Endgame Possibilities

[randomg]

So right now...aside from Manifest Destiny, I have no idea why I'm killing this stuff. I can assume the enemy tanks are attacking us because we're constantly messing with them and destroying their stuff.

So...to put the game in perspective, we're basically invaders trying to carve out a swath of land. Maybe the game behavior could reflect this?

What if, at 5 regions conquered, the 'endgame' starts, because the natives have finally realized we're here, we're serious about taking the land, and we're competent enough to do some serious damage? The 'game' starts from nothing - what if it ended as nothing as well?

At 5 regions, bonuses could become global, or...something. Enemy fortresses would start to regenerate, possibly procedurally. Every once in a while, a fortress would spawn back. The regen speed would be based on how many fortresses surround a point, and what kind they were.

This would cause towns to be cut off from Origin again, and at this point they would not be teleportable, but still visible. Reopening the path would make it a teleportable point again. This would emphasize maintaining wide open lanes to keep your bonuses going.

Once a base was separated from Origin, monsters would begin to attack it, so keeping the base safe would be very important.

Enemy bases could potentially upgrade as well as rebuild, so areas thick with bases would be considerably harder to cut through. Neglecting an area would mean it was lost potentially forever.

Once all other towns are destroyed, tanks would start moving in on Origin. When Origin is lost, the game resets.

The longer the game lasts, the more aggressive enemies would respawn and upgrade, agitated by the invaders, until eventually we were all pushed out.

To prevent turtling, the game could also spawn an 'escape point'. Pushing to the escape point would allow for some kind of endgame bonus to be granted if it's achieved. Realizing we screwed up and getting out instead of staying in and defending.

As the endgame goes on and the enemies upgrade, that point could get closer and closer(as it would be harder to get to). This would b something for everyone on IRC to rally around or something.

Just a thought I had, would LOVE additions or criticisms

EDIT: Odin brought up that fact that one person could trigger this and ruin all of the work of a bunch of players. Solution: once five regions are conquered, Endgame starts when X people are on next - possibly 5 to 10 at the same time?

[Jufda]

Are we the last survivors of the original habitants of the area? Maybe we are just trying to conquer our land back from the invaders.

Endgame after five regions are conquered sounds great. Enemy armada and smaller enemies could spawn and attack our regions' outskirts trying to conquer their towns back. I like the original-sounding idea of ending the game to total destruction of our own side.

Bonuses don't necessarily need to change to global, only if the new enemies are too overpowered to defend against. Maybe add some bonuses or faster regeneration when playing on town area. Some buildings that shoot the enemies could be great addition. As well as craftable offensive crystals.

Origin could be like the home of native people from The Matrix. The place where the machines attack in the third movie. There could also be enemy headquarters somewhere far away from origin. Heavy fortress of some sort with great enemy leader in it.

Cutting paths off is a bit weird idea, enemy lines between the teleportation points don't matter. It's teleportation, not train.

Enemies growing stronger and more aggressive is necessary if we want the game to end at some point as our loss. There could be some kind of highscore list of how long did the tanks last and who the players at the time were.

[randomg]

Jufda

Like that scenario a LOT more. The idea of trying to fight back and kill an enemy commander/leader is really neat.

Maybe once someone gets to the enemy base, it sends base production and aggression into overdrive? That would make preparation and staging close to the enemy fortress important.

Spawning the enemy base in a random spot as soon as we get to 5/5 would also encourage heavy expansion in various directions instead of super-building bases in the early game. THat eliminates the need for the bonuses - the idea was to provide motivation to protect bases BESIDES the Origin, but your idea of a fortress fixes that.

The reason for the supply lines was that I'd like to see the overall geography morph from a spread out grid to a true supply chain to the enemy fortress. We would need players guarding that supply chain nad players pushing forward.

Awesome awesome suggestions.

[amitp]

Great to see discussion of endgame possibilities. I think Rob needs more players, and then he'll be able to experiment with this. First priority is making combat fun; second to make leveling/building interesting. Endgame seems like it's going to take a lot of experimentation, given that it happens less frequently and is thus harder to iterate/test.

