This thread is brought to you by the letter I, and the word lied.
Tue, 11/16/2010 - 06:58
It's the middle of the night and I've had too much caffeine. I'm also listening to this which isn't helping me get to sleep at all.
But whatever, time to do what I do best.
Annoy everybody.
Boss Encounter?
This one is pretty cool. It's kind of a sub-boss leading to a much tougher fight. It happens in multiple stages, kind of like the Arena, just with no break areas.
Entrance/Room 1
The entrance room, you come down and there are four respawning Vitapods, two up either side of the elevator, a pill dispenser and either side are some rooms filled with Crystals.
To the north is a long hallway,at the end of which is a party button which closes the gate behind.
What spawns is random, Shield Gremlins, Trojans, Alpha Ash Tails, whatever.
It goes for 3 waves. After which the gate opens up and a decent length hallway stretches out over the clockworks below.
Room 2
This one is a bit tougher, the rear door closes but the front facing exit is blocked by an enormous metal spider. Two Gremlins jump out, they have rear shields but also have front shields, rendering them invincible from all directions until they attack.
The Blockade Brothers have numerous attack patterns.
Stage one: They act like regular Trojans, they rush, wait until you stop moving and swing. The do throw their Wrenches occasionally.
Stage two: They will slam their shields into the ground, creating a barricade and rush about individually of their shields, acting like bigger, tougher versions of shield Gremlins.
Ranged attacks cause them to dush forward and do a stun attack with the shaft of their Wrench.
They also have the ability to throw clusters of bombs.
Final stage: When they have almost no health left, they pick their shields up and resume a combination of the previous two stages, they move quicker this time, however.
They also deflect bullets with their shields now.
Once they have been defeated, they will flee into the giant spider. This spider has enormous front legs that can pull you towards it's poisonous fangs, as well as bullets that deal minor damage that keep you stunned in place for an attack by smaller metal spiders.
You can pick up the Blockade Shields now, which have infinite health.
They slow you down, as if you were blocking and when you attack while holding them, you drop them on the ground.
Activating them again causes them to form a blockade, kind of like a safe spot.
As you shatter the armour off the front of the Spider, it will begin firing out Alchemer-like projectiles.
Once all the armour on the front is broken, it will begin slowly moving backwards, along a fairly long hallway.
Every so often, it will stop and spawn Gun Puppy MK IIs along the way.
Final Room
The last room is also, the toughest.
The Spider has a new form. It is an enormous horned beetle, it can not only ram forward, but the front legs have turned into an extremely long horn, which can set you on fire when they snap shut, almost certainly killing you, blockade shield or not.
It retains the ability to fire out Alchemer Bullets, however they now cause Fire.
The only way to damage the Beetle is to hit it when it's horn is open. If you shoot the horn after stunning it, when it opens the next time, it will fire out homing missiles.
Once it's been destroyed, the Blockade Brother's will jump out and flee. However, their father will remain.
Blockade Father is not an easy guy to bring down. He has a Golden Thwack Hammer, his Shields will not break, he doesn't need to drop his shield to beat you down and all his attacks can shatter your shields quite easily. He also has enhanced versions of his son's attacks, as well as some of his own.
His attack pattern also allows for him to spawn Gun Puppies and throw multiple Golden Thwack Hammers.
Bringing him down will require clever use of the two blockade shields, as well as threat management (he will only attack the last person who attacked him).
Defeating him nets every player in the party a Golden Thwack Hammer. It's bound upon acquiring.
Invisible Rotation
I've said this in another thread, but I think it's a good way to lessen the predictability of descents, as well as add a reason to travel to higher up towns, if they contain certain levels.
Invisible Rotation involves every level having possible alternate levels, that players cannot see on the map.
Treasure Rooms might have a chance at being entirely Booby Trapped, they could also have Super Treasure Rooms or whatever.
Some bosses might have alternate forms that have a chance at being found.
