mana orbs - as seen in God of War and Diablo 3)
• Link health/mana orb drops system to combo counter system and character progression.
• Fewer dungeons, but much much much bigger, larger, longer.
• Increase combat density in both overworld and dungeons.
• Reduce respawn timers for enemies significantly.
• Double average amount of combatants in any given combat encounter, add a 'spawn next wave' element to encounters more frequently, if not always.
• Add mounts for overworld travel, as a countermeasure to increased combat density and quick respawns.
• Remove blacksmithing from crafting.
• Expand on gear upgrade systems like Sagecrafting.
• Add 'Loot Pinata' effect to enemies.
• Add 'Area Looting' as seen in SW:TOR
• Add 'Loot Pinata' effect to breakable objects
• Add significant loot to breakable objects
• Link unique epic loot to boss encounters/quest rewards
• Deeper randomly generated loot with more affixes
• Increase competitive quality of green and blue loot drops

In short, skew the experience away from Elder Scrolls to being much more like a 3rd person Diablo game with a full set of RPG mechanics. Away from open world 'exploration' - towards becoming more a combat and dungeon and loot centric experience. Focus being on improving balance and increase challenge. And most importantly - increase pacing and flow of gameplay, respectively reduce downtime between combat.

What would you suggest?

What would you suggest Big Huge Games and 38 Studios do differently?

• Reduce exposition heavy characters to one per quest hub, eliminate all exposition redundancy
• Remove alchemy from crafting.
• Add a combo counter system.
• Link combo counter system to buffs previously found in alchemy, as well as to character progression systems.
• Add health/mana orb drops system (fallen enemies 'drop' instantly consumed health and mana orbs - as seen in God of War and Diablo 3)
• Link health/mana orb drops system to combo counter system and character progression.
• Fewer dungeons, but much much much bigger, larger, longer.
• Increase combat density in both overworld and dungeons.
• Reduce respawn timers for enemies significantly.
• Double average amount of combatants in any given combat encounter, add a 'spawn next wave' element to encounters more frequently, if not always.
• Add mounts for overworld travel, as a countermeasure to increased combat density and quick respawns.
• Remove blacksmithing from crafting.
• Expand on gear upgrade systems like Sagecrafting.
• Add 'Loot Pinata' effect to enemies.
• Add 'Area Looting' as seen in SW:TOR
• Add 'Loot Pinata' effect to breakable objects
• Add significant loot to breakable objects
• Link unique epic loot to boss encounters/quest rewards
• Deeper randomly generated loot with more affixes
• Increase competitive quality of green and blue loot drops

In short, skew the experience away from Elder Scrolls to being much more like a 3rd person Diablo game with a full set of RPG mechanics. Away from open world 'exploration' - towards becoming more a combat and dungeon and loot centric experience. Focus being on improving balance and increase challenge. And most importantly - increase pacing and flow of gameplay, respectively reduce downtime between combat.

What would you suggest?

Make it not boring.

I want more steam-based robots, nothing to do with Kingdoms of Amalur I just like Robots with steam coming out of them.

When you talk to people what you say matters, and they actually move when you talk to them.

Keep the combat, keep the loot system.

More enemy variety, more Epic boss fights.

Focus the game more(less shitty sidequests and deeper quest chains), i appreciate that they are going for an open world but you either do it all the way or not at all, (that means open environments and not the hub connects to another hub and into another hub).

Dialogue decisions should impact the world thus giving you opportunity for multiple endings and increasing replayability, in the game they currently just convey information and don't really give you meaningful choices.

maybe i'm just wanting them to go more the way of Witcher 2's way of designing an RPG.. but that's not such a bad thing to wish for.

stop asking me personal questions twice a day

I like Amalur, but its falling short of its potential. Most of my niggles with the game could be solved with three points:

• Less Experience Given per Quest (therefore making the leveling slower, and the lower level loot/enemies I find more useful/challenging)
• More Enemy Variety (make unique enemies for each zone)
• More Enemy Numbers/configurations (mix kobolds in with spiders in with humanoids in the one encounter for instance)

Other features that would be cherries on the top:

• Allow overlevelled enemies in each zone (big bad asses wandering around to test your strength against)
• Mix in more overlevelled loot (give me something to pick up and look forward to)
• More Enemy AI patterns, consider changing based on health (low health = more aggresive)
• More wandering AI 'life" (npc/monsters) - zones feel very empty

@Simplexity said:

Make it not boring.

Make it fun.

I can get behind pretty much everything that have been said in this thread, now to let the developers realize that if they are going to attempt to make a sequel.

Focus.

