Questing and Bashing Updates
So we are working on updates for questing and bashing in an effort to make it more interesting.
Here is a list of some of the things we are working on.
Spawn Waves: We recently added these into Demons Pass and the Necropolis and will be transitioning more and more areas this way. For those of you that are unaware these areas spawn progressively different and/or harder mobs. For example, kill 100 zombies, then you kill 80 ghosts, the another type of mob, etc. Once you kill all the mobs, the area will reset after a set amount of time. We will be adding several bosses at the end of the waves in those areas, but they will be transitioned in properly with RP and events.
Bosses: Semi addressed above. We feel as though people have enjoyed some of the mobs we have introduced in past events. These mobs require special techniques, coordinating with other players, and perhaps completing other quests, in order to finish them off. They will always come with special items drops and/or special honors for those who can finish them off. In our upcoming RP events we are adding 15 new permanent bosses to the game.
Quests: We are working on making all of the quests in the game follow a set standard in terms of learning about them. We are also working on adding tons of new quests with a focus of advancing the storyline and RP. This does not mean that they will be easier to do, especially for high end quests, but we are working on making the process easier to follow (for the most part). If you have run through any of the newbie areas recently, you will know what I mean. Keep in mind, that the newbie areas are really over the top with their directions. In an above mentioned RP event we are adding over 25 new permanent quests ranging in difficulty from pretty easy, to extremely hard.
Storyline: Outside of making those aspects of the game more entertaining, a main focus is adding storyline and RP to the game via these quests, mobs, and boss mobs.
My question is, which of these things are you more interested in. Which of them do you not really care about? Do you have any ideas that can also make bashing/questing more interesting.
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Comments
To use Crevonix's tower as an example, you battle on each level of the tower as one 'wave' - and then perform some kind of quest in a limited time to either reduce the difficult of or tweak the details of the wave on the next floor. Or perhaps you have to perform a quest to move on to the next level (and thus the next wave). The point is that the master of the tower is progressively sending more awesome minions at you to take you out.
I could also see waves being augmented by an outside force to keep things from getting too comfortable (and also making each attempt at the same wave different somehow) - "A streak of lightning crashes down from an upper level of the tower, energizing XYZ mob.", Crevonix chucking fireballs at you, etc.
Plus...gotta get them cheevos.
Is it also possible to introduce a not-horde, not-undead antagonist? There's always been a mentality of "horde is bad." Paired with the Magick + AM will always hate Demonic, Stavenn (Khandava now) was always in a position to the enemy of my enemy is my friend it to just tread water. Then it became a game of who is going to betray who first. Thanks Caderyn, you dong. This isn't really going to change unless Samaos drop kicks Kinsarmar and Celidon into ball-having. The game could use an antagonist that has reasons to hate/dislike everyone and could actually role around and kick the shit out of one, two or all of the circles...at the same time. Personally, I'd like to have to compete with this (or pre-existing entities) for shards, just to throw a wrench in the whole system. Hey, I have 18 people, gonna get some shards...oh my god, 60 orcs and Spawn of Onkassus. FFFFFFffffff.
Ways you could make it interesting and force people to use tactics:
As as far as bosses go, I can see them being fun once or twice, but as I said before bashing is mainly for generating gold and belief when you're an aspect and being in a group greatly reduces the amount you earn.
As far as quests go, it'd be nice to have something that generates more quest xp than caravans or shard turnins.
Maybe occasional Horde raids or bashing areas could even be empowered in some ways if they've been particularly successful in harvesting shards lately.
Questing...
I hate questing in this game. It's so... primitive, I suppose. How do you find the quests? Walk around spamming greets and hoping you guess the right keyword. How do you complete the quests? Well, it's probably "fetch me a counterpane". If it's not, it's probably "Kill X boars." Sometimes, though, there's extra steps like "comb over the entire area looking for a specific item while you wonder if somebody did it and it hasn't reset yet."
And then you do it again. And again. Welcome to questing. Yawn.
Here's an example I came across recently. There's a rune or a stone or something in a room, and you've got to use it to open a door. Time to play the goddamned keyword lottery to interact with it. Touch it. Nope. Push it? Pull it? Press it? Poke it? Haha nope. Got to caress it. This kind of thing is why I don't bother with questing.
What I'd like to see with questing?
"On the battlefield I am a god. I love war. The steel, the smell, the corpses. I wish there were more. On the first day I drove the Northmen back alone at the ford. Alone! On the second I carried the bridge! Me! Yesterday I climbed the Heroes! I love war! I… I wish it wasn’t over."
Two topics, two posts.
As far as bashing goes, the problem with making bashing more involved/interesting is that I have to do SO GODDAMNED MUCH OF IT. It wasn't enough having to bash to aspect to get to real PvP health levels! Now we've got a sect system that required me to bash up 100% belief, throw it all in the goddamned toilet, and start over again. 20% per sect ritual group! 25% per temple room! Roughly 5% to learn another ritual! It's like you decided you needed something to keep players involved more at the endgame and couldn't think of anything other than bashing objectives in a fancy dress.
