New Mission Type: Radar Pings
Wed, 05/14/2014 - 15:56
Spiral Knights: Mew Missions: Radar Pings
These would function exactly like alerts in a game called "warframe." For players who play warframe, skip the General Description of this post, cause you get what I'm talkin bout. For readers who do not play warframe, read that section.
=== Mission Lore ===
We have crashed. Have YOU guys seen any bits of the Skylark? I have not. Certainly not, other than the piece in the lab. And escape pods if you count those. But there's a reason for that! (besides the obvious one, sk is developing as a game still. lel).
A new mission type: Radar Pings.
The Skylark is made of very specific materials, which we believe are not found naturally on Cradle (WE COULD BE VERY HORRIBLY WRONG ABOUT THIS). We've recently developed a scanner radar (of limited range) that can penetrate the confusing energies (mineral, mist, etc.) of Cradle to find radiation signatures from these materials. These signatures register as pings, and could very well indicate the location of a chunk of the skylark. Before now, static was what we got, and our field cameras ended up in the bellies of kleptolisks. But not today. And not tomorrow.
The Clockworks is always moving. Even though we might have crashed on the surface, wherever the bits impacted might be miles away and very deep within hours...or minutes. Some places in cradle are VERY difficult to get to, if not impossible. Some realms only rotate into accessibility once a millenia. So we see these pings, and if we see a way in, we see hope. But so fleetingly. We ask you..knights...to help your race find find these missing pieces. We might find out why...truly why...it exploded. And rebuild it better. And go home.
Fear not - you will not get stuck in these places. We have given your Emergency Revive a teleportation device specifically for these missions. Once you come in contact with the source of the ping, or if you lose too much health (die), you will return to your ready room instantly for cleansing and recovery.
Still, the work is very hazardous. We only want you doing at most 3 of these a day.
(honestly I love cradle to death, I don't want to leave as a player, it's just lore).
TL;DR: skylark parts are being detected, but they're in parts of cradle that move fast, so a knight has to be quick to try and get the piece before the area is impossible to get to again, which will happen, absolutely.
=== Mission Type General Description ===
Yeah that's right about the emergency revive - Sudden Death missions. If your ER is gone, you don't get to get up again and use SoLs. You're done. No rewards. You keep whatever you might have picked up, though.
These missions are issued by Sprial HQ. Their successful completion is rewarded by Spiral HQ.
These are only available for Vanguards. Spiral HQ wants knights to focus on their rank missions before dabbling in the dangerous.
These missions are incredibly difficult and short, but the reward is worth it. If you think so.
These missions show up randomly, semi-frequently - about 3-5x per hour.
These are limited-time missions: about 10 minutes per mission is all the time you have to get into them, before they become unavailable/you can't start them. Whether or not you get into one has absolutely no effect on how/if you get into others.
You cannot invite people into the mission who are not vanguards.
If you somehow finish the mission once before the time is out, you can't get into it again, even if you are invited.
If you're in a Radar Ping mission and the time expires while you're in the Radar Ping mission, you may finish and get your rewards, you just can't invite others into it.
You cannot do more than 3 pings daily (successfully, failures don't count toward this number) , so wait for the reward you want...even though that's contradictory to finding the pieces before they potentially rotate out of accessibility for another thousand years. Hey, someone else will do it, right? This lets rewards be larger/more valuable.
These Radar Ping missions will have their own tab button on the far right in the rank/prestige/expansion/arcade list.
The screen for these (via that button) is usually blank, but it will have a mission card icon if a Ping is active, with Agent Kora saying stuff about it in a text next to it on the left. Rewards will be to the right. Delicious rewards from Spiral HQ. Rewards have a wide variety.
The moment a Ping shows up on the radar, a bright orange text shows up for all online vanguard (only) ranked players anywhere, similar to the pinkish server reboot text, announcing that the ping is available. The orange text will speak again with 5 minutes left, and then 1 minute left to start. This means that a player messing around in a mission as well as haven will get the notice. They can simply press M to get into the menu to start the mission. If a bunch of materials are being grabbed by the knight and blocking the text box, the ping orange text shows up three times, making missing the mission less likely.
For players with 0 interest in Radar Pings, they can turn off the orange text in the options menus.
A player can easily press M+Radar Ping button to see the ping, and if they're not interested in the reward, they simply don't start the mission.
sound potential: same as party invite/trade request, but a higher noise? Mebbe. Also have this turn-off-able, noises like that are annoying even if they are fitting.
