New Areas Wishlist

Caelya

This is similar to the New Artifacts Wishlist thread, except that in this one you'll be submitting vague ideas of areas that you'd like to see in the game. I probably wouldn't get super detailed with any of them so that Jeremy and friends have plenty of room to do what they want with it if they like it at all.

I'd like to see some sort of battle pit area (or coliseum), where you fight several waves and types of enemies in an effort to secure the title of champion of the pit, or something.

Enryk

A strictly anti-magick community refusing to abandon their traditional faith in the gods, who have built their dwellings upon beautifully engineered bridges, platforms and glass-bottomed basements above and extending down into a lake. A virulent disease carried by swarms of waterbourne mosquitoes plagues the youngest children of the group, but their best prayers and medicines have sadly been ineffective at preventing a heavy death toll. Choose to help the villagers by killing aquatic animals to obtain palliative drugs to ease the pain of the children's passing, or speak with a cadre of hated magickers (or demonologists) who seek ways that they might administer their forbidden spellcraft to the children to save their lives.

A series of floating biomes that drift upon clouds of magick high above the ground, which consist of wildly overgrown tropical jungles and rainforests that have subsumed what once were pristine research laboratories encased in tiered crystalline spheres. The scientists and their families have acclimated to their magickal environment over generations to such an extent that they cannot actually return to the ground, and require adventurers to assist them with necessary resupply and trade needs, and to contribute to culling the foul creatures that skitter across the glittering surface of the spheres, building webs and disgusting nests that would block out the sunlight. Concealed in one of the abandoned spheres sealed off from the others is a group of demon-callers who are responsible for the infestation on the crystals' surfaces, seeking help with their efforts to destroy the magickal rainforest lest it be accidentally loosed upon Aetherius, consuming cities and civilizations under its rampantly enhanced growth. Only the with the aid of their demon allies can they remain hidden onboard and counter the magickal defences of the biomes.

Edit: A cabal of demonic adepts who have shaped an incredibly beautiful and unusual city in caverns deep below a wilderness, using their powers to create huge multi-level stalactites that spear downwards above a dark expanse into the earth. There these adepts commune with local demons of the earth and draw life energy through the decaying root system of trees in order to power their subterranean city and prevent any one species from becoming dangerously overpopulated. Adventurers can choose to assist with various tasks that keep the city at a high standard of living (and by-the-by prevent an even worse horror from emerging from the pitch-black depths beneath the stalactites) or alternatively work with an order of anti-magick monks who want to eradicate the taint of demonic influence from the 'haunted' land that surrounds their newly erected mission.

Svorai

That is actually how I'm sort of reworking the Warrior League in DeHayden. (Which is taking me longer than I had hoped). As a preview: before it was you'd fight a dude or beast, and if you won you moved onto the next tier. I was thinking more of you start of with a small wave and it gets bigger/harder/etc. Still working out details. But hopefully I can have this done soon and you guys can test it out!

Enryk

Sorry, another one: An enchanted wood populated by powerful magickal fey creatures, who protect their idyllic sanctuary with mind-altering sorcery. Players can only resist the deadly enchantments themselves either by having very high magickal affinity or by assisting a hideous young wytch living outside the hedged borders of the land to formulate a protective potion/device/whatever. Tricked into bargaining away his beauty and charisma by the callous fey, the wytch will leap at any offers of help to strike back at the hated, vicious things who ruined his career and stole his lover. Within the enchanted wood, the fey magick has ensorcelled all intruders into believing that they are in fact living out wondrously happy, heavenly lives with their loved ones far away from magick's touch - when in reality they are surrounded and effectively imprisoned by their most hated evil. If you can survive the magickal hedgemaze and deadly protective enchantments yourself, choose to either rescue the anti-magick prisoners from their stupor so they can return to their families, or assist the fey to maintain the integrity of their realm and entrap others who would attempt to steal power and wonderment at the fey's cost.

Enryk

Another couple: A nomadic and strongly anti-magick tribe living on the edge of a vast northern glacier, building their beautifully crafted wooden homes on cleverly engineered sleds pulled across the ice by giant shaggy centipedes. The ancient traditions of the people, not to mention their food supply of polar bears and seals, has come under deadly threat from a commune of magickal witches at the foot of the glacier who are using their foreign spellcraft in an attempt to awaken the lush tropical environment that was crushed aeons ago under the ice (the exact reason for this - natural or unnatural, is disputed by both sides). The ancient magickal creatures that are woken by the witches' spells are seeking bloody vengeance against the innocent tribespeople, who view the return of the jungles as unnatural, and representing a fatal end to their rich culture and way of life. Choose to help the commune undo thousands of years of accumulated icy desolation, or protect the tribespeople from these foreign invaders.

