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New end game raid suggestion...Tomb of Lords


LordArtemis

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I had a way to take care of hardcore gamers. The Tomb of Lords. I talked about it in Beta.

 

Note, this is a VERY rough outline. I am not a writer. It just gives the general idea.

 

The idea is to have a heroic instance or flashpoint that changes almost every time you enter it. First, just to get there you have to hijack an enemy ship. This takes an entire group, and each member has to do something different on the ship. Unfortunately no matter what you do you will die. The idea is to last as long as you can. You get higher rewards and XP based on the amount of time you survive.

 

At this stage you suffer no damage to your gear. You will die. The point is to last as long as possible. More time on the clock, better XP and rewards for this stage.

 

When you respawn your prisoners on board the enemy ship you tried to hijack. You break out, you have to liberate your gear (fight unarmed and ungeared, grabbing things to use along the way, initial weak weapons will be looted from gaurds).

 

The system treats you like a naked character, but your armor, weapons, bars and specials are all saved. You reach the end of this stage, click on the armory and your prior setup is restored. The game can grant you a temporary UI, like the GSF UI, with a simplified one quickbar setup to use until you are restored. Unarmed abilities can also be used here, the ones that you can unlock in legacy.

 

Once you have your original gear you then have 4 tasks to escape. You have to split up because all 4 have to be done at the same time for it to work. One group takes the bridge, next assaults security to lower the force fields, next group takes the shuttle bay, last group targets the engine room.

 

This stage is not about combat. Combat will likely cause your death. You may have to fight a few small battles, but you have to kill them quickly to avoid getting detected. Your goal is to sneak around and accomplish the tasks at the same time.

 

When all four targets are down, all players rush to the shuttle bay. The ship is crashing, you have 5 minutes to make it to the bay, get on the shuttle, and escape before it crashes. If you don't make it, the mission ends and you get your rewards at that point.

 

This is the entry gate to the second stage of the quest. If you fail the quest ends with rewards to that point.

 

If you do happen to make it, the shuttle is damaged, so you crash land and have to fight your way on foot. That means fighting against and avoiding large groups of troops, mechanized vehicles, etc.

Open world stage here. Mobs patrol the area in vehicles, walkers and on foot. A combination of sneaking, direct assault, etc. will work in this case. Group has to decide on the fly. Positions of mobs change constantly. You have the ability to take control of vehicles, walkers, field cannons, etc to help in the fight along the way.

 

You finally reach the tomb. When you go inside, each section has 4 different areas, 8 sections. Every time you get one area, one section, and the mobs change. Sometimes you fight a single high level mob, other times you fight trash or groups of high level mobs. Sometimes its as simple as a jumping and moving puzzle with traps.

 

Three scenarios for combat if that is what you draw for the third stage....survive until help arrives, seek and destroy and negotiate to survive.

 

This way this mission would change to a new run almost every time you ran it. The mobs would change, scenarios change, etc. This is how end game should have been done, but its not too late to do it now.

 

So, as a run down you have...

 

First stage

Large starship, impossible initial battle, get captured, escape, 4 objectives done at the same time, escape in shuttle (run to shuttle with timer), crash on planet

 

Second stage

Massive battle (use vehicles, walkers mostly to cut down on lag potential), cannons that players can mount along the path to clear it out, 3 or 4 battle encounters before you reach the tomb

 

Third stage

Tomb

Changes almost every time you enter. 8 sections with 4 areas each, objective and map changes, randomly set. Possible missions listed above, including puzzle mission.

 

I also have similar heroic run suggestions for the Jedi Council and Sith Order.

Edited by LordArtemis
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  • 1 month later...

You are targeting hardcore players. I see two issues with this:

 

1) 95% of the population is not hardcore therefore you are catering to a miniscule minority. This is one reason why WoW reduced the number of players required to raid and why they all but removed any sort of progression requirement (attunement as it is called); they wanted to give as many paying players as possible a chance to see all the work the developers did. In SWTOR, BioWare made end-game even more accessible to the masses with an easy "story mode".

