CRAZY IDEA : Meteorite Tractor Beam

Suggestions
1

Yay, it’s time for another #CrazyIdea!

What Crazy-Idea© did you have this time?

Ok, so it’s really straight-forward.
What if we could craft an item called, as the thread suggests, a “Meteorite Tractor Beam”?
Something that would look kinda like this :
TractorBeam

(to clarify, this is a World of Warcraft model)

How does it work?

So you craft it. You bring it to a wild space of your chosing. You place it and you activate it. The device then becomes un-removable.
For obvious reasons, the device could not be activated on a T1/T2 world, neither could it be activated inside or directly next to a beaconed area, or too close to another active device.
Once activated, though, you and other players around get a system message like “WARNING, A METEORITE IS ABOUT TO CRASH DOWN, GET AWAY FROM THE DEVICE!”

Shortly after, a meteorite crashes down next to the device, destroying it.

Now, there would be a number of Meteorite Tractor Beam devices to craft. One for each level of meteorite. I’d guess the first one could be made out of copper, then iron, silver, gold, titanium, and any gem, etc.

Why would be need that?

Basically, I’m really thankful for the players who organized themselves by making floating platforms in the sky, and how they cleverly figured-out that to basically force-summon a good and juicy meteorite to fall down, you gotta be as many as possible to cross into a region at the same time.

But I do think it’s really not the best way to do things, gameplay wise.
I’d rather have people going like “here’s a large arena zone we made, with reserved plots underground, and you can summon meteorites there!”.

And if people still stumble on a wild meteorite, those would still be there. But in terms of organization, you would have situation where you go on a platform and people are like “welp, looks like we have no luck, no meteorites are coming, let’s open a warp to yet another platform!”.

What do y’all think? Would you like to have such a feature?

EDIT :
Here’s a pretty great idea from Havok!

I’d personally still think it should be a craftable item, as I don’t see how it would fit in the game mechanics as it stands (I mean, a level 1 character would have this? Why? When would it be introduced in the tutorial?), but with your addition of having a cooldown of 24 hours, it would mean that there would only be one item instead of one per tier.

3 Likes
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So will this summon a meteor? Or just influence where the meteor lands?

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Both options could be ok with me, honestly.
My base idea was for the device to summon a meteor and make it land on the device, hence destroying it (or consumming it, technically).

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Too open to abuse - find a lava lake and boom, easy Oort + Loot. Also the whole point of a meteor is that it’s kinda spontaneous and you have to chase them. “And for those reasons, I’m out” :dragon_face:

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That kind of abuse can be disabled by a small “test” on the area around the device before. (Making that lava thing an invald place to place it)

I am all for something like this. Then maybe we could finally get rid of the platforms~

1 Like
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Personally I kinda like the platforms (that might be because I’m not keen on hunting in it’s current state), but I agree that they do take away a lot from the hunting experience. Maybe there is another fix rather than being able to summon meteors, as that seems quite lackluster. Do they need to increase the spawns? Speed up the spawns? Reduce the distance in which you have to run to reach the meteor? Change the way meteors spawns are triggered? I think these are the questions in which we should ask. It is a cool idea, granted, but I just think something else could be done.

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It would be great if meteors got unbound from the region centers. That would make all platforms useless lol. BUT it would not solve the problem, simply create a new one.

Bah just give us mineable oort all problems solved o_o

1 Like
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Yeh it’s a tricky problem :joy: But I am also opposed to minable Oort :upside_down_face:

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Maybe there can be “Meteor zones” Where mobs consistently spawn getting harder and harder and every time you clear 5 waves the meteor cracks open and another one starts falling OR theres another meteor inside of it and to get that to crack open you have to clear another 5 waves

1 Like
10

Not a bad idea, it reminds me of mini-boss summoning scrolls from BDO. Maybe there could be a daily lockout that resets for each player at 00:00 UTC

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I don’t really agree with a way to summon a meteor. That just feels like it will be turned into a farmable and easily repeatable process to break another component in the game – kind of like regen bombs are used for some things in my view.

Right now the summon works ok as it is by just running to a region. I think that works. Time might be an issue to get one but then I would lean toward other Oort gathering methods that starting to drive meteors toward the “easy button” process.

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I kinda have to disagree because the current system is being farmed with the floatting platforms. Like, I don’t think the devs had them in mind when they designed the original feature.
The players figured out how to force-summon the meteors. After a meteor has been dealt with, they simply warp to another platform and start again. How’s that not farming the system?

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I don’t disagree with that and would say that things are farmed somewhat with platforms. But, I wasn’t talking about whether the current system is good or bad. I was just commenting on the suggestion to add a tool to call one. I don’t think it is good to add another way to take advantage of the way meteors work.

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I think this would be a great way to summon a level 7 meteor/boss battle. Maybe with a timer so you can only do it so often. Maybe have certain requirements to use it. Like you need 20 people to activate it.

1 Like
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Yes, and it’s a fair point.
IF you see it with the mind of somebody who’s looking for more challenge or thinks that’s necessary.
I would argue it’s not. I’d argue hunts are an annoyance, and quite boring.

IF you look at meteor events thinking “how to make the process more fun?”, wouldn’t it make sense if players could control where and when they fall?

I’d love to see a city designed with a “meteor zone”, and see how it would attract many more players.

I’m pretty sure you’d see quite a number of players who would come (back) to Boundless because the current process isn’t fun.

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A meteor zone can exist in any wild area even in the middle of the city. Since I don’t know all the coding around the meteor beyond some specifics on not hitting water or plots, etc. I don’t know how easy/hard an asset like this would be to maybe help things. Overall I see the value of the idea and think it is cool as an idea and to have basically (minus the farm concerns) but not the value of implementing it at this time.

For me when I look at the meteor event I see it as overall something that wasn’t needed. It came about because of monster hunts as some other way to deliver Oort. At first that seemed to make sense but now as I see how it was implemented and other things I don’t think it is the only right way for Oort delivery.

I can agree the meteors are ok as something to have in the game but I feel that we need more combat work across the board and not just meteor events. I think we need to flush out the Hunter role and other Group Combat activities in a much more robust area than “tweaking meteors.”

We need different things in the game that engage people much more on various levels. That I believe will bring back many more people (or keep people) in Boundless than just tweaks to meteors. Basically more systems…

17

Another cool idea is a hold the fort idea. Kind like Fortnite save the world. Active the device. Build defence around it. And protect it for X amount of waves.

1 Like
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@Havok40k and a few others from our guild have pushed this idea. Basically a settlement defense model where you activate something and mobs attack while people defend.

2 Likes
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It would be sweet. I liked Fortnite save the world. Played for awhile before boundless took over.

1 Like
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On that, we agree.

I would still be way more involved in hunts if the tractor beam thing was there, but I do also agree that it would be nice to have another thing to get oortstones.
Defending bases isn’t my thing. I’d be afraid of having people wrecking blocks. Though, I don’t know the actual suggestions, maybe that’s been adressed there.

HOWEVER, I would totally be opened to Dungeons.

Make it so you get a niiiice chest at the end of a dungeon, and you have a new way to get Oortstones, and the community could play an active role in either the creation of these dungeons, or in playing through them.

1 Like