Goblin Squad Member
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KS2 Update 8 - What is an Escalation?
Lee Hammock: Hi, I'm Lee Hammock. I'm the Lead Game Designer at Goblinworks.
Stephen Cheney: And I'm Stephen Cheney. I'm also a Game Designer at Goblinworks.
What is an Escalation?
LH: The biggest PvE system we've really got is what we're calling the Escalation system. In a given geographic region, which we're basically breaking the game out into hexes, there will be a region-wide threat, such as Goblins, or Bugbears, Giants, Dragons, Undead, whatever. And the players in that Hex, be they part of a Settlement or players who hope to make a Settlement or players who are passing through, want to deal with that threat and make it go away in some capacity: kill off the Goblins, beat the Giants into submission, destroy the altar of the Cult of Lamashtu, whatever. And they'll have a series of goals they'll have to accomplish to do this, it'll be a decent number of goals so this'll be an activity that a group of players undertakes, not really one guy. If no one deals with this problem, if they just let the Goblins run wild in the wilderness, eventually more Goblins will show up and the problem will get worse. If a Settlement does not deal with its Escalation cycle in the wilderness surrounding it, the Settlement will have a harder time gathering resources, it'll start suffering issues on getting resources, its development indexes will go down so it won't meet the requirements to build some structures, so players will have a real impetus to go deal with these threats and keep them from getting more and more powerful. Also, when an Escalation cycle has entered its end, when that threat has been dealt with, when you've reached the finale, like for example if you finally killed off most of the Goblins and you've dealt with the Goblin Shaman who is the second in command and you've destroyed some resources they needed and done a few others steps to really get the Goblins out of your hair, and then you go kill the Goblin Chief who only shows up at the end stage, once you kill him there will be a reward of an Artifact item which is a useful item for Settlements. It provides a permanent bonus to a Settlement for completing that Escalation cycle. So Settlements will want to go through different Escalation cycles. Not every Settlement can go through every Escalation cycle. For example, some of them may be alignment-locked, if there's an Escalation cycle that's all about helping the Knights of Iomedae you can only get that one if you work with that alliance and you're a Good Settlement. Evil Settlements won't be able to do that one. So there'll be a number of different stories that Settlements can go through using Escalation cycles.
SC: And unlike a traditional public quest system, this is actually intended to go for several days, maybe even weeks. So you're not just going to happen by and have missed it by five minutes. It's going to be on-going. You're going to be able to think about how to best contribute over several days.
LH: We are lookign at doing some... in addition to the rewards of killing a monster and getting some money or loot or something else, we're looking at doing some manner of contribution points, something like that to keep track of players as they're getting involved in the Escalation cycle.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Most interested in the aspect of this where mobs just perpetuate out of control and cause problems in:
1. Supply lines
2. Resource collection
3. Large swarms migrate around attacking player structures at the point their mob strength can put up a potentially winning fight.
4. Unpredictable and very very dangerous if you blunder into a horde in a small party
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Always wondered if devs can periodically spawn these and "send them" to targets in a coordinated manner and leave them to it?!
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The Use of these as Adventure content and Resource collection influence is very good to see.
Yes, thanks for the transcript Nihimon! Really interested in this idea. It's similar to the invasions in Rift, but I like where they are going with it.
Certainly brings the need for caravans to have scouts to the fore! Imagine losing your whole load just because you blundered into a pack of Orcs that had moved into the area while you were away!
This sounds like a lot of fun!