Goblin Squad Member
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A new poster proposed a mining scenario where he imagined a PVE dungeon instance. I pointed out what I think we know about such, that there will be few if any provided by GW though later on down the road there may be such crafted by players for sale on the game's market.
However it occurred to me there might be an instanced PvE dungeon.
How do we imagine GW will bring Emerald Spire into the game?
Once the dungeon has been run it would be much different from what it had been prior to the first run, exhausted of treasure probably, yet likely to still be spawning escalatory critters.
This would present a problem: all that expense, all that creative talent working to craft it lost the first time a party successfully accomplishes a run? I doubt that. It would be nonsensical to waste it so.
Instead I believe while a player character is young there will be an opportunity to enter an instance of the dungeon within a party of adventurers.
From the outside it will look just the same as it always will, but first entry into the dungeon will be entry into an instance that preserves the original adventure. I suspect that instance will be preserved for that party until they either leave defeated to try again or achieve their objectives. Once that instance is completed the interior Emerald Spire will no longer be virginal. Chest will lie open and empty but resources may still be gatherable, and I feel confident it will be a constant source of escalatory content.
Do you see another way?
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Goblin Squad Member
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PFO will be a Sandbox with Theme Park elements. I expect the Emerald Spire and the Thornkeep dungeon levels (Forgotten Laboratory, The Enigma Vaults, and Sanctum of a Lost Age) will be the first major Theme Park elements, and that they'll operate largely the way Dungeon Instances operate in Theme Park games. Namely, they'll reset after a while, and be instanced so that different groups can experience them on their own without interfering with each other.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I have no idea how difficult it'd be to accomplish, but wouldn't it be interesting to have two options on entry to the Spire's instance?
1) a hand-designed, "story-telling" dungeon, that once you've done it you'd know what each room held, including possibly a final boss or bosses, and
2) a more-randomised dungeon, with mobs and treasures randomly placed on the same maps as option 1), as a rookie GM might do in Pathfinder tabletop
The first option would be closer (or identical) to a raid in a theme park, while the second would feel somewhat like the "fifth period D&D" that I, and probably some of you, started with all those years ago. One would know the layout once one'd learned it, but one could have a bit of surprise in which rooms held what.
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Goblin Squad Member
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This would present a problem: all that expense, all that creative talent working to craft it lost the first time a party successfully accomplishes a run? I doubt that. It would be nonsensical to waste it so.
GW2 released a new dragon and it was downed for the 1st time in less than 24Hrs...
It seems the "prestige" or value of downing such a dramatic foe is completely lost if you're 2nd or 103rd.
I think Nihimon is right: It's be themepark content. Obviously it'll take a lot of influence from the book with the awesome authors.
I really prefer:
2) a more-randomised dungeon, with mobs and treasures randomly placed on the same maps as option 1), as a rookie GM might do in Pathfinder tabletop
There's a cool system I kickstarted, Torchbearer by Luke Crane, and tbh if some ideas could be taken from that in combination with roguelike dungeon-crawls, it would be very cool with uber-nasty vastness of the above authors' descriptions and challenges.
1) Randomization
2) Needs to be large so there's high-low-medium points of risk that aggregate out (ie a bad start does not gimp you for the rest of the run)
3) Never perfect preparation for the encounters: So players select what they find fun to challenge the dungeon.
That's content that lasts longer and where everyone has a "1st!" :)
Goblinworks Executive Founder
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Tangent/hijack...
Instances dungeons are, in general, hard to reconcile with lore and the general concept of persistent worlds. If there are multiple copies of a dungeon sitting there all the same, then how and why?
However, consider if the emerald spire isn't a bunch of many-worlds towers with a quantum front door, but a tower with a confusing maze of staircases into a vast potential number of procedurally generated dungeons, such that it is believable that if two groups make no effort to stick together they will become separated and never find each other in the confusion.
The gameplay is similar: go through the entrance and then through the dungeon; the difference is that the dungeon isn't magically duplicated so that others can also go through it- it's so large that lots of groups can explore but still never find each other.
Compare/contrast the Roguelike game Angband, which uses a similar lampshade to (re)generate levels.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I also agree, though I also have to make multiple notes, ones that I have made pretty much every time the topic of instanced dungeons come up.
1. Repeatable instanced dungeons, pretty much cannot have noteworthy rewards. Why? well no matter how we look at it, just basic math.
A. The bulk of players will always do what the most consistantly profitable action is.
B. Instanced dungeons are not intended to be the bread and butter of the game.
C. Every other portion of the game, is subject to scarcity, location, travel and organization challenges.
So... if we try to compare
Harvesting operation, search and find unclaimed harvesting location, return to town find and assemble harvesting group, carefully transport harvesting group, avoiding PVP and PVE hazards, protect harvesting group from PVP and PVE hazards as they gather, escort group safely back again dealing with PVP and PVE hazards.
