OaDs and more
Posted: Sun Aug 05, 2018 10:08 pm
So nobody likes the way OaDs in the game work (except for the people who do). Here is some nostalgia for those who want real random spawn bosses. About 2 years ago the "bosses" didn't spawn at set times or even once per day. It was a truly random system based on the builder's idea of how often the monster spawned vs how powerful the item drops could be. Mendil the Elder spawned roughly hourly but The Essence of the Deep spawned between 10 and 16 hours from time of last kill. The Ringleader I believe was on an 8 to 10 hour timer from last kill. These variables meant that people would run for a boss and have no idea if he was going to be there or not. This lead to a lot of people complaining if the area was more complicated than a single, easily farmable, key. Also people got pissed if they only had a 2 or 3 hour window of game play and no spawns happened during that time.
I get why the random spawn system was replaced with timed key/OaD spawns. It promotes stability and allows players to plan ahead and not devote their life to trying to keep checking on the boss they want. This isn't a negative, it is something that is required for stable game play. Imagine how pissed people would be if parties formed up and fought for the keys, only for the winning team/guild to get into the spawn spot and find out it wasn't there and they would have to check back regularly over the next 8 hours and hope they catch the spawn. That is why the current OaD system isn't going anywhere.
Now let's talk about alternatives. I'm all for random spawn bosses. I think it would be great if they were spread out and could spawn between 18 and 168 hours after they are killed. This kind of randomness could allow multiple "bosses" to inhabit the same area with overlap being a very rare thing. When I designed Alderra (someone else finished it when I left) I had something like this in mind but the code base wasn't there for what I had in mind. It would be easy to build bosses who drop worthy items that spawn within shockingly wide time frames so players would have to keep checking the spots to see if anything pops up. This would incentivize people to get out of towns and actually roam around the world at all times hunting for random spawns. These monsters would be outside the normal "OaD" system with the strength of their drops being based on how infrequently they appear. Just imagine the fun of fighting a "weekly" monster. With the new global chat going in even players who are on at down times have a chance of putting together a group to take out one of these random bosses.
Also a consideration is building OaDs where the keys expire fairly quickly but respawn within a reasonable time. Basically this means you would have something like 15 minutes to use the key after it dropped or you could wait another hour for the key monster to spawn to try again. This could work but there is also the drawback of once the OaD is completed, the key monsters still respawn so people will probably run it occasionally only to find no boss at the end of the dungeon. Mix this with random spawn though might be fun if it was coded to where each respawn is a different boss monster. The dungeon could be run up to 4 times per day with a different ending monster/drop each time. But still you would have people running through only to find nothing at the end as it was between spawn times.
What other ideas do people have to add to the option list? What ideas would YOU like to see in game? Let's be nice to NH and not turn this into a "this sucks" thread.
I get why the random spawn system was replaced with timed key/OaD spawns. It promotes stability and allows players to plan ahead and not devote their life to trying to keep checking on the boss they want. This isn't a negative, it is something that is required for stable game play. Imagine how pissed people would be if parties formed up and fought for the keys, only for the winning team/guild to get into the spawn spot and find out it wasn't there and they would have to check back regularly over the next 8 hours and hope they catch the spawn. That is why the current OaD system isn't going anywhere.
Now let's talk about alternatives. I'm all for random spawn bosses. I think it would be great if they were spread out and could spawn between 18 and 168 hours after they are killed. This kind of randomness could allow multiple "bosses" to inhabit the same area with overlap being a very rare thing. When I designed Alderra (someone else finished it when I left) I had something like this in mind but the code base wasn't there for what I had in mind. It would be easy to build bosses who drop worthy items that spawn within shockingly wide time frames so players would have to keep checking the spots to see if anything pops up. This would incentivize people to get out of towns and actually roam around the world at all times hunting for random spawns. These monsters would be outside the normal "OaD" system with the strength of their drops being based on how infrequently they appear. Just imagine the fun of fighting a "weekly" monster. With the new global chat going in even players who are on at down times have a chance of putting together a group to take out one of these random bosses.
Also a consideration is building OaDs where the keys expire fairly quickly but respawn within a reasonable time. Basically this means you would have something like 15 minutes to use the key after it dropped or you could wait another hour for the key monster to spawn to try again. This could work but there is also the drawback of once the OaD is completed, the key monsters still respawn so people will probably run it occasionally only to find no boss at the end of the dungeon. Mix this with random spawn though might be fun if it was coded to where each respawn is a different boss monster. The dungeon could be run up to 4 times per day with a different ending monster/drop each time. But still you would have people running through only to find nothing at the end as it was between spawn times.
What other ideas do people have to add to the option list? What ideas would YOU like to see in game? Let's be nice to NH and not turn this into a "this sucks" thread.