=== Level Types in these Missions ===
These missions are single floors with a single objective: find the source of the ping, and if relevant, bring it back to Spiral HQ. These pings could be signatures from materials used to build the skylark, which means the pings on the radar could be actual chunks of the skylark.
The floors are generally solo-able, but a few of them would be better done with a squad.
you start the mission right in the floor, there's no lobby or arsenal station. The elevator area you come in on always looks absolutely wrecked. Have a loadout prepared to GO! GO! GO! But read the description first, seriously, so you know what to wear to the party.
Kora sent a little scanbot to the ping first. These fast robots relay information, so there's at least some telling what you'll be going into. Some. Hence Kora's text next to the ping card in Missions. Spiral HQ would never send a knight to absolute death, not even for a bit of the Skylark. So they spend a few precious moments investigating the area remotely.
There will ALWAYS be kleptolisks in these missions.
You can complete a mission one of three ways:
-find a glowing bit of metal (skylark chunk) and press attack to pick it up. Bam, you're done.
-find out that the ping was a mimic, and fight a nasty bunch of monsters. Once they are defeated, you're done.
-find out that the ping was a...crashed escape pod. The knight was in cryo the whole time, don't sweat it! Or they were turned off, whatever. I don't know what we as knights are...robots, alive, cyborgs, avatars, don't care. I prefer the mystery. anyway, simply finding them completes the mission, you teleport out together.
=== Ping Mission Types ===
1) Ping: Emission: ??? malfunction
Floor Design: deconstruction zone-like, very large. The entire floor is pretty much a floor hazard/trap, with very narrow 1x1 pathways through it blocked by debris (some of the rubble is also on the traps, yes) in the form of 1-hit junk blocks or 3-hit boulders.
These emission missions constantly drain your hp slowly, acting as a sort of timer... about half a pip every minute. So, equip more HP boosters for this type of mission. The bit of the skylark is having issues containing itself due to damage. So a cryogenics core malfunction (warframe reference) would cause the floor to have a Freeze theme. Monsters in the area will have adapted to the influence of the Skylark emissions by now, cause sk is over 3 years old. Tundralisks ahoy!
Ping: Emission: Cryo Malfunction (freeze)
Ping: Emission: Combustion Malfunction (fire)
Ping: Emission: Radiation Malfunction (poison)
etc.
Goal: find the piece, random spawn location. pick it up. Teleportation back to your ready room (the place you go when you log in initially) for cleansing of radiation etc. occurs instantly. You delivered the dangerous material to Spiral HQ en route.
Advice: hp boosts and MSI boosts, don't fight monsters.
2) Ping: Candlestick Arena: Noxious Night (etc).
An arena (arcade arena) floor, with grimalkin. Yikes! That's too dangerous for even Krogmo to watch. Candles are in the corners, and the fireball thing is bottom center. the skylark bit is where the end elevator would be...after the THIRD arena. there is no option to leave otherwise, besides...DEATH. (dramatic).
3) Ping: Graveyard: Trojan Travesty
a trojan was stargazing when a chunk of the skylark slammed into his back, killing him on the spot instantly. Sadly he was stargazing amongst his fellows, who are sleeping. This area of the clockworks encourages trojans to contain their tempers, and so they sleep almost constantly. Some have slept so long that their spirits are at rest, their bodies truly stone and dust. But not all...and no trojan woken up isn't grumpy.
souls constantly float around the area, and they'll blow up on players. these are freeze souls...the theme of this place is standing...still...in the dark...forever...and nothing is colder than the void of the soul. Souls will not break trojans.
Goal: travel around the trojan resting place (which is a graveyard tileset without phantoms), breaking trojan statues. One of them will have the skylark piece. Some of them will be dust. Some of them will wake up and fight you. Soon as you break the trojan with the skylark piece, the mission compeltes instantly.
trojan missions will never have crashed escape pods.
=== Rewards ===
Upon mission completion (success), you'll get the reward in the mail.
A Radar Ping mission will always let you know what the reward is.
It will only have one reward of the following:
A) 1000 crowns
B) one orb of alchemy
B1) 1-star
B2) 2-star
etc.
C) a set of 3 forge crystals, with c1/c2/c3 etc. being star level.
