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What would you change about Sacred Underworld?


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Let's say you travel back in time and you're the leader of the game design team, what would you change about the game? (Aside from fixing bugs, making everything that looks like a cave entrance lead to a cave, and some rebalancing).

Some of my changes:

  • I would make it more obvious that the portals in Underworld are indeed portals.
  • All sets should have some notable bonus for completing them, which would make it worth having them whole and not just loose pieces. For example, the Paternus set could give a bonus to weapon damage that increases for each "spell you have active" making after casting several spells like Stoneskin, Flameskin and Whirlwind the mage have a temporary bonus to damage that makes the sword build viable.
  • I like Reborn's idea of putting more emphasis on damage types, but I think the key to making better use of weapon slots is to correlate weapon types with different combat arts, for example, Fist of the Gods should have a bonus if you use it unarmed, Hard Hit a bonus if you use it with a mace, Multi Hit a bonus if you use it with a spear... I wouldn't go as far as making some skills only usable with certain weapons (like the Wood Elf does), but I would try to make the bonuses relevant enough to want to change weapons. The fact that in the game settings you can make it so that with the same button you can change weapons and combat arts at the same time makes me think that this was one of the original ideas.
  • Some items should have a higher chance of dropping in some areas than others, for example, in the Dryad Forest there should be a higher chance of getting bows, distributing well which items are dropped more easily in each area encourages players to venture through different areas to complete  their gear and not be constantly farming in the same place.
  • There should be more incentives to open chests and other containers. People only open them at the beginning of the game, when they don't have enough armor pieces, after that the items dropped by enemies is enough. I would make the statues set only be able to come out of containers and make the container to have a higher chance of dropping runes. Magic hideouts (I'm not sure of the English name, those sparkling dots) should ensure you a rare item (with the yellow name).
  • More enemies should be armed with unique weapons, for example, HRunga'zz should be armed with Tree Rage, this way it gives a little more value to the Disarm skill.
  • I would remove the island portals in multiplayer, instead I would mark all the portals on the map so you can find them easily. Also there should be points that connect Ancaria with the Underworld (locked in singleplayer), the most obvious would be a tunnel that connects N'Aguali with the deserts that are around it, but it would also be nice to have an extra area in the Zhurag-Nar mines that connects to the Dwarven Ruin region, Shaddar-Nur could connect through a portal to Shaddar-Sub and Braverock to the Valley of Tears at the point where Ilith'Bah was summoned.
  • All characters should have a combat art that allows them to cross rivers.
  • The Underworld map is boring and monotonous, I would add more notable points and more quests.
  • The Wood Elf should be able to ride the unicorn that she summons, which also goes very well with ranged combat-
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- Caravan system like in Fallout 1 & 2 to slow the game down and offer more gameplay options
- Endgame content: Fallout 1 & 2 one-liners for monsters and enemies
- Unlock tavern after "region is at peace" drink & rest option + new regional questlines
- Horadic cube like in Diablo2 + rechargeable runestones, which can be quicklinked to the B-button
- Gentle grave robber loot-system (find send-in community items of all levels and difficulties)
- Gentle amount-of-books-found bonus system
- Rogue traders, alone somewhere in the wilderness, selling community items
- Random encounters around the world. Wandering travellers, contract killers, merchands, adventurer groups...
- Wilderness-ambushes by various monsters and bad guys
- Real estate agents
- Proper written game environment
- Pitch black caves, tombs & nights, use of torches
- Weather system with rain, ground fog, heat exhaustion in the desert...
- Henchmen/militia system
- Proper NPC and NPC-guard AI
- Reworked horse system
- Reworked chest-loot system
- Reworked item drops
- Fancy abilities for full sets. They should be still clunky to play, though.
- Dangerous unique enemies with special skills
- More monsters
- Reworked sound design
- Fixed and working combat arts for all heros, including proper descriptions


PS:
Swamp-Snakeboss has the most powerful weapon in vanilla I'd say. Axe is one handed, so double wield is possible, has up to 4 sockets, always 128% magic spell damage bonus in Niobium, even more when not swapped in multiplayer, plus up to 140 percent to regen special move, or spell. Also big, fat damage. Either pysical or poison. Not bad. Just a matter of farming. Save before you enter his palazzo.

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-Full Modding Support

-Hiring a community manager. Communication and feedback from the community is everything.

31 minutes ago, Dax said:

Swamp-Snakeboss has the most powerful weapon in vanilla I'd say. Axe is one handed, so double wield is possible, has up to 4 sockets, always 128% magic spell damage bonus in Niobium, even more when not swapped in multiplayer, plus up to 140 percent to regen special move, or spell. Also big, fat damage. Either pysical or poison. Not bad. Just a matter of farming. Save before you enter his palazzo.

The weapon is called Tree Rage. It's also farmable from Karisall, the end boss of zhurag nar.