[shatov]

Jufda and randomg

I was thinking about this all last night, and had a similar idea to this. I wrote something up that I was planning to make as a thread, so anyhow, I'll drop it here as this is exactly what it pertains to.

Here is the write up I had going:

Currently, when you complete a map by clearing five regions, you are awarded with all of the VP you have on reserve. I see this as pretty strong motivation for completing a map, but I still feel like something is missing: A final encounter of some sort.

This would give the player more of a feeling of victory, something extra to look forward to, sort of an end-game component. Two RPG games come to mind when I think of a final encounter: Realm and Arkham Horror (board game). In Realm, as most of you know, when you finish a realm you are sent to the Oryx encounter, where the players have a chance to earn loot that is otherwise difficult or impossible to obtain in the realm itself (examples: exalted rings, old tops). This provides both the end-game victory component to defeating a realm and gives the players a way to improve characters that is otherwise hard to do without facing the encounter. In Arkham Horror, players cooperatively build up their characters and each other and try to complete certain in-game objectives. If these are not completed, the players must figth The Ancient One, which is basically the final boss encounter that the entire game leads up to. While on the board, players build up their characters with the main intent of either finishing the in-game objectives or to defeat The Ancient One. These are the basis of my suggested final encounters for Grid12.

I have two basic ideas of how the encounter could work:

1) After completing a map, players are sent to a (very difficult) final encounter in which players either:
a) (like Realm) Have a chance to obtian loot from victory to improve their characters in a way that they can't in the maps.
b) (like AH) Have some sort of high score system with an extremely difficult final boss (nearly impossible to defeat). All the players involved who survive could get a multiplier applied to the VP they earned from that map, this way the extra motivation for loot/character improvement is still there without a need for new and unique loot types.
In either case, the encounter should be more challenging for a group of players than anything in a map, with a high chance of killing players who choose to stay online and fight it.

2) Instead of sending the players to an encounter, there could be a "zerg rush" mixed with waves of enemies sort of end encounter. My idea here is that all of these regions we have cleared and towns we have built, well it feels like they go to waste if they are simply reset once we finish clearing them. So in this encounter, players would stay on the map, and hoards of enemies (/enemy spawners) would spawn within a town. This could happen in waves, with each wave getting much more difficult than the last, with nearly exponential rise. Then, once all the players have been defeated, whichever final wave they got to could be used as a high score mark. As a loot reward for fighting these waves, players can get a multiple of their VP from the map equal to the wave number they survived to (examples: If a player survived to wave 3, he could get 3x his reserve VP from the map when it converts. If this is too OP, then it could be something like that player would get 1.3x instead of 3x.)

Of my two end-game ideas above, I think (2) is most similar to that in which Jufda has mentioned, and I think having increasing difficulty enemies until everyone is bound to die is a great idea. Then, there could be a high score list, as you guys mentioned.

[hypevosa]

I've been spending around 6 hours coming up with an end game. I'll post it soon.

[hypevosa]

Quoth the Rob: "We mean for Grid 12 to be a game in which all players work together to defeat the enemies that have taken over the world."

So we're not the invaders, they are. We stand as the last bastion against the invading force and are attempting to reclaim OUR world, so the idea of just being forced to escape is kinda lame since it never lets the player feel like they've actually won - it's hard for alot of people to enjoy games where you never actually win (at least in realm you actually get to kill Oryx, ya know?)

I've always assumed that 5 regions conquered was just the number meant for our super small alpha testing group - I doubt end game will ever be claiming the whole map, but I suspect that once we have more than 30 people on at any given time, we'll up the regions conquered requirement to at least 20 or so.

While I like the newness of the idea of us just being hunted down to the last survivor, I can't see it being a viable endgame. Everyone will just spawn a pegasus or another healing character right before endgame and suddenly, no one can die because everyone is constantly healing one another - or you screw them over with enemies that essentially one hit you and that's just being hostile towards your own players' ingenuity (which gets old really, really fast). So it's either let your players break your intended endgame, or you break your endgame. This is still a problem with the idea of having an escape route too.

HOWEVER - we can fuse both this idea and the "traditional" endgame (kick badguy ass) together. Instead of JUST trying to survive, what we should do is make it so we also have to exert some sort of offensive as well.