 

2) most truly hardcore players would blow through your amazing instance in a week and say, "OK what's next!?!" This is why many MMOs developers have shifted their emphasis to catering to more casual players. Hardcore players will never be satisfied, but for casual players there will always be a "carrot on a stick."

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Good idea. Make everything variable and random. For example the boss doesn't sit in one place waiting for you to walk in, discuss, and set-up; but is actively searching you and can surprise you at any time. And the same for all NPCs. Have more than one hall on the ship, and more than one room in each section- make it more cat-and-mouse using recon, developing strategy and experiencing plan modifications based on the environment. Use the other paths to try to bypass a mob, or to ambush them. If you walk into a room, all mobs react, instead of one group in a corner jumping you while all the others go through their standing around animations. Make running away a very real, and tactically necessary reaction for when you encounter a situation where your group is outgunned/outnumbered.

 

The idea would be to satisfy the hardcore players quest for challenge. The group might have beat the scenario once, but in no way can they rinse and repeat the exact same steps to beat it again. Keep the skill requirement high, but inject more need for luck, and the need for on-the-fly decisions to alter a plan that should have worked but is negated by the AI environment.

 

We'd probably never get away from the trinity of player roles, but make other class attributes desirablefor a situation. Stealth for recon and sneaking mission stuff. Explosives to collapse a path to escape or funnel NPCS into a killbox. Placing mines and tripwires. Slicing to reprogram droids to fight for you, or turn off lights or life support in certain sections to your teams advantage. Force persuasion to possibly overwhelm a NPC to at least temporarily turn on his own team. Capturing a leader to use as a meat shield to gain safe passage. Use a weapon to cut a hole in a wall to go another way.

 

The idea is to make it the opposite of BlackTalon/Eselles, which after the very first time has no challenge and is only just a way to gain LS/DS points and social points.

 

This almost starts to sound like an entirely different game, and probably impossible to code and implement in this game. But it would be fun. It would make a great alternative to grinding- so give out commendations for milestones reached and most definitely generous rewards for mission success.

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Well, many of the suggested mechanics are already in the game. The real question would be if they can have instances generate random combinations of content every time you enter them.

 

This is key, because a changing instance provides a challenge rarely seen in online games.

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A few random thoughts on an idea I really really like:

1: There's the question of random content per instance. This is already done in EV at the puzzle. It's admittedly an extremely minor content change but it's in there.

 

2: It may be simpler from a programming perspective to provide a couple of elevators, each of which is linked to a specific but random scenario at instance creation. Linking to a number of finite scenarios with random elements would be easier to program and provide the same perceived effect.

Edited by tankthing
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A few random thoughts on an idea I really really like:

1: There's the question of random content per instance. This is already done in EV at the puzzle. It's admittedly an extremely minor content change but it's in there.

 

2: It may be simpler from a programming perspective to provide a couple of elevators, each of which is linked to a specific but random scenario at instance creation. Linking to a number of finite scenarios with random elements would be easier to program and provide the same perceived effect.

 

Those are interesting ideas. If you dont mind I will add them to the OP.

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  • 1 month later...
I had a way to take care of hardcore gamers. The Tomb of Lords. I talked about it in Beta.

 

The idea is to have a heroic instance that changes almost every time you enter it. First, just to get there you have to hijack an enemy ship. This takes an entire group, and each member has to do something different on the ship. Unfortunately no matter what you do you will die. The idea is to last as long as you can. You get higher rewards and XP based on the amount of time you survive.

 

When you respawn your prisoners on board the enemy ship you tried to hijack. You break out, you have to liberate your gear (fight unarmed and ungeared, grabbing things to use along the way, initial weak weapons will be looted from gaurds), and once you have your original gear you then have 4 tasks to escape. You have to split up because all 4 have to be done at the same time for it to work. One group takes the bridge, next assaults security to lower the force fields, next group takes the shuttle bay, last group targets the engine room.

