idea for new kind of tradeskill instance: tower defense

[Meirril]

<p>Its kind of a revelation. What do crafters want to do? Build stuff.</p><p>What are adventure instances about? Going into the monster's lair and killing them (for their stuff).</p><p>How about if we build stuff to stop the monsters?</p><p>Make it a timed instance. When you enter you get 10 minuites until the "monsters" show up.</p><p>"But that's not enough time to craft much of anything!" you say? Well, then we better build something to give us more time! Lets say we're in your typical underground setting and we're being invaded by a hord of...something. We have a recipe for walls. Walls can be built in a single combine and are placed by right click casting them near the weakening baracades. Each wall adds a few minuites to how long it takes to batter the defenses down. The longer the instance runs the less time you get per wall section.</p><p>Then you build the actual defenses. Make a bunch of different devices you can build. Each device consists of a placeable "hull" that you have to put the rest of the components in and then a final combine to finish each one. Each component uses a different tradeskill. Lets just say we have 5 different devices and each one takes 3 different components. That's a total of 25 recipes right there. One more for wall components. Plenty of recipes to spread around, and lots of reasons to communicate with everybody else. You might even make 1 or 2 more sets of "emergency" devices that can solve on the spot problems the big machines arn't built to handle. Fire extinguishers, bottled wind (to take care of gas), bomb disfusing kit, field repair kit (for damaged machines), bug repellent (for attacks too small for the big machiens to handle).</p><p>Make it to where the mobs start dropping rewards for each wave defeated, with maybe either a final "boss" wave or an ever building "jackpot" with each wave defeated. Throw some odd attackers in there so you can't just build lots of a single machine and expect to get the really big prizes. Make the crafters run in once in a while to take care of some special attacks with the emergency devices.</p><p>There could be limited resources and more resources droped for each wave/mob killed so you can keep building during the attacks. This way you ballance building "walls" with "machines". The more walls you build for time extensions the less resources you have for defense!</p><p>Basically, introduce "tower defense" style gameplay for crafters. It should be fun!</p>

[Whilhelmina]

Oh ! YES ! That would be really fun ! *supports the idea*

[Aneova]

<p>but what causes the win scenerio?</p>

[GrunEQ]

<p><span style="font-size: small; font-family: comic sans ms,sans-serif;">How would you distribute winnings?</span></p>

[Valdaglerion]

<p>Sounds interesting but overly complicated by limiting the number of nodes when coupled with the number of players in etc.</p><p>I am going to assume this defense mechanism would have some type of offense to it that would kill off the invading army to signal a win? I cant see an invading army just giving up because they cant get through a wall.</p><p>What kinds of drops in loot do you envision.</p><p>The issue with the void instance right now is it takes longer to do and is a much bigger PITA than the other 3 instances with the same potential payoff.</p>

[feldon30]

The overall idea sounds AWESOME. For rewards, there would be two chests, one visible to folks on the Tradeskill quest, one visible to folks on the Adventure quest.

[Meirril]

<p><cite>Aneova@Kithicor wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>but what causes the win scenerio?</p></blockquote><p>The invaders spawn in "waves". Each wave lasts about 3-5 minuites with a 45-60 second break between waves. Each wave defeated contributes towards winning. Each instance should have a few different degrees of "win".</p><p>Lets just say your in a halfling mine just outside of Rivervale and its being mined into by Runnyeye Goblins intent on taking over the mine. If you defeat 3 waves, you get the small victory of all the mine personal and the valuable ore are able to escape. You get a minor victory reward. If you defeat 7 waves the deputies are able to gather further up the mine in a narrow defensable position and are ready to counter attack when the invaders get past your automated defenses. That's the regular victory condition, you get rewarded by the deputies. If your machines plus your efforts hold out for 12 whole waves the Runnyeye Goblins loose their resolve and collapse the tunnel as they flee. The boss of the last wave drops the big reward and you receive some small trinkets from the mine owner as well.</p><p>While you build walls at the beginning of the instance, they just delay the action from starting. You have to build devices that will actually take care of what ever is being delayed. Defeat the goblins, take care of the rising water, put out the raging fire, fix the out of control factory, pacify the raging spirits, take out the hord of bugs threating Farmer Walcot's fields. Set up a problem with a whacky magi-mechanical solution that any gnome would be proud to be part of.</p>

[Meirril]

