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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

  • I'm personally pretty excited about -15- new bosses, not to mention all of those quests. I love events, especially those that introduce new content in a reasonable way. I'm really looking forward to the continuation of the whole undead army becoming relevant and comparable to the Horde, and I'm also looking forward to the Horde making a return and making people regret certain decisions in past events. 

    The only other thing I have to remark, is that while I sort of dig the wave areas, I've only ever been able to do the current ones with at least one other person. I realize the waves are currently in previously high-level areas so that's to be expected, and that it's also meant to encourage cooperation, but I'm hoping that these waves will be applicable to lower-end areas for people who like to solo bash but aren't endlessly tanky/full of crits.

    Otherwise, I love what you guys are doing, keep it up!

  • I'd love it if there were some way to find out where all the bosses were. With it only being word of mouth right now, it makes it difficult for everyone to experience boss fights, which is something I think everyone needs to go through because they're awesome.

    Honestly, a "questfinder" mob would be pretty cool. It'd point you to an area where there's a quest around your level you can do. Can only be used once every so often, but I think that'd go a long way to having quests and exploration be more prevalent. 
  • Word of mouth is one aspect of 'roleplay' that I think adds real depth to the game, like letting people figure out where quests and how they work mostly by themselves.
  • @caelya Yeah. We are getting new waves in for the high end areas, and we will work downward. We are also working on bringing back a meaner, darker horde. We will try to get some more mid level wave areas in soon. I would have loved them as a player.

    @gurn That will be in the new questing stuff we are overhauling. If it is not clear enough, that is a good idea though. I will think about it. We are actually working on quests that point to other quests. We have them in the newbie areas, and we will work them all the way up. It is just a ton of work.

    @juran Yes, which is why a lot of 'quests' will be more like hints, and not a list of what to do. I love those quests where you have to figure out the clues in order to complete it.

  • Will you be doing more interesting things with waves at some point? The system seems like something that has a lot of room for neat stuff.

    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.
    <div>Message #2062&nbsp; Sent By: (imperian)&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; Received On: 1/20/2018/2:59</div><div>"Antioch has filed a bounty against you. Reason: Raiding Antioch and stealing Bina, being a right</div><div>ass, and not belonging anywhere near Antioch till he grows up."</div>
  • MenochMenoch Raleigh, NC, USA
    If you add a wave structure to places like Schrovik I will make an alt just to bash it.
  • One thing I would like to see with the new bosses is less use of qhonors (which I don't know if your plan was to use them or not for these upcoming bosses) and more use  of the achievement system.  Qhonors are nice, but I feel like with the introduction bosses and the like, its going to start to feel bloated on top of all the normal quests that give qhonors. 

    Plus...gotta get them cheevos.
  • @Sarrius Yeah, we will do more interesting things with waves. My goal is to have them in as many places as possible (without going overboard). I love that level by level idea. We will use that one.

    @Menoch Yeah, we are working on a couple of places like that right now.

    @Selthis Easy enough to do. I will try to add that in.

  • One thing that I'd like to see is that as the new content is released and the new area features are released, that there's some sort of story behind it.

    An example would be DP, the undead had an epic scrum with the demons and won. You could have a horde faction fight in the Gongen Stronghold and have it change hands, etc. It would establish bosses, hint to quest lines, etc. You could do this with a lot of areas and add more depth to the undead/horde outside of a plot device. There's a lot of room for development in factions of the horde. There's also a lot of untouched roleplay on the undead v necromancy and tying up the torn rug of loose ends when Demonic moved to close the demonic rift.

    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.
  • @Ahkan Yes, we are planning to introduce new antagonists. However, I really want to clean up undead and horde areas/storylines before we add them into the mix. As for the DP area, the undead did win back in the Hammer of the Gods event, we just too a bit too long removing all of the demons. Well, more like the demons lost and we did not remove them quite as fast as I wanted.

    Hrm, I think I am a fan of mob armies going for shards. I will have to think about that some more. It could also be more annoying for players then fun through. I will think about that.

