Dungeon Siege III and its expansion.

Well I loved DS 2 but there are somethings that could be better

1)Multiple endings,after I finished the game on elite I had hoped for a different ending. ex : My character wielding the sword and the shield and leading a vast army.Like Valdis was in the intro movie
It would be great this way exeample
Mercenary 1 - 3 endings the 3 should be more difficult to obtain
Veteran 2 more endings
Elite 3 more endings the most interesting ones and hard to obtain
*Masterfull or Lord * hiden difficulty only avaible after finishing Elite.Provides 1 - 2 extra party members,extra quests,new sets of armours,weapons,enemys,boses and places to explore makeing it possible to obtain 100 % game exploration and completion.
2)larger places to explore :
there should be areas that are only for side quests and have absolutley no connection to the main quest.
The maps in DS 2 were very small and player would often fell that they are following a pre set path.
3)Better sets after finishing on Mercenary dif I had the unpleasent surprise to find out that good weapons,armors,uniques and sets wore getting fewer and fewer(at least for melle and range clases I had no problem in finding stuff for mages).
At elite there wore almost no items for melle and range at the shops.
4)Better grafics,the grafics in DS 2 wore good but compared to other games that came out that year it looked out dated
5)The music in the game was great so continue with it.
6)More skills and clases,it would be great to have more clases and skills DS 2 had a good skill tree but it could use even more skills to add more diversity.
7)Keep the 4,5,6(maybe 7 - 8 in the new one) party sistem becouse it was great(in my point of view)
8)More towns and maybe some outposts(small places with a market(blacksmit,magicshop) a small inn,and a militia,note it would smaLler then a town/city ) found in certaine places(places you will be traveling ex : on the road(of the main quest),forest and other areas.
This would be usefull becouse in DS 2 the distances betwen town wore huge and after a while you would have to go back/teleport back to a town.This way you could get what you need and sell some items so you can continue to fight without teleporting back to a town.
Note : The items that could you could buy in an outpost will not be as good as the ones in a town but there would some that would be great and there would be quests.
9)Multiple quest endings
10)More diversty for enemys/when it comes to enemys I mean for there skills and efects.Some of the monsters in DS 2 wore great and had divers efects/powers others though look like they just copyed the abilities of others monsters. ex :
Riders the only difference betwen riders and soldiers that fight and fought was that some of them had more health.
I would be great if you could enhance each of the monsters uniques ability.So players dont feel like they have fought the same monsters before.ex :
Some could have crazy speed but less life,others could have more/less dexterity,strengh etc.
Also the mages in the game could have more spells the main spell used by mosnter mages was : health steal and a fire atack from time to time a spell that weakend and a lighting spell.
Some more spells for them would be great and efects ex :
the mages in Valdis Stronghold that used lighting spells and heal the selfs useing combat magic wore great.When I played on elite and had a combat mage in my party and I encountered one of these monsters I was thrilled about them.It made the game much more chalengeing becouse I had to continuesly switch spells so as not to heal them.
11)A greater diversity in the matter of bosess
Valdis was prety good as a boss but the Archmage(only head like 2 spells 10to lock the obelisks around him and and then start an atack useing them and 2 was a normal atacks spell.I was expecting something better,I mean the guy was ancient and should have known a huge amount of spells) the creature at the water works(it had no true atacks) sucked ass (pardone the expression).
This would make them more chalengeing and divers and thus more memoring.
The Dragon,Valdis,the Tree like creature(you fight it to get the first pat of the shield) and even the first mage(when you free Eva) wore great and I still remeber those fights.

Note for others that would want to mention other games :
From my point of view these games had a great story and it would be good to see more like them in other games.
Other games that are DS 2 type and could have been used as an example :
Spellforce 1,2 and expansions,Neverwinter Nighst 1,2 and expansions,Diablo 2 and Sacred 1.
Also I am aware that some FPS and RTS had great storys but I decided to only mention these ones becouse I have recently played Mass Efect and it reminded me of the old days when I was playing Kotor 1.

I gues that is all.

Well, I see further interesting observations on this question from Hauo.
One thing he explicitly stated that I don't remember any of us touching on in the past is music, and I agree; the music in both DS1 and DS2 is very appropriate for the genre and the settings, and it's something I've come to associate with "Dungeon Siege" very strongly.

