Immersive GMs

[DrRocket]

Only a suggestion, but one that is a bit out of the box...

 

Typically GMs are stationary in their spawn zones and they are met and defeated as they are and do not interact with mobs near them.

 

I would suggest let the GMs move randomly and attack local mobs of not their faction, and when they get next to a zone gate, they actually use it and go to another zone. The Paragon alarm system would say "GM has now entered Zone, please liberate the zone from the GM"

 

Every time the GM switch zones, it is healed and gains a 50% additional hit points, nothing else changes.

 

When the GM is defeated in a "new" zone, a system message listing the players who participated in the liberation is made and gets double merits for the defeat. If the "defenders" was a super group, then Super Group gets recognized in the system wide alert. Perhaps a statue of the GM is awarded to the super group and participants for their bases, but only when the GM changed zones.

 

Any comments, ideas or Suggestions?

 

As always, please make your comments an educational opportunity, please do not just agree or disagree, or give me an emoticon, or say no.

 

Regards

[Rudra]

There are wandering GMs. Scrapyard in Sharkhead, Paladin in King's Row (at least until he gets to his loiter destination), and Babbage in Boomtown. (Edit: Oh yeah, Caleb in Nerva Archipelago as well as the Arachnos Flier in Grandville.) And they do already attack mobs that aren't of their faction. I've watched Scrapyard annihilate Family and Arachnos on his journey. As for leaving zones to other zones? They will be forcibly despawned by the drones, and that is a very good thing. The last thing I want to see happen is players get the ability to gather giant monsters and lead them all to the starter zones where new characters have their initial spawn.

 

Also, why should a GM award double merits if it were to be in a different zone? That would just lead to players leading the GMs to other zones to get the double merits.

 

And I still don't get why players want their SG or character announced to everyone else in the game for doing anything....

 

So in a nutshell, my response is "no".

 

Edit again: Does the Kronos Titan count as a wandering GM since it chases down the character/party as a spawned ambush? Or the Skyway City Babbage?

 

Edited August 20 by Rudra

[biostem]

I think a large part of why GMs don't move around too much is that NPC pathing doesn't handle overly large characters very well, and you'd end up with them clipping into buildings or the like...

[Glacier Peak]

Jack moves in Croatoa.

 

The Grim Vale event is also exactly what the suggestion is describing. 

[tidge]

Moving/Wandering Giant Monsters also tend to cause an issue when they spawn with minions that must be defeated/cleared to reset the possibility of the GM respawning.

 

I've posted at length about how Kings Row falls victim to this, as the scrubs have to (a) "wake up" and (b) path themselves towards "their" Paladin. These guys end up spread across the zone (and the spawns act as typical spawns if one of them happen to get aggro) so while it isn't impossible to clean these up, very few players bother.

 

The wandering Jack and Eochai are the same. Sometimes these associated spawns don't appear as level-less! Jack is more problematic IMO because his paths go under bridges and through the woods, making it easier for players to miss them (again, if they care).

 

Personally, I don't think "the juice is worth the squeeze", and that this sort of thing already causes some issues.

 

EDIT: I want to add Arachnos Flier. This guy moves around the zone, which is fine... but occasionally gets stuck... with it's Force Shield up. 😛

Edited August 22 by tidge

[Greycat]

I keep expecting a suggestion for a new GM with some of the Water based powers from the title.

 

As far as the OP? Yeah, GMs aren't going through gates - they'd get zapped. (I'd had to intentionally do that on live a time or two.)  Even if they didn't, I'd ... really rather not have them crossing zones, and *really* not if it were awarding double merits - that'd be exploited to hell and back. (And, personally, I'm not fond of the "announce who did it!" thing, but that's more a me thing.)

[General Idiot]

It's also worth noting that having GMs move and attack random mobs means those random mobs attack back. And enough of them can mean killing the GM fails to give its badge because your team didn't do the 10% of total damage required to get it. It happens sometimes with the war event in Croatoa, if they spawn and get left alone for a while both GMs will just beat on each other endlessly and then regenerate the damage done, but it's still counted in the total damage done so if the've been there long enough it can become impossible to get a badge from them.

[Techwright]

On 8/22/2024 at 11:24 AM, Greycat said:

 (And, personally, I'm not fond of the "announce who did it!" thing, but that's more a me thing.)

It's more of an us thing.  I find it ridiculous that one person is credited because they were the lucky one to get the last point in, especially when the point of impact looks like NYC on July 4, 1986 (if you don't know, look it up 😉).  Who on Haumea cares?  Unless they killed it solo, it was a team effort, and its an insult to the guys who possibly did a significant portion of the damage on their own. 

 

 

Edited August 24 by Techwright

[tidge]

On 8/22/2024 at 11:24 AM, Greycat said:

I keep expecting a suggestion for a new GM with some of the Water based powers from the title.

 

I'm fearing the day we get an enemy group that uses Marine Affinity. <- Fears were manifested during a Positron 1.