With recent developments to the game since the concept of titans was introduced, I’m wondering how our expectations of their nature have developed.
We know that we will soon be able to fill out a full skill page. Take a moment to consider how ridiculously easy meteorites will become when half or more of the players hunting have full damage, armor, and health.
My burning question is this: Do we want the [hardest level of] titan to be intensely difficult?
You know how Boundless players are. If there is a new drop, we want billions of it. We ‘farm’ meteorites. Are we going to farm Titans too, or do we want them to be a true challenge? Are we going to organize titan hunts because we want more people to get a bigger reward, or because we need more players to help finally take the [level 6] titan down on our 10th try?
Will anyone who wants Titans to be endgame content be satisfied after taking 25 of them down? Will anyone who wants to collect drops for selling/crafting be satisfied if it’s hard to find a group good enough to consistently complete them?
Personally, I think the best solution would be to make them something that requires very high skill play for a small team of coordinated people, and also available as challenging for a much larger group.
If I were designing it, I would at least test to see how people react to see if scaling rewards down with player count goes over. Say 1-5 players get 10 [REALLY_COOL_THING], but 10+ players only get 3 [REALLY_COOL_THING] for completing the same challenge.
This would let Reaper DJCoolPants or whoever grind it out hardcore to build a [REALLY_COOL_THING] palace, but still let The CasualBrown Squad grind out their share over a slower period.
This would allow for both speedrun glory hunters to get their piece, and also everyone else can grind to their heart’s content.
This does assume it’s easily repeatable and readily available.
What about having a machine where we have to donate resources to spawn a titan like rough gems ,Lucents, etc a community goal .
Like Echo we need to build a machine to destroy the meteor
Would like them to be instanced, too many players and it becomes boring. Meteors are fun to do solo/with a couple mates, but when its a huge hunt, you just might as well afk and grab the loot. But yeh, Titans end game for sure.
I am also assuming only 1 spawns at a time/per world, not like how meteors spawn. This is going of my understanding of how Titans are like ships filled with mobs on them - not being a huge mob itself
Aside from some inevitable community issues from people being left out, that is an awesome idea. Like Ovis said, meteors are more fun with less players. But of course we aren’t really doing daily hunts for the fun of it. Guess this also shows that whatever we get from titans shouldn’t be a necessity item that forces people to complete them.
Random idea here, not suggesting this is what it should be but rather giving an example of how the ‘scaling down rewards’ could work: We have a legendary weapon that needs to be charged by titan drops… think of the drops like exclusive augments. Going in solo gives you the most, say 10, while a group of 20 would only get like 1 each. Again, replace any of those things with what you want them to be. I just like the idea of a legendary weapon.
Love this whole thing. And a server dedicated to the titan would probably cut out a ton of latency issues. I really like the idea of it being a multi-step process rather than just getting to the location and being thrust into a moshpit of a fight.
This is actually a difference of opinion. I usually have more fun doing a chill hunt with a bunch of people than I do on a more challenging hunt with a handful of people.
Sometimes I’m looking for the more challenging thing, but usually I just want to hang out with my wife or watch a stream and shoot stuff with very little danger.
I really do. The rewards are nice, but when I do a hunt, it’s because I want to. My wife and I do enough meteor and roadrunner hunting that we have a surplus of several months, but still hunt because we enjoy it.
I actually agree more with you than I do with myself in those quotes lol… I’m a builder- outside Boundless I’m a strategy gamer and I’m terrible at 1st-person anything, so I’m not particularly into the challenge.
With this thread I just wanted to channel those who game for the challenge, the ones who want bosses that they have to beat with their gaming skills. I do genuinely believe the game needs to provide more for them and I think titans are the answer.
This would be disappointing tbh, if it’s just a bigger type of meteorite. I’d expect it to be more like bosses from Valheim or Zelda. Big monsters with special attacks and conditions for beating them.
One might be invincible until you grapple his head and pull him to his knees. One might smash the ground so hard that it creates holes but the blocks around the holes rise up and you can jump on those blocks to get a better shot… make us get creative with our fully stacked skill pages.
Last version of a Titan I saw rendered in-game was from mid 2016, and it was basically a borg cube that floats about and crushes anything beneath it. At that time, it was sidelined to focus on core game mechanics like RPG skills, items, etc.