Doesn't matter in what area. But they need to cut the fat somewhere and get better in any of the other aspects. For example: drop the pretense of being an RPG and go full on after the loot lust dungeon crawler with expanded action combat. OR Create a cool tight story with deep characters and great action combat, less filler bullshit quests.

But we know they are making the MMO so ...

@Tennmuerti said:

Focus.

Doesn't matter in what area. But they need to cut the fat somewhere and get better in any of the other aspects. For example: drop the pretense of being an RPG and go full on after the loot lust dungeon crawler with expanded action combat. OR Create a cool tight story with deep characters and great action combat, less filler bullshit quests.

But we know they are making the MMO so ...

38 studios is doing the Amalur MMO. An entirely different team. Not Big Huge Games. KoA:R 2 might be just what they're up to next.

I want them to not force me having to run for 20 minutes just to get to the next quest area. It really kills any interest in it.

A stat screen and better stat names. 
Placed loot.
FoV
More than 1 unique boss.
Enemy types that change.

Drop all the silly names. EVERY name of ANYTHING does not imply at ALL what that thing/persone/place is. Meaning, that all names are gibberish for me. Make my character speak, or give me propor dialogue, and make the story actually interesting.

• The camera is junk top to bottom. Increase the FOV, zoom out so I can see more of what's going on around me and give me full manual control. All I want the camera to do automatically is zoom even further out to keep all my enemies on screen in combat. And keep my dude centered in the screen please.
• I've got the burning hate of a thousand suns for stun-lock. Restrict stunning/interruption to special attacks only, not every attack the enemy makes.
• Block should instantly interrupt all other animations. Also, since we don't have a lot of targeting control and the stunning is crazy it should block all enemies in the encounter, not just the current target.

Are we fighting slowly and methodically like in Skyrim or are we going balls to the wall like God of War? It's balls to the wall in this game but the stunning and blocking is more suited to slow and methodical.

Better system to personalize character face. More faces or sliders for different parts of the characters face and head.

Dyes for armor and equipment. It's 2012 and if I want my character in all white armor I should be able to have a dye to get it done.

more...

Light and heavy attacks. I can't stress how bored I was with the combat in the demo because it seemed like it was just the same three hit combo no matter what I did.

And lots of other stuff too, but I haven't played the full game, so I won't say any more.

I don't have too much problem with the crafting (alchemy, blacksmithing) systems though I agree with others to either have many of the side quests to not have that much xp to them, adjust the combat so you just don't get staggered by multiple opponents doing multiple hits on you (when missing one blocking move), allow to drop quests/tasks, put weapon type names on the description in compare menu, stat requirements when crafting, make some locations in the world like skyrim (just a random bandit/monster cave to just explore or something inside like bunch of plants for alchemy, stagger it to make me want to explore more than just finding lorestones).

Except for the obvious re-balance stuff.
 
1. Greatly increase the "comboability" between weapons, allowing for several combo options for every possible weapon combination.
2. Add more moves to every weapon.
3. Add GoW type "style-switch" (or rather aoe-toggle) through bumpers/triggers. 
4. Better block and dodge-cancelling.

The only real problem with amalur was that all the games systems (story, combat, loot) were not completed that last mile. Combat needed more depth/moves and more challenge. The open world had too much dead time travelling and nowhere near enough enemies populating it and at the right levels. The open world was a big negative, way too much deadspace (doing nothing) travelling a more linear mission based structure for the world would have done wonders for pacing the combat and telling the story.

Amalur suffers from an a dev team trying to do too much for their first big action RPG so all the games parts are half completed.

Make it less of the crap spamfest it was.  Improve the combat so you can actually make the game a challenge.  Get the fuck rid of R A Salvatore, because can't write, has no idea about exposition and is about as derivative as they come.  Oh and stop marketing these shit games into oblivion EA.  

Voice acted main character.

make it harder, make enemies smarter and more variations. make most side quest active after main game is done.

Think of what it would be like if most of the side quest were active till after main story was over. It would give people a reason to keep playing, people wouldn't get bored before the game was over. You could also than repopulate the world with harder enemies making side quests atleast harder therefor more fun.

Would like a mount, and would love a watercraft. I love boating, why can't more games give you a boat?

Thanks Two Worlds 2!

The main things I didn't enjoy in Reckoning was how the dialogue system works, the boring side quests and lack of enemy variety. While I do like that 38 Studios went for a deliberately cartoonish artstyle, I also can't help but feel that it also ruined some of the immersion for me. Overall though, I felt the game to be quite enjoyable, the loot aspect of it in particular.

Convince me that your game is something I would enjoy to play. I didn't love Skyrim, and not only because of the combat, so I have no interest in a game that fixes none of my problems with Skyrim. I'll just go play more of that if you can't come up with something different.