Gated dungeons: a new concept

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

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.

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Comments

Frostywombat

Sounds a bit confusing, but I like it. Not for all dungeons obviously.

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.

Arya_Yeshe

Frostywombat wrote: »

Sounds a bit confusing, but I like it. Not for all dungeons obviously.

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 but 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

tautau

What problem are you trying to solve with this 'system' of yours?

Mr_MaDrupalow

Your Idea is a good one @Arya_Yeshe.
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

Arya_Yeshe

tautau wrote: »

What problem are you trying to solve with this 'system' of yours?

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

Arya_Yeshe

It will feel like a wave defense dungeon:

players behind you
bosses ahead you
you will have some control of what is going on for some time
people can break in take the control
the dungeon won't have empty so many pockets as open world dungeons in other games have
you won't have so many monsters spawning behind you
most of the mobs will be ahead of you

Frostywombat

For each mini boss after u subdue it. You send it back to the entrance back to guard.

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.

Aces_Are_Wild

I think the game will make guilds run Dungeons together ,where you take turns watching the entrance or a Choke hold area to stop other guilds coming in to still a dungeon run , I am sure this would also create alliances with other guilds where you might have multiple guilds covering while they take turns inside

Arya_Yeshe

Mr_MaDrupalow wrote: »

Your Idea is a good one @Arya_Yeshe.
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.

That was the idea!
So you gotta run that dungeon in 20 minutes, or someone else can break in

Mr_MaDrupalow wrote: »

(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

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

Mr_MaDrupalow wrote: »

(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.

Not sure, I think people would set to the maximum almost always, I prefer fixed

Mr_MaDrupalow wrote: »

(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.

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.

Mr_MaDrupalow wrote: »

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

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

Arya_Yeshe

Frostywombat wrote: »

For each mini boss after u subdue it. You send it back to the entrance back to guard.

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.

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

Arya_Yeshe

Aces_Are_Wild wrote: »

I think the game will make guilds run Dungeons together ,where you take turns watching the entrance or a Choke hold area to stop other guilds coming in to still a dungeon run , I am sure this would also create alliances with other guilds where you might have multiple guilds covering while they take turns inside

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

Arya_Yeshe

It will feel like a wave defense dungeon:

players behind you
bosses ahead you
you will have some control of what is going on for some time
people can break in take the control
the dungeon won't have so many empty pockets as open world dungeons in other games have
you won't have so many monsters spawning behind you
most of the mobs will be ahead of you
big pvp at the door
mostly pve inside with some pvp from time to time
if you are running the dungeon too slowly then more waves of people will come in
invaders can actually team up and don't fight each other, they could make a big party just to get inside and kill you
dipomacy opportunities at the gate
players who roleplay as merchants could actually sell stuff at the gate

Arya_Yeshe

Some dungeons could have it's first half completely open and then a special chamber in the middle, in this special chamber it could have a gate system.

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:

mini-boss
beat a jump challenge
deal damage on an object
thunderdome: free-for-all fight to appease the guardian who will ask for 100 kills/knockdowns
repair something
pull a giant rope/chain
solve a puzzle
do ritual with many steps
an entity asks for something, maybe go back and kill 20-30 mobs

After openning a gate, they can leave it open or close, people will have their own reasons tha't could be anything:

keep opened: maybe they opened the gate for a client, for friends, for guildies
keep opened: maybe they want to bait people into comming in
close it
do anything you want

Mr_MaDrupalow

Arya_Yeshe wrote: »

That was the idea!
So you gotta run that dungeon in 20 minutes, or someone else can break in

Yeah sry if I repeated it in the first segment xD
Not necessarily, you would just lose the safety feature.

Arya_Yeshe wrote: »

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

I got that, just thought this addition would come in handy as a whole !

Arya_Yeshe wrote: »

Not sure, I think people would set to the maximum almost always, I prefer fixed

I don't know about that, since the loot loss would also scale up...Probably only carebears would do that

Arya_Yeshe wrote: »

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

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 ?

Arya_Yeshe wrote: »

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.

Totally agreeing on that I hate it aswell.

Arya_Yeshe wrote: »

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

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

Arya_Yeshe

@Mr_MaDrupalow yes, if there is a damage cap you will make sure that this door will be bashed in the amount of minutes you are expecing

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

tautau

Don't forget that dungeons and caverns may have multiple entrances. Also, the wiki states that there will be hidden passageways that only Rogues can find:

"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]"

Mr_MaDrupalow

This could lead to a Party(A) thinking there is only one Gate, they think they are safe but suddenly a Party (B) storms into the Bossroom through a shortcut, Party (A) hasn't reached yet. (B) kills the Boss and happily awaiting the still motivated (A). When they realize they have made a fatal mistake in not checking wether there is more than one entrance to this section.

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?

Voeltz

Warhammer Online did have something like this, it was called Tomb of the Vulture Lord. It was an Egyptian themed end game dungeon in a highly contested zone where you needed to complete a public quest (dynamic event) and kill a mini boss for the door to open to get in. The door would stay open for a short time and once it closed players outside would need to do the PQ again to enter.

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.

Arya_Yeshe

tautau wrote: »

Don't forget that dungeons and caverns may have multiple entrances. Also, the wiki states that there will be hidden passageways that only Rogues can find:

"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]"

Nice, this only makes it more interesting

Arya_Yeshe

Mr_MaDrupalow wrote: »

This could lead to a Party(A) thinking there is only one Gate, they think they are safe but suddenly a Party (B) storms into the Bossroom through a shortcut, Party (A) hasn't reached yet. (B) kills the Boss and happily awaiting the still motivated (A). When they realize they have made a fatal mistake in not checking wether there is more than one entrance to this section.

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?

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.

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