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Gated dungeons: a new concept
Arya_Yeshe
Member
Since AoC will likely have 80% of it's dungeons as open world dungeons, I came with a concept never seen before: gated dungeons.
I would like to hear everybody's opinion about this, this has never been done as far as I know and I suppose it's 100% my idea.
The system is simple: it's just a door
We don't have to necessarily use gates, could use boulders or elevators like in the Wall from Game of Thrones or mini-bosses or else.
The idea is not safety but wandering between hot and cold and having a proper party in the dungeon instead of just a bunch of randoms running around. The gates could work as a door alarm if you are close to it, or if the entrance has a big bell or a thunderous noise could be emmited, so who is in the dungeon will have the "oh shi" momment.
So at the entrance people would probably have some fat PvP, winners go in and they will have some time to breathe, then another party shows up and break in and the PvP may happen again.
This system would be kind of a mix of instanced dungeon and open world dungeon, it is a blend.
I would like to hear everybody's opinion about this, this has never been done as far as I know and I suppose it's 100% my idea.
The system is simple: it's just a door
SCENARIO A:
Let's imagine a dungeon has a big castle gate in it's entrance, inside the dungeon there it has a big lever that can be pulled if you have 2 people pulling it at the same time. Your party pulls the lever and it shuts down the gate and you can run the dungeon in relative safety, but not really safe. First party has 8 people.
A second party arrives at the gate and the gate is shut, they will break in by using tools, or ropes, tools that are available in AoC. They have to work on the gates for a few minutes so can they break in.
A third party arrives and sees the second party breaking in and they start fighting each other, whoever wins this fight will choose between waiting the first party to come out or they will force their entrance.
SCENARIO B:
First party goes in and don't close the gate, they have 8 people, they are confident in their pvp skills, they don't need no door alarm.
Second party arrives with 4 people and see the gate is open and they think it is safe, they go in confidently and get ambushed and killed.
SCENARIO C:
Random guy sneak in the dungeon, he doesn't have enough people to shut the gate, he is a solo assassin.
First party now with 3 people goes in and close the gate, they want to use the gate as a door alarm.
When the party is fighting the boss, sneaky guy shows himself and finishes the party off and hide again.
He will stay in the dungeon until a party manages to open the gate or if he finds an exit, he doesn't have 2 people for using the gate lever.
We don't have to necessarily use gates, could use boulders or elevators like in the Wall from Game of Thrones or mini-bosses or else.
The idea is not safety but wandering between hot and cold and having a proper party in the dungeon instead of just a bunch of randoms running around. The gates could work as a door alarm if you are close to it, or if the entrance has a big bell or a thunderous noise could be emmited, so who is in the dungeon will have the "oh shi" momment.
So at the entrance people would probably have some fat PvP, winners go in and they will have some time to breathe, then another party shows up and break in and the PvP may happen again.
This system would be kind of a mix of instanced dungeon and open world dungeon, it is a blend.
PvE means: A handful of coins and a bag of boredom.
2
Comments
What about once u beat a mini boss u can send it back to the entrance to fight anyone who comes in and yells out “I’m sorry frostywombat, Arya has killed me” when he dies.
That sounds nice too
You got the idea then, its for holding people off just a little bit
For example, having a minotaur at the door, if you can't pass that, you don't even go in
Or the door is a huge rock door (kinda like Egyptian style), if you don't have 40 people for pulling a chain and lift the rock then you can't even go in
It enables an additional decision a Party or eventually a Raid has to make after entering.
What if you do decide to pull that lever and almost simultaneously the Gate falls down giving you a timer lets say 20 minutes of safety.
(1)But you have to make a sacrifice ! This could be reduced loot, because you took away the risk temporary.Why 20 minutes? Because as far as I know the Dungeons and Raids will be big in AoC. You might end up for an hour or more in one. So considering that, 20 minutes are at max only a third of the time you spent in there, your safety is limited to some degree. Everything you kill loot within this 20 minutes gives you back a (slightly)reduced amount of what you would get without extra safety.
That brings me to the (2) option.The same thing above but slightly different. You can manually set a timer for how long the gate is closed up to one hour. This will scale down your loot within the timespan the gate is closed.
