Survival Missions

[Darkneblade]

While it is not particularly needed it can be fun with 8 people or with friends.Lets say you go in building enemies come to you for 5 minutes wherever you are.Additional enemies may come depending on player count.Or enemies get additional buffs if it is hard to implement.When 5 minutes timer up , There will be AV coming you need to defeat in order to continue.Respawn mechanics doesnt work there so everyone has to die to fail mission.Or you can respawn but you exit mission as well as team too.After AV defeat you can choose to continue for stronger mobs and stronger AV possible multiple AV's.Everyone has to same level or close to prevent farming.

Edited November 6, 2019 by Darkneblade

[DougGraves]

so zombie invasions as instanced missions?

[Moka]

24 minutes ago, Darkneblade said:

While it is not particularly needed it can be fun with 8 people or with friends.Lets say you go in building enemies come to you for 5 minutes wherever you are.Additional enemies may come depending on player count.Or enemies get additional buffs if it is hard to implement.When 5 minutes timer up , There will be AV coming you need to defeat in order to continue.Respawn mechanics doesnt work there so everyone has to die to fail mission.Or you can respawn but you exit mission as well as team too.After AV defeat you can choose to continue for stronger mobs and stronger AV possible multiple AV's.Everyone has to same level or close to prevent farming.

Sounds like Warframe's survival missions. This would be very fun.

[Darkneblade]

1 hour ago, DougGraves said:

so zombie invasions as instanced missions?

Yeah but different enemies.

[0th Power]

I like it, sounds fun

[Call Me Awesome]

We used to do this in AE with Ambush farms, you enter a room and trip 10, 20, 100 ambushes all at once.  I used to make good coin with my BS/SD scrapper doing that solo.  Trip the ambush, then stay there and rack up several hundred kills in 10-20 minutes then rinse and repeat.  Ambushes would continue to swarm until they're all gone and they'd come to you even when you were over the aggro cap, you just wouldn't have more than 17 actually attacking at once.

 

You just needed very high defenses and mobs you were strong against.  Those went by the wayside at some point in the roller coaster ride of the admittedly somewhat poorly thought out Architect system.  It used to be completely possible to enter at level 1 and leave a couple hours later at level 50.  Unfortunately we had an influx of new players at that time who ended up with instant 50's who had never left Atlas Park and though AE was the entire game.   It wasn't a good time in game with so many "AE Babies" running around with no clue how to play, or do anything but sit by the door and rake in XP.

[Darkneblade]

Well you can set it so only same levels able to enter and requires level 35+ 

Ex: Level 50 and level 35 enters mission but mobs all are level 50 so level 35 guy dies more quickly but it cannot rack exp while dead.Only for living.

[MunkiLord]

I LOVE this idea! Every round the enemy gets buffed a bit more until it's eventually impossible. Have different combos of enemies you can select, leader boards for survival time/rounds, leader boards for clearing X waves in the fastest time. I'm all for it. I need this yesterday.

[Broken_Prey]

Yes please! Always looking for a challenges.

[Shadowsleuth]

3 minutes ago, MunkiLord said:

I LOVE this idea! Every round the enemy gets buffed a bit more until it's eventually impossible. Have different combos of enemies you can select, leader boards for survival time/rounds, leader boards for clearing X waves in the fastest time. I'm all for it. I need this yesterday.

It would be great if there was also an option to set up a tower defense style playstyle (obstructions you can erect between waves to slow the enemy or funnel them into a killzone, or turrets/drones and/or minefields to help you take them out), then the player could choose whether they want to use the tower defense help or take the enemy with just their powerset powers only.

[Broken_Prey]

2 minutes ago, Shadowsleuth said:

It would be great if there was also an option to set up a tower defense style playstyle (obstructions you can erect between waves to slow the enemy or funnel them into a killzone, or turrets/drones and/or minefields to help you take them out), then the player could choose whether they want to use the tower defense help or take the enemy with just their powerset powers only.

This would be awesome and so much fun. 

 

Only problem with this is I wouldn't want to play anything else in the game. 

[Shazbotacus]

I like it. Huh, what if hosping put the player in a cell with a regenerated door?

[MunkiLord]

Just popping in again to restate that I love this suggestion. It has now become what I want the most.

[Call Me Awesome]

It WOULD stress the server quite a lot, that's one of the reasons that the Dev's killed the ambush farms.  I'm sure the new 64 bit client would help reduce that however.

[MunkiLord]

26 minutes ago, Call Me Awesome said:

It WOULD stress the server quite a lot, that's one of the reasons that the Dev's killed the ambush farms.  I'm sure the new 64 bit client would help reduce that however.

This is a good and valid point. But counterpoint, I want it!!!!! That's not a good counterpoint, but still. 

[GM Sijin]

25 minutes ago, Call Me Awesome said:

It WOULD stress the server quite a lot, that's one of the reasons that the Dev's killed the ambush farms.  I'm sure the new 64 bit client would help reduce that however.

The client has little, if not nothing to do with it. The issue is that active ambushes (the kind that actually track down your characters and follow them) cause constant pathfinding on top of normal combat related checks which are relatively processor intensive and entirely server-side. Individually this isn't a big deal. When hundreds of players are on missions that spawn a lot of these kinds of ambushes, it stresses the servers available processing power significantly.