It indeed has the highest base damage of every one-handed weapon ingame. Poison and, iirc, physical too. But all versions I ever got had one socket. Thain's Axe of Flames has the second highest base damage I know for one handed weapons, but three sockets. With the sockets it can easily outdamage Tree Rage.

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lovely topic, Alfchaval... nostalgic, thoughtful and kind-hearted

Loving reading the community's answers now...kind of like a salve for stress after a superior long week :oooo: 

... so many angles and recollections :connie_xmas-moose: of this game, and thoughts of how it could be made better ? :blush:

Sacred for me was a ton of things  My first computer ever had arrived two months before, and I was looking for a game... and the demo did it all for me. I remember being breathless the first time I could see my Seraphim (favorite! :bounce:) ride a steed while going circles around an orc...then equipping her with a bow while it lit on fire... 

S O L D

This was my first game I played online, met everyone here on this forum years ago at the SIF so its all very nostalgic for me, very immersive and always beautiful to kill things in :lol: 

The only thing I'd change?

Maybe adding an an action announcement yell everytime a toon cast a CA?

Imagine a seraphim casting CL... and yelling out... *Celestial Light!* every time she cast ... :D ...course if you could cast them very quickly the word would be cut by the next one coming in...but wouldnt that be a lovely onomatopoeia

:heart:

gogo

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11 hours ago, alfchaval said:

Let's say you travel back in time and you're the leader of the game design team, what would you change about the game?

That would be an enormously dangerous thing to do. I wouldn't do that.

It all starts with our arrogance thinking we know better now, but even with hindsight we are not all-knowing.
I for example first had to loose a large part of my colour vision to understand that the fact that all the colourful sacred loot, the runes, the nice green set items etc. might have been an important part of my enjoyment of the game. I would have never guessed that was important before that point. We don't really understand our brains, we are just stuck inside of them.

Always remember that most game developers did not "predict" their success but arrived there by accident.
Like the original Diablo devs deciding to speed up their "turn based game" to "real time", accidentally creating the arpg genre...

4 hours ago, gogoblender said:

Maybe adding an an action announcement yell everytime a toon cast a CA?

I'm almost certain you would wish for the exact opposite if you had had it your way. We always want things we don't have. With all this annoying screaming, having the darkelves constantly say "poison mist" and the woodelves "multi hit"... We'd be playing cota woodelves just to get that minute of silence before whe hear it again...
I just imagined the most extreme option of this change:
Imagine your Fadalmar character screaming "icon" with every step and "Fireball" every time one triggers that :)



Also for those who want to change a lot, remember that it is not just about how you are effected by those changes, but also about others. After all the effect sacred had on some specific people led to the fact that we had a sacred 2 and to the specifics of what that sacred 2 looked like...

Changing things in the past is usually not a good idea and I certainly sleep better knowing that most of you don't have that kind of power.
If a change had to be made I think Lindor's "
Full Modding Support" is the wisest solution, allowing all our different ideas of how the game should have been in parallel instead of overwriting history.

Hindsight may be great for things that actually did happen but for things that did not it is just as blind as our sight ahead.

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Adding a script language for modding AI, more automatic playing if wanted, selfmade maps and enemies, ...

Sacred was done in a time when cracking and copying kinda prevented this.

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27 minutes ago, chattius said:

more automatic playing if wanted, selfmade maps and enemies, ...

you want to turn it into dungeon siege? :)

29 minutes ago, chattius said:

Sacred was done in a time when cracking and copying kinda prevented this.

How does "cracking and copying" prevent the possibility for player made content? Because giving more tools to change the game makes it easier to "crack and copy"?
hmm, maybe.

But I still think we're lucky that Sacred was done in a time before "cracking and copying" led to always online garbage... Otherwise we wouldn't be able to play it at all anymore since the company that made it is long gone.
Sacred will outlast any modern title because it comes from that time.

Nostalgia, such a great thing :cow: 

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  • The title was changed to What would you change about Sacred Underworld?
3 hours ago, SLD said:

you want to turn it into dungeon siege? :)

 

oh Gawd.. i LOVED dungeon Siege!

:superman: 

gogo

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On 8/17/2024 at 2:40 PM, gogoblender said:

oh Gawd.. I LOVED dungeon Siege!

same here...
I think I earned the title of number one thread derailer :)

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1 hour ago, SLD said:

same here...
I think I earned the title of number one thread derailer :)

Lol SLD .. don’t worry too much about thread derailing  here my friend… This is DarkMatters … everything eventually gets to where the universe is supposed to get us too no matter how long it takes.

Enjoy the ride, enjoy the day, our company …

I know that many of us are certainly enjoying your posts

🙏

gogo

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On 8/16/2024 at 3:18 PM, Dax said:



- Real estate agents

I had hoped we were going to get real "land" and /or be able to build places in sacred 2... Every time I look at the architecture in Sacred 2 my heart swoons

Renders_High_Elf_Villa1.jpg

I'm in for RE agents... just ..nice ones

:P

 

gogo

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