Guild Based Raids - NPC Boss!

[Grimrock Litless]

I see a future, a future with guilds dedicated to hunting great monsters, new jobs like monster hunters started appearing. Great loot have caused many to run for the riches and glory.

+1

[Shadowood]

I like this a lot and have enjoyed group bosses in other games. Here is a couple of suggestions:

- To keep it as a thing to have fun with guildmates, have rewards for certain accomplishments. For instance, once the group boss is damaged by 25%, then everyone gets ________. At 50% damage, everyone gets ________. Would be nice to have some small rewards that build to a bigger one and helps out guilds with not as strong fighting ships to still get something from playing this.
- Along with that, there could be individual rewards. Like, for taking 10% off (or a certain amount of hit points), you get ____________. Another reward for taking 15% (or larger value of hit points) and get ____________.

- To inspire a little competition within the guild, have a leaderboard that keeps track how much percentage off each person has taken from the boss(es).

Another thing that I saw in other games and liked was that there were waves of bosses that got harder as the progression goes on. And the rewards also got better as they went along. Maybe a top reward for all of the progression could be a pack of voodoo cards, and in sum total maybe get 5-10 credits, and 50K gold. Nothing too huge (as playing (fun) should be the main point of this), but something to help celebrate the win.

One last idea (for now) is that if there could be lots of little bosses (like the lesser kraken in ship missions, but a lot more for this guild mission) that are found randomly in ports that the guild has to find and destroy. If this gets implemented as a progression level, this would be a great lower/starter level boss round. Would be awesome to build up to the Leviathan at the end that takes a lot to kill it. If there was something like this, I would be happy to pay credits (or doubloons or whatever else) to be able to participate in it.

Slindur

Some great feedback here Slindur, Thank you!

[Shadowood]

I like this a lot and have enjoyed group bosses in other games.

One last idea (for now) is that if there could be lots of little bosses (like the lesser kraken in ship missions, but a lot more for this guild mission) that are found randomly in ports that the guild has to find and destroy. If this gets implemented as a progression level, this would be a great lower/starter level boss round. Would be awesome to build up to the Leviathan at the end that takes a lot to kill it. If there was something like this, I would be happy to pay credits (or doubloons or whatever else) to be able to participate in it.
Slindur

I really like this idea. This could be the way to getting the Doubloons to unlock the big boss. Are you thinking we would have to "Patrol" for these "lesser" NPC's or would they just randomly appear. For now I would think guilds would need to "Patrol" as a large guild, heck even a large player could just have a ship in each port and it wouldn't take much effort to find. If you add in the "Partol" feature or even a "Dig" feature to find these buggers (again team work) that could work. Thoughts on that?

[Shadowood]

Captain Jack,

Could this idea tie into your Special Crew and First Mate idea?
viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1778

You mentioned

Obtaining crew Members:
-Rewarded through NPC missions
-Rewarded through NPC battles

Just thought we could pair these two somehow. Special Crew could be part of the reward system during these guild based raids against NPC's

[Shadowood]

This idea may make it into the game and sooner then anticipated.

If you have any further ideas on how this would work or what you would like to see, please send some thoughts today. I will make a revision later today with some ideas and post.

Again I see this as a great way for guilds to interact, teamwork, coordinate, etc... and get a few prizes out of it to.

We are not reinventing the wheel here as many other games have a Guild Based Raids in them, so if you played or play a game with some cool elements please let me know.

Thanks guys

[Captain Jack]

The concept is a nice idea; Having waves and a Big Boss to eliminate sounds good.

As it is suggested, it is a fairly easy implementation. It will be too similar to existing chain of missions though.

I do not really like that people will be forced to lose again and again against NPCs -> Some other form of a battle engine is needed. One where all attacking fleets will be combined and attack on the same time. So they will either lose all together or win all together.

Such an upgrade of the battle engine can be our next implementation. It is a major feature though which means that it would take months to implement. But it could be the improvement we are looking for the game all this time. On this upgraded battle engine we will be able to build the future of Pirates Glory.

I am speaking for the following upgrades:
-Ability to have more than 1 player participating against an enemy.
-Ability to have more than 1 player defending.
-Ability for every player to chain fleets (more than 1, perhaps limit 3?).
Or to speed things up development wise, we could revise the numbers of ships per ship each player can have (instead of allowing bundles of fleets).
-Ship specialization improvements as discussed elsewhere.

