Sign in to follow this  
Warlander

Invasion events - large feature concept/idea

Recommended Posts

Warning - big wall of text coming.

 

I have concept of in-game rifts I would like to discuss both with all players and staff - I will try to present this idea as accurately as possible.

 

Right now, we have two main and one occasional form of PvE-oriented combat activities: hunting and unique killing (+various GM events from time to time). In this suggestion, I will focus on third addition to these activities - invasions.

Invasions would be small, separate "mini servers", connected to main world via single rift. You can enter them only on foot, but in some cases you could find possible mounts/pets inside. These would vary a lot, from small sites easily doable by single average player up to the ones requiring 25+ experienced and well geared players.

 

Why "mini servers" instead of directly in game world? There are some big reasons why this is bad idea, two most important are:

  • Terraforming - unless these sites would not terraform any land at all (in which case sites would always look similar and not really interesting)
  • Space - these sites would need to be either rare or very small to fit inside current servers, what makes them even less enjoyable. It also makes them depending heavily on available terrain. Their existence could also make traveling harder.

 

Where can the rift spawn? Location must be:

  • On land
  • Not on road
  • Outside of building (blocking access to rift with new structure would be impossible as well, and rift would create small no-build zone around it)
  • Outside and far enough from deeds (I think that 15-20 tiles would be enough)

 

Once the rift spawns, type of invasion is randomized, with bigger chance for low difficulty site than the more difficult ones (PvP server could have bigger chance for more difficult sites, but more risks related to that as well due to fact that if main server is PvP enabled, rift is PvP enabled as well). To conserve server resources, it is not generated until first player enters it, in which case its generation due to small size of instances should be very quick and not noticeable on the whole server. While active, rift acts as mob spawner until invasion is completed or it times out (no logged in player inside since one week or site is older than one month). You can determine rift type, difficulty and age by monsters spawning around it, its color/size or coming close and examining it.

 

Invasions itself - like I mentioned earlier - would be miniature servers. Inside them, you will encounter few types of different sites that can be split into three major categories:

  • Dens - usually low to medium difficulty sites, with mostly open structure and cave network. You can encounter rats, wolves, bears, goblins, trolls and spiders dens. These usually have one main task and no side tasks, most often requiring to kill champion inside the den. Rewards are small, but there is some chance for rare loot and tiny chance of getting unique items. 1-3 players should be able to complete all these sites. Thought as single player or village-wide events.
  • Villages - usually medium to high difficulty sites, with mostly open structure and large village in a middle. You will encounter goblin and trolls variants, maybe rarely villages damaged by Valrei monsters as well. These usually have one main task and one or two optional side tasks. Rewards are average, with at least one guaranteed rare item and small chance for supreme/unique items. 3-10 players should be able to complete all these sites. Thought as village or alliance-wide events.
  • Sieges - very high/extreme difficulty sites, requiring many players and few hours to finish. These sites would be most complex and involve many stages, starting like village sites, with need to break into castle area and courtyard using siege machines, optionally into cave network below castle as well. These will always have chain of main tasks and many side tasks. Rewards are big, with some rare items, chance for supreme/fantastic and at least one-two unique items. 25+ players should be able to complete these sites, but it should always be challenge no matter how many players take part in it. Thought as server-wide or global events, similar to current unique hunts but much harder and rarer (maybe one or two per month on the whole cluster?). On PvE servers, if siege rift exists everyone can enter it using personal rift similar to epic portal. In case of both PvE and PvP appearance and collapse of this rift is signalized with global message similar to unique mobs one.

 

To make it impossible to finish hard sites single or with too small group, mobs quickly respawn until proper side/main objectives are completed, walls/fences repair themselves unless destroyed as well. Mobs inside invasion sites don't give any skill rewards, but completing a site gives skill reward dependent on contribution.

Inside invasion, you cannot dig and build houses, but can craft and do resource gathering actions including mining. This can be useful in case of village sites and is basically required to complete sieges. All resources are hardcapped at 50 ql and - as you cannot bring carts in and out of them - it is not worth to bring them back to the main server. Some spells like disintegrate don't work inside.

Once main goal of site is cleared, site closes after a moment and gives main rewards to players (undecided how should rewards giving work yet) as well as teleporting them to rift location. If rift closes due to timing out, all players who were inside get teleported to the location where the rift was and instance - together with everything left inside of it - is destroyed.

 

What do you think about this concept? Is there anything more to add, expand, maybe some bad sides or you don't agree with it completely? Let's discuss!

  • Like 24

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

I think you would get more player participation if you used a constructible portal for the server based ones that players can use to get there from wherever they are at.

 

Edit:  Rift has to be activated by the player that found it before the portal would work and an event message would broadcast when the rift is found/opened so everyone on the server knows one was found and is open.

 

 

Edited by Kegan
  • Like 7

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Its' good idea, but if it's full pvp mini server how do you plan to prevent small group making it private mini server? Ppl will sit on other side of the rift waiting players to enter to get their stuff. If we die in rift do we lose skills? Lot of drama may come out of it.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
14 minutes ago, Kegan said:

I think you would get more player participation if you used a constructible portal for the server based ones that players can use to get there from wherever they are at. 