D) a material
E) a weapon slot
F) a trinket slot
G) 5 spark tokens (g1/2/3 forge/grim/primal)
H) a hall of heroes recipe
These rewards are delivered bound, except materials.
each squad member gets the same reward, it's not divided up.
So, you'd see ONE of these to the right of the ping card. You would go "meh" for 3 cracked fire crystals, but will probably go yay! for 3 radiants, or whatever it is you want.
-would add some variety to the game
-would take away some RNG farming effort, a little bit, with the rewards being known and guaranteed upon success.
-we don't pay for elevators anymore! So more missions/gameplay with short/story floors could be a thing and not hurt your wallet/time in the game.
-would actually match up with all that Skylark lore and the "goal" of Spiral Knights - get the ship fixed, get some energy from the core, get out. (Which, again, I don't agree with).
TL:DR:
New missions that last only a few minutes that give a lot of lore to the game.
Wed, 05/14/2014 - 16:39
#2
+1
+1
Thu, 05/15/2014 - 02:23
#3
+0.67 Sounds interesting, but...
>These emission missions constantly drain your hp slowly, acting as a sort of timer...
No-no-no, the constant HP drain is utter nonsense! It would turn entire mission into a speedrun, and what would be the point then?
And generally, picking ideas from other games... I dunno.
Thu, 05/15/2014 - 10:20
#4
@the-vindicar
These are supposed to be speedruns :P, if you read the description, it constantly talks about the need for urgency. Since levels no longer cost energy, sk could have a lot more variety in its mission types without risking the wallets of players.
The point is a challenge and to add more lore.
Games always take ideas from other games. That's how they make each other better. They just sneak around the copyright.
Thu, 05/15/2014 - 12:17
#5
Interesting.
This would probably solve my incredible amounts of idle time I spend in Haven, not knowing what to do.
I do have a few suggestions to add onto this though...
- Make ping notifications not so prevalent.
- Take out the teleporting.
- Make parties have to be made quickly.
- Scramble radars.
- Don't cut our health.
- Level bits
- Make pings rarer
- Design a few more levels
I don't want to be bothered every so often about pings unless I'm explicitly searching for them. Have them be accessible via the tab we have that includes the missions and supply depot, and work similarly to the party finder. This would be an "opt-in" experience, and would automatically be off every time you log on. We might even be able to recycle sounds, or make them higher pitched as you suggested. Don't message me in the chat more than once - have it be like the party finder but instead saying "Ping found at X depth!"
Once we obtain the object that was pinging, we should have to escape on an exit elevator, or maybe even the entrance elevator(It could be locked behind a gate or be after all the danger). Teleporting isn't exactly lore-material, it just happens because of the nature of this being an MMO with parties in the dungeons. Lock the parties and you're set.
Pings should rotate back to Haven if you spend too much time waiting for people in the lobby, much like a less-nice arcade gate.
Make our radars scrabbled for these missions.
If we're going for urgency, don't throw damage in and call it good. If anything, make the object we need to obtain be behind a timed switch that we have to turn at the beginning, and have all monsters on a respawn pad. The trojan and candlestick-arenas are already urgent in themselves.
The trojan level should also have an occasional griever and bombie, and the bombies should be able to blow up trojan statues. The Candlestick arenas should have an extra wave after the final wave in the third arena where we will fight a reskinned Margrel with fewer attacks. (Ever wanted to fight that boss? Here's your chance, and also it's tier 3.)
Have pings show up about twice an hour at most, and at least 4 times a day. If these are designed to be quick and frequent, then disregard this. Perhaps have various kinds of pings be more frequent than others, such as candlestick arenas being rarer, and emissions being the most common.
Similar to how we have the daily prestige missions with semi-unique bits, try to make a level for each monster family in mind. So far we have fiends, undead, and beasts. Perhaps we need to wreck a gremlin device that has a bit of the skylark used as a component (construct), intercept a gremlin shipment (gremlin), and maybe even pluck a piece from a green jelly giant (Slime).
That's all the constructive criticism/add-ons I can think of right now.
Also your first line says "Spiral Knights: Mew Missions: Radar Pings". Not sure if that's a typo that was meant to be in there.
Thu, 05/15/2014 - 12:20
#6
But wait, no one cares about the other parts of the Skylark. All the Order wants is a power source - aka, why this whole "open the core" thing is even a problem.
Fri, 05/16/2014 - 16:20
#7
+1
I like the Idea of more missions.