 

This would have to be overcome somehow before missions such as these would be viable as new content. Likely requiring significant and completely new code for handling active ambushes pathfinding.

[MunkiLord]

And then seasons! Each season having new enemy combos or other random things thrown in to make it more interesting. 

 

For seasons I'm thinking more like Path of Exile or Diablo rather than Fortnite. 

[GM Sijin]

4 minutes ago, MunkiLord said:

And then seasons! Each season having new enemy combos or other random things thrown in to make it more interesting. 

 

For seasons I'm thinking more like Path of Exile or Diablo rather than Fortnite. 

And here I thought you meant Spring, Summer, Fall and Winter...

[MunkiLord]

9 minutes ago, GM Sijin said:

And here I thought you meant Spring, Summer, Fall and Winter...

Will each season would be about three months long, so maybe both?

[Shadowsleuth]

6 hours ago, Shazbotacus said:

I like it. Huh, what if hosping put the player in a cell with a regenerated door?

 

If it’s for a team tower defense that would be great (it would add another layer of challenge while the team is down a person), but for a solo challenge it shouldn't.

 

More thoughts on rezzing during the team tower defense, you should be given two options:

 

• Rez in Jail - To help any ATs that don't have enough damage to quickly break out on their own, the door would have a countdown till it bursts open. (You can break the door down before then if you choose.) The door would also be close by to the team, so they could just send someone to help break you out.
•  
• Rez in Maze - Unlike the frustrating Perez Park maze, this maze would have a couple of methods of getting out.

 

Maze Escape Method 1: Working your way through the maze to one of the multiple exits (This is the long way).

 

 

Maze Escape Method 2: Portal exits - Random Portals scattered throughout the maze

 

• Green Portals randomly drops you somewhere else in the maze & where it leaves you will always be safe but not necessarily near the exit.
•  
• Red Portals will always drop you near an exit but also spawn hostiles right on your location, the player can choose to fight them or make a mad dash for the exit. 
• Once the player makes it to the maze exit the enemy group will despawn so that the next resurrected player working their way thru doesn't get ganked by the previously player's spawn.
•  
• Gold Portals drops you directly back at the team rally point, no muss, no fuss.

 

 

Maze Escape Method 3: Brute Force Method

The walls of the maze are all destructable, if you want out bad enough you can just smash your way free. (The walls will respawn over time.)

 

 

As for why would anyone rez in the Maze instead of the jail; scattered throughout the maze are additional temp powers (even temp allies) that can help the team beat back the waves.
 

[Dragon Crush]

This sounds both taxing for the server and fun.

[Chris24601]

Given the noted server-stress of pathing, I’d say you’d almost have to go the Rikti/Zombie invasion method of the mobs spawning at your present location (i.e. no pathing). It’s a bit of a limitation on mission design, but there’s already code for Rikti/Zombie invasions (and I think there was a super rare Devouring Earth version) as a start point and it would then be a matter of adapting that code to other groups and to an instanced environment.

 

Also of note is that, in addition to teleporting in and breaking out of the ground, perhaps some of the other MM pet summoning animations could be applied to various groups. For example, I think one of the merc pets parachutes in... and that would be fantastic for a 5th Column style assault (I’m having flashbacks to the one G.I.Joe opening sequence where Cobra parachutes in to attack the Statue of Liberty).

 

Allow me to also throw in another element to this mix. One of THE most tense (in a good way) missions for me is the Croatoa one where you have to keep less than 30 Fir Bolg from entering the Henge and a similar “must defeat the waves before X of them make to objective Y” mission goal would be another way to up the tension in such a mission, particularly if the size/level of the spawns increased as time progressed.

 

It fall more under an arena type competition, but “time until X mobs reach objective Y” would be a great way to rank it as a competition and with no upper limit it becomes a matter of beating another best time rather than “you cleared this, no need to ever revisit it.”

[Kistulot]

21 hours ago, GM Sijin said:

The client has little, if not nothing to do with it. The issue is that active ambushes (the kind that actually track down your characters and follow them) cause constant pathfinding on top of normal combat related checks which are relatively processor intensive and entirely server-side. Individually this isn't a big deal. When hundreds of players are on missions that spawn a lot of these kinds of ambushes, it stresses the servers available processing power significantly.

 

This would have to be overcome somehow before missions such as these would be viable as new content. Likely requiring significant and completely new code for handling active ambushes pathfinding.

Warframe Survival missions forced the players to hunt and kill mobs. The mobs didn't find players.

 

What about just making the map spawn new mobs at random, with no pathfinding AI beyond what any mob has? Make the impetus on the players to find the mobs. Solves the problem, adds more gameplay.

 

if you want to make it simpler, you could even use a small map, like the final fight in MoM, and make it so the mobs are always visible and in close quarters 🙂

[MunkiLord]

I still feel this is a great idea and should be implemented. Favorite idea yet.

[0th Power]

1 hour ago, MunkiLord said:

I still feel this is a great idea and should be implemented. Favorite idea yet.

I don’t know why this thread never got rolling. It’s a great idea