A sprawling demonic "medical" facility comprised of chaotically warped towers that arc sideways and downwards as much as vertically, housing a thriving trade in cutting-edge life extension products. The staff and their families who operate the facility serve two kinds of exclusive clientele with equal dedication and professionalism. Unfortunate souls who are down on their luck can negotiate infernal (limited-time) contracts to obtain wealth, success or power for a few months, in exchange for becoming the source of body parts and demonic rituals at the end of their brief taste of glory. These willing sacrifices are then used to offer the other, well-funded clients a variety of miracle cures and death-defying treatments, such as organ replacement, youthful skin transplants and rejuvenating undeath injections. Despite having the consent and appreciation of all involved in the facility's work, a terrorist cell of defiant anti-magick soldiers has besieged the facility for years. These self-sacrificing heroes struggle against the often overpowering demonic defenses of the citadel to liberate it from demonic corruption and end the foul and unnatural experiments for good. Technologically sophisticated, the cell can be aided in sneaking their devastating explosives and mass-destruction devices into the critical areas of the facility where they can do the most harm, or alternatively you can help defend the staff and patients from these deadly acts of terror and perhaps win yourself enough credit for your own free treatment.

Edit: I know none of these are probably good enough on their own, but the goal I'm aiming for is to have areas that represent clashes of fundamental values and sample ideology. Neither side is "good" or "evil", these just bring into focus the differences in philosophy between the various circles, and hopefully provide a compelling narrative and justification from both perspectives.

Khizan

You know what I want?

I want the old Demon's Pass back. 

I don't want this crap with waves of enemies, so that I can come to an area and find it's literally on cooldown. I don't want this crap with bosses dropping group-mandatory concent into my bashing areas. I don't want this fancy 'enhanced' bashing, because it's not more interesting. It's just more tedious. 

Just give me an area with a ton of dudes in it and let me murder them all while I chat on clans and talk with people.

That's all I want out of bashing. 

Zarim

Pretty sure that's what the waves did, Khizan. I can spend all day in bashing non-stop in just two or three areas now.

Lionas

Zarim said:

Pretty sure that's what the waves did, Khizan. I can spend all day in bashing non-stop in just two or three areas now.

But not one room that demons spawn and patrol into as you kill them.

Enryk said:

A sprawling demonic "medical" facility comprised of chaotically warped towers that arc sideways and downwards as much as vertically, housing a thriving trade in cutting-edge life extension products. The staff and their families who operate the facility serve two kinds of exclusive clientele with equal dedication and professionalism. Unfortunate souls who are down on their luck can negotiate infernal (limited-time) contracts to obtain wealth, success or power for a few months, in exchange for becoming the source of body parts and demonic rituals at the end of their brief taste of glory.

Paging Dr Faust

Enryk

Lionas said:

Paging Dr Faust

If you're saying that the suggestion is unoriginal, it wasn't intended to be. I was going for the vibe of what a demonic health spa would be like, and deals with devils seems to be as much a classic motif as fire projectiles (ugh - fireballs) are with mages. I'm not much of a student of literature, so that is probably showing.

Oh well, I'm sure there are probably better ideas out there, and I'm looking forward to seeing what other area suggestions are made.

Gurn

Khizan said:

You know what I want?

I want the old Demon's Pass back. 

I don't want this crap with waves of enemies, so that I can come to an area and find it's literally on cooldown. I don't want this crap with bosses dropping group-mandatory concent into my bashing areas. I don't want this fancy 'enhanced' bashing, because it's not more interesting. It's just more tedious. 

Just give me an area with a ton of dudes in it and let me murder them all while I chat on clans and talk with people.

That's all I want out of bashing. 

So you want to be able to autobash without paying much attention back. :P

Lionas

I wasn't downvoting the idea, just making a joke.

Bathan

Gurn said:

Khizan said:

You know what I want?

I want the old Demon's Pass back. 