@Fang
But the teleporting saves us from danger i.e. ER MAH GERD 42 TROJANS
Also NO BOMBIES!!!!!!! I would hate that! Whoops! He just freed 6 TROJANS well no biggie...
And Finally. Fang, I love it when my radar gets scrabbled .
@Kliplik
Yup. Just lemme take off w/o wings, and engine, any part of the hull whatsoever. Ill be fine.
Sat, 05/17/2014 - 00:49
#8
@Dracora-Speaking
These are supposed to be speedruns :P
Ugh, I hate speedruns, and timed missions in general. Why would you suggest such a vile thing? -__-
The entire floor is pretty much a floor hazard/trap
People would equip a Sera, stack ridiculous amounts of status resistance and just run through it ignoring the pathways. More Grind for the Grind God! More Loot for the Loot Hoard! X)
By the way, another idea for the mission: Howling Hollows. Basically, an arena-like mission with succession of howlitzer waves. Status effects should be mixed within each wave, preferably random, so noone could be 100% protected.
@Fangel
Scramble radars.
No. Just no.
Scrambling radars doesn't add any fun or difficulty to the mission itself, it only makes it intensely annoying to navigate the level.
Don't cut our health. If we're going for urgency, don't throw damage in and call it good.
I totally agree with that.
@Flame-Shinobi
I guess they can produce everything else using resources and technology of Clockworks. Everything, but the power source.
Sat, 05/17/2014 - 01:11
#9
/derp
Of course I correct a spelling mistake and make one in my own post. Hypocrisy award, here I come.
And I totally hate it when my radar is one space away from that triple word score.
I guess I should clarify my thought process a bit:
Also NO BOMBIES!!!!!!! I would hate that! Whoops! He just freed 6 TROJANS well no biggie
That's the reason I wanted them, actually. They don't have to be respawning, but you would have to plan your attacks carefully. Same with the grievers, or you risk suddenly having an axe in your face. (Also because people will just bring a blitz needle to these levels and insta-kill the trojans and break the statues to find the right one, then complain about how easy it is.)
@Fangel
Scramble radars.
No. Just no.
Scrambling the radar adds more weight to your mistakes while also adding a spectrum of confusion to your mission. I pull up my map so often in regular runs I sometimes forget that I am not simply following a map and occasionally fighting enemies in designated areas on my quest for "the spot". Scrambling the radars was also one of my favorite things to come from the Shroud of the Apocrea, and I'd love to see it work here too.
Lore-wise, these pings might send out some sort of short-circuiting signal to our radars. That depends more on what Three Rings would decide if this were to be implemented.
I'm typing this at 1 in the morning, so my brain is prone to being the dumb. If I stop making sense, bear with me. It's probably just monkey salmon potatoes.
Sat, 05/17/2014 - 01:47
#10
@Fangel
Scrambling the radar adds more weight to your mistakes
How? It's not like you can make took-the-wrong-turn kind of mistakes here. And radar has little use in combat. It's main function is to recognize room patterns, with additional benefit of showing you monsters just behind the corner. The only real combat use for radar is to shoot Vana from offscreen.
a spectrum of confusion to your mission
I just don't like being deprived of things I usually have access to. If there was no radar at all, I'd be okay with it. But when it's usually here, and then it's replaced with useless static, it's annoying.
Sat, 05/17/2014 - 05:40
#11
@Fang
I guess you are right on the bombies. People (mahshelf eenclewdeeed) would just Blitz.
I do like the scrambling radar. Then again, this is coming from the guy who liked the suggestion involving the occasional level with Fog of War soo...
@The-Vin
Soooo.... you're never going to run the Unknown Passage eh? Scrambled radar there.
Sat, 05/17/2014 - 06:38
#12
lol
People would bring a fang of Vog and a Babarous thorn blade fo the bombies and greavers
Sat, 05/17/2014 - 09:13
#13
@Flame-Shinobi
Let's see... going through a grinder of a boss fight into a level with respawning enemies (one of the cheapest tricks ever) and possibly invincible mosnters and irresistible effects for a chance to craft something that's useless at best (like Almirian Crusader armor) and fairly easily replaced by other means (like Snarby suit)?
Yeah, I'll pass. Scrambled radar is just a cherry on the top. =)
On the topic, one death idea is kinda meh... especially if it will deprive you of a mission due to timeout.
Sat, 05/17/2014 - 17:58
#14
@The-Vindicar
/mumble Stupid chaos user/skolver clone, it's about the fun and the cool looks of the gear... *mumbles*
Sat, 05/17/2014 - 18:57
#15
Sounds cool!
