[Dynamics] Triangular Structures Change - Triad

[Ood]

[deadhorsebeating]
The game is boring.
[/deadhorsebeating]

Yes, here's some more salt.

Idea 5 for removing boring:

This one's a bit more complicated, but could potentially be a huge increase in difficulty, so the conditions are more stringent than previous ideas in this series.

Conditions:

• One of each size (small, medium, large) triangular enemy within 2 enemy spaces (20 grids) of one another
• Once first qualification is met, the effects chain to every triangular structure within 2 spaces of the original 3, and continues chaining until there are no triangular enemies within 2 spaces.

Result:

• Buff the 3 original structures in all stats by some % (large)
• Let minions of all chained structures wander in the chain (only via 'chain' lines)
• Buff all chained structures and minions according to region by some % (less large but still a fair amount)
• Glow to indicate chain?

---

Why/More explanation:

This is a big buff, but would be quite rare (how often does one see a Delta, despoiler and trianguluum in such close proximity?).

If the conditions are confusing:
A - large triangular structure
B - medium
C - small

Conditions are met when:
A > 2 enemy spaces > B > 2 enemy spaces > C > 2 enemy spaces > A

A, B, and C are the 3 original structures. Any additional triangular structures within 2 spaces from A, B, or C are 'chained', any additional triangular structures within 2 spaces from those secondary structures are also chained, and etc.

Think of A B and C as the triangular mafia family, they protect each other and all their close friends.

Adding such a buff would create better 'mini-mini-bosses' found through normal gameplay. Similar to how in build 40s and earlier, drills and deltas were 'mini-bosses'. Now drills and deltas lack the firepower and tactical difficulty to be of any challenge to all but the newest players.

[Justin]

Fortresses only spawn when a player is near it. Not sure how this would work because of that (for larger chains mainly)

[Ood]

Did not think of that, Justin, not sure how well this would work then as many times only one tower is visible past what is cleared.

[Justin]

Jul 12, 2014 17:07:58 GMT -5 Ood said:

Did not think of that, Justin, not sure how well this would work then as many times only one tower is visible past what is cleared.

It's very limiting. This idea reminded me of that aspect of the game.

/slightly-veering-off-topic/

I don't like talking about this games difficulty. Plenty of fortresses are difficult to destroy alone, but easy with a small group. All enemies in the game are easy to destroy in a large group.

I'm not sure if content should be designed with the mindset that if X amount of people are playing, this game will be a wonderful experience, but if less or more are playing then gameplay is affected drastically.

But I'm also not sure if content should be designed (assuming it's possible) to appease solo play and ultra massive train of destruction play.

I'd really like to know the intended audience of this game, if there is one(yet). Small group servers + cross-server market? One giant world map, with hopes that players will diverge into squadrons or small groups when no super-rewarding-events are occurring, and converging when super-rewarding-events do spawn?

/now-a-tangent/

The reason I find it hard to test the game anymore may not be the same as yours or anyone elses.

I stopped feeling the excitement I once had playing this game after I unlocked all the tanks.

There's no 'reward' for doing anything once you've unlocked all the tanks. There's no reason to do anything, besides setting goals for yourself and reward being completing your own task, and I don't know what direction Rob could lead this game to change that. Long ago, it wasn't something I'd say needed to be changed, because of how long it actually took to unlock all the tanks. However, the current inflation of items in the game greatly reduced the amount of time it took to unlock tanks.

I'd be more excited for squadron related content if I had friends, but that's not an issue globally faced by the grid12 playerbase afaik so I'll assume my thoughts would be invalid. I do have a ton of squadron (or just team) PvP thoughts for this game, but I'm hesitant to mention them because (like most ideas I have had) I end up typing new ideas on the spot and then end up with a great mass of confusion.

/now-back-to-topic/

Although this idea exactly how you've described it is not possible in the game, maybe future fortresses/bosses can behave in a similar way.

The butcher, although universally hated by players, IS a good addition to the game. It creates fear. I love being chased by a shot that can crush my shields and destroy 50% of my hull. It's a wake up call that tells me to pay more attention. Some increase in visuals to make the missiles more threatening is probably needed though.

I despise the bee-tower that I don't know the actual name of. But it's also awakening to encounter one if you're unprepared.

You've already hit the nail on the head with your ideas of using fortress-minions as a way of creating interaction between fortresses. I'd be fond of a zerg rush tower that launches very weak enemies directly to players, that behave similar to the 'bees' of the 'bee tower' (really sorry for not knowing the right name). But, moments after typing this, I realize that's already what the nova does. Maybe changing nova-minion behavior slightly to be much more annoying at other fortresses as well as the nova itself would be fun? Or extremely annoying. What's the difference, really?

edit: Not too sure about buffs, and I'm not too sure about the affect of the orange to pink debuff we can do to fortresses. Yes it does make the content harder and add randomness to the great repetition of grid12 fortress generation (the buffs, not the debuff I mentioned), but I think it would lead to shields being irrelevant on all tanks and the destruction of the towers affected by the buff relying on plain old large-group-damage-distribution-tanking.

[Ood]

Some good thoughts there, Justin.

With regards to difficulty.

Yes, some things I suppose are difficult in some tanks, especially when solo. But, if a player is patient and smart enough, all content CAN be soloed given a sufficient amount of time (with the exception of region bosses, since they are timed).

Most of my ideas (whether they accomplish it or not) are trying to shift the focus of the game from being the most dpsing tank you can to tank placement and even more-so towards introducing some sort of secondary layer of tactics to structure killing.

The buff described above would be a considerably large buff (if possible), but would easily be broken by sniping the trianguluum sitting next to the other two tri-towers.
The GCT buff I proposed would be pesky for sure, but would be mitigated by eliminating the GCT first (unless there's multiple, muhahaha).
Having the two in combination would let the player decide which is more dangerous, and act accordingly.

As of now, it doesn't really matter if you kill A B C D ... Z first, second, or last. Each tower is an individual unit, and has nothing to do with any of the others.

I hate to bring it up, but think of RotMG god-land tactics (particularly when not maxed out). Medusa - circle it. Tree - side to side. Ghost - in between bullets. Medusa+Tree+Ghost - you have to make a decision on what to do.
The decision is what makes it appealing. Grid12 has no decision, it has 1 single easiest way to do all structures. That is why this game is boring and everyone is losing interest after unlocking everything. Also, in Grid, everything is stationary. There's no chase, there's no 'oh-shit-I'm-backing-into-a-godwall' moment, if you get in trouble just drive sdrawkcab. The decisions you have to make here are very, very limited.