<p><cite>GrunEQ wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p><span style="font-family: comic sans ms,sans-serif; font-size: small;">How would you distribute winnings?</span></p></blockquote><p>Everybody that participates should get some "base pay". I'm more in favor of having it be a coin-chest that gets split according to loot settings (usually coin splits evenly). It could also be that everybody gets tokens like they do for the current instances, or faction that can be spent like with the diety miracles or city status. Either way, just for comming everybody should get something.</p><p>I'd also like there to be "corpse loot". Some of the monsters defeated have something on them. While you go around checking corpses you find some resources to be used in the instance. Sometimes you find a treasured peice of vendor loot worth 15g. Sometimes you find 20 roots on a mob. Sometimes you find one carrying 12 baraccuda (don't ask where he got them from, you'll sleep better if you don't). Also maybe some status trash loot.</p><p>Each wave should have a named something in it that drops a chest. The first few waves should drop coin, advanced tradeskill recipes, imbuing material, maybe a rare harvest in a good box. When the instance ramps up in difficulty, the drops should get better. Rare harvests arn't quite so rare, chances of dropped crafting components increases. As you get beyond the regular victory conditions the dropped loot should be better. Dropped crafting components are still uncommon but noticably better to the point that your disappointed if you get less than 4 from chests. Dropped recipes for said components start showing up. You start getting adornment components (fragments, powders). Recipes could either be tradeable or (perferably) no-trade and worth decent coin to the vendor (say 20-40g if vendored). The final boss should drop several regular rares, dropped components, and I think adornment components (common infusions, rare mana). Also some rare crafter's clothing and tools would be grand. Nothing quite like a malet or a pick to make a crafter feel manly. </p><p>The actual distribution? If they are chests and/or corpse loot use the regular loot rules that adventurers use. If its quest driven then its more or less a non issue. I'd suggest for any NPC given reward you actually talk to the NPC to receive it or do that group chest thing that is so popular in TSO instances.</p>

[SilkenKidden]

<p>Sounds familiar.  Sounds like the tradeskill instances we already have, especially the one with the mini war going on.</p>

[feldon30]

<p>Except that you make all the items, then you can chase after them as they fight an exceptionally easy fight. What we're talking about is a real-time event, more like the excitement of a raid. Where you have tradeskillers making items and adventurers who zone in and use those items. For instance, you've got a cannon and it has a certain amount of ammunition and you've got tradeskillers making ammunition that auto-increments the ammo count. And you've got tradeskillers making food items, health items, potions, damage shields. There are all kinds of things you could be doing to protect the 'home fort' in real time. Either those items would auto-drop into people's inventories, or as soon as you create the item, it buffs/affects the whole group. I realize that this would not interest solo tradeskillers, and some folks are not 'quick fingered' nor like timed events. But for someone who actually liked the challenge of Rush Orders back when there was a real question of whether you'd have enough power to finish them (now I finish Rush Orders with over 4 minutes remaining *yawn*), I'd really get a kick out of this type of encounter. I know it would be difficult to tune, but fun things are difficult to design.</p>

[GrunEQ]

<p><span style="font-size: small; font-family: comic sans ms,sans-serif;">Believe me, after building the spires dragon episode, I have no desire for anything to do with a contested mob for loot.  What happened on my server was...when it was close to being finished some guilds would stop working and at the planned moment they overwhealmed the server with setting off fireworks and knocked many people out of the game.  And being that only the group/guild that got the kill got the rewards. So even if you helped kill the dragon...if you didn't do the killing blow forget it. But I'm thinking they locked the encounter.  Yeah that part was lots of fun.....NOT.  So anything that isn't a reward directly for participating, is out as far as I'm concerned.</span></p>

[Deson]

Asked for similar years ago, still want it. Nice write up.

[feldon30]

<p><cite>GrunEQ wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p><span style="font-size: small; font-family: comic sans ms,sans-serif;">Believe me, after building the spires dragon episode, I have no desire for anything to do with a contested mob for loot. </span></p></blockquote><p>Who said contested?</p><p>12 person instance. 3-6 tradeskillers. 3-6 adventurers.</p><p>The rewards would have to be pretty substantial, with a long zone lockout timer.</p>

[Meirril]

<p>I was thinking it would be a just crafter instance actually. The machines you build would just work. Though, it would be fun if you could crew some of them. That way you could have them have various refresh rates and have crafters running all over the place to aim and trigger different machines.</p><p>I'm not opposed to a mixed crafting/adventuring instance though. I think the main problem with that though would be the 80/80's out there who are both adventurer/crafters. You'd have double the crafters when you need them, and double the adventurers when you need them. Its a ballance issue unless you totally seperate the 2 groups.</p><p>Instead of having items auto-populate you could have designated "drop off points" like tables and platforms where finished products could spawn. Then anyone would be able to run over and grab one from the approprate area. This way the crafters could keep crafting while someone places the items as they are made to increase efficiency.</p>