|
Questing and the Party System:
I had a very hard time coming to the conclusion on how I was going to handle online questing. Given that Graal is an online game, it would seem wrong to make dungeons clientside, as you'd be very secluded from the world. But serverside dungeons are so complicated that it's insane. Also, you'd be inadvertently getting help from others whether you wanted to or not. Anyone who played way back when Classic had bosses and you had to either wait for others to beat them, or go in only to have it already beaten for you know what I mean. I didn't like either, and I couldn't think of a way to implement both.
So I thought of a completely separate way!
Normally, if you'd enter a dungeon you'd be separated from other players. It would be all clientside, thus it would give you the chance to enjoy the experience like a real Zelda dungeon.
HOWEVER. I also planned a party system. This would allow you to party with up to 3 other players. When in a party, dungeons were created by instance for your party. However, instead of just creating a copy of the clientside dungeon I planned to remake the dungeons from the ground up to be specifically tailored to online gameplay. Baddies would be different, puzzles would be different, the whole dungeon would be different. Since it was serverside, specifically designed baddies would be used instead that had simpler AI and movement. This way the whole party is experiencing smooth and simple movement instead of complicated movement that will most likely suffer from lag. Baddies would also be generated with health and numbers depending on the party size. Like I also said, the whole dungeon would be designed to work best with a party instead of being specifically designed for a single player experience. For example, even though the video doesn't show it, you could pick up other players in your party and throw them around. Things like this would be worked into the dungeon. Same could probably be said for the bosses. They may be the same boss, but chances are they would be changes to various degrees to make the party work as a team.
So when all is said and done, you could play through a dungeon by yourself and then party up with others and get two completely different dungeons! I also intended to give incentive to players to party and redo quests. How I'm not sure... I definitely planned on having time trials, with the quickest parties getting recognition for their feats(probably in a tablet in front of the dungeon or such). However, I was also thinking of giving rewards for each time you beat the quest again... I don't remember what they were. Possibly large gralat rewards or something. Like I said, I forget.
On a somewhat similar note, I intended to keep track of all sorts of fun data. If you've ever played Timesplitters, I was very inspired by it. How many bushes have you slashed? How many gralats have you earned? How many times have you readied your shield? Opened your map? Picked up a vase? As well as the typical... boring data, like player kills, hours and such. I was going to record all this data, because I believe players LIKE looking at random, nonsensical stuff like that. I certainly found it humorous when I booted up Timesplitters to see I killed 537 monkeys and smashed 57 watermelons. Then all the data would be compiled into a massive top-10 list, just like the good ol' days! |