Speaking of music, I've recently been dabbling in Guild Wars and I've noticed the additional animations ("emotes") in that game. It would be nice if DS3 were to have something similar; I'm particularly taken with the belly dance done by the female Elementalist, and the Tai Chi style motions of one of the monkish types. Maybe DS3 could have some sort of sword dance akin to Scottish or Cossack sword dances, as well as appropriate dances for other sorts of "equipped weapon/spell." One of the things we may have mentioned here previously is the "Hand" skill found in SJR's "Dungeon Siege Abstraction." That's a nice additional skill that I would like to see as part of DS3, and a dance appropriate to having that skill equipped would be something like a Tai Chi workout, I would think. I don't know what sort of excuse to make for the belly dance, except that it is esthetically pleasing (although, as with the chainmail bikini, it probably wouldn't work for Lothar or Vix). Another skill that I would like to see is some sort of Musical Magic (usually associated with "Bards" in games of this genre), and the introduction of musical instruments accordingly. Edit: The "Bard" (if by that we mean a Mage whose medium is Music) could be a subclass of Nature Mage or Combat Mage (or a subclass of a dual-class of both types of Magic), rather than a separate class in its own right, although if there is going to be an increase in the number of main classes available (as is suggested in the case of the Hand skill), adding Bard as a separate class would not be extreme.

Edit: And is there ever going to be a Priestly class? If so, I want several options as to patron/matron and pantheon and so on. The worship of Azunai and Xeria and their fellow Azunite divinities is not universal, and it is difficult to say how the Elves view Istaura and Isteru or what divinities the Agallans might follow. Do the Elves have divinities apart from Istaura and Isteru? Are Istaura and Isteru even regarded as divinities, and if not, then Who are the divinities of the Elves? There is an obvious element of Ancestor-Worship (or at least very devout Honoring of Ancestors) involved in several of the societies of DS2; the Dryads, for example, seem to regard their Ancestresses as divine, or near-divine, and refer to Them as "the Mothers of Eirulan." Who were the divinities of the Utraeans before the coming of the Azunites? A vague elemental theory seems to be in operation in the use of both Nature Magic and Combat Magic, but that is slightly different in the western lands of DS1/Yesterhaven/LoA and the eastern lands of DS2/BW. Is that due to some difference in religion and/or philosophy, or could it have to do with which divinities exert control over what geographic territories? There will likely be "official" Priesthoods, but the possibility of competing rival sects and forbidden underground cults and so on would add yet more depth to the game and to the potentials for character development.

Speaking of skills, several of the mods, siegelets, and total conversions have involved crafting, similar to skills found in various other games. I think it would be interesting to have a selection of secondary skills in which one's character could train and earn levels, etc. That might be more advantageous in a multi-player context, but it could still be fun in single player. The world of Aranna we have seen thus far has had mills, mines, fields of crops, livestock, workshops, historical societies, smithies, temples, shrines, enchanters, alchemists, fletchers, etc. In the DS2 quest The Armorer's Apprentice, a bit of information useful for a smithing skill is presented (that is, the rudiments of such a thing are presented). The same thing happens in the DS2 quest Lumilla's Salve and the DS2BW quest Lumulla's Special Recipe, wherein the rudiments of an enchanter skill are presented. Skills available to players might include herbalism, alchemy (a combined herbalism/alchemy skill exists to some extent in DS2 with the ability to harvest health and mana potions), enchanting, mining, smithing, farming, carpentry, woodworking, woodcutting, masonry, cooking, brewing, and so on (some of these might be combined skills, like cooking/brewing or mining/smithing or woodcutting/carpentry/woodworking, etc). Gem cutting and jewelry making might also fall into these skills somewhere. In the multiplayer context, of course, players could use these various skills to create products for sale to other players (or the shops), though the question of Massively Multiplayer Online or limited Multiplayer Online may affect the appeal of this sort of production and marketing without at least some means of advertisement and distribution to other online players. If the trend towards specialization continues, a Beastmaster subclass of Nature Mage should probably be able to have the secondary skill of animal taming (and related skills), so as to be able to make pets of wild and potentially aggressive creatures encountered in the wild or summoned explicitly for the purpose (same as is done by Rokhar and Khartos), and a Beastmaster should not be limited to one or two summonses at a time (certainly not at the highest levels, anyway; the same would apply to a Summoner, which would be a type of Combat Mage, as a Beastmaster would be a type of Nature Mage).

