Addition of huge new system, the ‘Wanderers’

Janaos

So, I've had this idea for some time now regarding a new way enemies can appear/spawn in the game. This isn't as much of a new type of enemy as a completely new system. Basically, the game would have randomly spawning 'wandering' enemies, these could be single units or packs, the idea is that they would be random across the map and not be held back by zones or areas. Now, this might sound like a very player hostile system, and in a way it is. id say the closest thing I've seen in a mmorpg remotely similar to this is the 'beasts' in Path of Exile. I will be using the term 'Wanderer' to describe this sort of enemy, although they would in a sense be similar to the conventional 'Boss' mob in the sense of difficulty. This means waiting in a particular area would be inefficient as they would not have a clear spawn location, this would mean players need to travel in order to find these, creating an incentive to travel and explore the vast world. I imagine the enemies themselves could be very varied, differing in:

location- by this, I mean that they would still be random however, some would stick to a certain general location. e.g a rogue yeti boss may only wander polar areas, of course, many would also be able to appear across the entire map. note: this would have to be relevant to the identity/backstory of the given 'wanderer'.

backstories- backstories are key in creating interesting characters, places buildings and ruins could hint at the backstories of some of these, I feel it's important that each 'Wanderer' has its own enticing story, consequently adding depth to its character.

number- as mentioned before not everyone would be a singular unit, this may be a rogue group of dangerous parasites, seemingly weak alone but deadly in groups, a nightmare for all who are unlucky enough to meet them.

appearance- this may be obvious but each of them would need their own appearance, and by this I mean not just a re-skin of the same mob, but complete new bosses ranging in size, number, colour, and attacks.

time- Again, although the time is meant to be random, I imagine it would be good for some enemies to appear in a certain time range, e.g id imagine a werewolf to spawn at night. although there would be bosses that could spawn at any time. similarly, as for 'location' this would have to be relevant to the boss.

Clues- A bit of a smaller point, but since these are randomly spawning enemies, tracking would be necessary, clues could be given to the location of the bosses, e.g a dragon may leave burn marks or big footprints in different places. I feel like this would give Scout-style characters additional meaning, with builds being able to be concentrated on tracking these types of bosses. Parties looking to hunt these enemies would have to hire Trackers in order to help reveal the location of these.

Species- although one could argue this ties in with ' appearance' I have a bit more to say regarding this matter. I want to clarify that such a 'wanderer' DOES NOT have to be a beast, this might have been unclear from my description, but a 'wanderer' can essentially be anything, including a human, for example, an evil archmage or wanted criminal could very well be a 'wanderer'. Every race could be one.

There are many things that can be added when it comes to a mechanic like this, which is why I believe it is very good to have as an endgame mechanic. This brings me onto my second point, the 'wanderers' level range. Although I see that a few of these types of enemies could be added to the lower to mid level range, the 'wanders' would mostly be an endgame mechanic. Some of the harder ones, requiring entire high-level parties to take down, maybe even a few of them being raid difficulty. Of course, some could also be solo endeavors; rare creatures that you may just be lucky to run into on your endeavors, for example nearly extinct animals, possessing rare furs. Continuing on from the point about the impacts of these on lower levels, which unarguably would exist consequently to the free reign these 'wanderers' would be given. I realize this however also believe that this isn't a bad thing, these would be rare so the chances of getting repetitively killed by something like this would be small, In addition, some of these would be big others slow (not everyone) and hence easy to avoid. And even if a lower-level player were to be killed by one of these, I feel like it would do a good job at showing them the power ceiling in the game and motivating them to become stronger, to one day be able to hunt these. The randomness also would give a feeling of thrill and add to the excitement of the fight. Hunting some of these could also be implemented into quests, perhaps even town quests could be centered on helping kill the monster if one is spotted near the town. Moving onto the rewards, these would be some of the hardest enemies in the game, meaning that the rewards would need to be good. exclusive gear, crafting recipes would be common with enough contribution, as well as some form of special currency that could be used in an exclusive marketplace. I don't imagine this system as some half-wit thing that's gonna be added and forgotten, I'm talking about an entire infrastructure built around and in it, perhaps even comparable to something like dungeons. I realize this is ambitious, but it's original (as far as I'm concerned), and personally, something that I would pay to see. I think this is all I have to say for now xD, and thank you for reading this if you've gotten up to this point. I really hope you could at least consider this, and any feedback on the idea is welcome, in the end, it is only an idea for now.

Noaani

A number of games have had roaming mobs. Some that roam in small areas, some that roam large areas.

EQ2 in it's original release had raid mobs that would roam an entire zone (the technology of the game prevented any more than that). It also had a squad of mobs that patrolled around the parameter of a specific keep, as well as things like messengers that could be found on any track in the zone they were in (again, only technical limitations kept things within one zone).

Janaos

Yeah I guess it would be unreasonable to expect no game to have something of this sort before, but that’s ok. I mean if we look at something like dungeons, this is something that has been used perhaps thousands of times in different games, and yet players still want it because it’s a nice feature, in the same way I don’t think it matters much if a few games have done this before, essentially it still is pretty much a fresh idea, because as you said due to technical limitations EQ2 was not able to fully implement this feature, and tbh I only imagine a handful of games even have something similar to this feature, none of which I believe have used it’s full potential. With something as broad as this, even if this was a very common addition to games there would still be ways to impress, I’ve already gone through some of the ways the feature can be made unique and I’m sure others can think of other ways. And if there’s one game I feel can get this feature to be done right, I think it’s ashes.