 

When all four targets are down, all players rush to the shuttle bay. The ship is crashing, you have 5 minutes to make it to the bay, get on the shuttle, and escape before it crashes. If you don't make it, the mission ends and you get your rewards at that point.

 

If you do happen to make it, the shuttle is damaged, so you crash land and have to fight your way on foot. That means fighting against and avoiding large groups of troops, mechanized vehicles, etc.

 

You finally reach the tomb. When you go inside, each section has 4 different areas, 8 sections. Every time you get one area, one section, and the mobs change. Sometimes you fight a single high level mob, other times you fight trash or groups of high level mobs. Sometimes its as simple as a jumping and moving puzzle with traps.

 

Three scenarios for combat if that is what you draw....survive until help arrives, seek and destroy and negotiate to survive.

 

This way this heroic would change to a new run almost every time you ran it. The mobs would change, scenarios change, etc. This is how end game should have been done, but its not too late to do it now.

 

So, as a run down you have...

 

First stage

Large starship, impossible initial battle, get captured, escape, 4 objectives done at the same time, escape in shuttle (run to shuttle with timer), crash on planet

 

Second stage

Massive battle (use vehicles, walkers mostly to cut down on lag potential), cannons that players can mount along the path to clear it out, 3 or 4 battle encounters before you reach the tomb

 

Third stage

Tomb

Changes almost every time you enter. 8 sections with 4 areas each, objective and map changes, randomly set. Possible missions listed above, including puzzle mission.

 

I also have similar heroic run suggestions for the Jedi Council and Sith Order.

 

BW please have this as something with the Makeb patch. Please. If not, then soon after.

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Well, many of the suggested mechanics are already in the game. The real question would be if they can have instances generate random combinations of content every time you enter them.

 

This is key, because a changing instance provides a challenge rarely seen in online games.

 

Easy fix. Make 50+ different instance (same make-up or diff mobs as you intended) and have THOSE randomly cycle through one another.

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Looks pretty amazing OP. The escape part in particular has me interested, as there are at least some cool abilites they can use even without gear (inquisitors, consulars. etc). Hope BW at least gives this a look.

 

Thanks. I was thinking about what kind of unarmed abilities players could have. I believe that there are some located in legacy that you can purchase.

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  • 4 weeks later...
Amazing, this would either have to be a 16 man ops or an easier part when you split up into groups of four, because you are probably going to have 2 healer/dps pairs, and 2 tank/dps pairs. With the tank/dps pairs holding the highest dps to burn the mobs down. However sadly I think this might be waaaay out of scope for bioware :/ awesome as it would be. Also the story of the ship would have to be like a ship containing the jedi council/ dark council. Because if a group of the finest soldiers the imps/pubs have to offer (I.E. The Emperor's Wrath, Last agent, Professional Ghost Buster...ect) was somehow defeated, they would have to of been hijacking one of the toughest ships to hijack in the galaxy, and orbiting the home world of the opposite faction. And I don't just mean normal foot soldiers defeating them, I mean WAVES of sith/jedi MASTERS that eventually incapacitate you. But the idea itself is solid, good work, and put those ideas to good use in the future!
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  • 2 months later...

Thanks. One thing I was thinking of that was lacking in the game was a true open battle raging between Sith and Jedi in some spot around the galaxy.

 

Would be nice to happen to an area where Sith are charging in, jumping in to battle en mass while Jedi fight them back at every turn. You would need to see at least 20 of each, every time one of them is killed a new one runs in to join the fight.

 

I'm thinking something like the battle in the arena in AOTC.

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  • 3 weeks later...
something this amazing would turn me to pve. I like it

 

I appreciate that. I think it's important to note that many folks rerun flashpoints all the time, and this would be a way to provide a different experience almost every time.

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Artemis is the best guy on this forum: his suggestions are simpy great!! Listen to him, Dev!!

We need dynamic quets!!

 

Thanks, but there are plenty of enterprising individuals with good ideas on the forum. I appreciate the good comments.

