Konae's Investigations

In the past two weeks or so, I've been playing me some Arbiters From Another World (To check up on a bug report) and Matsumori Days (To reconfirm the approximate game time for the RMW game-thread). There was quite a bit grinding for levels involved with these playthroughs. I sorta designed these games this way on purpose, though. Particularly in the case of Arbiters, where getting into and out of a dungeon was merely a matter of proper Beacon placement. However, to be perfectly honest, making grinding for levels more convenient didn't actually make playing these games more fun.

So, I want fighting in this game not to be relied on as much as the other entries of the series. Or, as it could be argued, the games I make in a general sense. Which means that I will want players to have a different means to achieve levels, as that's still something I want players to do in a typical playthrough. The idea I'm having in this game is to present players with stories for Konae and Nanami to chase that are not related to the main plot. In other words, optional tasks.

This isn't a new idea, as it traces back to when this was called Konae's Detective Agency. The basic idea being that optional tasks would be assessed via the bus/train station, and take the player to whatever map that the task calls for. They would also be limited to Chapter 2 and 3, and only have four maps devoted to them. No other specifics were given toward the idea, though.

Though, there is, more recently, the thought of taking a page from Wing Commander - Privateer, and setting up some kind of "random story generator" that would handle what stories would show up, how difficult they are, and what reward is obtained upon successful completion. I may also want to see how this kind of thing could be implemented into the encyclopedia script. Allowing players to refer to the Case Notes for something like this seems like an appropriate move. Though, I imagine that I must limit the number of optional tasks that players could take on at a time. Also, if I want to retain my original idea of taking the bus/train to a different map (Which I may want to do anyway), then I would either have to make a decent number of maps (This is my preference, to be honest.), or obtain a random dungeon generator script (Possibly the same one as Carolyne?).

Saying that, I'm not quite sure what Konae and Nanami are going to be asked to do. Will it involve activating game-switches? If so, would I be able to re-use the switches that I use for the lock-picking mini game, or would I have to use a different set, as there may be lock-picking involved in said task? How feasible would it be to come across background information regarding the game-world that is on a "nice-to-know" basis (as opposed as a "need-to-know" basis)?