If we can, I would also like the end game to have some sort of rhyme or reason to it.

The first question to answer: Why do we need to conquer X number of regions?

Proposed answer: Origin is a sort of power source, hence why sockets must first be able to connect to it before they can be upgraded, and is also a cleansing force, which is why enemies don't reclaim space instantly in the absence of players. However, it also feeds off the energy of the grid, much like our invading friends do. Origin has the capacity to clear the grid entirely of the invading force, but it must first reach a critical mass of energy before being able to do so, or requires enough grid over which to release said energy, and thus, the required number of regions X represents that amount.

END GAME PROPOSAL

Upon reaching X regions conquered and having at least one player per region's city online:

Faint green type along left side where grid shards and victory points were once displayed:
"Minimum connection requirement reached. Uploading batch files to grid..."

The regions that have been reclaimed have their tiles begin pulsing gently, all their towns being gradually upgraded facility by facility until they're all level 10 with full facilities, including origin itself. Facilities turn white and begin pulsating in the same fashion as the grid itself, they are now known as "Cleansing Capacitor"s and provide no debuffs to enemies.

"WARNING" (Blinks in and out on the player screen 2 times)
"Massive Viral influx detected - initiating emergency recall..."

Players are teleported to the nearest town in a conquered region.

"Initiating Astrea_Protocol.Exe...."

A loading bar appears in the top center of the screen. This is essentially a timer to the end of the game. The more towns there are in conquered regions (i.e. the more cleansing capacitors there are) the faster the load time. The enemy begins assaulting all the towns in conquered regions at random, the system giving a warning when a capacitor has been destroyed and the town name. The enemy is attacking with viral versions of our tanks - the more cleansing capacitors they destroy, the longer the load time becomes. If they destroy every town in a region:

"Astrea_Protocol.Exe failed. Deposit 100,000 gridshards to initiate reset."

Origin continues to come under attack during this time frame, as we've already given up the ghost. If at any point Origin succumbs, we lose the game entirely. On initiating a reset, Origin lets out a pulse clearing enemies around itself and the towns, and rebuilds the towns to start the next attempt and begins the cycle again. When the loading bar is full:

"Astrea_Protocol.Exe Successful. "

Seemingly explodes with white energy enemies are instantly slain leaving players to collect universal loot before about 10 seconds pass.

(about 2 seconds pass between messages)
Purple text "^_^"
Red text "H3ll0"
"Warning: Multiple intrusions detected ... Tracing"
Purple text "(-_- "
Red text "O0ps..."
Yellow text "Incompetent..."
"#!(#&!*@@//// Sockets disconnected from teleportation matrix."
Purple text "^____^"
Red Text "N1c3"
"Warning: Intrusions detected near socket (insert town name)"
Purple text "T-T"
Red text "..."
"Tracing Successful: Opening connection"
Purple text "(╯°□°）╯︵ ┻━┻)"
Red Text "7h1s 1s b4d."
Yellow text "I'll stall the connection, you idiots slow them down."
Purple text ""
Red Text "D0n3"
"Warning: Network corruptions detected"

Players now have 5 minutes to make it to the town named by the system. You can't teleport to towns, so dying on your way there means starting back at origin. You can still teleport to other players though. Each player now has a black watchtower square following them at all times that will purposefully move to get in the way at random times (detects speed and direction, deviance of up to one square any direction, 2-5 second). (red does this) making traveling in one giant group less effective. Around the town will spawn a () emoticon face made of wavy blue/purple walls that heal one another and fire rockets, with the town in the mouth (yellow does this) making teamwork important to get through since you have to overcome the healing capacity and 3 walls must be breached to get to the town.

30 seconds before completion:
"Connection Established"

The town's socket turns into a portal for players to enter.

Purple text "There it is..."
"Global backup restore initiated."

Any players who did not enter the portal in the town are now back in a completely reinfected grid.

Down into the rabbit hole we go.

The tiles everywhere are the purple infection tiles. There is a large triangular enemy to the north (yellow), a mobile square enemy (red) to the west, and a grouping of circular enemies making a face to the east.