(3)And last but not least When you choose to close the gate(with fixed time or timeset) you have no risk for being attacked by another group, but for that the Dungeon/Raid difficulty will (slightly)increase. So if a group is better in PvE than in PvP they would have the choice (which would state that PvP-groups have no choice). So this one might be unfair.
In all three cases it is still possible to destroy the Gate but doing so would take a good amount of time, scaling up or down with the timeset. The debuff for the Folks who are inside the Dungeon/Raid would continue to run, as the timer runs with the timeset and not with the actual Gate
This has a wave defense vibe, but against players behind you and monsters ahead
In the games with open dungeons I played, in my occasions the dungeons were half done, or there were random people running around killing mobs, then there's pockets in the dungeon were it's all clear
That makes feel as if the dungeon is lacking something, there's people going in an out the entire time, it feels the dungeon design is falling appart. Then monsters spawns behind you and there's no monsters ahead
Such problems don't exist in instanced dungeon, because the reset
So in a gated dungeon you could actually try to control what goes on for some time, then people could take that control out of your hands if you dont run the dungeon fast
So it gives some space to you if you are really fast, there's also a better chance everybody killing each other in the dungeon and then becomming the only party in the dungeon while having a shut door behind you
If it attacked It yells to the dungeon channel “player 1, I was attacked by player 2.”
AND/OR
If it is killed It yells to the dungeon channel “player 1, I was killed by player 2.”
Each mini boss subdue drops a single use item that teleports party back to the entrance, party is seen as red, corruption off for 10sec.
Each mini boss drops loot twice:for subdue ;and kill
If you defeat the final boss. Teleport items are all used up at once. Party teleports back to the entrance and all mini bosses turn red, attack party.
That was the idea!
So you gotta run that dungeon in 20 minutes, or someone else can break in
I didn't really think about reduced loot or anything, I was just thinking of when a wave of people could come in
Because in open world dungeons there's always a bunch of randoms semi clearing the dungeon and it feels super odd
Not sure, I think people would set to the maximum almost always, I prefer fixed
Even if you close the gate, there's a chance there's people hidden inside!
But if the dungeon is clear, it's clear for good for that amount of time, then you won't have a bunch of randoms clearing random pockets in the dungeon, pulling mobs, etc, going in and out
The mess is what kills the mood you know, but if you know that a commited party will come in 10-15 minutes the mood is completely different
It is a concept of controlled chaos
Noun
controlled chaos (uncountable)
A state or situation that appears to be completely disorganised, but where some things are under control.
Yes, let's say a gate has 1 milion hit points... but the structure has a damage cap of 2500 hp... so will have to hit it for 400 seconds of 2500 hp per second... could a solo guy deal 1 milion hit points?
Yes... but he won't be fast enough
Or maybe a spirit spaws at the gate each 15-30 minutes... if you can beat the spirit than it will lift the magical barrier and the surviving party can go in
So if you subdue the mini-boss, it go guard the door.
I think that if the mini-boss guarding the door simply yell something generic is good enough
Or a bell could start ringing for sounding the alarm
I don't know yet how AoC will handle exiting dungeons, afaik there will be no teleports of any kind except for the blink spell
Yes, so at the door we would have full blown PvP and inside the dungeon the mobs would be there
My biggest concern about open world dungeons is having empty pockes because randoms are all over running around and then random spawns behind you and people pulling mobs everywhere
But if we had controlled chaos by having some gate control then we would have waves of mobs ahead and waves of people behind
Then in this chamber whoever is alive will go in, being in the party or not, then they can access the second half of the dungeon. If you try to sneak in a gate that was opened by another party, that's up to you maybe you are going to do something cheeky or will end up dunked by the party.
If another group arrives in this chamber then they would have to do the required action that opens the gate, examples:
After openning a gate, they can leave it open or close, people will have their own reasons tha't could be anything:
Yeah sry if I repeated it in the first segment xD
Not necessarily, you would just lose the safety feature.
I got that, just thought this addition would come in handy as a whole !