The one saving grace bashing had is that it was mindless enough so that I could bash and chat, or watch a movie, or do something other than pay close attention to the 342,463rd 'ATTACK DEMON' of the day. Leveling in WoW in BC and onwards wasn't a chore for me because the areas changed, the quests changed. I always had different objectives and different scenery and I had various ways to level. Run quests! Grind! Do dungeons! I could even level up via BGs!.
Here, there's only one real way to level: Grind, grind, grind. Grind some more. There is absolutely no way in hell to keep bashing interesting over the length of time you seem to want us to bash. What's fun once is "meh' on the fifth time, tedious on the 50th time, and soulcrushing the 5000th time.
And, of course, god help you if Aulani and Gurn are about, because one Aspect can dominate an entire area to the point where nobody else can bash there. Three aspect level bashing areas? That'll cover... three aspects. Of course, the only real way to get gold or sect belief is to bash, so you've got people who are level 110+ grinding out these areas, making it frustrating for the people in the 90's who would like to be on their way to aspect but didn't log on in time to monopolize DP themselves. The wave style things make this even worse, in a way, since now it's not just sporadic resets, but it's "Haha, this area is literally on a timer now."
Suggestions for leveling/bashing:
"On the battlefield I am a god. I love war. The steel, the smell, the corpses. I wish there were more. On the first day I drove the Northmen back alone at the ford. Alone! On the second I carried the bridge! Me! Yesterday I climbed the Heroes! I love war! I… I wish it wasn’t over."
First, on wave areas. @Jeremy I know you asked for feedback about Khous a while ago, but I never got around to sending it your way. The gist of how I felt about Khous, and how I feel about Necropolis and Dpass now:
You have a leasing system to enforce the instanced area style of bashing. One possible idea on how it works. Dicene is the one that paid to use the arena area(or maybe have some sort of quest to lease out the area, or make it free, up to you). This means that only people ringed(or implement a system to allow others to bash in your area, using ring means one less thing to code) with Dicene can harm the mobs in that section of the overall area. This prevents any mob-stealing, griefing, boss-jacking. Since the lock only restricts bashing in the area, but doesn't prevent other players from moving within it while its in use, Azefel can come and gank Dicene for his champion if he so desires. The area is still leased to Dicene though, so he can come back and continue bashing when he's back from Dis. You're no more safe there than you are in any other bashing area. This lease lasts for something like 45 minutes and is followed by a down time of maybe 15 minutes, during which the area repopulates(a million ways to describe it, RP-wise). The lease will also expire a number of seconds after the boss mob is killed. When the lease expires, the area can either eject everyone inside and physically lock for the cooldown period, or all the mobs can disappear(or become unbashable) and the area can remain open in case unfinished PVP was going on. Each player can only lease a section of this area every 1.5 hours so it isn't infinitely farmable by itself. You'd have to come up with a way to limit a group of people from just leasing a room under each different player in a ring and moving from one to another, but there are probably several relatively easy ways to accomplish that.
Almost everything about that setup could be customized to fit a particular idea of how an area should work. Maybe have an area that is very large with a longer lease time and higher reward for clearing, but a much longer cooldown. Maybe even have some once-a-day areas. You can also give that style of area a considerable amount of RP. Instead of an arena with leased sections, maybe a series of tombs in an area thematically similar to Necropolis. Instead of paying a price to get into the area, you'd have to do a quest and collect a necklace or get some sort of blessing that allows you(and your party) to damage the mobs in a specific tomb until the necklace/blessing wears off. Or a more arcane or demonic area with rifts/portals leading to instanced areas(thinking Arcane Sanctuary in Diablo II, theme-wise). How about an area with instanced wave rooms. You loan a single room and monsters are dumped in on you in waves. That would prevent someone from running in just to kill the boss of the area, and would prevent a lowbie from cheesing a much harder area than he should be in.
Waves rooms are a nice break from identical bashing areas and I think instanced areas would be another great addition to the list of bashing areas once a few more wave areas have been fleshed out. There are a lot of problems you'd have to tackle to get them working in a way that would fit Imperian, but I think they would be very doable if you're willing to think outside of the box. Don't worry about making them identical to WOW instances, because WOW is infinitely different from Imperian. It also doesn't have to work in a way that would allow a hundred different instances of each area going at the same time, you just have to have enough instances to accommodate the handful of people that are bashing that level-range of area at once. 3 instances could work for areas that are once a day. 5-10 for most should be sufficient for just about everything else. If you're willing to have some players waiting on instances to come open, then you need even fewer. Just some thoughts that have occurred to me over time.
I just ran through most of the minor quests I could think of, and of a couple dozen only one gave experience.
It's pretty much and endless waves of increasingly difficult npcs. Last man standing (Whoever kills the most) wins.
It would pretty much be like:
Pretty much, imagine blowing one horn. Fight till that is over. Blow 2 horns. Fight till that is over.
And a better event...2/3/4 man NPC Rumble.
(I didn't know where to put this)