Two things- in my mind- stand in the way of Titans right now.
a world to host them
weapons to fight them.
1 can be addressed with existing tech by designing an Exo to accommodate them. 2, Weapons are coming in the next update… some day.
I’d LIKE to think that I’m the 5 years since, that Titans have had some degree of secret development progress. I’d LIKE to think they are to blame for the lack of demonstrated progress these last few updates… but I struggle to convince myself of that anymore. Actions speak loudest to me, and I’ve not seen any actions that support that theory.
With the current mobs, i agree it would just feel like a bigger meteor. But im pretty sure this is how they were originally designed “a floating structure filled with creatures”. Then a boss at the end was my hope
I was hoping to hear a little about your preference on the difficulty, as you mentioned it’s one of the features you were most interested in from the beginning. I forget if it was you or someone else in the poll thread that referred to it as endgame content.
What would you think about Gorillastomp’s idea on summoning a warp… then what if it took you to a server that’s more like the sanctum than an exo- no extra stuff to slow down performance?
I always imagined they would be giant living fortresses with various different locations and abilities. Think like a Shadow of The Colossus boss, but you grapple onto it, swinging around arms and platforms, fighting mini-bosses and regular enemies on the platforms and in the air. High-skill, high-risk, high-reward.
But that’s me imagining them based on 10 seconds of trailer.
I agree that warping to a temporary instance is a good idea for it, and that lines up with something I’ve read (but can’t find again) about the plans for the protectors and Oortian ruins.
100% feasible, but to me part of the fantasy is lost at that point. Why have a giant wandering base relegated to a tiny zone? I’d much rather have them wander an exo-like planet so there is an exploration aspect to finding them as well.
Titans always felt like that over the top feature that sounds amazing but in that back of your mind know will never come / live up to the vision. Titans as a living dungeon I think are very doable, but as a single huge monster not so much. That all said, every since they added the ability to roll and grapple stunned Hoppers around, I’ve been waiting for the boss that will require a coordinated manipulation of this mechanic to expose a weakness, earn extra loot, achievements, or to simply defeat it faster
Sorry if this is a bit long. But I’ve been thinking about this for awhile. Lol.
I’m hoping it will be quite difficult. So you will need people taking actual rolls when attempting to complete it. Healers, tanks and such.
Perhaps you need a large enough group to even open a portal to a special planet which houses a Titan. Maybe a special Titan augment you put in your totem. When you have so many player pointing there totems at warp conduits you’ve set up. It will activate the conduits to the Titan planet.
If collision of the Titan with the landscape is a problem. Just making a special world. Where the terrain doesn’t come above a certain point. 30-50 high perhaps. Leaving 200 high for the Titan to roam above the terrain. Under the terrain there would be lava.
The planet should have a lot of high level mobs that are alway aggravated.
When you approach the Titan. The lightning that comes off it could blast holes in the terrain exposing the lava making it more difficult to get to it.
Having max range grapples would make it too easy to get to. So possibly a grapple debuff reducing grapple range by 50% when you enter the Titan planet. With possible other debuffs as you get close.
Once you get close enough you’d have to smash your way in. Possibly with specific lucent tools to break the Titan skin blocks. Once inside you have to make your way to the core. And destroy it to take down the Titan. But the protectors are inside trying to stop you and repairing walls/ rebuilding the inside of the Titan to stop you from getting to the core. The Titan continually creates more protectors to stop you.
Once defeated. You can scavenge the Titan skin blocks along with receiving Titan cores from a loot box that can be used to craft armours and possibly a bunch of other high end items. Once done scavenging. You return to sanctum and head home. You can only leave with one inventory full of blocks. So you take what you can. Rinse and repeat.
Titan augment require meteor ichor which mean you have to do t7 meteor hunts. This way it can truly be end game content.
I think it would be amusing to have a regular T5-T7 meteor finish and the 5 or 6 people with the most damage dealt( or most kills). Those Oortians get slurped into a portal to a generated area with the titan boss. This area would be mineable after the boss is defeated.
This would make people work harder at the hunts, and have more people join them. The mineable area could be generated temples, throne rooms, a domed in region of rare coloured blocks, caves with refined gems made to look like crystal shards. Etc. Mineable Oort (ooh la la)
Return portal opens after boss defeated to go back at leisure…
Death means sent to sanctum. Return options only to the original planet.