I don't want this crap with waves of enemies, so that I can come to an area and find it's literally on cooldown. I don't want this crap with bosses dropping group-mandatory concent into my bashing areas. I don't want this fancy 'enhanced' bashing, because it's not more interesting. It's just more tedious. 

Just give me an area with a ton of dudes in it and let me murder them all while I chat on clans and talk with people.

That's all I want out of bashing. 

So you want to be able to autobash without paying much attention back. :P

It's bashing, not roleplay. It's not scintillating or fun.

Ideally, there should be zones where players can just mindlessly grind (while at their computers) and make a bit of gold. If they want to make far larger amounts, force them to go these group centric zones that require being attentive and some cooperation with other players. Sometimes I just want to grind out gold while watching Last Samurai for the 45th time. Give me that option.

Gurn

That's true. But the idea, I think, is that gold/experience should relate to effort put into playing the game, otherwise we could make a system that lets you generate gold and experience so long as you stand there and do nothing else, which, was pretty much old demon's pass. As much as I bashed it and liked being able to spam F1 without doing anything else, it makes gold/experience generation too easy for triggerbots.

The change to demon's pass was a good one, as it took away one of the significant methods of automated gold generation. There's differing opinions as to what bashing should be, but my opinion is that gold and experience should be generated through the effort in actually playing and paying attention rather than leaving triggers running for 10 hours.


What do they call that in other MMOs? Gold farming and botting, which is banned. We have it good enough here that we're allowed triggers to work the majority of attack/shield for us so long as we pay attention.


I'd support a mindless grind area if it grinded out 1k per hour or something really slow like that, but otherwise...

Bathan

I'm inclined to disagree as someone who considers himself an expert on the MMO market. The successful MMOs reward you with a solid amount of gold for engaging in incredibly simple activities for say five, ten minutes? If you do endure long grinds or suffer through stuff like LFR (Imperian's equivalent would be group oriented, wave based PvE zones) you are rewarded with considerably rarer loot.

Until Imperian starts dropping mini-pets, exclusive mounts, storyline progression or other desirable vanity items, your time in a PvE area past Aspect is measured in gold earned. The old Demon's Pass had some issues with numbers in terms of just how much gold was dropped, but that was fine for a couple of reasons:

The 2.0 DP was hard as balls, and you had to be fairly heavily artifacted to survive with just triggers and AFKing. I tried it. Bathan had like 600 HP, surcoat, really most of the defensive artifact suite. I could not actually leave my computer or else, even with redemption, I was going to be dead because some shadowy demons walked in. That said, because of constant spawns and the RNG factor, it was still possible to do it by yourself with the right amount of investment while say, watching a movie or something, or being on the phone.

And that brings me back to the current argument. I want an option as someone who believes that a game I play should be fun where in I say, okay, I'm not going to not pay much attention because I'm writing, prepping some RP stuff for later, talking on clans, whatever. I still want to bash some corpses for cults/sects or make some gold. I accept that I'll make a good deal less than people who are out there being Korean MMO champions, working with others, et cetera. I just want the option.

If that's something A LOT of people want, then yes, it should be considered. It's about appealing to the various mentalities existing in the community.

Zarim

I tend to disagree with both of you. Outside of a very few situations, like fighting crawlers, all the bashing is more or less mindless. I do it almost entirely manually and I'm not overly distracted from watching movies while doing my old Erorag->Kenuba->Skegdald->Gongen->Necropolis->Creepers->Magglix->Treslein->Ik'taru run. 

And the crawlers would be just as easy if I had triggers to deal with the constant tossing.

Khizan

Bashing is nothing but mindless grinding. It never will be. There's absolutely nothing to it other than "spam your best DPS attack."

There's no burning cooldowns and self-heals against DPS to solo big rare elites or bosses. There's no pulling half the area in your tank gear, there's no kiting.

There is ABSOLUTELY NOTHING that will make bashing interesting, because they want us to bash SO FREAKING MUCH FOR ABSOLUTELY EVERYTHING. 

Tadhg

Khizan said:

Bashing is nothing but mindless grinding. It never will be. There's absolutely nothing to it other than "spam your best DPS attack."

There's no burning cooldowns and self-heals against DPS to solo big rare elites or bosses. There's no pulling half the area in your tank gear, there's no kiting.

There is ABSOLUTELY NOTHING that will make bashing interesting, because they want us to bash SO FREAKING MUCH FOR ABSOLUTELY EVERYTHING. 

And this is why my Character is 305 and only Level 77. 

