Hi. I played the campaigns of version 0.3+34 Bronken Stuart and enjoyed it very much. It's the potato and meat thing you mentionend I think.
I also try to discuss the "overarching"-story thing (and others) a little bit.
I play roleplaying video games since 1989 on the Amiga 500 and on PC, NDS, XBox 360, PS4 later and so on ...
Very outstanding games I played in that genre were Bard's Tale II, Dungeon Master, Might and Magic 3 (& 6 later), Pool of Radiance, Wizardry 6 - Bane of the cosmic forge, Eye of the Beholder, ...
And nowadays Diablo 2, Gothic 2, Fable 2, Mass Effect 2, Legend of Grimrock 2, Guild Wars 2, Skyrim ... did anybody notice the 2s? ;)
So of course its a IMHO and I made the list to show into what genre I see Wyldermyth in and also what I would call "real" roleplaying video games. The list is not complete in any ways of course ...
Perhaps it's interesting to think about what Wyldermyth does compared to the games I listed. What does it different and what does it not because it wants to be different ...
Should it be completely scripted or procedurally/generic or how much of both?
Think about Gothic 2 for instance. All was scripted but you had to choose one of three factions and as a consequence could play only that part of the game (simplyfied a little bit).
Fable 2 also was completely scripted. By choosing good or evil playstyle different things were playable in the game. I think the point is clear.
But there were other games like Stalker - Clear sky that did more of a simulation or tried to I think. Perhaps it worked really with the follow up (the 2 again). Ok this is the "the world does its thing and you can be part of events or not" approach. A good game I think.
Then the Mass Effect trilogy had one big vulnerable point: Did your choices change anything? And here comes part 2 into play: they did! This was the game I played through the most times of all games.
So your beloved party members were killed when you did the wrong choices and I had to play it through several times to have them all on board again ...
Dungeon Master because I never played it through. I also failed many many times. And it was completely static.
I first would say that I would go more into the direction that the game is played one or two times at most (one whole campaign for instance). Nowadays there are many many other games that all want to be played ;)
Another thing is that in my opinion you don't get replayability by using different possible events. Perhaps you get the right one for the player? what he likes? Good or evil for instance or a little bit more fine grained?
I think failing gives the most replayability. Fail hard and early perhaps. Or two times with most hardness the latter.
Yes. I have the same feeling. There are many nice things in the game. But all are not epic and outstanding. In my opinion the reason for that is that it is procedurally and generic. It feels like it. I think it is not even good to pronounce this for the game. But I have the feeling that this could be used to model real consequences in the game and real choices. This is the strongest thing in the game I think that a character can die because of a decision for instance. But then the character has to be less generic before to really let the player feel the pain about it if the character dies. This all works with the concept of creating a fixed party in the beginning and loving it. Then I would do much to keep them alive. Perhaps these first characters can have a special meaning to the game. The attributes of the chosen characters could drive the game into a certain direction?
I often read the game attribute epic on steam. But what does it mean? A meaningful story that gets more dense and dense? A finale? I think so.
As I read villain I thought about opponent instantly. The big opponent. Okay this is always the same problem. In the real world there is no opponent. And this is what wyldermyth tries to imitate? My feeling says that epic always means big opponent (and has nothing to do with the real world. it is fantastic). Perhaps I am a bit narrow minded but all epic games have this big opponent ... So if there is a something that gives the story to do something with then there is a why and this why comes from something. And I think this something should be concrete and imaginable.
The funny thing is that having different big opponents would make different games.
Perhaps this is the problem of the "game" right now? It is more of a game generator with much good existing content of course and you don't want to fixate one real good set of weights that make an epic game? Let's train a KI to get the best weights out of it ;) - joking. sorry.
You could make both the game generator and an epic game?
Perhaps some Riddles ...
Ugh. It got much text. Wrote it outside in the editor. Hopefully It is understandable and helps something ...