Brainstorming: What to do in town?

[Aquillion]

Quoting: Joseph Hewitt

ACADE: Academic, scientist, professor
Invent something new. Explore and discover stuff.

CRAFT: Craftsman, mechanic, engineer

I'd love to see more invention along the lines of how robotics works.  One thing that might be interesting is the ability to customize personal-scale gears -- there was an ancient bug in GH1 that let you do that; it was obviously broken and got fixed, but it would be interesting to see if it could be done in a balanced way.

Robotics should probably be a badge, too.  Maybe another badge for growing your own biotech creatures.

CORPO: Merchant, Corporate, White Collar
Sabotage rival corporation, do corporate promotion, deal with an idiot boss.

You could get sent from place to place to do sales pitches.  Maybe the player could also start their own business, which could be used as a branching-off point for other plots ("someone is attacking your caravans!  If you don't deal with it, profits will be reduced!"  Etc.)

It would be interesting if the player got actual abilities to influence the world by rising in a corporation -- they could alter corporate policy, set R&D priorities, etc.

FAITH: Monk, Priest, etc

Recovering religious artifacts (long-lost idols or icons, etc) and ancient books.

POLIT: Politician
Do negotiations, cause an international incident.

Elections!  If the player manages to rise high enough, they could prevent or start wars, make decisions that set how prosperous various nations become, cause events or moods to change, start, or end in various cities, etc.

TRADE: Shopkeepers and merchants
Business negotiations- practice your salesmanship skills.

Players could buy or start their own shop.

[SharkD]

Quoting: xpace

Treasure Map

This map might lead to, say, an ambush, a pre-cataclysm cache, a bandits horde (and possibly bandits), a nice ore deposit (which could be reported to a colony for a tidy sum), etc, etc. In every case there should be at least some chance of an enemy or monster encounter.

Also, how about a new Talent / Skill combo?:

Treasure maps shouldn't be an instant thing (otherwise, what would be the point?) Rather, you should have to piece together several clues from different encounters.

[xpace]

Quoting: SharkD

Treasure maps shouldn't be an instant thing (otherwise, what would be the point?)

Well... my original idea for a Treasure Map would be something the player could investigate at their leisure, but would be available right away. However, it would sort of be treated like a mission where you're taken to (or have to travel to) a battle map and have to investigate the actual spot... with a strong possibility of being attacked.

BTW: I have some fond memories of Battletech and finding a Star League cache. I thought it'd be neat if GH2 had something equivalent - even if the actual reward was only medeocre. Though, GH1 does have some pre-cataclysm stuff, such as the awesome Argoseyer.

Quoting: SharkD

Rather, you should have to piece together several clues from different encounters.

That works too. I would be pleased with either method. However, I'd still prefer that, on rare occasions, the map is whole to begin with. And if it comes in parts or via clues to be gathered, then I feel it should not require more than 3 or 4 parts (unless it's very special and non-random). I'm thinking: whole maps should be for mundane rewards (such as a bit of cash), 2 parts for mediocre, and 3 or 4 parts for a good or rare reward.

Anything more might be too tedious and boring for the reward - at least for me.

[SharkD]

Quoting: xpace

However, I'd still prefer that, on rare occasions, the map is whole to begin with.

The map needn't necessarily be split into separate parts. It was just an idea. Maybe the map is in a different language and needs to be translated first? Maybe the map's reference points can't be identified? Maybe the map was written in invisible ink on the back of a newspaper and needs special chemical processes to be made legible?

I don't find one-shot quests to be very interesting. It's just another FedEx quest, which the game has enough of already. (This applies to way too many RPGs, actually.) I'd rather have to think about a problem in order to solve it. For me, a quest should not equal an instant reward.

