Goblin Squad Member
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Woohoo, powered right through a second one today, which catches us up:
Bob: I'm Bob Settles, I'm the PvE designer.
Lee: So, the question we've got for this week is from Pax Shane Gifford, though several people have asked the same question: "What varieties of escalation are currently planned for early enrollment? What varieties do you want to do beyond that?"
So, quick review for folks who aren't up to date. Our world is divided up into hexes,, of which there eventually will be thousands. There will initially be dozens, then scores, then hundreds, but we'll eventually be up to thousands. A small percentage of these are referred to as monster hexes. These hexes can never be claimed by a settlement, and they hold particularly valuable resources. These hexes occasionally get infected by monsters, so a monster group will spawn up in the hex. It'll grow over time in that hex, and once it hits a certain threshold, it'll start spreading to all the other hexes. The escalation has a numerical strength in each hex it affects; that strength goes up over time based on how many hexes around it are infected. So, if you're trying to deal with an escalation cycle, you can't just go to one hex and deal with it, then go to the next hex and deal with it; you have to deal with it more holistically, because if you just try to deal with them [the hexes] one at a time you won't be able to face the whole weight of the problem.
Bob: Yes, the stronger it gets the tougher the monsters are that appear in that hex, the faster it can spread to neighboring territories. And the tougher the neighboring territories get, the more they feed back into that central territory as well.
Lee: And if you deal with the escalation cycle - if you fight it, if you beat it into submission - you can basically cause a boss to spawn in the escalation cycle who will give you huge rewards if you can go kill it. So, our monster population is dynamic across the world; if you go somewhere, there's not always going to be goblins, or bandits, or undead, depending on what escalation cycle is taking control of the area, if any.
So, the first batch of escalation cycle stuff is mainly stuff that we've pulled form the Thornkeep book.
Bob: So yeah, we've got the Ripping Chains goblin tribes, they're coming out to rebuild the Kingdom of Zog. We've got the Bonedancer goblin tribe, they're coming out to build an undead army and take over the area. The Skullbasher ogres are out to do one of their "bone boils". We've also got some bandits that are based on one of the novels that's coming out to support the Thornkeep area, so they're coming out and just robbing, pillaging the area. And we've got an undead uprising, where skeletons are coming up and over time they build up in strength, so you get stronger and stronger undead filling the area and spreading out.
Lee: We've also got, for less of a local group, we have an escalation cycle set up for Razmiran cultists who are coming to "spread the good word" of their god Razmir, and try and convert new locals to their faith.
Bob: The first batch of escalation cycles are all basically ones that, they're coming in and they're trying to spread out, and you need to bash them down before they get out of hand. Later we want to have more complicated ones where some of them are more like you're actually helping the escalation cycle, or different factions may choose to help or hinder the escalation as it advances.
Lee: One of the ones I've always wanted to try and do was have one where the escalation cycle is plague victims or refugees, where you can't beat them - if you beat them into submission, that's really evil, but you can feed them into submission, and you beat the escalation cycle by giving them food. So we're hoping long-term that our technology will allow us to do a lot of different things, as opposed to just beating the crap out of each other. Not that beating the crap out of other people is bad.
So, the second question we're doing, from Xaer: "Will you expand the starting races to ones that will use the same model/base race?"
Yes! That's low hanging fruit, and we love low hanging fruit. Making a dark elf, once you have an elf, is much easier than, say, making an aasimar or something like that that's a completely different model. Every time we do a new race that has a different body, we have to do a whole new set of animations, we have to readjust all the armor to fit on the body, so doing something that is a drastically different shape from another race is a lot of work. Doing something that is painting them a different color, maybe changing their facial features and putting some different hair on, is so much easier.
So yes, we will be doing all different flavors of elves... If there's a different flavor of a race available, we'll probably look into doing it at some point. How these come into the game, we haven't gotten that far down the line of the specifics of it, but we definitely want to do a bunch of these because, like I said, it's a very easy way for us to add a lot of variety to the game, and we love low-hanging fruit like that.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Here's an interesting thought - It seems to me there are examples (at least I think there are) where good aligned settlements may need to hire evil-aligned characters to help them out from time to time (assassinations, raiding enemy caravans, etc.). Sort of a Stockburn and his Deputies (from the movie High Plains Drifter) type crew may be needed by that good aligned group to do some enforcement, lets say.
Are there situations where evil aligned settlements would need to hire good aligned characters? One that I thought of when I read the above regarding monster escalation cycles where Lee states "Lee: One of the ones I've always wanted to try and do was have one where the escalation cycle is plague victims or refugees, where you can't beat them - if you beat them into submission, that's really evil, but you can feed them into submission, and you beat the escalation cycle by giving them food."
This brought an interesting idea to my mind. Is the feeding of these plague victims an inherently "good" act? Or, what if it wasn't "feed them into submission", but "heal them into submission"? Wouldn't it be incredibly interesting if an evil aligned group (who would have healers of course, but perhaps feeding or healing these plague victims would increase their "goodness" which perhaps they would not want to do), had to go out and hire a band of good aligned healers to deal with this escalation?
I just found that a fascinating potential aspect; good may sometimes need to hire evil, and evil may sometimes need to hire good.
I think that would be a very interesting dynamic!
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Goblin Squad Member
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This brought an interesting idea to my mind. Is the feeding of these plague victims an inherently "good" act?
What if it's feeding plague victims so that they can keep up their strength so that they can further spread the plague? A plague victim with no energy just isn't an effective spreader.
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Goblin Squad Member
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This brought an interesting idea to my mind. Is the feeding of these plague victims an inherently "good" act?What if it's feeding plague victims so that they can keep up their strength so that they can further spread the plague? A plague victim with no energy just isn't an effective spreader.
I don't know why, but the "You are not yourself when you are hungry" line of Snickers commercials just came to mind.
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Goblin Squad Member
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This brought an interesting idea to my mind. Is the feeding of these plague victims an inherently "good" act?What if it's feeding plague victims so that they can keep up their strength so that they can further spread the plague? A plague victim with no energy just isn't an effective spreader.
I may be slightly biased here, but that sounds like a perfect plan for the clergy of Urgathoa. Plague? Feeding/Gluttony? Find a way to put Undead in that plan and you all of the Pallid Lady's Prime Tenets.