Just think of it. You could go into the Crystwind Mines, kill some Darklings and Krug, mine your ores, take them back to the smithy in Crystwind or Fallraen, smelt them, hammer them into weapons and armor, gather your reagents according to the proper recipe, go to the Ancient Temple near Meren, cast your enchantment, and presto, you've got your very own player-crafted and player-enchanted item. At higher levels of Mining/Smithing, better ores could be gotten and worked, and more style (appearance) selections would be available for armor and weapons. At higher levels of Enchantment, players might be able to create their own unique reagent recipes, choosing from a set of variables that make sense in connection with the reagents and type of item used and a few bonuses. And of course, the player would get to choose any desired color or colors for the created item, having already chosen style when smithing it.

As for hack and slash vs. RP, I like a bit of both, more of a balance, but with a slight preference for RP (sorry, Sol). The puzzle-solving stuff in DS2 and BW was mostly excellent (if one or two of the puzzles were too complex for my patience, when I had resort to walkthroughs), and more character interaction and greater potential for character development is something I would like to see. The storyline in DS2 and BW was more well developed than in DS1, and the historical background information provided by such items as the various books found in the course of the game and by such characters as the historians in the various towns added a depth to the storyline that gave a stronger sense of purpose to the actions of the character in the quests. A lot of the dialogue between party members in DS2 and BW is amusing and/or enlightening, and may provide clues to things yet to be revealed (when you actually get to hear the dialogue, anyway).

I think we've said something like this before, but player-owned (and constructed, if the skills I've suggested are implemented) homes would also be nice, and provide additional storage space for reserve items as well as display cases for very special items (things that are cool-looking, have catchy names, pleasing special effects, etc, but may no longer be useful to the player because his/her level has surpassed their utility).

Edit: Additional Comments on Starting Locations. I found it peculiar to be playing a Dryad from Aman'Lu in DS2. Of course, due to the fact that there are no male Dryads and therefore all Dryads have fathers who are of some other race, some justification can be made for that situation (my character's mother may have married an Elven man and they settled in Aman'Lu). The story also seemed to call for the main character to be from Aman'Lu, but had the character been from Eirulan or Kalrathia or even somewhere in the Utraean Peninsula, the story could have still worked without the "return to hometown" thing in connection with Aman'Lu. I would like to see a variety of starting locations, with some basic information about each, when creating a character. I might want to be a Dryad from a Dryad town like Eirulan, for example, or an Elf from Kalrathia, or whatever. This is of course part of what I want to see in the way of "greater potential for character development."

Oh, yeah, and chainmail bikinis!

I like that idea of adding crafting skills. The basic start character in DS1 is a farmer, but never uses any skill from that former life. He/she just starts becoming a fighter/ranger/mage by doing those things, but leaves farmer completely behind.

There's also a bias towards creating a single-skill character in the way the game rewards your development to the point where the tutorial in DS2 even tells you you need to do that. BW's dual-classed characters really aren't, they're two new single-class characters with dedicated skill trees, so that you still need to specialize to benefit most.

It seems to me that crafting skills that work with your combat skills would be a good addition. You could add smithing to melee and make yourself better weapons and armor with lower requirements, or just build up your skills and buy the higher-requirement ones. Either path should achieve the same balance of offense and defense, but the game gets more variety. Ditto for Fletcher/Ranger and Alchemist/Mage. Any class could add Enchanting skills for the equipment bonuses, again trading enchanting skills against main path skills.
I would imagine the vendors might sell only plain equipment without any magical properties, but all would be enchantable, and maybe upgradable in non-magical ways as well, sharpening a sword, restringing a bow, etc. Spells sold would be basic-level ones, but an Alchemist would be able to upgrade their effectiveness, make them faster to cast, etc.

Parties of characters, whether in SP or MP, would benefit from crafting skills upgrading armor for all members, adding the smith's higher defense value, the fletcher's reduction of strength requirements (they know all about lightness), the Alchemist's reflection of damage and the enchanter's resistances.

The ability to collect potion materials is a pair of skills in DS2, but those are tied to character classes, and it seems to me they'd be better as part of the common Enchanter skill that any class could add to.

The hardest job for anyone trying to add this to the game is that the skill trees would need to link together, too, so that some Ranger skills would need points in Fletching, for example, and it's a bit harder to come up with a good UI for that.

Personally, I'd like this change to replace Powers, which I don't feel add anything but complexity to the game, (and really get in the way of modding!)

On map design... take a page from TES4:O on that subject. Big world, freely explorable, dungeons everywhere, quests scattered around, multiple towns, scaled monsters to your level, respawning loot and regions repopulated with monsters after a while... I'm not too crazy about the interface / combat system / character development of that game, but just love the game world structure.

