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Water is a finicky thing, and I don't think you can be damaged in it even through scripts. I don't understand why it's in any towers currently. In fact, scripting diving was a very troublesome thing and it doesn't even involve combat/taking damage. Just changing the players gani was a headache.
Personally I would love to see towers take a more deeper and involved direction. Something like Dungeon Defenders if you ever played it... but the more complex it is the harder it will be to design and balance. Not to mention it will always be very hard to design towers in a way that is truly balanced for guilds. I'm not saying a guild should be able to take and hold a tower with 2 players, but it is a numbers game right now.
I mean, say you hold a tower... and you could build defenses/have NPC soldiers. How would we determine how players can "pay" for these defenses? Time? Then it takes a bit of a snowball effect, where people who hold towers for longer get more defenses, and thus are harder to take. Because they are harder to take, they can hold for longer and buy more defenses! It would become increasingly hard for the tower to get taken. Can't let guilds use gralats, because then it becomes pay2win. Alternatively each tower could have a predefined set of defenses, and the goal being to maintain defenses... but that's still a numbers game(more guild members on = more guilds fixing defenses). How do you design a tower in a way that the guild with the most players on isn't the automatic winner?
It's a weird, and unique environment, and very hard to maintain balance and fairness when trying to design. If you guys have ever played another MMO with a similar sort of concept of competing for an area, it'd be nice to hear input on how those games maintain it. Just remember this isn't player vs player, but groups of players competing.
In my opinion, the goal of towers should be something fun for guilds to take. Something a guild should want to get together to do because it will be entertaining to do as a group. I'm not saying there shouldn't be a reward, but fun should be the main reason a guild would want to take a tower. I also don't think a prize after a certain time is a good prize. It needs to be something that can keep the player interested, even after a certain period. With guild houses also needing a rehaul, it might be cool to see the two linked(for example earning some sort of currency for a guild for every hour a tower is taken, and using it to buy furniture for your guild house). I don't really design much PvP stuff though.
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Sorry to quote the whole spiel there, but what I have to say kind of references several points... guild houses and houses need only a couple more layout options imho.
As to towers, have you ever played call of duty 'nazi zombies' ?? It was a popular alternate gameplay option way back when... basically the concept I want to bring to light is that players in that game would be thrown into a building or area with limited entrances (sort of like the towers in graal) and have to defend it for as long as they could against the zombies. Doors and windows were able to be 'boarded up' and blocked to prevent the zombies from coming inside... the parallel that immediately came to mind is that players could work to destroy objects or obstacles that would block the path to the flag, while others could try to destroy or find another way in (like the dual entries in york fort). Potentially multiple entrances (or objectives to reach in order to take over the fort instead of just a flag) would be the way to limit the influence of a guild with multitudinous members! Just hit the barrel of TNT, for example, and the fort gets blasted from underground, killing all inside and putting everyone back at the entrance?
Also, something with 'guild house' and 'towering' might be interesting - the ability to go and capture a 'flag' at some one else's guild house in order to get a prize? Maybe something along the lines of a time limited competition with similarities to guild spar/capture the flag in game, but hosted at players' GH's ?
Which leads me to another interesting concept that I had been toying with a while ago... what about neighbours? I hate how, in many of the current house and GH layouts there is just a line that denotes the end of your level 'property' and no explanation of what goes past there. How about a link to a buddy's place? Other MMO's do this, with varied results... but walking into a friend's place from your own would be awesome!
On that note, so would being able to walk from your own Guild House to your House through a door, warper, level edge... ;)