An idea for a future Hard Core season

[ianflaer]

So I was thinking about how so many players seem burned out on HC this season. It's fair, this season seems to be the deadliest one yet. I have heard Jerry say that they are looking at doing two HC seasons this year with a bit of a break between them. I hope so because I love it and I want some more of it. I'm positive SSG knows about the player burn-out and dropping player numbers on HC server, why wouldn't they know. They have as good an idea as anyone why it is happening and they want their game to be successful. So it stands to reason that next HC season will not be as dangerous as this one. So I started to wonder what might that look like. I have an idea and I like it. I am pretty sure that even if SSG wanted to do this that there would be no way they could do it next season and I am also certain they don't need me to come up with ideas for them, but still I had some fun with this idea and I'd lake to share it with the community in case some of you might enjoy the idea and maybe even want to add to it.

so what if HC5 had a Mabar theme (this one was Xoriat)
first of all as soon as you exit the grotto into Korthos you would see it was nighttime. before long you realize it isn't changing. it is only night. NPC's walk around like they are sleep walking and mutter about how it has been night for a really long time. NPC's tell stories that sound like they are out of light Halloween creep-show movies

The host (is that what we call them?) is Eternity (dragon from Mabar festival) Who wants to bring the joy of undeath and darkness to the prime material plane (do we still call it that?) and specifically to Eberon / Stormreach. Or perhaps she wants to suck the life force out of all mortals for some other reason and use their undead forms as bonus canon fodder troops (this is flexible)

You have the usual "one life to live" debuff but as soon as you join a group and enter a dungeon you get a new debuff called "the call of Eternity" which says something like "Eternity calls for your soul! Not all who die stay dead. Life calls to life, the living may win you back for a price." if you die you lose the "one life to live" debuff and are whisked away to the land of lost souls and have the fear debuff and can't do anything as usual. If there is still at least one member of your party alive the "eternity calls" debuff remains. If all party members die this new debuff goes away and you are trapped in land of lost souls just like normal.

If your party completes the quest the debuff will trigger a window to pop up like the death release window but it will say. "Eternity holds you in the balance! your friends have won your life back but Eternity demands a price. You may return to life but you must give Eternity ONE LEVEL of your life. You will will be returned to the level below your current level with 1 XP more than needed to attain that level. this loss is permanent, do you accept? if you click no you stay dead and keep your levels, if you click yes you return to life minus one level. 1st level characters do not get the call of eternity debuff even if they are in a party. optional: it might be worth considering giving the call of eternity debuff a stack for every time you die so that if you have a character that dies often they can lose more than one level. at some point this is going to drop characters back to level 1. true death would only really happen from party wipes, at level one or voluntarily (unless we want to make the cumulative level loss kill them if they go below level 1 but I was thinking we could make this HC less deadly and more fun)

ok so at this point we should be worried about griefing. I mean what if after you die the party leader kicks you out of the party? what if the last surviving party member recalls without winning the mission? I propose we fix this thusly:
1: parties and dungeons lock 3 minutes after quest starts or as soon as all party members are inside
2: when dungeon locks dimensional anchor is set and the recall button is removed (Eternity plays for keeps)
3: when party and dungeon lock no party member may be kicked or added (hirelings and pets don't count)
4: Parties only get the Eternity calls debuff when their dungeon locks. Wildernesses don't lock so no debuff. if you die in a wilderness you die as per HC normal permadeath. same thing if you die in a public place, you get permadeath as per HC usual.
5: what if your quest bugs out and becomes unfinishable? I'm not sure what to do here actually. maybe if every player in party logs out and enters a new character they can return to their character and have them in a public place. seems like this could be exploited. this could be a problem and I don't have an answer right now.

Cordovan and Linnabell (spelling?) have both said that it is important for HC league to not give characters anything they can take with them that gives any kind of real in game benefit thus all the rewards are cosmetic. well how about this:

Shadows of Mabar Enchantments
Every loot item has a chance (with named items, or higher power items like the teal border or masterful craftsmanship items having a higher chance to have a shadow of Mabar enchantment.