As for non-combat skills, I'd really like the idea of being able to improve equipment as you go, so if you like the look of a certain armor / weapon you can keep it for more than a couple of levels without nerfing your character...

Which accounts for your attempts to enchant the non-enchantable, I presume.

If you allow unlimited improvement to the same base item, then the cheat community will know no bounds, so you'd have to have a system that provides a limit to how many upgrades you can add, and maybe they would develop over time with your experience, so after you level up you'd be able to add enhancements to some of your gear. It's probably no harder than the sets system to keep track of how many enhancements you have on an item.

I suspect that the real answer for progressing your equipment is to make it relate directly to the owner's experience, the way a few mods have attempted for special items, but you'd need to use your craft skill to do the upgrade, instead of just re-equipping it. It would be interesting if the crafting process could affect which stat influences the enhancement, e.g. you could make a sword's damage depend on dexterity or intelligence more than on strength, or conversely upgrade a bomb spell so that more strength lets you throw bigger bombs! That would make everything more personal, and giving a crafted item away would not necessarily make it as good a bargain for the recipient, unless they had similar stats.

There may be a danger that it would no longer matter what you buy or find, if you can change everything about it by crafting. Mageworld takes that to its logical conclusion by letting you make everything from raw materials, but that spoils the fun by making you spend all your time foraging. I think DS needs to keep some focus on quest rewards and drops, so you don't just play the side-game of crafting. However in MP, playing the craftsman in the party rather than a combatant might make for an interesting variation.

On progressive items:
The biggest issue I have was in the inventory management needed for a party of 6-8... The way DS1 loot worked, I found myself stocking up on low level items with magical bonuses, even if they couldn't be equipped by most of my party yet. The idea was to have stuff available for when characters gained high enough stats to equip something better. I always made sure I had enough 0 requirement enchanted spell books before leaving the first town (the higher requirements for books bought later, with the same bonuses, never made sense to me...). My mages NEVER wore robes... ever. There was always better armor available. I didn't like the idea of making a pretty party vs. an effective one... and why should I have to choose?

If equipment could have a bonus when equipped, based on a character's crafting / equipment skill (or overall level), with some customizability (like choosing to add an attribute bonus, or elemental damage, or resistances... also scaled) then there would be a freedom not afforded by a rigid loot / equipment system.

Cheat prevention: hard-cap the possibilities (according to character levels), and link items to the character that crafted them (a taylored piece of armor would need to be retaylored for someone else...). This second idea would kill the possibility of a specialist party member though.

To make new loot worth something, introduce new base enchantments (ones not available for crafting enhancement) as you progress in the game, and don't recycle the same object models but introduce new ones as your journey moves forward... Also, make later items better to start with, in case some players don't want to do any crafting (but if crafted they'd have to be comparable to older items that have been manually upgraded).

An idea on how crafting could work considering the DS levelling system / engine: divide the potential crafting benefits by stats. Strength influences base weapon damage, armor thickness... Dexterity influences weapon speed, armor encumbrance (eg. give heavy armor an attack speed penalty, and dexterity crafting could reduce the penalty)... Intelligence influences the type of magical enhancements possible... Each item could be crafted by each of the three disciplines, encouraging a well rounded character. Have loot dropped "pre-crafted" in 1-2 of the disciplines, so specialists wouldn't be completely crippled by the system...

/rambling

I'd agree with you about the robes. One problem with the randomness of pcontent was that you'd get the same benefits on almost any kind of gear, so wearing something with low defense never made any sense. There were minimum requirements to wear things, which would stop the mages wearing heavy plate etc., but they'd still want the thin chain, light plate rather than the robe.

In DS2 and BW, they maybe went too far restricting equipment to one class, but I suppose you get better matching outfits that way. A suit of light plate with a pointed warlock hat always looked silly in DS1, but sometimes it was the best combo available!

I haven't checked to see if the pcontent system can be biased to provide "matching" enhancements, i.e. fighter-useful ones on a fighter item etc., or if it's always going to give you +melee on a flimsy bonnet and the like.

It's nice to get the big boosts on rings and amulets, instead of armor, so you can look good and still be effective, whatever outfit you choose.

I agree with you about the robes as well, which is why I've advocated the use of the concept of illusion so as to equalize things. After all, the chainmail bikini wouldn't be very desirable if it were made useless by the assumption that it could only offer as much defense as such a garment would offer in real life (even with a few magical modifiers).

~~~
Giovanna

Lighter equipment = faster dodge or attack, heavier = slower. Therefore a Chainmail Bikini is (almost) as good as it gets - for speed.