Sounds cool!
Mon, 05/19/2014 - 02:40
#16
<3
Thank you all for the feedback!
Anyone have any more level layout/mission type ideas?
Had one - "Intrusion" (inspired by that "Immortel" 2004 French film with Egyptian gods) - this would be a huge flat level like the Apocrean "grasping plateu." But even more barren. It would be mostly walking in near darkness with no landmarks (just imagine how glow eyes would look in here! hnng!) except a few obsidian-apocrean-like spires. (These will spawn souls if you get too close). You'd see black-shiny silhouettes of monsters from fleeting events, like tortodrones...black kats...etc. They behave the same way, but they aren't quite "there" so their abilities are limited (like the kat wouldn't summon zombies). They don't drop anything, but the mission rewards for these Radar Pings are always event materials, such as ancient shells, glyphs, tribe fetishes, and so on. However, the reward is ??? for intrusion - you don't know what event material you'll be getting from Spiral HQ (they have an unstable unidentified material that stabilizes when you exit the intrusion zone upon success), but you know it will be an event material at least. (the reward, if it is a glyph, would be more - others would be just one of a material). Of course, these pings don't happen very often at all, perhaps once every three days or even once a week (remember, pings are short and you have to be online to catch em). Intrusion zones are very risky! They are unstable areas lost in time, here, not here...over there perhaps, or not at all.
The skylark bit here is in flux. It will actually teleport away from you, about 5 tiles in the direction you were walking toward it, if you get closer to it (within 3~ tiles). Unless your shield is up. So when you see it, shield up, and creep up close to it. Once you're on top of it, you complete the mission. This is difficult, cause you might pop into the mission without a shield by accident. If this is the case, good luck trying to get the piece to "run" into a corner of the map/get stuck on a spire. Dashing onto the skylark piece will make it sort of hiccup and not teleport so much. The monsters are pretty aggressive in here, so shattered shields would be an issue.
-reason for reward suggestion due to people wanting awesome items, but having lives during the events, so they miss out. Several forum threads asking for this.
-reason for mission suggestion: MOAR MISSIONZ.
COMMENT #8: By the way, another idea for the mission: Howling Hollows. Basically, an arena-like mission with succession of howlitzer waves. Status effects should be mixed within each wave, preferably random, so noone could be 100% protected.
Interesting, mixed status is something you don't see often (c42 and.....shadow lairs...annnnd...???). Where would the skylark bit be here?
Alternate form of this turret mission: Turret Nest. It's a huge area that's just a winding path-maze full of turrets. Maskwraith would be VERY useful here. Sneaky sneaky. The skylark bit is somewhere randomly in this maze...and the turrets near the bit are rotating in place, cause the piece is keeping them awake with its energy. Remember, dashing makes some turrets not "see" you, so mask isn't a necessity, it's just really nice. This would encourage players to slow down, think, and take things out from behind, strategize...vs. just barging in. (Not all Pings are HP drain, of course - just Emission pings are).
There is a very, very, very VERY low chance that the turret nest is entirely a love puppy nest. But they don't drop materials/items, and if you kill any of them, they ALL turn into broken-hearted rocket puppies. Kleptolisks abound in this level.
LOVE the scrambled radar suggestion. The Radar Ping isn't the same as the radar knights use in the depths. So it fits.
Mon, 05/19/2014 - 14:53
#17
Another Missioin Type
The Darkfang Circus
this mobile dark carnival is full of nasty gremlins who don't treat their animals right. They're in cages! But they store their stuff (nicknacks, food, animals, and tricks) all the same in the same place...the skylark piece is in one of these crates. Gremlins like shiny things too, even if they don't know what it is...but how to find the skylark piece? Gotta open the crates...it's in...one of these crates, amongst dozens of monster crates...which can spawn Vog knows what.
=Random status situation Vindicar mentioned, only with more than turrets.
Several gremlins are in the area, mostly flamethrower types.
Map is a modified decon zone, more circus type junk on the floor, perhaps silly circus music playing.
Mon, 05/19/2014 - 22:16
#18
Yay, a new type!
If we're going to have a circus, we should have a large (think incinerator Compound 42 gremlin) clown that stomps about and has a very high amount of health, plus is on a respawner. Don't want to mess with those.
But...I was going to make a Champion hipster alt .-.