The triangular enemy is stationary but rotates slowly, it fires a 2 square wide penetrating laser at a randomly selected target every 5 seconds - the laser has a range of 30 squares. If circle or square are defeated, all 3 corners will begin to shoot the laser, and it will no longer select targets, but spin and fire at random (1-5 second intervals). On defeat yellow text: "Well played, but I can wait." The triangle turns grey and does not move.

The square enemy looks like a giant treaded tank from overhead, and has a large number of rockets and missiles that fire from any side, it travels at a speed of 3 squares per second, and will move towards healing tanks, if none are around it will patrol in a square path around triangle. If circle or Triangle are dead, it will release corruption squares around itself like a watch tower. On defeat red text "E4t 7h1s!!1!" 3 seconds later it erupts into a massive corruption square 3 squares wider than the tank was.

The circular enemy is 15 purple circles that fly around in formation near red or yellow, whoever has least health, randomly changing what emoticon it is and healing the target; if the triangle or square are defeated it will intermittently it will change into a very angry face D:< become stationary and each sphere will discharge lightning at a nearby target. Odd spheres out of formation will just orbit the center of the formation. Once only 5 circles are left it makes a sad face purple text: "Bunksy has disconnected" and the spheres just disappear (defeat)

Once all 3 are defeated:
"Initiating Astrea_Remote_Protocol.exe"

Players' tanks turn white and begin pulsating.

"Astrea_Remote_Protocol.exe Successful."

Players explode, purifying the infected tiles.

Rewards: Each boss on defeat will drop a special lense; a yellow triangle, a red square, or a purple circle, you can pick it up and for every lense you carry (up to 4) you do an extra x% damage to, and receive x% less damage from that enemy type (triangle, circle, square; X being 2,5,8, or 10% depending on intensity of color). Getting 5 of the same lense type at fullest intensity will give 1,000,000 grid shards, the rest of the rewards scaling down from there.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

How do you like it?

[tarbomb]

A few thoughts.

Endgame should be:

• Inevitable: or close to it. Endgame should come naturally as a consequence of normal gameplay, rather than being forced. Take Realm, for example. Do people close a realm primarily because they want to go to Oryx? No (well, unless it's a WC). They close it because it's a natural consequence of killing the "best" (highest loot, most exp, quest pointer points to it) in the realm. The endgame in Grid similarly shouldn't be forced; I feel that the "region" mechanic doesn't work in this respect since the only incentive to clear a realm is to end the game (the 2k VP bonus isn't really much once it's split up, especially compared to how much VP you're going to get killing monsters normally anyway). I'd prefer a more loose "area" system, with the main benefit of clearing an entire region being taking advantage of facilities.
  
  
• Satisfying: you have to make it so players want to end the game. Resetting the map is not satisfying, since you lose all your facility buffs.
  
  
• Special Tying into the first point, endgame should be special. Oh, I got 500k gridshards for killing the endgame boss? Meh, at least I didn't have to go through the grind. I got an special module or upgrade I can't get anywhere else? Now that's worth it!
  
  
• Natural: endgame should feel like a natural progression of the game, both in terms of how it is reached and in terms of how it is conducted. Just as Oryx is another boss fight rather than another minigame, endgame in grid12 should also feel like a natural extension of the game.
  

I'm not going to discuss inevitability right now since that's a function of how endgame is reached, rather than endgame itself.

Hypevosa's idea addresses satisfying and special all right. But is it natural? I'm not sure. Part of the beauty of grid is that time isn't really a part of it; you can play as slowly or quickly as you like. The primary goals are killing enemies and constructing. By making the game into a race, it essentially adds a slightly incongruous minigame to the game itself.

So, how about this? Get rid of the "race to town" part. Keep the viral tanks and the idea of grid being part of a recursive larger structure, but this time the viral tanks are the ones entering the portal, fleeing from you. They drop tons of good loot, so it's in your interest to destroy as many of them as you can. After they've entered the portal they put heavy defenses, essentially identical to what Hype proposed in his post. You destroy them, and you've cleared the grid of enemies!...