I don't know about that, since the loot loss would also scale up...Probably only carebears would do that
I didn't think about hidden players, that's a good point yes. Probably (3) is the best wether it is fixed or timeset,
Carebears might be protected from PvP for a long amount of time, but can they manage the higher difficulty with nice AI ?
Totally agreeing on that I hate it aswell.
Damage mitigation or limitation to a Gate is a good solution, so a Solo dude or a small Party can't just run in after doing a few hits on that closed Gate and then troll or grief the party inside with Aggro pulling or something like that
Exactly!
Solo dude or couple of random guys won't go in just to PvE "grief" others!
They can't PvP against your party and they can't PvE the dungeon, why are they even in there?
Then they go and keep pulling mobs for hours!
Well, if they cant bash a gate in less than an hour, then nobody will have to deal with them for one hour. When the party who actually ran the dungeon come out they will even kill those guys
"All classes are capable adventurers, but rogues excel at delving the deepest dungeons and finding the most hidden of treasures.[5]
Rogues will have utility skills that enable them to discover hidden doors, traps and additional treasures.[6]"
That thing with the rogues is really cool aswell. But...if only one out of 8 Archetypes can do that...isn't that a bit unfair? As a full Party consists of 8 Players, an optimal structured Party would have 1 of each Archetype. Now my Question would be : How many Players on a server would play a rogue? Will every Party be able to have 1 rogue? Or will it be an hour long "LFG Rogue" in the Global/Area chat?
When entering into the instance you could choose to create your own or invade an enemy faction's. The defending players were alerted when they were being invaded. If the invaders were successful and killed their group, it would kick the enemy party out of the instance or zone depending on another mechanic of the zone, and the invaders could continue clearing the dungeon where they left off. There were also traps throughout the dungeon that could be set and used against the attackers. Although there were set factions in Warhammer and the dungeon was instance based, the concept was the same as what you're describing.
Personally having experienced it, I thought it was awesome and innovative. Still to this day it is one of my best memories from MMOs, playing in Land of the Dead (the zone) and invading/defending TOVL. I haven't experienced anything else like it in another game. It could work really well in this game too, especially for more difficult high level content.
I see it being very difficult in Ashes to clear dungeons or raid content because it will be highly contested, you will constantly have to fight off enemy players and I don't see there being enough time to defeat bosses without enemies interfering, jumping on you mid pull wiping your group and stealing the boss kill. Not to mention the pve in this game is intended to be more difficult than others. Plus I don't see anything in the current system that prevents a zerg group from flooding into a dungeon/raid and overwhelming any players or monsters inside. Having some sort of barrier to entry like a dynamic event or puzzle allows players that are already inside some time to at least attempt to clear it and progress. That is the good thing about instances, you can limit the amount of players that can go in at one time. There definitely needs to be some sort of anti-zerging mechanics otherwise the experience will be ruined for a good portion of the playerbase.
Nice, this only makes it more interesting
Well, the idea of gated dungeons would be for a few dungeons only, it's up to the devs deciding if they want secret passages or how they will use it... or if they will have more mini-gates along the dungeon trapping people in or out.
This Warhammer system seems really fun, specially because the traps.
It's very close to what I have thought specifically for AoC.
Yes, I agree that dungeons in Ashes will be pure chaos, people who already played other games that have open world dungeons have an idea about it
Having a mini boss yell names would reenforce name recognition on the server. Especially if your deciding if you want to go back to fight them.
In the my scenario they would also be stealing your loot at there killing the mini bosses, but also making the final fight easier by removing them from the final fight. One strategy may be to have a second friendly party at the door killing the mini bosses as they are sent back if your not tough enough to take them all at once.
This is sign that this has potential
There could be levers or mechanical systems like elevators, like you said. Perhaps intrepid could program the doors to only register combined effort from people of the same party. However, this could lead to some absurd looking “sword in the stone” scenarios where a dozen of randoms are pushing on a door and still can’t open it.
