I started another thread to see what sort of response I would get from the community, and it seemed mostly good. A couple folks poked some holes in ideas I had, while I was simultaneously adding to the original idea. In other words, it's pretty much a mess, so I'm rewriting it here, with a more descriptive title, and a little more clarity and the benefit of input from other folks.
Here's the original thread: http://forums.anarchy-online.com/sho...d.php?t=605691
Now, on to the actual idea. Player Generated missions.
Let us build our own missions similar to old school RK missions. Players design single person missions, orgs design team missions. The player would design the layout of rooms, using the modular room system that already exists. The player could place chests and furniture, and also place monsters, traps, and sentry cameras, etc. Monstera would have to be captured alive and brought to the mission the first time to place them, but then would be maintained by the mission. The missions should adjust to the level of the player or group who enters the dungeon, and it should instance to each player or group. Loot would be randomly generated like normal RK missions.
But as was pointed out, there are certain mobs that are dead easy to kill, so a player that collects a bunch of really really easy mobs would have a super-easy experience system set up, so there should be a few mechanics in place to discourage this, and prevent it from being too abuseable.
1) Player generated missions should have a lockout timer similar to daily missions.
2) Mission metrics should be compared, and contests arranged that the mission owners would compete in.
Here's how I imagine it working.
Player decides to create a mission, then:
1) claim a spot somewhere, with a dungeon entrance, and enter the first room.
2) change the room to whatever decor they want, with an exit in whatever direction they want.
3) go into the next room, and do the same, eventually designing the floorplan.
4) finalize the floorplan and begin working on the furniture, traps, and loot containers.
5) decide what monsters they want, acquire them somehow, and put them in rooms as desired.
6) put monsters in traps or link them to sensors, or perhaps other options, but lets start out simple.
7) Go to the entry room, and initialize the mission, entering it into the world database.
Once initialized, every dungeon would auto-initialize to the level of the playerentering it, and title-level contests would be automated.
A daily or weekly, or even monthly contest would encourage players to engage in the missions, and also engourage the builders to make them challenging, because the contests would be for both sides.
Players who enter the missions might compete for things like:
Fastest clearing of monsters
Least damage taken
Fastest blitz
Least nano used
Greatest amount of overkill damage
Players who created missions might compete for things like:
Most players killed
Highest player damage taken per monster to kill
Lowest average percentage of monsters killed during mission completion
Lowest percentage of locks and traps to be successfully avoided or disarmed
Longest average completion time
Since the contests are two sided, both sides would really be competing against each other, through the contests.
A player or org who owns a strong mission would check the leader board, and try to get strong players to go to OTHER player's missions to ruin their scores, or even go themselves.
A player who wants good experience would check the leader board and look for the lowest ranked dungeons, for the best experience for reward.
A player or org whose mission is very low on the leader board would be encouraged to go to very highly ranked missions and see what they do.
A player who wants a good challenge would go into the highest ranked missions.
But what rewards would people want? How about VP and Funcom Points? Or perhaps unrollable nanos? Phasefront vehicles?
Why stop there though? You could allow players to create their own contest rewards for their own dungeon. If you put up a Nullity Sphere nano as a reward for the player to generate the most overkill damage in a mission, I bet you would get a whole lot of attention.
But how to organize finding the missions? You could simply add a player mission terminal with a few ways to rank the missions (see above) and allow players to choose. You could even do this with a simple button on existing terminals to change their function from normal missions to player missions.
So, let's say I just upgraded to QL 200 Ofab gear, and my 150 gear is no longer useful to me, and I'm NOT an incorrigible packrat that keeps everything. I drop a full set of OFAB 150 as a reward for the player who completes my mission in the shortest period of time over a week. Or maybe a set of QL 100 treatment implants? This will, ideally, attract lots of people to my mission!
On the other side, an org might put up a reward for a full set of unrollable nanos for a class that is NOT well suited for the mission they have generated, hoping to build up their kill count.
I see a LOT of potential fun here, as well as ways to encourage players to not create easymode exp missions.
Reply With Quote
Originally Posted by smokex