... except your job isn't done. The viral tanks have fled into the subgrid. So you follow them to prevent them from coming back. There's a G.R.U. in the portal world sitting on top of sub-origin, which you have to kill. Once killed, the GRU explodes, and the blast destroys the return portal to the supergrid. So you're trapped inside a brand-new grid, crawling with the enemies you just banished moments ago. And you have to wipe them all out. Again.

And a new game has begun.

[tay]

The one problem I currently see is that it takes quite some time to clear however many respected regions are set as the requirement for endgame content. I really like the idea of having the "big boss" to kill because it gives you someone to actually go after and grants the feeling of success that shatov was talking about.

If there was some way to set it up where endgame was a 1-per-day rather than what I would forsee as 1-a-week I think the average players would enjoy it more as well as the die-hards for the chance to at some point in the night have that feeling of victory. This would also ensure that people would be committed to longer playing times if they know they can complete the goal in 1 night of teamwork instead of being off for a day and coming back to a new grid when you worked on the last one for a week.

Just a thought to keep the casual player interested which will help the money flow a bit better while still serving the purposes of allowing people to get that die-hard attraction.

[hypevosa]

Mar 15, 2013 22:45:31 GMT -5 tarbomb said:

A few thoughts.

Endgame should be:

• Inevitable: or close to it. Endgame should come naturally as a consequence of normal gameplay, rather than being forced. Take Realm, for example. Do people close a realm primarily because they want to go to Oryx? No (well, unless it's a WC). They close it because it's a natural consequence of killing the "best" (highest loot, most exp, quest pointer points to it) in the realm. The endgame in Grid similarly shouldn't be forced; I feel that the "region" mechanic doesn't work in this respect since the only incentive to clear a realm is to end the game (the 2k VP bonus isn't really much once it's split up, especially compared to how much VP you're going to get killing monsters normally anyway). I'd prefer a more loose "area" system, with the main benefit of clearing an entire region being taking advantage of facilities.
  
  
• Satisfying: you have to make it so players want to end the game. Resetting the map is not satisfying, since you lose all your facility buffs.
  
  
• Special Tying into the first point, endgame should be special. Oh, I got 500k gridshards for killing the endgame boss? Meh, at least I didn't have to go through the grind. I got an special module or upgrade I can't get anywhere else? Now that's worth it!
  
  
• Natural: endgame should feel like a natural progression of the game, both in terms of how it is reached and in terms of how it is conducted. Just as Oryx is another boss fight rather than another minigame, endgame in grid12 should also feel like a natural extension of the game.
  

I'm not going to discuss inevitability right now since that's a function of how endgame is reached, rather than endgame itself.

Hypevosa's idea addresses satisfying and special all right. But is it natural? I'm not sure. Part of the beauty of grid is that time isn't really a part of it; you can play as slowly or quickly as you like. The primary goals are killing enemies and constructing. By making the game into a race, it essentially adds a slightly incongruous minigame to the game itself.

So, how about this? Get rid of the "race to town" part. Keep the viral tanks and the idea of grid being part of a recursive larger structure, but this time the viral tanks are the ones entering the portal, fleeing from you. They drop tons of good loot, so it's in your interest to destroy as many of them as you can. After they've entered the portal they put heavy defenses, essentially identical to what Hype proposed in his post. You destroy them, and you've cleared the grid of enemies!...

... except your job isn't done. The viral tanks have fled into the subgrid. So you follow them to prevent them from coming back. There's a G.R.U. in the portal world sitting on top of sub-origin, which you have to kill. Once killed, the GRU explodes, and the blast destroys the return portal to the supergrid. So you're trapped inside a brand-new grid, crawling with the enemies you just banished moments ago. And you have to wipe them all out. Again.

And a new game has begun.

I have the "race" portion as part of my ending not because I wanted a "race" so much as I wanted a "display your skills" section. It:

1. Shows a player's solo skills (mobility while attempting to get to the town and not get killed while penetrating it)
2. Shows a player's cooperative skills (working together to penetrate the fortress)
3. Show's a player's combined solo and cooperative skills (working together to kill the bosses will require both high mobility skill and coordinated teamwork)

I didn't want getting to the end game to just happen, because to me that's not as satisfying, I wanted getting to the end game to also feel like it was earned rather than something literally thrust upon you. The addition of the castle in ROTMG for example, made you feel more like you earned getting to Oryx, and was a positive addition since it added to player accomplishment. If you get there and if you beat it, you freaking earned it, unlike in realm where you can really just sit back and let everyone else do the work after a point. This is why there's a watchtower square chasing you, and this is why the bosses don't all just target the nearest character to them.