There’s also an issue of one group opening the door and then… guess what? It’s exactly the same as it was before and people just rush in behind them. I see no reason why you wouldn’t close the door behind you. Over-confidence isn’t really a valid reason. And if you get in a fight over opening the door, well, the losing team will just come back after the victor gets inside and then go inside themselves if they want to risk duking it out inside the dungeon again. If it takes a significant amount of time to open the door, enough to the point where it makes a truly noticeable impact on dungeon crowding, I feel like that would just feel bad. 60 seconds isn’t enough to change the flow of traffic that much.
Yes, I had that in mind, but it wouldn't be so mandatory, you could probably still force your way in without the minimum, but it would be pure pain and would be long.
If a dungeon is for 40 people then we could have a giant battering ram at the door, could be with or without wheels. So people would need like 10-15 minutes to bash the doors open.
The people inside would listen that constant banging and when will make a plan about what will they do?
So the act of breakin in will actually create a build up for something.
Also, when they open the gate you have no idea how many people will come in, it could be 40... it could be 100 because the gated dungeon still is an open world dungeon.
I don't think it's important being in the party, they could pay some gold for a player who was just cutting wood by the road to help them open the dungeon.
How people deal with the thing it's their thing, the thing is just there.
Well, I think people could get creative with that, your guild could be bringing 20 people more who were fighting somewhere else and they will join forces.
I don't think closing the gate should be automatic, people should do it on purpose when they want.
Imagine this, you are in a party that opens the gate, a second party arrives.
Some PvP starts to happen, the second party could actually use CC to prevent you from closing the gate.
Yes, letting it open could be a risk, but imagine we could have gates like this:
If you open the gate you could actually want to scout a bit, so you can have an idea about what kind of scary people is inside already.
If you close that gate immediately out of fear then you can't run away easily anymore
I think it's a great idea though, and would let them up the boss mechanics. So for instance, say there's rooms A and B. Room A connects to room B, but it's a free for all PvP fight in room A for 30 minutes before the Room B boss spawns. Whoever controls room A once the timer is up gets to go to Room B to fight the boss, while a gate pops up and prevents other raids from entering. If they beat the Room B boss they get the loot and progress to the next room. If the group fighting the boss wipes, they spawn back into Room A but now with a XP debt debuff, and have a 5 minute fight to see who gets to try the boss next time.
Problems would be if mega-guilds could completely lock down dungeons by winning the PvP fights, but there's already a worry for that with free-for-all open world dungeons.
OP's idea just goes a bit further with the ability of the second group to come into the room through some sort of action, while L2 just switched the room to a full inaccessible instance instead.
I thought of this:
In a regular open world dungeon a bigger guild can lock a dungeon for sure.
But the difference is here is that if a small group arrives first, they can close the gate and run the boss, if the big guild arrives they will have to deal with that gate first. Then the small group can defeat that boss and escape to the next section of the dungeon and keep going. None of that is possible with a purely open world dungeon.
It's kinda a game of cat and mouse too, this is kinda electrifying.
Of course certain dungeons will take an hour and the gate will be openable each 10-12-15 minutes possibly, so you will have to deal with some PvP regardless.
If in a dungeon we let only 8 people get in at a time, then the big guild will have to send in only 8 people each 15 minutes... if inside there's 8 sweaty PvPers they can kill waves and waves the big guild will send at them
People will actually be able to pull some heroic stories out of this
Yuck, Lineage 2, that emo game which every character's hair is prettier than my wifes, I don't play weeb games.
So you are saying that the idea is "just like L2" but different that L2"
Understood, it's "the same" but different
My idea is an open world dungeon which people can effectively manipulate the inflow of people, how much space you have for fights and bait people into fights, this is very different than anything I've seen. No game has this yet afaik
That Warhammer dungeon is much closer to this
To me open world dungeons must to be complex and dynamic enough, to me can be complex as hell and even changes every season(or devs have new ideas for the dungeons) and I not saying to defeat the boss should be hard what I mean is it should be a living maze that changing constantly to meet the PvX(to me PvX means all aspect weaved together) and risk vs reward game design, otherwise open world dungeons are just a place for mega guild to control the resources.
↓Good youtube channel to learn things about creating games.↓
Masahiro Sakurai on Creating Games:
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCv1DvRY5PyHHt3KN9ghunuw