[Ivan]

A lot of cool stuff here to cause me just ditto. To add to this a few useful things for separate flavor -
 
1) there should be ways to turn skills and skill combos into profit for several sides a player might play. All side skills into action for different jobs. While peculiar stuff is in development just make a test thing called labor market with random list of jobs for varied skills, taking different time, amounts of mood etc. So PC takes job, time begins to run, applicable conditions affect PC + random events happen. Ah, and aplicable skills train. Jobs might result in civilian career, basicaly taking higher related skills and giving growing benefits. The very top of career might give some minor worldwide impact. Say XXXdonalds starting work is okay pay for noob, costing a bit of mood and stamina. Progressing slowly to the rank of senior regional manager. At this point it randomly allows quests to say kill/subdue corp owners or just make them very happy with you (which will pay less but be civil). Another example of job is way of the celebrity, paying very little in the very long. Such job could mean several stats to watch, all of them deteriorating gradually and following balance: Performance content (new songs, done for money investment or own skill checks, time and stamina), Team and equipment value - unlike classical inv tools it's a gradual value to watch too (obtained fom direct investments), Current fame (with set latter stats is affected by how often you perform) Current style - a modifier that affects whether you get money or respect out of your workin'. Interface for celebrity career is done through "your agent" who offers standard options (hire ppl, do new studio stuff and rock local pub) or gives opportunities. Higher level of any career including celebrity will result in agent regularily giving "offers you can't refuse" i.e. going on tours to other places to maintain fame levels. Top level of celebrity career would involve better reactions worldwide and random events of money gifts from influential fans, or vice versa - maniac attacks and ppl trying to blackmail you. While attack would mean a small single personal scale fight, other things could be done just as a script with a couple of choices, affecting in-career stats and maybe few out of career ones. List of such events could start out almost blank, ppl would spam you with suggestions on how to exactly mod these, so really would be no pain at all generating ideas - it's all about starting concept of a job and its in-career stats and math. But it should be simple too - career should be able to go high up if PC has high relevant skills and is a bit lucky with random AND gives all of his PC time to career, and since it wouldn't likely keep a person in career forever with other events pressing, the player would eventually end up being the one who decides how much of a career he wants to have. (careers abandoned and underlooked (unanswered emails from agent for long) end up in series of rapid in-career stats drops in just like 5 days of neglect)

2) Controlable buildings - tied to either career or factional employment, the property that you possess gives several control options, either profit or combat related. Say it's a local shop that you control - it runs itself but sends you emails like come on, man, some thugs here think they are our hood - come within a week and kill them or we shall think so too.

3) Through careers and controllable buildings to whole area control. In places with less control from big factions might get control options over certain areas, resulting in same as building management options but of bigger scale. Top of the control ladder - own mecha factory allowing to MAKE mechas for a set of in-control stats+time and own militia, allowing to hire lancemates off your OWN ranks. Whether to count such overlord title as individual faction is yet another thing to think of.

Summary all of this stuff is aimed to diversify single shot quest systems, it can be both added as alternative or addition to other things to do. For example owning your own fortress might be similar to choice of faction, while owning certain biotech labs might be a plus over anything else.

Speaking of which it would fit quite well into "what to do to the bio-tech" dispute. Get lab ownership. Biotech lab produces implants, serums and creatures. Result of production is complex with a lot of randomization, taking TIME and experience feed from point of investment to point of return. Why? To prevent basic save scam and add bio tech flavor to the whole thing. So how it looks like - corp career allows you to own a biotech factory producing viagra mk15. As it is it just gives you lil profit, rarely quests to solve problems, that would temporarily shut it down. This factory comes with a few internal variables - levels of staff skills, research data, supplied materials (use of survival and biotech on encountered fauna becomes needed). Fueling all these variables would most likely make this lab first become a pain for wallet, but later, with variables raised high, would result in making cool stuff for sale or use. Each time you adress lab npc you order some change in place - either something "normal" as equipment purchase or more bio-technological. In latter case it takes your money and/or samples and says "come back tomorrow". Also, unless you get few skillXP while hanging around it would not finish saying "sorry, we have unexpected delays". End result is either a complete failure or a presumably good item. Items for sale are ok to sell at this point, items to use are a gamble again, with same time + skillXP try and test period. If it's a serum or an implant it is fairly easy to understand what might be the results, and if it's a pet, results might be vivid and hidden mutations. Funniest of them runs checks in personal scale combat - once owner is hurt and few monsters still around, the pet synth joins the enemy. Or suddenly goes berserk in town, with everyone blaming it on the owner. However the jackpot of this gamble should remain quite tasty - rewarding implants, npcs and mutation serums, just a BIT better than ones acquired through one shot quests, to reward players for dumping megatonns of time into working with that lab.

To finish it all in the bottom line - it all would fit quite well into the semi-anime style of the game. It's quite common for this genre to have people with a bit of super-hero in them, doing mecha piloting + having some glowing career as another life. Thanks fo reading.