While I enjoy your Ouroboros eating it's tail, it still feels less like I've won, so much as I've just been fucked instead. However, that ending could easily occur in my endgame as well, once you've been used to remotely cleanse part of the grid - an origin socket could appear alluding to the fact that we just continue chasing this threat through more and more grids.

The question is do we want that feeling of "HA! I WON!" or "Ooooo I see what you did there... that's clever..." when we choose between genuine victory or the continuing struggle. Do we want players pumping their arms in victory, or do we want them hand on chin eyebrowing the screen with a grin.

[amitp]

I don't feel it's inevitable, satisfying, or natural for one reason: the enemy has infinite territory and we have just a few regions. That doesn't feel like “winning” to me. It seems rather artificial.

If the map were finite, and we had to conquer the whole thing, then

1. victory would feel inevitable — conquering everything is a natural result of conquering
2. victory would feel satisfying — we actually retook the world and drove them away, woot
3. victory would feel natural — of course the game would end when we conquer everything

At the same time, conquering the last bit of the world needs to be challenging; it'd be empty if it were mere conquering of territory. The last battle needs to be tough. Unfortunately I don't know how to make this work. If the last battle is tough, and the world is finite, then what do new players to an old world do? What if we need 20 people to fight in a group for the final battle, and there aren't that many players on?

[hypevosa]

Mar 17, 2013 0:11:19 GMT -5 amitp said:

I don't feel it's inevitable, satisfying, or natural for one reason: the enemy has infinite territory and we have just a few regions. That doesn't feel like “winning” to me. It seems rather artificial.

If the map were finite, and we had to conquer the whole thing, then

1. victory would feel inevitable — conquering everything is a natural result of conquering
2. victory would feel satisfying — we actually retook the world and drove them away, woot
3. victory would feel natural — of course the game would end when we conquer everything

At the same time, conquering the last bit of the world needs to be challenging; it'd be empty if it were mere conquering of territory. The last battle needs to be tough. Unfortunately I don't know how to make this work. If the last battle is tough, and the world is finite, then what do new players to an old world do? What if we need 20 people to fight in a group for the final battle, and there aren't that many players on?

I don't think actually conquering every bit of the map would feel fun at all though, it would feel like 100% grindfest or it would feel too short if the world wasn't big enough.

This is supposed to be a game for players, not a job.

[tay]

Mar 17, 2013 0:11:19 GMT -5 amitp said:

Unfortunately I don't know how to make this work. If the last battle is tough, and the world is finite, then what do new players to an old world do? What if we need 20 people to fight in a group for the final battle, and there aren't that many players on?

I would assume that you could set a scale of difficulty for the boss depending on how many people are fighting it. Maybe have a minimum limit to make players want to fight it as a group and then scale it up if there are 20+ fighting it. This would make it a challenge no matter what.

[rob]

Bump!

The enemy forces took over Grid12, all except the little nub of Origin. It's our job to get it back.

Since the map is effectively infinite*, we can't ask people to kill everything. But there are plenty of other victory conditions we can explore. Right now it's the dead simple "clear 5 regions" rule. But I want to try some others, and you guys have made some great suggestions.

The suggestions I like the best involve the players being proactive about making progress toward the goal. I don't anticipate a problem with coming up with an explanation or "lore" for whatever victory conditions get chosen. For example, if there are 4 specific regions we need to conquer, they can be the ones holding the "crystal matrix resonance dampers" or whatever it is that allows the enemies to be in Grid 12. It's like the small thermal exhaust port that allows Luke to blow up the Death Star.

I'd prefer to avoid having the enemies take land back; "once you kill it, it stays dead" is something I like a lot. I'd also prefer to avoid enemies attacking player towns; the reason for this is that players do many things in the game at their own pace, and having to drop what you are doing to go defend towns is a pain in the neck. I've tried "oh no, drop everything and defend our town now" before in Steel Chaos, and I didn't like it.

