Turrets, Guards, and player controlled spawn mechanics

Weā€™ve seen lots of exciting mobs and features lately for players to discover and encounter in the world, but what about features for the adventures we create?

I mentioned earlier that I have some sketches and plans for player made and maintained dungeon experiences after 1.0 and I want to go into some in depth discussion about possible features and mechanics for this idea.

The first feature I want to see are turrets. Specifically, turrets that can be placed and programmed to target specific entities including creatures, players, or members of an opposing faction (ie ā€œred teamā€ in an arena or members of a specific guild). Turrets could have limited arc of fire or 360 degree pivot based on materials used. These could be used in dungeons as activated traps or as static defence for city walls and gates.

My idea for guards is a bit like a mob that can be programmed to be hostile to specific targets, much like a turret, but instead is mobile and can be placed to guard an area around them. These can take the form of anything to a guard-dog creature to a gollum to a humanoid guild servant. Perhaps, the humanoid variety cab even be outfitted with player made uniforms and weapons to denounce a guardā€™s guild loyalty? That would be cool.

Lastly but most importantly, I would love a way to spawn basic creatures on demand. I already can hear ā€œbut, Havok! That would be game breaking because you would just spawn and kill mobs for lootz!ā€ Shhhhā€¦ you fix this issue in how you prepare the creature spawning! In the wild when you kill a creature, they drop an item, right? Well, what if creatures had a high chance to drop an essence of itself that you could then perhaps craft with some single use resurrection device (preferably a device with a small $ cost to allow bulk crafting) that can then be used both by hand or dispensed from another device on command. This would allow dungeons to be reset after being cleared. Naturally, player spawned creatures should not drop anything, or award experience of any sort.

These three features combined go a long way to allowing players or Guilds to build and maintain their own adventurers for players to experience and enjoy. Guilds could charge a small entry fee to enter so as to cover the costs of spawning creatures as well as generate revenue, and popular dungeons could draw large crowds to cities and monuments.

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This sounds a lot like Line Tower Wars or Hero Line Tower Wars from Warcraft 3 (back in old days :smiley: ) or like Guild of Dungeoneering.

While i like your idea in general i need to ask a few questions or mention a few of my thoughts.

One of the things you mentioned is the reward/revenue system.

Iā€™m not sure whether money alone is a sufficient incentive for playing or (more important) building and maintaining such a dungeon is. In ā€œGuild of Dungeoneeringā€ you get a set of tools (mobs and obstacles) that you need to use to protect your dungeon against invaders (In this case the invaders are AI based). In your scenario there are freelancer (or other guilds) like to invade your dungeon but why should they do it ? If itā€™s an easy dungeon there is no incentive to do it because everybody can do it and the reward is most likely really small (divided among all who master the dungeon). If the dungeon is to hard only a few will master it and the reward is most likely also very small because only few (good coordinated guilds / team of hardcore gamers) will try it. Iā€™m sure we need some ā€œhelpā€ from the devs (like a predefined reward based on the length and the used mobs of the dungeon - but this will cause problems too because the system might me miss-used or griefed). Do you have any plans according to the revenue problem ?

i hope you mean coins with ā€œ$ā€ and not real money ?! If this game will consume real money for things (Items or Vanity) itā€™s nearly dead for me. This was one of the game-breakers in GW2 for me (in early days ā€¦ now there are a lot more).

If you need to maintain the dungeon you need a ā€œreportā€ system like ā€œYour dungeon has been mastered - Replace your mobsā€ otherwise the dungeon will be ā€œemptyā€ from time to time. This would also be a problem if it should attract people ā€¦ you donā€™t visit a ā€œamusement parkā€ (theme park) if there are no ā€œactiveā€ attractions.

The next thing i need to ask is how do you think to ā€œscaleā€ for a different number of players or parties. Will you dungeon be instantiated (every party gets itā€™s own dungeon) or do all play at the same time in the same dungeon ? Will it be harder for 5 player than for 10 players ? Will this effect the reward ? ā€¦

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Mostly, all of these concerns seem to be under the preconceptions that I mean dungeons as in developer made features that players find and claim and explore or exploit. What I actually mean is something players make themselves.

The purpose of a dungeon is not necessarily to protect ones loot or find loot, but rather for adventure and challenge. Dungeon builders certainly could incentivize others to explore their dungeon by placing a small reward at the end, or even move the Explorer along by using the dungeon to tell a story- thatā€™s up the the maker. Other challenges such as balancing for party size and frequency of completion are up to the builder to solve creatively.

As for revenue, I figured it could be handled with the beacon tax for entry, sort of like an admission booth. In a player run economy, it would be up the the builder to decide proper fees and profit margins

As for my use of the $, I meant it as short hand for what ever currency is chosen for the game. I do not advocate real world money or micro-transactions.

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i assumed that you mean that but IMO it would be sad if your creative work will be treated under value. There are a lot of great custom maps for CS:S (Surf maps, Jumping puzzles) which mad the hack of fun but there is nothing that remembers me later (like achievements for example). There is no reason to do it again and again like dungeons. There are a lot of creative people in here (@Nyuudles for example) and iā€™m sure they are able to create much better dungeons than most of the game-designers (seen this in a lot of other games like CS:S/GO, WC3, StarCraft2, Half-Life [CS is a HL mod ā€¦ remember remember] and so on).

My questions is more like ā€œwouldnā€™t it be better to let players create their own dungeons than spend a lot of development or design time on developer-made dungeons ?ā€. Maybe their could be a promotion system or something and if a dungeon reaches a given value of promotions the ā€œcentral guildā€ can inspect the dungeon and make it a ā€œrealā€ dungeon or something.

:+1: Only wanted to be sure about this point :slight_smile:

Yes, thatā€™s what Iā€™m pushing for. Iā€™m just asking for a few features that players can use in creative ways to create their own content. The devs would not make the dungeon- just a set of things to play with.

Iā€™m not really big in the dev promoted player content- there will be plenty of self promoting for that.

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Generally I like the idea of player made dungeons but I think this is something that will be introduced by mods for private worlds.

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some proteccion would be coool for our creations

Sounds cool. Like the turrets and the spawn able creatures could be cool.