Threat Meter and You
The Threatometer may also alter the levels you go to, having Red meters might turn the next level into your last. Higher star gear would DRASTICALLY increase your chances of going to an extremely difficult special stage.
Some alternate forms of a boss may only be reachable by having a high threat meter.
Travel Agent Mix-ups
Some Town levels might also send you to a different place, possibly with special, static Dungeons.
These places have usage only (as opposed to time based) passes associated with them.
These towns might sell unique items or recipes, they all have arcades as well.
Altered Weapons
A kind of weapon power up in which you can alter a weapon's performance and possibly even their form.
Using shards, you can fill three slots inside a weapon with different colours, creating different effects.
The power-ups, initially only effect the Charge Attacks.
With three slots and 5 different coloured gems, that's 125 different combinations for gems.
Some combinations won't do anything. Some might immediately change an item into another item.
Three gems of the same type will just add or enhance an elemental effect to a weapon.
Some elemental effects can not be added alongside another elemental effect.
That's all for now, folks.
Deal with it, cool story bro, etc.
Wed, 11/17/2010 - 17:19
#2
Horses don't wear pants, so why should I?
Shards already have preset functions, light and dark shards wouldn't so much add an effect but rather they would be catalysts to produce different effects, or to evolve a weapon without giving it any additional effects.
The wiki entry is here.
Crimsonite => Red Shard: Affinity with Fire
Moonstone => Blue Shard: Affinity with Electricity
Valestone => Green Shard: Affinity with Frost
Luminite => Light Shard: Good catalyst (offers positive effects to 'Light' weapons or adds 'Light' effects to weapons with no affinity)
Dark Matter => Dark Shard: Evil catalyst (offers positive effects to 'Dark' weapons or adds 'Dark' effects to weapons with no affinity)
So say if you had a Firotech Alchemer MKII, you put two Red Shards and one Dark Shard in there. The charge attack would send out larger, skull shaped rounds that home in on extremely close enemies, but explode after a shorter distance. Meaning they need to be fired with much more accuracy.
Then, if you used a Prismatech Alchemer with three Dark Shards, it would eventually evolve into the Shadowtech Alchemer.
A weapon's initial effects from using the Shards would be extremely weak. The strength of the attacks and the change offered up by the Shards placed in the weapon, would increase with use of a certain combination.
If you place the shards in a higher levelled weapon, it would take much longer than if you placed it in a low level weapon.
It would also remove any chance of seeing the weapon evolve, since the weapon will only evolve on a level up.
The main reason I don't want shards to give out more tangible effects, like a 1% chance to knockback an enemy, is because it would stop people experimenting with the shards.
If they know that something adds something for sure, they'd just use the effect that appeals to them.
There's no guarantee putting Red Shards in a weapon would give it a Fire Effect, or Blue Shards giving the weapon a Shock Effect.
Mon, 11/22/2010 - 07:11
#3
I'm just a Jeepster
Some Gate related stuff today.
Been listening to these, if you're interested.
Surprisingly, it has nothing to do with Marc Bolan.
Dew Drops:
If you're doing a bulk drop of minerals (in the thousands), using a Dew Drop would essentially enhance the effects of deposits made after yours by contributing stock from the Dew Drops into subsequent deposits.
So say, you drop 1,000 Moonstone into a Gate with a Dew Drop, the Dew Stock would add an amount to every subsequent deposit of a certain amount based off that.
1,000 Stock would not be equivalent to 1,000 additional Moonstone every time somebody deposits Moonstone, it would be a logarithmic amount added.
People could thus, control gate deposits without actually having to contribute any more to the Gate itself.
So an example:
If you deposit a Dew Drop and 1,000 of a Mineral, whenever somebody deposited that mineral, there would be an additional 50 of that mineral processed for every deposit.
You would need to drop them in early for it to be worth the sheer amounts you would need to deposit for it to be effective.
Perhaps after a certain number of deposits or time they would become ineffective.
