Pylon - ARPG In Development [Quantum Squid Interactive]

That concept art looks strong. I like the more realistic style and primitive concept in the screenshots. I know it's probably way to early but is there any estimated release timeframe?

 

We are shooting for early part of 2013.

And thanks regarding the art and screenshots! Our artists want to get in here and engage with you guys about that stuff soon, so any comments or thoughts are helpful.

 

Glad you like it, we spent a good deal of time discussing art styles. If you look at Diablo 2, it is a very dark oppressive game, D3 a little lighter. Then look at Torchlight, the shapes are more pronounced, colors brighter.

With Valve's work on Dota 2, they mention thing like staying away from over-saturation of color, yet having strong color schemes that compliment the overall idea of a character.

We thought it would be cool to have a more mature look, but not on a level that was too dark. Bright colors and an accessible art style.

 

Looks very nice Looking forward to more info

 

You should really add a strong emphasis on defense, not just offense

Look at the souls games (dark souls and demon souls) for inspiration, the focus on defense makes the action extremely tense.

Just focusing on offense just makes the game a drag, Diablo 3 is just a big click fest, you plow though the game.
Defense brings strategy, tension, memorable fights and an feeling of epicness when slaying bosses and elites.

Take it in consideration.

The concept art looks great and a lot of the things in your vision sounds great!

Good luck!

 

Hey thanks!

You make an excellent point... We definitely have room to add more abilities, too. So far, in playtests, the need to play defensively is there, because the game is pretty hard right now. It is very easy to die, so using dashes and stuns defensively helps.

We do have a couple raw defensive abilities and passives that we'll go into in further posts, but you're right. Plowing through games is fun and has its place for sure, to keep the pace of the game flowing among other things, but strong defensive abilities that create tension and strategy can't be overlooked either.

For now, know that we have an abilities that revolve around damage absorption, dodge and evasion, dash and charge, sleep, heals, and knockbacks, anti-cc passives etc

Basically a skill tree doesn't necessarily have a strong emphasis on being offensive or defensive, but does have both offensive and defensive moves within them.

 

I have both a iPad 2 and iPhone 4S.Can't wait to put my hand on it

 

Nice! The game loads hi-rez textures for devices that can handle them... pretty sure the iPad2 is on that list.

 

Those developments sound promosing; unique bosses, armor sets... bring it on. A few things I'd in ARPGs:

- Randomized dungeons
- Open world non-linear gameplay options
- Hard difficulty challenge dungeon intended for death obsessed ARPG aficionados
- Skills/magic that are accessible and not too draining on magic/mana.
- Diverse environmemts/enemies
- New Game+ or easter egg options. (Let me play as those boss characters after I beat them even if it's in some areana disconnected from plot)
- Mysterious/elusive super creatures/enemies (high hit points, escapes frequently, etc)

 

We have been working hard in regards to your points on diverse environments and accessible skills. The skills that we have are not set in stone, but one of our goals with them has been to allow the player to use each skill as much as possible (without it becoming OP, of course). Cooldowns, if a skill even has one, are fairly short, and energy costs are low enough that you can use quite a few before you're out. But even at that point, energy regenerates very quickly, so you're back to using it after a couple seconds.

We plan on having multiple difficulty levels, and so I imagine it is pretty feasible to have one that is painfully difficult for the "death obsessed" as you put it, haha.

When you (undeadcow, for some reason the quote didn't work) say open-world, are you thinking just the ability to roam and kill stuff at your leisure? Or for an abundance of side quests? Something else?

 

By open world I mean the ability to roam without restrictions but not limited to killing stuff. If there are elements that promote exploitation then it's better.

At a minimum unending horders to fight through would be a basis for an open world design but there's a lot more possibilities for incorporating optional plot points, atmospheric, and social (even NPC) elements. Some effective RPGs emphasize disconnected side/mini quests within a wrap-around framing overall plot (i.e. Chronos Trigger, FFVII) so it add more detail to the towns and different settings. It's nice to be able to just explore, even if that means you find yourself wondering into some mismatched areas for your experience level. Even having areas that exist without clearly being linked to a quest but contain mini-quests (what's in random forest?).

Some of the better open world games have a sense of mystery propelled with substantial mini-quests or easter eggs. I remember Ultima: Quest for the Avatar had an optional sunken ship that players had to search for using clues, Diablo II has the "secret cow level." Consider the ARPG equilivalent of some platform games that require players find hidden letters for form a word (or in RPG terms, an elusive weapon or rare playable character).

 

Love the character design for the protagonist. Both stylish and functional!

 

Heya!

To your first point, our levels are built in a variety of manners. For example, the first three areas are pretty open. The are linear in the sense that there is an entrance and exit, but the meat of the levels allow the player a chance to wonder around and explore off the obvious path, rather then follow a very narrow one. Some areas are very straight forward, while others are more like mazes. During playtests we decided that it was fun to not have to worry about getting lost in some cases, or to not have the same type of level everytime, which we found to be too predictable. We also like exploring in others, which led to the mini-map implementation. People were getting lost lol

Secondly, we have planned for side-quests and content like an endless arena mode unlocked after the beating the game, but they are lower priority in comparison to getting the core game developed first.