Having a big encounter at the end might work, but I think it ought to be optional. Perhaps a portal can open up, which leads to the big Oryx-like boss fight. Those that don't want to fight can just go to the next map (Grid 12, sector 37B58).








*Tim and I were just calculating the theoretical size of the world based on our coordinates. The x and y of everything is in decipixels (dpx) at default zoom. Each little tile is 1000 dpx or 100 pixels wide. There are 10 tiles between fortresses, and 30 fortresses across a region. So there are 300,000 dpx in a region. The coordinates are signed 32-bit ints, giving 2^^31 dpx as the maximum coordinate. So we can have 7158 regions or so on either side of Origin.

[hypevosa]

Apr 3, 2013 11:11:01 GMT -5 rob said:

For example, if there are 4 specific regions we need to conquer, they can be the ones holding the "crystal matrix resonance dampers" or whatever it is that allows the enemies to be in Grid 12. It's like the small thermal exhaust port that allows Luke to blow up the Death Star.

So these are essentially their own cities? How would we determine where these are placed? Having a region required to be conquered be in the very corner of our infinite map would be quite maddening. Making the map technically infinite seems a little purposeless though if there's no reason to want to explore as far out as you can beyond these desired captures.

I could dig the idea of taking back specific sockets instead of conquering 5 regions. Honestly I was kinda hoping we could randomize how we win the game each time a bit or having multiple possible endings. Having multiple ways of ending the game that diversify player goals makes things more fun.

Apr 3, 2013 11:11:01 GMT -5 rob said:

I'd prefer to avoid having the enemies take land back; "once you kill it, it stays dead" is something I like a lot. I'd also prefer to avoid enemies attacking player towns; the reason for this is that players do many things in the game at their own pace, and having to drop what you are doing to go defend towns is a pain in the neck. I've tried "oh no, drop everything and defend our town now" before in Steel Chaos, and I didn't like it.

I'm not familiar with Steel Chaos?

The reason I like the idea of having the enemy push back is so there's something actually threatening player progression. In ROTMG it worked because when you eventually did die you lost EVERYTHING. There was always that sense of tension, where at points I could feel my heart pounding in my chest, that drove me to keep playing. Here, unless we really up the penalty for dying alot, I don't ever expect to feel any sort of tension, because nothing is ever really lost but a fraction of a percentage of a stat. Ya know? But if you threaten to take away towns, regions, things that players really want to keep and don't want to lose at all, you can introduce that kind of adrenaline rush.

One of the reasons I suggest only having any such events occur when X number of players are on is so that players who want to can continue doing whatever they were doing without being bothered can do so, and those who want to interfere can interfere. It would suck to be one of only a few players on when a G.R.U. dropped, but when we actually have 30+ people on a regular basis, I don't think it would be a problem. (you will always have varying percentages of grind focus and skill focus players if you allow for both)

Apr 3, 2013 11:11:01 GMT -5 rob said:

Having a big encounter at the end might work, but I think it ought to be optional. Perhaps a portal can open up, which leads to the big Oryx-like boss fight. Those that don't want to fight can just go to the next map (Grid 12, sector 37B58).

*Tim and I were just calculating the theoretical size of the world based on our coordinates. The x and y of everything is in decipixels (dpx) at default zoom. Each little tile is 1000 dpx or 100 pixels wide. There are 10 tiles between fortresses, and 30 fortresses across a region. So there are 300,000 dpx in a region. The coordinates are signed 32-bit ints, giving 2^^31 dpx as the maximum coordinate. So we can have 7158 regions or so on either side of Origin.

I agree with the optional encounter that people can ignore if they're focused on other objectives.

Given your proposal of what players skip to (Grid 12, sector 37B58) couldn't we theoretically take over the whole map, just shifting the point of origin to new coordinates? Maybe reaching the end would clear the 500 (or whatever) local regions, and, eventually, we could actually conquer the entire grid (after 15 "wins"). Victory points still produced at every win, but maybe having some extra end game material for when a whole grid is conquered?