  • If it's done like the "npc war" it's going to be annoying. Players can't handle 20npc aggro, especially when there's four forms of CC spread out in there. It'd be like facing two versions of AM (zing!).

    Ways you could make it interesting and force people to use tactics:
    -Scouts. These find shards and call in reinforcements. Kill scouts, deny reinforcements.  (Cap reinforcements at 5-8 per shard. Have them chase to prevent hit and run.)
    -Leaders. They bring in their own reinforcements when they spot players. (Cap the reinforcements based on the difficulty level you want from the boss)
    -Bosses. Every now and then, have a big wig roll up. He'd have a contingent of an honor-guard, but otherwise it's his badass self throwing down. I'd even make them 'flee' barring some sort of extreme measure.
    -Leveling up: This may be for 'leaders and bosses' but whenever an npc kills a player, have it level up (like the Spawn of Unnameablehorror and the beast of thera). You could even evolve scrub orc--> leader --> boss based on player kills. The way people afk harvest shards, it's totally possible and would be awesome.
  • Well, I haven't bashed since Demon's Pass changed. I rather enjoyed standing in one room and hunting to my heart's content while I tweaked my offense, or 'attempted' work out some different curing priorities. Bring in some waves akin to that and I'll probably bash some more. For me bashing is less about the experience of it and more about where I can go to earn gold or sect belief with the least amount of effort. Demon's Pass was that place, where will it be now? I'm not trying to discourage you from what you are doing. It's great that you are trying to keep the game fresh. I just don't particularly like the changes, I'm sure most everyone else will though.

    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.

  • I absolutely love Ahkan's idea for shardfall interference.

    Maybe occasional Horde raids or bashing areas could even be empowered in some ways if they've been particularly successful in harvesting shards lately.
  • Regarding quests. I think the biggest thing stopping me from questing seriously is that it seems all the high end quests are too isolated. Only way to learn how to summon Yasyolan is to ask someone that's done it. That sucks the fun right out of it for me. I think, similar to what Ahkan mentioned, having a mob that could give you general information about how to start certain quests would be amazing. Head to the tavern and ask the barkeep about Yasyolan and he drops a hint on where someone who knows more could be found. That would take a lot of frustration out of the questing process and would allow newer players to learn about older quests without having things spoiled for them. As far as new quests go, I like old school styles of puzzles from things like Zelda and Castlevania games. For instance, I like temples and things with puzzles spanning several rooms, 15 tile puzzles, lost woods(recurring almost identical rooms), and I generally like things hidden in room descriptions, as long as they are relatively obvious if you know what you're looking for. Looking forward to seeing the new ones getting rolled out.
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  • I don't really play Imperian for bashing, and would probably be done with shardfalls if a serious PvE handicapping system were added to try and artificially add difficulty.
  • I think we could find a place for Ahkan's idea in some other system.. maybe Horde could solve our obelisk stagnancy issue by being very very good at attacking them?
    <div>Message #2062&nbsp; Sent By: (imperian)&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; Received On: 1/20/2018/2:59</div><div>"Antioch has filed a bounty against you. Reason: Raiding Antioch and stealing Bina, being a right</div><div>ass, and not belonging anywhere near Antioch till he grows up."</div>
  • I'll settle for well-designed quests where the next action makes logical sense and the mob involved actually responds to logical terms from the player. 

    For example, let's say my character is in the desert with a mob asking for "help". However, the mob doesn't respond to the word "help" or any of its synonyms (or even "yes"), because it's programmed to respond only to the word GRAPES. How far am I going to get with this?
  • Lalitana said:
    I'll settle for well-designed quests where the next action makes logical sense and the mob involved actually responds to logical terms from the player. 

    For example, let's say my character is in the desert with a mob asking for "help". However, the mob doesn't respond to the word "help" or any of its synonyms (or even "yes"), because it's programmed to respond only to the word GRAPES. How far am I going to get with this?
    Aetolia has something like that with their dialogue system and I think we're going to be getting it as well.  I know the first priority was on newbie areas, but maybe we could see it somewhat ramped up to  other quests as well.
  • Selthis said:
    Lalitana said:
    I'll settle for well-designed quests where the next action makes logical sense and the mob involved actually responds to logical terms from the player. 