A Shadow of Mabar enchantment adds abilities or qualities to an item to make it more powerful in some Mabar themed way. so maybe evil damage or ability draining or maybe concealment % bonuses to sneak attack or hide move silent etc. this enchantment is temporary and does not raise the level of the item. There could be a count-down timer on it like you see with artificer deadly or elemental weapons or it could just say it will expire like the candies from the mabar event do and then someone has to go into the game and turn them off at the end of the HC league not sure which way would work better or if they would both do terrible things and it must be done some other way. I just think it would be a fun way to have some hardcore themed item traits that do not impact life on the regular live servers.

Hard Core also likes to drop surprises. HC4 has the special champions. Mabar HC would have a something percent chance that any living mob that gets killed may spawn an undead mob to take its place (kinda like undying mobs in orchard). new mob would be of similar CR to the original monster but be a standard undead that already exists within the game maybe with a slight name change to indicate where it came from. also let's have a small number of new, unique undead monsters that can spawn. maybe they use graphics assets already in game to lighten development load so they might look like a zombie with a funny aura maybe but the stats would be entirely different and it would be a "(something-something)Mabarian Zombie" No need to make the special monsters super scary and deadly like the HC4 champions (so no insta kill or lots of extra damage etc) they don't even need to be champions just make them do weird flashy things. like maybe a zombie that attacks and instead of dealing damage just piles web sells on every with hit. maybe you get snagged and things kill you but maybe you make your saves just wacky stuff. maybe one shoots pumpkin head fireballs. like the fireball is a flaming jack-o-lantern and anyone who gets hit by it gets a cosmetic pumpkin head or skull head cosmetic for like 60 seconds as well as taking the regular fire damage

the idea here is to make a HC season that is lighter and more fun as a break from a really brutal HC like HC4. it still plays for keeps but it doesn't play as hard and it's more focused on fun along the way. HC3 was easier than normal HC seasons and maybe there needs to be some HC seasons that are just not so vicious.

Personally I am loving HC4 but one of my regular partners is burnt out on HC and doesn't want to play it anymore and he's obviously not alone when you look at the server population numbers so maybe we need a HC league that is more of a festival now and then. Also this idea could run concurrently with the Mabar festival on the live servers IDK just an idea.

let me know what you think. if you want to tell me you don't like it please say why and don't just be an insulting jackhole. either way please mention any ideas you have to deepen this or change it for the better or if you think you have a whole different idea on what you might like to see in a HC season drop it on us

[ianflaer]

Also one more thing:

Since we have the dirty trick of not being able to replace a dead PC or even leave the quest when people die we should balance the loss a bit

When a PC dies they spawn an undead that is CR similar to character level or perhaps a bit lower. this undead is friendly to the party and will fight with them using its normal abilities. If we are doing the stacks of Eternity Calls debuff idea then more stacks of Eternity Calls the dead character has then the more powerful the undead they spawn is. so a character that dies often will make a more powerful replacement for themselves but they will lose more levels when they return

[Justicesfury]

Also one more thing:

Since we have the dirty trick of not being able to replace a dead PC or even leave the quest when people die we should balance the loss a bit

When a PC dies they spawn an undead that is CR similar to character level or perhaps a bit lower. this undead is friendly to the party and will fight with them using its normal abilities. If we are doing the stacks of Eternity Calls debuff idea then more stacks of Eternity Calls the dead character has then the more powerful the undead they spawn is. so a character that dies often will make a more powerful replacement for themselves but they will lose more levels when they return

And 3 days later not one person even bothered to comment. Gee I wonder why...I am sure the Devs will get right on all this.

[boredGamer]

And 3 days later not one person even bothered to comment. Gee I wonder why...I am sure the Devs will get right on all this.

To be fair, there's not much activity at all in this sub, nor in HC at this point in the season. Or really even over in General.

I do like the creativity, but yeah, complicated does seem complicated.

[ianflaer]

And 3 days later not one person even bothered to comment. Gee I wonder why...I am sure the Devs will get right on all this.

I suppose you just completely missed where I said "I am also certain they (SSG) don't need me to come up with ideas for them, but still I had some fun with this idea and I'd lake to share it"

so yeah totally not expecting anything to be done was just thinking we might have some fun theory crafting. but whatever, be mean, it's cool.

[C-Dog]

Since we have the dirty trick of not being able to replace a dead PC or even leave the quest when people die we should balance the loss a bit...

It would be nice if Reaper level were not locked when a party member dies. Really annoying at times.