Racks and Pinions
These would be occasional rewards from the Core. Blueprints for new levels that can be placed into rotation by adding them into the gate. Using Racks would create rows of rotational levels, Pinions would create column groups of levels.
They could be boss levels, unique challenges or anything.
They are extremely rare and have their own sockets on the tray menu that show what Rack and Pinions are going into the Gate.
Once a Rack and Pinion are placed inside a Gate, the Gate will no longer accept them.
These would allow for easy regulation of Christmas, Halloween or other themed maps, by just adding them to the Cog and Sprocket sockets automatically.
Guild Stock
Guilds could take a cut of their member's Mineral earnings to be placed inside Guild Storage. This would allow Guilds to choose what Minerals they deposit into the Gates as well as give them more of a reason to collect collaboratively.
People could regulate this themselves, choosing to give all of their crystals or only a certain amount.
Or Guilds themselves could regulate this.
When Guilds contribute to levels, they generate better stages and most likely, in much larger amounts. Making them prime users of Alloys.
Guild dumping can be done by the Guild Master, or if it is their wish, delegated to lower ranks in case of dwindling activity.
mostly the long corridor...this can be made with a rushing wall running to you too (idea brought to you via final fantasy 12):
-When you enter the room, it is a long, long corridor, where a wall monster (construct type), walks slowly towards you, getting faster as the health dropss, getting, at most, a little slower than the players movement speed. All the melee attacks done against it would knock back the player, rather then the wall, would not stop it attack, and the knockback would not interfere in the player combo. If the wall touches a player, it would cause small normal/piercing damage, as well as knockbacking the player...like, let's say, almost a screen away, and stunning for 2 seconds, at most. Of course, it would attack too, not only run at the players. It Could have some prjectile attacks that freeze, and some that stuns. Also, rarelly, it could do a frontal "jump", just to go faster, and also causing more damage if it touches a palyer. Of course, it would be killable, but, not necessarelly you would need ot kill it to proceed. At the end of corridor, there would be a door, where you can enter, and the door would close right after everyone enters. If no one enters, the wall can easilly knockback them there. When closed, well, the wall would be unreashable, thus, makins it unkillable after that. If the players do kill it before they are thrown in the rest of the dungeon, they would have a chance of high drops (the moster would give a lot of coins heat, and culd give some nice equips, rarelly), and also would open another door at the begin of the corridor, with acces to a treasure room filled with chests (let's say, something like 7 chests would be good). Also, to ensure that everyone is being dropped in the room, the wall would knockback everything, from bad placed bombs to dead player corpses (so palyers don't revive right near the monster, or behind it....
quite long idea, sorry.
-About altered weapons Quite nice, though i would like it this way:
-> every shard have it specific status change, like a small bonus to damage, small bonus to status chance, and other things;
-> If you combine 3 shards without a set, it would only give you the small insignificant bonuses.
-> If you combine 3 of the same, it would give a more significant bonus, but nothing as usefull as the specific bonuses;
-> If you manage to find a specific bonus, it would add a usefull status to your weapon. For example, if the bonuses are of 0.5%, yellow is for attack speed, red is for attack, blue is for charge speed, purple is for status chance, and green is for knocback, then, if you combine yellow, red, and blue, then you could get a small chance that the first attack of your combo acts like a charged attack, with less damage, but with the same effects. Like, for example, the spur: is the effect connects, then the first attack would be the same speed, with the same damage, but would let out a small energy burst, that would cause damage like a normal attack.
-> I'm talking about a 1% chance. It would not be something reliable as a must have to pass, but would rather function as a bonus. So, this way, even if some skills seen to be too overpwered, they would be active with such low rate that it would make for the mistake.
-> to finish, players could have a logbook, where all the combinations that they used are logged there, when the effect conects (if you do the combination yellow, red, and blue, as the example, you would get a yrb combo in the log, followed by ?????. Them, when the special comes out, the ???? would become an explanation of how the stones let you sometimes do a charge dattack without chargin, and could have more ??? to fill, if it have more skills to discover).