Suggestions for an implmentation of random dungeons

[Aegeon]

Preface: I really enjoyed Diablo type games, and Hellgate London, at least once they added the Stonehenge area and it was challenging because it automatically scaled to your level. I realize that DDO isn't Diablo, but that doesn't mean it couldn't benefit from some of its addictive loot and dungeon themes in some instances. I have a lot of ideas, and some of them are bad, and some of them need a lot of polishing. Each idea in here stands on its own merit, and need not necessarily be accepted in total.

Randomly generated dungeon thoughts:

I've seen a lot of people out there asking for random dungeons in one way or another, and I would definitely like to see them. However, there's a lot of things out there that you can't do with a randomly generated dungeon, and to keep the map the same but change the locations of traps, monsters, and shrines has some appeal, but is somewhat limited.

Rather than altering all the adventures out there, release a new dungeon or series of random dungeons with paths, dead ends, secret doors, traps, and all that other good stuff. Each dungeon should scape to the level of the highest level person in the party at the point that the instance is created, with modifiers for casual (level-1), normal(no modifier), hard(level+1) or elite(level +2)

The dungeon needs to be challenging and give good rewards. Randomly placed rest shrines could make things even more interesting, attain them behind secret doors or off in other areas that are not along the main path. They could also be placed at the beginning for casual or even maybe even normal. The end of the dungeon should have a minimum number of tiles between the entrance and the exit but there should be some variability. The possibility of having more than one path should exist, and the dungeon should have sprawl to make it an exploration exercise instead of just, "Run along this path and kill everything. There should be some way for the player to have influence on the dungeon's length, either or an option that the player selects, possibly tied or independent to difficulty level. Doesn't matter much to me as long as there's some variability.

I may be biased on this next point, as I'm a little against raids and running them over and over to get the piece of gear I want. The more players, the less each player's contribution matters, and the longer you have to wait before you're ready to go.

Here's one possible idea for good rewards that might allow Turbine to sell other adventure packs and make it appealing to own more than just the random ones. Randomly place portals to bosses, raid bosses and other difficult bosses, some from adventure packs and some new ones. The raid bosses should be altered in such a way as to beaten by a normal party of 6 at that level, though with difficulty and perhaps persistence. In order to go into that area and fight that boss, you'd have to own the adventure pack. If the boss is a raid boss, there should be a chest at the end with a normal chance of giving you some of its awesome raid loot. Portals to raid bosses should be somewhat rare, but not so rare that you never see them. Perhaps one every two or three normal length runs, and a guaranteed raid boss in an elite or very long run. Portals to tough bosses with extra loot should be common enough to see them at least once per normal length run.

Going with the above idea, the monsters in the dungeon could also be selected from the packs the party leader has access to, or possibly that every player has access to, just to keep things interesting.

Hellgate London had an area called Stonehenge with four bosses that, after collecting their heads, you could turn in to fight an uber boss who dropped enough loot that it was basically guaranteed that there'd be something good dropped. Some sort of tally system and options of fighting different bosses would be great, especially if it lead up to a great challenge with a great reward.

There was also a very interesting mechanic for making bosses a challenge instead of just run at them till they die from it. If a boss killed a player, it got to use a powerful healing effect on itself. You had to avoid dying if you ever wanted to kill it, which made it a challenge. I think it'd be a good mechanic for the uber boss and any raid bosses, making it an accomplishment to kill them, not just something you'd be lucky enough to stumble upon.

I've also got some ideas for a rare system and additional properties that could also be used as an addition to either the random dungeon area, instead of the raid bosses, or as an addition to the loot system in general. However, I've got a lot of idea,s and I'm going to need a lot more time to get them all written down. More to come on that topic.

[Vynnt]

My feeling on random dungeons is meh..

'New Invasion' is very Diablo like. Each level is a random maze with you having to find the entrance to the next level down, just like diablo. The randomness doesn't add much to the quest, instead, its kind of annoying and tedious (with a really annoying end boss). I rather play New Genesis or Sins or any other shavrath.