    For example, let's say my character is in the desert with a mob asking for "help". However, the mob doesn't respond to the word "help" or any of its synonyms (or even "yes"), because it's programmed to respond only to the word GRAPES. How far am I going to get with this?
    Aetolia has something like that with their dialogue system and I think we're going to be getting it as well.  I know the first priority was on newbie areas, but maybe we could see it somewhat ramped up to  other quests as well.
    We have that in place as well. All of our newbie areas are set up with this system. We are working on setting this up on all of our quest mobs. We have also set up some standards to deal with problems like you have addressed with your 'help' example. Hopefully we will get all of these issues fixed over the next couple of months.

  • AhkanAhkan Texas
    edited April 2013
    Honestly, I'd sacrifice losing the interest of 3 pkers to further the story and get the story telling back on track. If we have to eat a few deaths to develop the horde, undead, bad-guy x, I'm willing to eat it (I'm also going to throw Aleutia, Kanthari, Selthis, Lionas, Katalina, Sam under the bus). AM has showed it's not a very good antagonist (not all their fault), as has Demonic (not all their fault either) and Magick (totally their fault) isn't really ever going to take that step. Players have rules and we can always hide behind those rules to make player antagonists disappear.  Some of them, you just have to get to a % of health and they make themselves disappear. The player base has demonstrated it's not really ready to bear the burden of being 100% responsible for the story line. Players are good for brief bouts of antagonism, not long term.

    -You can't really crush a city. (it would be cool if you did) I would have said Khandava 3-6 months ago, but now...Khandava is rocking some sick rp with Tzolkin and Olanre. 
    -You can't really kill a guild (it would be cool if you did) I can think of 4.
    -The best and easiest way to hit people and make them care in a way they can afford to lose is shards and obelisks. They lose xp, some special opt in skills and shards.

     When mortals want to be antagonists, I have to keep fighting ^&%*$  off like a damn diamond laden herpes infection until 'they'  feel like 'they' won. The orcs? They take my crap, they leave. I get snarked about in an events post. I win? I stand atop a pile of glittering orc corpses drinking mud water with Kanthari and Aleutia while we get all the glory of an events post. It's really easy to chose which option 98% of the game would pick.
  • @khizan All good ideas and a lot of these are already in our new guidelines. I wish we could have them all in right now, but it will take a few months of constant work.

  • Pretty much everything @Khizan said sums up my thoughts on it.

  • I love questing when it is done well, there are some really nice little quests around which make me smile when I do them.  The storylines are full and interesting, the quest makes sense for the area it is in, and as Khiz said, you don't have to spam every version of the same word to get them to work.

    Something which would make questing nice is different versions of the same quest, or different outcomes, based on the circle you are in.  There are a few quests Dot would never do, because it would be out of character for her to help a magicker NPC or whatever, but if there was a slightly different version of the quest to sabotage that NPC instead, it would be nice.

    Need to think more on this, I am sure there is more to add in terms of ideas.
  • @khizan Point one and two are the same thing I think. I am good with high XP, one time quests (or extremely hard). We will do that.

    I am okay with instanced bashing. But there are several issues we have had. The main problem is what if someone portals to you in there? they kill you and then bash out your instance. Or just sit there and you cannot go back in. We do not want to make them safe areas where people cannot get to you. But then what if you do want to bring someone in with you? Who can kill those mobs? There are a lot of little issues to work out.

    I am a fan of daily type quests. We are working on more of these.

    I agree some areas are not worth the time because the mobs are not well balanced. Working on that.

    As for the aspect thing, that is why we are working on revamping more of the top end areas and balancing them out. (and mid range, low range, etc)

  • AhkanAhkan Texas
    edited April 2013
    I am okay with instanced bashing. But there are several issues we have had. The main problem is what if someone portals to you in there? they kill you and then bash out your instance. Or just sit there and you cannot go back in. We do not want to make them safe areas where people cannot get to you. But then what if you do want to bring someone in with you? Who can kill those mobs? There are a lot of little issues to work out.