Zarim

You know, I wonder how viable a threat system would be in text gaming. Specializing in tanking, dps, etc really can be pretty fun.

Sarrius

Zarim said:

You know, I wonder how viable a threat system would be in text gaming. Specializing in tanking, dps, etc really can be pretty fun.

It is likely possible - from a strict design basis, you attach threat to every possible bashing attack, make some new ones that decrease or increase threat, defenses that tweak threat production, and then make threat tracked on a table per mob. You would likely need to consider healing a possible threat generator as well, likely by making mobs check assists ('Did you heal somebody I have threat against? OK, I have threat against you too now'), etc.

Is it worth the time? Probably not.

EDIT: And then how do you address what each class can do, role-wise? And then, this gives people more crap to waste classlead cycle time on. Nah, no thanks.
EDIT2: I can see it now: 'My class can't be a tank, but I really want to be a tank. Give me some tank skills!' - sudden PvP ramifications galore.

Ahkan

It wouldn't change much. Oddly enough, some of your highest dps classes are also your tankiest classes. 

The only real impact you'd see is "The wall of artifact knight whoever taunts an npc" which we already do with defend. I guess it means we could tank for more than one person at a time? I dunno if this is a good idea. If you wanted any sort of tank idea, I imagine it'd have to be coded in specifically for an encounter with its own unique action and verb.

Fred the Demonic Chicken is about to eat Lionas! (You should cluck at Fred to make him stop!)

/crickets.
Fred the Demonic Chicken has eaten Lionas!
Lionas has been slain by Fred the Demonic Chicken

Fred the Demonic Chicken is about to eat Kanthari! (You should cluck at Fred to make him stop!)

/cluck fred
Kanthari is spared the fate of being pecked to death by a chicken!

Bathan

They actually have taunt in Midkemia and it works (or at least worked back when I played it) well. They also don't have potions, so your health pool is what it is until you can bandage after a fight. Soldiers had to protect Mages and Rogues.

Devim

Zombies, Skeletons, and Small decaying children oh my....

Im sick of the only places with waves being undead... give me more flavour I would love to spend an hour fighting ever increasing annoyances of zealots yelling at my lightning bolts as they fry. Is that to much to ask? (Don't have to be zealots I would be happy rofl stomping on horde, creatures, bandits, or what ever type you can think of other than undead)

Svorai

Devim said:

Zombies, Skeletons, and Small decaying children oh my....

Im sick of the only places with waves being undead... give me more flavour I would love to spend an hour fighting ever increasing annoyances of zealots yelling at my lightning bolts as they fry. Is that to much to ask? (Don't have to be zealots I would be happy rofl stomping on horde, creatures, bandits, or what ever type you can think of other than undead)

We are redoing a lot of areas, and we will be introducing more waves as we go through them. I know you guys are probably biting at the bit for new content and to see things implemented. Just know we are working hard to try and get things for you guys quickly! We are trying!

Devim

Nah I'm not super worried about the areas just getting bored of undead... now if you could kick the code monkeys on mage/summoner revamp I would worship you for at least a couple days.

Selthis

Devim said:

Nah I'm not super worried about the areas just getting bored of undead... now if you could kick the code monkeys on mage/summoner revamp I would worship you for at least a couple days.

I'd rather have a well coded/complete class revamp than a rushed class revamp. This isn't Lusternia.

Svorai

Devim said:

Nah I'm not super worried about the areas just getting bored of undead... now if you could kick the code monkeys on mage/summoner revamp I would worship you for at least a couple days.

Garryn is working very hard on this. But like Selthis said, it is not something that should be rushed. Garryn is great at what he does.

Bathan

Having tried out the new DP, I'd like to say that I'm actually big fan of what it is, that being the Public Quest system from WAR Online. Neat!

Devim

I'm not saying it should be rushed I'm just getting impatient after how ever many irl months I have been waiting to play with my toys (hopefully not christmas toys)

Sarrius

Devim said:

I'm not saying it should be rushed I'm just getting impatient after how ever many irl months I have been waiting to play with my toys (hopefully not christmas toys)

This release seems to follow almost the same time line as last year's three class remake. I think we aren't too far off from beta, but @Garryn could prove me wrong.

Ahkan

Sounds like a weather report.

Sarrius

Ahkan said:

Sounds like a weather report.

I am making only a slightly less educated guess than the average weather report.