2. Don't be constrained by what has gone before. Sometimes decisions are made in games to do things a certain way because there are substantial engine limitations. Don't think that because heroes had to destroy lairs by hitting them repeatedly till they were destroyed means that it always has to work like that. One idea is to have heroes actually enter lairs, and kill the monsters/burn them down from the inside. (Incidentally, remember the awesome loading screens in Maj1 where heroes were doing just that?) You might consider enabling building interiors full stop.
I would luuurrve to see that happen. (I'm generally leery of the notion of anything short of siege weapons destroying most buildings in the first place.)
What might be an idea, rather than creating specific models for lairs, is to model them as an aspect of terrain, and generate them semi-randomly- a little like what you'd see way back in Diablo II. That way, you don't need a separate pathfinding system for indoor environments.
I actually put a little
research into doing this for peasant cottages way back when. I don't think it would work easily for every structure/lair, but it could certainly add some character and individuality to specific building types- individual citizens' homes, for example.
...They're not really heroes if you have 20 of them mobbing a target.
Well, depending on the
target... but yeah, by and large that sort of thing should be rare. I read an interesting
article on 'boss fights' in 4E D&D, some of it might be applicable here.
I'm pretty well in total agreement with most or all of your other points, but I'll see if I can come back to those later on and elaborate on them further.
I'm not entirely convinced of this. One can understand(Though not like) why they went for quantity, because quality is binary in the face of Rogues/Wizards/Dwarves-you're either immune to Stun/Freeze, and thus highly dangerous because you can't be interrupted or stopped, or you're not and die horribly to chain stunnings.
The solution to this is to make stunning resistable, based on some attribute of the victim- strength or vitality, perhaps. (Though I'm not sure if those even exist in Maj2...)
I'd have to agree that it's not neccesarily fewer/tougher monsters that improve the experience- if anything, Maj1 had weaker monsters attacking in larger waves- but the key difference is that in Maj2,
the monsters never stop. Ever. There's just this constant irritating trickle of insensible cannon-fodder that reminds me of nothing so much as DotA or a Tower Defence game.
A sim-style game
needs to have interludes of peace so that heroes can do things other than fighting without looking like either (A) cretins and/or (B) psychopaths. (e.g, shopping for potions while their home is burning down and their comrades-in-arms are being mauled by trolls.)
