Samiusbot
10-14-2021, 02:44 PM
What does the next level of HCL challenge look like? To me I want to take the game and stand it on its head for HCLs. But I think it is important when playing dev, is setting our goals for the player base and those goals are simple. Everyone needs kills to stay alive, time has a real cost, and keep people in the quests. In all honesty I also want to lessen the number of piking accounts as much as possible.
Balance will be tricky. To be clear this is how I would summarize the challenges of each HCL.
Permadeath
Permadeath + New champs
Permadeath + Softcore
Permadeath + New champs + Mimics
So, what challenge can we add that would ramp things up and say in line with the challenges of the past. Simple, we need to feed our sweet "one life to live" buff/pet challenge appropriate mob kills or it hurts us progressively harder. Aka, we need keep it fed or it kills us. Guess I should also say my version of HCL I see the storyline more of one like we have caught a Super Brain Maggot thing and we need to keep it at bay or die.
How does this work?
Calm: We use the same "when you defeat an enemy of equal or greater" code to get stacks of "Calm" up to a fairly solid number of stacks 5+1every 4 levels like ability score should be fine. Said stacks fall off at the normal rate in combat areas, quests adventure zones etc. More or less, we clone "Master's Blitz Epic Moment" and use it as our base. Also, while in quests being near a shrine halts the degradation and taking a rest grants a fair number of stacks to grant some time for buffing and finding the next group or groups of mobs.
In public zones the stacks fall off a slower, but only grow in "Calming Spaces" like bars and inns.
Enraged: Once we are at 0 stacks of Calm, we are no longer keeping the beast at bay and we are paying for it. Stacks of Enrage start to build slow at first but then gain steam as they build. Number of stacks are limited by player level, and deal damage not unlike that of a fear reaper.
Some details need to be worked out. Like how many charges you get when logging into an active quest? You don't want to kill off people that happen to DC and fight to get back in to the game. But if we add to many then piking account tax shifts some to log in server vs just taxing the game play servers.
We could even ramp things up a notch with champs that synergize with how our stacks are gained, lost or how the effects are applied become very scary. If out of the blue a couple of people in the party have 0 stacks calm or even positive stacks of Enrage out of the blue might mean someone needs the next kill in a hurry.
Idk we had a game outage at a different time than normal and had a moment to get some thoughts down on the matter and I wanted to share. Is this the plan for HCL5? Unlikely. But HCL6 or 7? Maybe.
<3s
Samius
Balance will be tricky. To be clear this is how I would summarize the challenges of each HCL.
Permadeath
Permadeath + New champs
Permadeath + Softcore
Permadeath + New champs + Mimics
So, what challenge can we add that would ramp things up and say in line with the challenges of the past. Simple, we need to feed our sweet "one life to live" buff/pet challenge appropriate mob kills or it hurts us progressively harder. Aka, we need keep it fed or it kills us. Guess I should also say my version of HCL I see the storyline more of one like we have caught a Super Brain Maggot thing and we need to keep it at bay or die.
How does this work?
Calm: We use the same "when you defeat an enemy of equal or greater" code to get stacks of "Calm" up to a fairly solid number of stacks 5+1every 4 levels like ability score should be fine. Said stacks fall off at the normal rate in combat areas, quests adventure zones etc. More or less, we clone "Master's Blitz Epic Moment" and use it as our base. Also, while in quests being near a shrine halts the degradation and taking a rest grants a fair number of stacks to grant some time for buffing and finding the next group or groups of mobs.
In public zones the stacks fall off a slower, but only grow in "Calming Spaces" like bars and inns.
Enraged: Once we are at 0 stacks of Calm, we are no longer keeping the beast at bay and we are paying for it. Stacks of Enrage start to build slow at first but then gain steam as they build. Number of stacks are limited by player level, and deal damage not unlike that of a fear reaper.
Some details need to be worked out. Like how many charges you get when logging into an active quest? You don't want to kill off people that happen to DC and fight to get back in to the game. But if we add to many then piking account tax shifts some to log in server vs just taxing the game play servers.
We could even ramp things up a notch with champs that synergize with how our stacks are gained, lost or how the effects are applied become very scary. If out of the blue a couple of people in the party have 0 stacks calm or even positive stacks of Enrage out of the blue might mean someone needs the next kill in a hurry.
Idk we had a game outage at a different time than normal and had a moment to get some thoughts down on the matter and I wanted to share. Is this the plan for HCL5? Unlikely. But HCL6 or 7? Maybe.
<3s
Samius