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Well, many of the suggested mechanics are already in the game. The real question would be if they can have instances generate random combinations of content every time you enter them.

 

This is key, because a changing instance provides a challenge rarely seen in online games.

 

good concept. i'd like to see it in game. it really goes beyond just kill trash, kill boss and loot kind of raiding. it brings back the rpg element, adventure and survival element from other genre games.

also when you lose gear and get gear back, they can simply put a debuff that says your gear doesn't work etc. then clean the debuf when you find your gear box.

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good concept. i'd like to see it in game. it really goes beyond just kill trash, kill boss and loot kind of raiding. it brings back the rpg element, adventure and survival element from other genre games.

also when you lose gear and get gear back, they can simply put a debuff that says your gear doesn't work etc. then clean the debuf when you find your gear box.

 

That's a good idea...they could even apply an alternate appearance, like the disguise sets in game or the covert armor that would make it appear you are naked (current underwear model of course) but you still have the gear on.

 

They can disable quickbars as well, and just give you a small box with a few melee abilities to fight with. They would change when you grab a weapon over to very limited ranged abilities.

 

The box would disappear when you click on the armory and get your gear back. All prior quickbars would reappear.

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Great idea! I'd love to see this.

 

On a related note, there's actually something I've been wondering for a while; maybe one of you guys knows the answer:

Is there something fundamentally different about MMOs in general or SWTOR specifically that would account for these sorts of things being especially hard to implement? I ask because it seems relatively easy to create this sort of content for single-player games--the hard part seems to be developing the game and the game engine in the first place. I'm especially thinking about something like the Elder Scrolls games, for which you can pretty easily create entire levels using the Creation Kit and Papyrus scripting language. Creating a new boss for people to fight might take all of 20 minutes with the Creation Kit. I'm assuming it can't possibly be that simple for SWTOR, or they'd have done it already. Mostly I'm just wondering why it's not that simple.

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Great idea! I'd love to see this.

 

On a related note, there's actually something I've been wondering for a while; maybe one of you guys knows the answer:

Is there something fundamentally different about MMOs in general or SWTOR specifically that would account for these sorts of things being especially hard to implement? I ask because it seems relatively easy to create this sort of content for single-player games--the hard part seems to be developing the game and the game engine in the first place. I'm especially thinking about something like the Elder Scrolls games, for which you can pretty easily create entire levels using the Creation Kit and Papyrus scripting language. Creating a new boss for people to fight might take all of 20 minutes with the Creation Kit. I'm assuming it can't possibly be that simple for SWTOR, or they'd have done it already. Mostly I'm just wondering why it's not that simple.

 

I really don't have an answer to this, but I think it might have something to do with sticking to a particular design model. Having a raid with static mobs that folks down to engage in the gear slot machine tends to work as intended.

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  • 1 month later...
This is the entry gate to the second stage of the quest. If you fail the quest ends with rewards to that point.

 

I like your ideas but am I reading correctly that if the group dies, they fail the quest and they have to start from the beginning? I believe that would be extremely frustrating for a lot of people. Plus it could potentially be exploited for farming rewards from the first few encounters if there's no lockout.

 

I really love the idea of a non-static operation, where enemies and bosses move around and make the world feel more animated.

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I like your ideas but am I reading correctly that if the group dies, they fail the quest and they have to start from the beginning? I believe that would be extremely frustrating for a lot of people. Plus it could potentially be exploited for farming rewards from the first few encounters if there's no lockout.

 

I really love the idea of a non-static operation, where enemies and bosses move around and make the world feel more animated.

 

I am actually going to rewrite it with some recommended changes from the community, as well as a better focus in the suggestion.

 

Thanks for the kudos :)

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  • 2 months later...

A raid like this is exactly what this game is missing.

 

Raids like this is why the game was hyped so much.

 

Raids like this would have/still would do justice to the old republic brand. Missions like these are part of what made the kotor games so fantastic. It's exactly the approach I expected bioware to take when I first saw the game get announced. Then sadly all I saw/see is wow raids.

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