 

Hmm... Good idea, but only for this one type (sieges, aka largest invasions) and portal works only for server where the siege is located. There wouldn't be any rifts for this kind of invasion, but every 3-4 hours there would be global broadcast that the site is available.

 

6 minutes ago, bramsky said:

Its' good idea, but if it's full pvp mini server how do you plan to prevent small group making it private mini server? Ppl will sit on other side of the rift waiting players to enter to get their stuff. If we die in rift do we lose skills? Lot of drama may come out of it.

 

If rift is on PvE server, invasion site is PvE as well. If it is on PvP, then site is PvP. Also, like I mentioned in topic you cannot build inside and it disappears after some time, so you cannot "claim" it. When it comes to losing skills... I think that normal rules should apply, especially on PvP (higher risk = higher reward).

  • Like 1

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

That is probably the best feature that has been suggested on this forum so +100

Also you could add new spell for compass so it can show den/village/siege direction

And the Kegan's concept of portals is good if those portals would have limited range of finding for example 1000 tiles so everybody has chance to loot den and not only the same old players farming dungeons for items.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Sounds fun!

 

I dont agree to an event message being sent to the whole server. I think the person that found it can choose to either do it alone or invite their own friends. On the other hand, how do you decide "owner" of a rift. What if a new player finds it and never lets anyone enter, thats not how it should be.


Yet there might be a group of people that want to do it themselves without anyone else enterning, how is that managed?

 

Besides that i really love the idea

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

What happens with (say) a den rift after someone has entered and completed it?  Does it reset, allowing others to have a go, or does only the person who found it get to play?  What happens if someone's already inside, having perhaps completed some of the quest, and someone else steps in?  Can the latercomer run through and complete instead?  If you die in a rift, where do you respawn?  And if the rift closes before you manage to get back to your body, is everything you were carrying now gone?

 

Smaller rifts sound like a great thing, assuming they either spawn so regularly that they're always available if you feel like one or a single rift allows many people or groups to play through them before they go away.  Having them be 'once and done' seems like it'll lead to more of the same drama currently surrounding uniques.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

I love this idea, a randomly occurring event is something I believe the game and players would all benefit from actually.

 

Also the idea of having a rift/portal to another small server as well, I'm assuming smaller than the 1024x1024 small servers we are used to? If I'm known for anything it's my love of exploring new and untouched servers ;)

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

So this is the special sort of "invasion" where nothing is actually invaded or affects the server in any way at all.

 

Sad. I was hoping for actual events on PvE servers and instead we're getting something dangerously closed to instanced dungeons.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
2 hours ago, whykillme said:

Sounds fun!

 

I dont agree to an event message being sent to the whole server. I think the person that found it can choose to either do it alone or invite their own friends. On the other hand, how do you decide "owner" of a rift. What if a new player finds it and never lets anyone enter, thats not how it should be.


Yet there might be a group of people that want to do it themselves without anyone else enterning, how is that managed?

 

Besides that i really love the idea

 

Largest rifts would be available for everyone on a server (on PvE only) - if it would be possible to finish it with less than 25 people, something is very wrong. Also, this should be community event. Smaller ones would be more common, so I don't think there would be much drama.

 

2 hours ago, Pandalet said:

What happens with (say) a den rift after someone has entered and completed it?  Does it reset, allowing others to have a go, or does only the person who found it get to play?  What happens if someone's already inside, having perhaps completed some of the quest, and someone else steps in?  Can the latercomer run through and complete instead?  If you die in a rift, where do you respawn?  And if the rift closes before you manage to get back to your body, is everything you were carrying now gone?

 

Smaller rifts sound like a great thing, assuming they either spawn so regularly that they're always available if you feel like one or a single rift allows many people or groups to play through them before they go away.  Having them be 'once and done' seems like it'll lead to more of the same drama currently surrounding uniques.

 

After completion, dens and other rifts close forever after a moment. When it comes to quest completion, this is something to discuss, but I am thinking about effort-oriented approach (if someone kills 30 mobs in short enough time and is inside invasion site for some time actively playing he is more eligible for reward than someone who enters, quickly kills 5 mobs + champion ending the site). When dying in a rift, you would respawn close to rift exit, inside the invasion site. Player bodies would be protected against destruction and teleported outside of site when it closes.

 

Den rifts would be fairly common, during average day with some traveling/patrolling well known areas you would on average encounter 3-4 of them. Village rifts would be less common, but maybe detectable using pendulum enchant, with chance to encounter them when traveling. Sieges - global and known for the whole server.

 

2 hours ago, Zenity said:

I love this idea, a randomly occurring event is something I believe the game and players would all benefit from actually.

 

Also the idea of having a rift/portal to another small server as well, I'm assuming smaller than the 1024x1024 small servers we are used to? If I'm known for anything it's my love of exploring new and untouched servers ;)

 

I was thinking about 128X128 for dens, 256X256 for villages and 512X512 (maybe 1024X1024 if it would contain multiple smaller dens/villages inside as well) for sieges. Small enough to make them not too resource consuming and allow to quickly generate them without server lag while still providing some space to make them more interesting than just raw "structure".

