Spiral Knights - Hero for hire system (contracts)

Hero for hire system (contracts)

11 replies [Last post]

Thu, 11/12/2015 - 13:58

Holy-Nightmare

So a lot of endgame players are really looking for something to do with all their time, but OOO doesn't have the man/womanpower to push out playable content at a high rate. So.... is there a compromise? I think I have one.

I would like to introduce a new sort of "mission" called contracts.
Basically your knight would at random be give a contract to accept of decline. Should they choose to accept it they will be give a checklist of tasks to complete.

Tasks such as:

Killing X amount of a certain monster species.
Collecting X amount of a certain material.
Completing a past level.
Defeating a certain boss enemy.
Bringing back minerals (blue and green mostly)

Contracts would often be a combination of some of these and would require a decent amount of time to complete (not possible to complete in a single mission run).

So.... what rewards would you get? Well here is the most attractive part.... you don't really know for sure.
Once you complete a mission and turn it in the person who sent the mission will send you a reward box.

Inside this box can be:
Crowns
Rarities
Energy
Weapons
Armor
UV tickets
Costumes/Accessories
Sprite Pods

Most often it will be a CR or Fire crystals (useful to a knight your rank.... I.E. Radiants for Vanguards).... all the other drops have around a 1% chance to get.

Contracts will be delivered at random and can come from a multitude of characters ranging from the Knights in Haven to the Kats in Moorcroft. Most importantly the character sending the contract will have an impact on what the rare items in the box may be.

If Izola contracts you you might receive a weapon or recipe from her shop, if you get called by a gremlin from Emberlight the rare item may be a gremlin costume, and so on.

Thu, 11/12/2015 - 15:09

Fangel

Hmm

Trying to pull more from TF2 I see?

Not to say it's a bad idea, a system like this would be nice. I would say to limit rewards to crowns/rarities/UV Tickets/cosmetics. Weapons and armor would be wonderful but the difference between Spiral Knights gear and other games with this model is that in Spiral Knights your gear is your livelihood. You willperform worse with lower star items, whereas stock items in all games mentioned above are just as good/fit into a different playstyle than granted ones.

To be honest, if these contracts were weekly and involved a lot of effort to complete (and you wouldn't get a second contract until you finish your first) then it would breathe a lot of life into more constant play. You could also terminate contracts but then it'll take an extra week for anyone to contact you for another contract.

Heck, you could have it so that your contracts become more involved and more rewarding the higher your prestige is.

Only question is how these contracts would be given. Via mail? Via the social interface? Via a pop-up (trade request alert, party invite alert)? In the prestige mission tab?

Thu, 11/12/2015 - 16:02

Holy-Nightmare

@ Fangel

The weapons and armor would not be wildly OP (No event gear or anything over 4*) and could come with a single relevant UV already added (that matches type defense or status resists). Weapons and armor would be pretty much limited to what you can acquire in the Hall of Heroes (unless you were hired by Basil then it would be a Basil exclusive item/recipe).

Contracts would be doled out at random from 2 to 5 days between each one. You can store up to 3 at a time and after that they stop coming in till you make room.

I had hoped that the contracts would be doled out based on what rank your knight is making drops useful to that rank.

Contracts would only be accessible when in the knight's Ready Room.... when you log in you would receive a communication message from the one wanting to hire you (much like how you communicate with various SK NPCs in the tutorial stages of the game).

Fri, 11/13/2015 - 04:47

Vohtarak-Forum

just how big are the rewards?
would it be something like kill 100 gremlins and you get 2kcr? or something higher like 30k? and that question applies to rarities too, will you get something like 3 or 30 radiants if youre at that level?
this is a nice idea, but it needs a good rewards scale if people are going to take time out of their vana farming to complete these

Fri, 11/13/2015 - 16:00

Fangel

hmm.

Potentially we could have "dangerous" contracts then, in the spirit of danger missions? These would take place in more hazardous locations or require a specific and difficult setting, but these contracts are the ones that drop higher tier rewards (equipment drops that are 1 under your knight rank star level).

2-5 days would work too. If we had "dangerous" contracts in the mix they should be on a timer, and be very urgent.

Dangerous contracts could be something like "Desna is seeking you out - it is urgent. Report to the Recon Rangers for briefing", and then you need to complete the danger mission. Three times. Yes, this means you'll need to be invited to the danger mission twice if they're on a timer - but this gets more players into the missions and requires us to actually talk to each other in an MMO. Rewards could be weapons and armor of any star level under your current rank (meaning 4* maximum).
Another dangerous contractor could be Rhendon, and he would contract you out to the Scarlet Scouts, and would provide very high rewards for "scouting" out levels (i.e., not killing enemies as much as possible, while also making your map as filled up as possible, and you get more points for leaving boxes intact and not taking damage. Basically a pacifist speedrunner). Rewards for these contracts would need to be high due to the lost income from skipping monsters and prize boxes. Completing Firestorm Citadel for this mission wouldn't reward too much due to a lot of forced arenas, however speedrunning normal clockworks would give a lot of skipping power. Rewards could be a high number of crowns (30k-40k) and rarities of our knight rank (30-50 fire crystals).

With the "communication message" in the ready room, do you mean like the comlink talking with Kora? That would work - but we should be able to choose when we talk to them. A little popup like a party finder ping would be good, perhaps with a unique sound.

Sat, 11/14/2015 - 13:00

Fehzor

I'm liking the idea of TF2 styled contracts for SK in general but would like some that are meant to truly stretch gameplay rather than just force me to go kill some gremlins. Like if instead of just doing something, we were required to do that something with a couple of randomly chosen stipulations...