As for random generated maps, we really like the way Path of Exile does it. Having affixes attached, rarity levels and actually being a drop from mobs make their system fresh and unique. Currently, that is out of our scope, but maybe in the future we can spend some time figuring out a fun way to do random generated maps as well. Another thing to note is, Pylon is not a traditional isometric ARPG, it doesn't use assets that can only be used from one perspective. This was done to a) get more out of our assets and b) reduce the amount of alpha-masking as it tanks frame-rate on mobile.

Rarity is definitely a core aspect, as far as the traditional white, blue, yellow items - so Pylon does have that. Our Elite system also covers rare, unique encounters, but I agree, something easter-eggy like a secret cow level would be awesome.

Thanks for giving your thoughts and ideas! It most certainly helps us to steer Pylon towards what you and the community want and find fun.

 

Wow I'm loving the art by you guys! I have a couple suggestions regarding the interactions between alphas and their pack monsters.

1) Maybe have two groups (1 alpha and their pack in each) side by side. Depending on how much damage you're doing to one alpha, the other alpha and its pack either increases or decreases in attack power with the health difference between the two alphas. This makes it so you have to switch between alphas for strategic battles.

2) Maybe have the alpha eat its pack to regain health if its taking too long to kill the alpha, or if the alpha isn't being attacked.

I love the strategy you're involving in this game. Keep it up!

 

We have talked about that second idea before, we definitely like it. But I really like that first idea! That could be an awesome Elite encounter too. Two elites spawn, and you have to bounce back and forth between the two so that neither gets too powerful.

 

A quick overview on the bread and butter of combat.

BASIC ATTACKS

At level 1, everyone has access to three basic attack abilities. Subsequent levels give you skill points to spend on unlocking more powerful abilities.

Our philosophy from the beginning was to give the player choice and flexibility, throughout the entire game. Changing out abilities on the fly was something we HAD to have.

All our abilities are split into three trees: Strength, Dexterity, and Intelligence. Abilities in these trees scale from their assigned stat, whether that be damage, cooldown reduction, heal amount etc.

Lets say you get a nice gem off one of the monsters, and it has +10 to Strength. Of my three starting abilities, the Strength Basic Attack (a melee swing) is probably the move to use because it has just become more powerful from the +10 STR.

The basic attacks use no energy and can be spammed. The strength one increases weapon damage by 130% (calculated before adding bonus damage from +STR items). The dexterity basic attack is a melee strike that increases attack speed by 20%, does 110% weapon damage that scales from +DEX items, and from whatever weapon/s you are using.

The Intelligence's Basic Attack is a ranged Fireball. It costs no energy and can be spammed as well. It also homes in on targets, within a certain range. The damage of your Fireball goes up the more Intelligence you accumulate.

The goal here is let play-styles emerge through drop rates. If a player has been getting an equal mix of +STR, +DEX and +INT items, then the choice is whichever one you'd like to use, or sub out +DEX and +INT for other stats like Critical Hit ratings. If at the beginning of the game you get a lot of +STR you might use and unlock strength moves, but later in the game lots of +DEX items drop, prompting a change out to dexterity abilities.

Does it make sense, does it sound fun?

 

Hey guys,

I'm the programmer on this project, and I was gonna go ahead and jump in to clarify a few things, and hopefully prevent possible confusion.

For starters, all abilities scale with weapon damage. However, not all abilities scale the same with weapon damage; as you saw in the above post, the STR basic ability uses 130% weapon damage, while the DEX basic ability uses 110% weapon damage (if you were wondering, the INT basic attack does 120% weapon damage). This was done primarily for 2 reasons: 1) it's easy to understand, and 2) it ensures that there isn't a significant gear difference between the specs, so switching specs is relatively painless.

Second, the 3 main stats (STR, DEX, and INT) currently add 1% damage (or healing, or whatever else the ability uses instead of damage) per point to an ability. So, with 100 STR, the basic ability for STR gets 100% extra damage.

Third, one might come to the conclusion that based on these systems you would want to just stack your main stat as high as you possibly can, and ignore other stats. Fear not; we have a solution in place to prevent that, which we will discuss when we go over gear and the gemming system more in depth. For now, just rest assured that gear choices aren't that mindless.

Lastly, we do have a system in place that encourages some mixing and matching with abilities from various trees (as opposed to just getting all the abilities from one tree and ignoring the others), which we can iterate on as development continues, as well as some other ideas we can implement in the future if the aforementioned method isn't enough.

If you have any additional questions, or if anything needs more clarification, feel free to ask and I will answer as soon as possible.

P.S. Yes, we do allow you to respec your character.