    -When a player kills another player in an instance, it automatically kicks out the killer (and anyone who has attacked them in the last minute)? They get their kill. The bashing party doesn't get booted. If the victim mouths off again, they can always get attacked again.
  • edited April 2013
    I apologize in advance for the massive wall of text...

    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:

    Pros:
    • Having a much higher capacity for mobs without needing a stupidly big map. Iaat has maybe 60-80 mobs. Wave areas have 100-200 if I'm not mistaken. 
    • Much more variety in mobs. Khous has waves of fairly innocuous mobs, but it also has waves that love to throw Aeon around. 
    • This variety also allows a larger range of players to bash these areas. I feel like 60-80's could probably bash the first round or two of both Demon's Pass and Necropolis if they were careful, and there's a decent amount of mobs in each wave, so it's cool to give them a taste of an aspect bashing area before they actually become strong enough to take on Wights and Bats.
    • Boss mobs showing up on different waves and not just always standing around means that people can't just put the bosses on a timer and farm them, meaning they're more likely to be there for those that are actually bashing the area.
    • And since the waves show up kind of sporadically, you can't just bash out every room once and be done with it. This(depending on the person) could discourage auto bashing and means that multiple people can bash the area without stepping on each others toes the whole time.
    Cons:
    • Not a problem with Dpass and Necropolis, but Khous takes way too long to repop after Lakhild is killed. Possibly as a way to limit Lakhild since he's a QHONOURS, possibly as a way to prevent massive gold farming from the crazy turn-ins there.
    • I know it's intentional in two rooms in Khous and at least one room in Necropolis, but it seems like wave areas get more ridiculous clots than you see in any other area. The first two rooms of Necropolis clot really hard after a few waves, which is bad if you're not paying attention when you path find in. The two last rooms in Khous are also always clotted hard, but if you clear them in an early round, two rooms at the entrance of the cave system will clot really hard to make up for it.
    As for instances. There are definitely a lot of issues that pop up when you try to hash out how instanced areas will work. If you prevent hostiles from entering instances, they become an impenetrable safe-zone. That's not how Imperian tends to work. If you implement a fancy system to kick players after they kill someone, you have to deal with working out a way for them to collect the body of the player they killed. As well, you could have people showing up and using something like Sunder or Radiance and getting teleported away from a group of players that might want to kill them in return. It gives them an easy exit from a potentially bad situation. You also have issues with mapping. I don't like the idea of having an infinite, or just ridiculously large, number of identical areas with the same rooms. You couldn't tell from WHO or FARSEE if people were in the same instance, or in a different one. You'd not be able to use client-side mapping to go from one instance to the other, just a load of problems introduced like that.

    The best way I could think to deal with a lot of these problems, and to get a small picture of what problems could arise, would be to make a bashing area with a set number of largely identical sections that have cosmetic differences,  in which you could only bash one area per some period of time. Imagine an arena area with 3 gated areas(I know 3 wouldn't be enough in practice, but I'm talking about something small-scale for a trial run). Each area is almost identical, maybe slight differences in theme, but the same challenge and reward for each one, so a single aspect bashing the same area over and over doesn't impede other players.

    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.
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  • One thing I'd really like to see is quests actually giving quest experience.

    I just ran through most of the minor quests I could think of, and of a couple dozen only one gave experience.
  • AhkanAhkan Texas
    edited April 2013
    New Tournament of the Ages game: NPC Royal Rumble

    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:
    Wave of easy ogres
    wave of easy undead
    boss
    wave of medium ogres
    wave of affliction orcs
    wave of undead
    boss
    wave of hard ogres
    boss
    wave of hard undead
    wave of 2x medium ogres

    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.

    *With the progression of the npcs. Lower level people can totally jump in and grind out some xp killing tons of critters until they get overwhelmed by the npcs. There'd be no xp loss, but xp gain. It'd be a ton of fun for everyone and as npcs got harder and harder, it'd get more competitive and interesting for those involved.

    (I didn't know where to put this)
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