Random spawning dungeon: pretty much the same procedure, only substitute harvesting group for adventuring group.
Escalation: Pretty similar again, only likely much less work to find, when they are available, but might not be available at all times.
When we compare all of that, to instanced dungeons, which essentially fold up to: Grab a group, most likely from people already at the enterance area, as it's a static predictable location so no supprises here, clear the dungeon from PVE only obstacles. Bring out the loot and you are set.
Essentially the big things that change, 1. Predictability, an instanced dungeon basically makes biting off more than you can chew ONLY fall into the realm of terrible planning. 2. A static location also eliminates half of the battle. 3. The static location also greatly lessens the PVE and PVP hazards of finding the location (if the big strong guilds are going there on a regular basis... you can pretty much assume they are going to clear out bandit's waiting on a regular basis.
Basically all these factors in mind, the reward from a dungoen like this, is either A. Going to be negligable, B. Going to overtake the rest of the content by a huge margain.
I would say GW would be best to err on the side of A. The goal of the game is a sandbox with theme park elements, not a theme park with a sandbox that nobody plays in.
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Goblin Squad Member
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My understanding (but this was from quite awhile ago) is that entrances/exits of said instanced player-crafted dungeons would be remote: Still need an adventuring/harvesting party to travel to get there and back, and equally unpredictable. And they are inexpensive because they evaporate after use.
My imagined vision is that the purchasing player would get a system generated map to said entrance, have to gather his party and travel there, possibly without a firm grasp of what to expect beyond whatever description the author used to sell the adventure. Then the contents, from PvE encounters inside to what loot/resources were available in it, would be commensurate with what characters would expect at a similarly dangerous area elsewhere.
The biggest selling point would be the story and/or puzzles the author wrote for the player's entertainment.
Consider: when an author wishes to tell a good story he must provide a setting in which it happens. In what I am envisioning as PFO's version of storytelling the crafting of the setting is three dimensional. It would be very challenging to the storytelling art to do well, but if adequate quality control measures are set in place, perhaps using a 'Guild of Storytellers' as reviewers in order to lift some of the burden from GW, then the system could become a form of interactive movie making or evolved literary authorship or dungeon mastering, and eventually be considered an art form.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Basically all these factors in mind, the reward from a dungoen like this, is either A. Going to be negligable, B. Going to overtake the rest of the content by a huge margain.
Alternatively (not saying it's the best alternative), the rewards from dungeons could be different from the rewards of other activities with no significant overlap.
Example: Dungeoneers are rewarded with gemstones but not with wood. Outdoor gatherers are rewarded with wood but not with gemstones.
A nice mage staff requires both wood and gemstones to craft -> crafters need the yields from both dungeoneers and gatherers, yet these groups of players are not in direct competition with each other.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Basically all these factors in mind, the reward from a dungoen like this, is either A. Going to be negligable, B. Going to overtake the rest of the content by a huge margain.Alternatively (not saying it's the best alternative), the rewards from dungeons could be different from the rewards of other activities with no significant overlap.
Example: Dungeoneers are rewarded with gemstones but not with wood. Outdoor gatherers are rewarded with wood but not with gemstones.
A nice mage staff requires both wood and gemstones to craft -> crafters need the yields from both dungeoneers and gatherers, yet these groups of players are not in direct competition with each other.
At which point you can expect the price of gemstones to be extremely rapidly changing. People stop running the instances, their prices skyrocket, people run the instances like crazy to take advantage of the new high prices, only to discover that they have fallen down the toilet.
The supply demand curve pretty quickly turns unstable when the players have absolute control of the supply. Coupled in with the randomness of wood (IE excess of gemstones while wood is in shorter supply), my theory on this economically is it will result in massive hording of gemstones when the prices are low, and mostly stable very low price of gemstones afterwards unless there is a huge boom of wood. More or less giving instances the A. Scenerio anyway
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Goblin Squad Member
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I did not really consider rewards. If it borrows anything from roguelikes then advancing is part of the reward via the immediately usable/possible means. Then that itself becomes the reward.
So what's to get players deciding it's time to spend valuable resources on a fool's errand?
Answers on the back of a postcard...
I'd say the most powerful reward possible = The unknown: There could be some amazing or nothing at all, who will find out? How long will it take? Will anyone ever unlock The Emerald Spire's eternal secrets?
If the devs are clever there will be teenie-weenie little rewards possible per dungeon-crawl (like gambling if you're up, even or down) and only the devs know how the big cheese is got.