Portals, Worlds, and Exploration

[Eph]

Hey there,

as promised, here’s my first suggestion, a complete explanation of what i consider would be the best exploration gameplay of Oort.

Keep in mind i’m aware this requires a lot of time, dev side. Ideas i’m throwing here are “long-term” objectives, i’m obviously not asking for it right-now-this-instant-today-this-second-else-i-quit

Let’s start with confirming some present facts, who i’ll build upon :
* Worlds are “servers”, each with a different, handmade “signature”, featuring unique set of biomes mixing in.
* Worlds are persistent, and aren’t supposed to vanish after some time.
* For now, worlds are manually integrated in Oort : means there’s no such thing like an infinite number of worlds, means a player might be unable to find a new, fresh, unexplored piece of land. /* In this suggestion, i will suppose there’s always possibility for a player to find an unexplored piece of land/world */
* Worlds are big, large enough to not be feasibly cleared by a solo player under a week (month?).
* Portals (will) allow seamless transition between worlds
* Portals will be player-craftable, and allows to select a world to be linked to OR ask to be linked to a random, existing world.
* I’m not sure, but i read somewhere than every portals leading to a world (let’s say, world A) would drop the player in world A’s spawnpoint. I’ll come back to this later.

Now, what i consider would be a fun exploration :
1) It needs to be challenging (hard, even hardcore, etc…) while still being accessible to everyone.
2) It needs to be varied, filled with wonders and surprise us.
3) It needs to be rewarding. In my opinion, exploration should be the one and only way to find places containing challenging spots (think about Titans) with riches, and in general be profitable. This is actually an alternative to the commonly used scheme : “get rich by farming mobs and complete quests in a short span of time”. Called Farming. Don’t get me wrong, farming isn’t bad, nor unfun if well done, but it just cannot compete with the level of satisfaction exploration can provide.
4) It does need some constraint, to not hop world to world by spamming portals. (Without it, some issues may appears)

Well, let’s see how we can fulfill those four requirements.

1) The perfect solution would be than each world has it’s own difficulty. For now, as it’s my own preference and allow for more liberty development-side, let’s say difficulty is not a finite value (means you’re not landing on worlds with difficulty 0 to 100 %, but you’re landing on worlds with difficulty 1, or 17, or 42, or 1337… (up to 2147483647 i’d suppose *joke*)). This difficulty level would be a mix off parameters like :
* world’s threat level (is there lava or other damaging/Dangerous biomes, are there flying islands prone to falling damage, is there a lot of spikes/traps/things like that. I don’t know if the world builder keep tracks/allows parameters like that, i suppose not. Should add a “dangerosity” value to each biome, and average them for the world).
* Monsters stats
* Gear level (if gears has levels) : Higher level worlds will obviously drop higher level swords. /* Technical : I’d suppose/hope gears would drop following a Gaussian’s curve, with the peak scaled on the world’s level */

This difficulty level would be accompanied by another parameter : the world’s “difficulty mode”. This may looks like this :
Peaceful < Calm < Normal < Wild < Dangerous < Hardcore
difficulty mode would typically affect things like :
* Player malus on death (peaceful you loose nothing, Hardcore you loose absolutely everything in your inventory + equipped gear + money + debuff on res + ejected from world …)
* Gear stats (different of gear level). For exemple, gears may have rank : a gear level 17 could be of rank F, or E, or C, B, A, S, SSS… this rank would determine the stats of the gear : A level 17, rank C weapon would have less attack than a level 17 rank SSS. And higher difficulty mode would drop more higher rank item.
* Rarity of “structures”. By structures, i mean something like Protector’s lairs, Titans spots, rare resource deposits, stuff like that you’re happy to find.

This fulfill both 1) and 3) : Exploration could be both accessible and challenging. Everyone could play as they prefer : slowly, easily but surely on low-level/calm zones ? Or take a bet and venture to rewarding but dangerous high-level hardcore zones ?