  • Like 3

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Might want to tweak the difficulty of the largest 'events' to the current player base / online time.

 

21 minutes ago, Ostentatio said:

Sad. I was hoping for actual events on PvE servers and instead we're getting something dangerously closed to instanced dungeons.

 

That as well, as much as I can understand a rift / portal is easier to place than a whole town on actively used servers, i'd like to see some mobs leak out of that rift toward the servers' lands. Think TES Oblivion when you had daedras coming out of the portals till you close them.

  • Like 2

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Well, it's a clear -1 from me, sorry.

 

Wurm is a sandbox game and a game-world - not a collection of instances and mini-servers like other games. By all means - improve the experience of the Wurm world - but do not split it up into mini-servers. Servers are empty of people right now - I think it's a very wrong idea to make them even emptier by drawing people into new instances.

  • Like 1

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
10 minutes ago, Eobersig said:

Well, it's a clear -1 from me, sorry.

 

Wurm is a sandbox game and a game-world - not a collection of instances and mini-servers like other games. By all means - improve the experience of the Wurm world - but do not split it up into mini-servers. Servers are empty of people right now - I think it's a very wrong idea to make them even emptier by drawing people into new instances.

 

I believe, from what I've read so far, that these are more temporary dungeons, rather than actual permanent servers.

 

And as they'll be small and liable to disappear I can't imagine it'll be possible to go live there, even if there are crazy people who might try ;)

  • Like 1

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
2 minutes ago, Zenity said:

 

I believe, from what I've read so far, that these are more temporary dungeons, rather than actual permanent servers.

 

And as they'll be small and liable to disappear I can't imagine it'll be possible to go live there, even if there are crazy people who might try ;)

 

Same thing really, Zenity.

 

People will be in there instead of in the game world. I think it's a better strategy to improve the actual game world where we all live - and not to make some new "bits" where we don't live.

  • Like 1

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
8 minutes ago, Eobersig said:

 

Same thing really, Zenity.

 

People will be in there instead of in the game world. I think it's a better strategy to improve the actual game world where we all live - and not to make some new "bits" where we don't live.

 

These sites would be heavily limited when it comes to what can you do inside - you couldn't be able to haul resources inside and out of it, cannot terraform and build inside and quality of resources is limited, so these sites are most suitable for explorers and warriors, I cannot think of situation in which you would want to spend more than half hour in den or up to three hours if doing village invasion in small group. Sieges are obviously longer, but not meant for living inside them as well.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Warlander I feel like you've been playing Rift lately. ;)  I love this idea myself, just like I loved the MMO Rift as well, so +2 from me.

  • Like 1

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

+1 of all suggestions on forums, we need this. It adds a bit of spice to pve and pvp servers. From what I understand, it can help players to get a team like experience. Time to make 2016 the year of great/amazing things/features, and make 2015 look like eh. 

 

scratch the +1, I'd give it +1000 x infinity.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

I'm all for more content, especially more group content.

 

It kind of feels like a cross between FFXIV's Fate system and Eve's deadspace. I would discourage some of the suggested restrictions as they kind of defy the opportunity created. Having a separate, time sensitive world would be a perfect place to stick in new material variants. The fact that those materials might not be always be available outside of the instanced space makes them more desirable. Setting up a home inside is a bad idea, but if the player is deposited safely outside when the rift closes and everything they left in is just deleted when the map wipes, lesson learned without spending time developing a bunch of extra restrictions.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

So nothing is going to invade, it's us, players, that will inavde the poor monsters' villages... Sounds like instances. Do we really need instances in a sandbox game? No skill during fights, but a big chunk after the instance is finished sounds very difficult to actually implement: what would you do with weapon skills? Will i receive a right amount of weapon skill for every one i use there if i just enjoy killing every other monster with different weapon? This "rewards only in the end" concept would also make everybody who has ever failed a rift ignore them completely until they're 100% sure they can beat it. Hence, no challenge, no point, no use.

 

The concept sure seems to contain a lot of ideas from the Hunting Server thread, but one of its main purposes was to find a less tedious way to gather resources...

 

The last, but not least, is the danger of them becoming another kind of uniques, farmed by those who can scout the servers all day just to find them and get them for themselves. Of course, such dedication should be rewarded, but if majority will miss out on 90% of them, it's not going to do any good.

 

+1 but the concept needs a lot of work, i believe. Thank you for posting this for discussion!

Spoiler

I wish some other changes would be discussed with community first too... BRING BACK THE SLOPE EXAMINE, please

 

  • Like 1

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

A rift opens... unleashing the rampaging pvp barbarian hordes upon the pve'ers.

 

 

 

 

 

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

I don't like the idea of it being instanced either.. One of the big draws of Wurm is the big persitent world. Not people running instances. Whatever you do, make it happen in the live servers.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now
Sign in to follow this