Stipulations:
-No shield
-One weapon
-No battle sprite
-Solo
-Low star level (for T2 missions?)
-Normal damage only
-Bombs/guns/swords only
-Proto armor
-No minimap
-Time limit
-No dash/bash
-No offensive stats
-No emergency revive/sparks

Stuff like that. Rewards should definitely have the equipment drops. I'll do a lot of things without question for equipment drops. Probably too much stuff for equipment drops. I'd cut my ear off Van Gogh style for an unique equipment drop. I'm not even kidding.

I'd also like stupidly time consuming ones with huge rewards. Like kill one million devilites and become the most feared knight of all time.. and then it provides us with an arena full of devilites, so that we can just sit there murdering wave after wave of devilites.

Lastly Fangel has good ideas for this.

Mon, 11/16/2015 - 09:38

Holy-Nightmare

...

@Vohtarak

The prize value will vary per mission and will be up to OOO to decide how much they reward the player. Regardless the ability to get rarities you can actually use without having to do mind numbing repetition would appeal to a lot of players.

@ Fangel

The more dangerous contracts would of course have greater rewards and would be more rewarding if completed on elite, less on normal, etc. Being able to join the ready room and not be instantly messaged would be good, just a simple thing on the HUD in front of your knight indicating you have a contract and a tab button would be fine.

@ Fehzor

I do like the idea of super long contracts, but they shouldn't have an easy way to finish them. If they do get added you would be allowed to have one "Super contract" and a set number of "regular contracts"

The stipulations you talked about could be part of an "Advanced" extra for the mission. Once toggled on you would be saying you accept this extra part, you would be prevented from using that thing limited by the contract. If you managed to complete the contract with these limiters you would receive a greater reward.

Mon, 11/16/2015 - 10:09

Cyphereau

"Cut to the chase - the more slaves the better!" from Cyphereau's Doctrine of the Idol Mind p. 1986 (11-16-2015)

Mon, 11/16/2015 - 11:45

Corporal-Shade

I'm a Wizard

I'll gladly kill 100 Gremlins for 2k cr.
Or anything else.
You think there would be:
Kill 2000 Glop Drops and their variants.
Or
Ignore 7 treasure boxes.

Tue, 11/17/2015 - 20:07

Inquistitive-Ego

A slight alteration and a nostalgic reference

Love this idea, as it seems just the way to keep those vanguards in the fold and buying those prize boxes ;)
This idea was brought up a very long time ago on the (now sadly dead) Arsenal Podcast in which an extremely similar idea was voiced with the alteration of instead of a RNG based reward like OP suggested the reward for the contract was a "Token" which could be traded to a merchant in Haven (or somewhere else) for CR, fire crystals, accessories or costumes (possibly weapons, armor and the like?) depending on how many you gave him/her. Incorporating the idea of different mission giver= different rewards, more than one kind of token could be available for a reward, thus influencing the purchasable items

E.G.

Spiral Token (most common) : CR, fire crystals and 'generic' costume items and accessories (Frosty, Hallow, Surge etc)

Strange(er) token: Cr, fire crystals and stuff from the disguise prize box (stranger hats, beards and the like)

Moorcraft token: Cr fire crystals and any undead/fiend/scary (but no Apocrean) costumes and accessories

Amero tokens: (the hunter's lodge guy) any 'spark' (primal, grim or forge) and boss tokens

NOTE: any costumes and accessories will be very expensive so as to not devalue the original item, and Boss tokens will have to be harder to get from this merchant than from the original boss, allowing for a different (albeit more time consuming) way to farm for that Fang of Vog you want.

NOTE THE SECOND: Devs an GM's please listen to this! This idea is amazing and deserves more than a "..." http://forums.spiralknights.com/en/node/112509

Wed, 11/18/2015 - 10:41

#10

Holy-Nightmare

@ Ego

The token idea is nice but too much of this game is already about grinding. If tokens are used then you shouldn't be forced to store up large amounts. I think many players would like the idea of an instant reward system, kind of like the current missions system but with more mystery and more reward.

Since Contracts are handed out on a relatively random basis (5 per month but date of each at random) and the contractor is chosen at random for each knight as well as the mission it would literally take months to stockpile enough tokens to get you into double digits. Instant rewards are the way to go but having tokens on the side would get people who already have fully heated gear invested in these missions.

Wed, 11/18/2015 - 14:17

#11

Inquistitive-Ego

Grind, Heat, Rinse and Repeat

@Holy-Nightmare

Take a look at SK as a whole, it is, in essence, a grind fest, and some of us like it, and anyone 3* and above doesn't.

How about this. After completing a contract (we need a better name, I don't like it, it makes me think of TF2) an instant reward of CR, fire crystals or something else small, then a token or tokens to be given to the merchant; because let's face it, instant rewards are great, but to prevent unnecessary rage (E.G I complete one of the 'Dangerous' contracts, and for my long anticipated reward I get... a Dusky Maid Headband) I think that a token system would be better than more RNG (we already have tons of it, prize boxes, lock boxes, and the end-of-level prize wheel) and as for the long amounts of grinding this would bring about, simple, make them more common.

"Since Contracts are handed out on a relatively random basis (5 per month but date of each at random) and the contractor is chosen at random for each knight as well as the mission it would literally take months to stockpile enough tokens to get you into double digits"

This is the thing that really grinds my gears, if these contracts are going to have a significant impact on the game, they need to happen more than 5 per month. Here's my idea, Three 'normal' contracts per week (these ones only take a day or two's work to complete, so no real rush) and one 'Dangerous' contract every 1-2 weeks or so (these take a while to complete, so these should probably stay up for a while)

P.S. sorry for not putting your quote in italics, I've never really been good with HTML

Search

Hero for hire system (contracts)