2) What about varied worlds then ? I consider worlds and difficulty system would already provides enough variation to not be bored. This, plus random structures… You could improve this point by adding more content, not by adding new mechanics.
Structure example : a rare nest of creature, but attracts mobs when approached

4) Finally, i consider we do need a layer of “constraint”, to avoid getting spammed with portals everywhere, and portals in world lv4 doesn’t -usually- lead to a world lv1337. This layer of difficulty would be present with portals.
Portals now come in 2 types: definitive, and temporary.
* Definitive portals would cost a lot, it would be mandatory to aim to a precise world (no random) while linking it, players could get it back by breaking it (and when re-dropped, would link to the same world), …
* Temporary portals. Those could aim to a precise, player-chosen world, or random (if random, inspire itself of the actual world, with a tendency to up a bit – for difficulty level). Upon portal linking, you could define an amount of Oort stone to give to the portal : more means more chance of leading to a high rank world (actual world’s rank would also affect the portal to link to similar difficulty rank). Then, depending on the world’s rank, the portal would deplete in some time (faster for higher difficulty rank, slower for lower rank), and transform itself into a portal shard : can’t be used to transport someone anymore, but for a Oort stone fee, could be reopened again (cheaper than craft it back entirely). Eventually, if not sustained regularly, portal shards would deplete, vanishing in the void.

Remember about portals dropping you to world’s spawnpoint ? This behavior should persist for portals linking to a precise world (you could give the possibility to definitive portals to “aim” to where it would land, with x/y/z coordinates). But, for portals opened to a random world, the landing point should be random : spice up things a lot.

This would “force” players to team up at the beginning, or don’t team up at all : meeting someone while random exploring would be a seldom and cool “event” (= unexpected and would favor human interaction : << Hey, it’s rare than i meet someone during my exploration ! that’s fun =)! >>).
It also avoids the case where different players goes random-exploring, and when someone find a structure (Titan, Protector…), calls everyone on the chat and create an instant bus (IMO poor for human interaction).
Notably because structures are more common on high rank difficulty, it would encourage players to team up when thriving for challenge.

This, imo, allow every player to enjoy, with their own taste, the exploration Oort will provides, while still allowing surprises (you wouldn’t see world’s difficulty level, only world’s difficulty rank).

* Small note about portals price. Will be a bit unclear. Rising the prices of portals when the difference of levels/ranks between 2 worlds (for world-select linking, not random linking) is high would be good. I already have a “map of worlds” in my head, with same-levels near each other, and portals joining some of them in a chain from beginning zone to high level zone, that’d be incredible. For this to happen, prices of portals should be exponential with level difference, and greatly outweigh price of 2 portals + beacon :
Exemple, price to link a world lv4 to world lv100 would be 10000 Oort Stones. Price of a link from world lv4 to world lv 52 would be 3000 Oort stones, and link from world 52 to 100, another 3000.

* Small note about death toll, i’m somewhat against any form a debuff/timing respawn, even in hardest difficulty rank. It’s just plain boring to wait for your timer or your debuff to go away before playing again.

On top of that, you can add behavior to those world’s rank : maybe lower ranks spawn unique gardening seeds ? Maybe harder ranks spawn unique types of dungeons ?

If you read everything, congrats =)
I hope i managed to be clear and understandable

[Zouls]

Yeah i’d like it, Because i’m an explorer/crafter at heart, i also think that some of the places with better materials should be really hard and require atleast 2 people, and that ores should only be mineable if you have enough skill, some with wood and things as that, so that way you could make mercenary guilds who would do work and help people who need it.
but yeah i think it would be hard as hell to make but it would be pretty cool if different creatures and worlds are harder than others so everyone have something to do.

[Havok40k]

I believe the whole “unique creatures per world” is a planned feature, but the properties of each creature will fall into one of four(?) Classes, so a skilled adventured can identify and adapt to any challenge. Perhaps they can have hybrid creatures that use traits of two random classes?

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