I know that our speed during this period is top, but I am really worried about the time this will need.

Without such an ability, I do not see reason to add unbeatable NPCs. It does not sound exciting to me for a guild to see who will suicide the most times in order to take the wave down.

We also need more refinements in rewards. We would prefer these guild raids to unlock extra abilities, either permanently or for a specified period of time. Profitability awards are not really a good way to go with PvE features.

For example, there can be a 10% attack bonus for a whole month for all guild members. This bonus can grow per 10% for every consecutive achievement (10% 1st month, 20% 2nd month, 30% for every month after). Failure to complete the mission for a month, will zero the consecutive wins bonus.

We also need some ideas in more requirements than just battle. I guess that only beating npc enemies can be a bit boring once you have done it many times.

Therefore:
-A new way to battle where attackers can be combined. (that's our struggle, no need to worry much about it)
-We need ideas of what the rewards will be. An exact list would help.
-More ideas on objectives for mission accomplishment (not just battles, perhaps resource transfer, some PvP objectives, etc).
-Tying objectives and rewards to the right enemies, can give us a nice story which is always good for the game.

[Slindur]

The concept is a nice idea; Having waves and a Big Boss to eliminate sounds good.

As it is suggested, it is a fairly easy implementation. It will be too similar to existing chain of missions though.

I do not really like that people will be forced to lose again and again against NPCs -> Some other form of a battle engine is needed. One where all attacking fleets will be combined and attack on the same time. So they will either lose all together or win all together.

Such an upgrade of the battle engine can be our next implementation. It is a major feature though which means that it would take months to implement. But it could be the improvement we are looking for the game all this time. On this upgraded battle engine we will be able to build the future of Pirates Glory.

I am speaking for the following upgrades:
-Ability to have more than 1 player participating against an enemy.
-Ability to have more than 1 player defending.
-Ability for every player to chain fleets (more than 1, perhaps limit 3?).
Or to speed things up development wise, we could revise the numbers of ships per ship each player can have (instead of allowing bundles of fleets).
-Ship specialization improvements as discussed elsewhere.


Therefore:
-A new way to battle where attackers can be combined. (that's our struggle, no need to worry much about it)

Ok, here are some ideas about the battling/combing of fleets. I might comment on rewards later, but one thing at a time...

With what CJ said, I think that looking at adding a battle format that can work for this and the port wars (defense and blockade ideas) makes the most sense. So these ideas are oriented to try to address both.

1) Guild (or nation for ports) Armada:
Instead of a fleet, there could be an Armada that is designed for players to put ships into larger groupings to attack (or defend ports). The Armada is a guild (or nation) "fleet" that holds ships from different players. Players can send a ship to the Armada like they can send a ship to go fishing: It takes a certain amount of time to be grouped together and to get in position, and if recalled, then it takes a certain amount of time to be recalled. The Armada ideally would be able to fight as one as opposed to fighting as it is now (first ship in fleet fights first ship in other fleet, winning ship fights second ship, etc.) so that all ships on one side fire a massive volley at the ships on the other side, perhaps lined up by ship type (SotLs fight SotLs before fighting something else, frigates fight frigates before another ship type, etc.). (I have a more preferred way of fighting, if we are creating a new battle style...more below). The two opposing Armadas will fight so that every ship remaining after each volley will fire again until one side loses. For the winning side, there is some bonus or reward (I am not going into rewards or bonuses yet) for all players/ships that are in the Armada. For the losing side, the Armada is not able to reform and complete any coordinated Armada movement for a certain period of time. There could be voting for Armada actions similar to the current national voting. For guilds' Armadas, it could be a similar function where the guildmaster gets to veto like a king, and players have a voting power equal to their power rating in the guild.

I don't know how many slots of ships should be available for the Armada. Maybe 15-30 ships? That way, large guilds do not get to benefit from throwing hundreds of ships into the Armada and small guilds can still do well with their Armada. I do not have a fully formed opinion on whether or not port Armadas should be the same size or bigger than non-port Armadas.

2) Convoys
Convoys could be a way for one or more players to join fleets together for protection while traveling. Right now, I think a max of 3 fleets could be used for convoys. It could be a way to train new players (by showing them good fleet configurations) and to protect precious cargos (and a way to get the high end ships sailing). In a 3 fleet convoy, only 1 fleet would really be protected, as the other 2 fleets could be attacked depending on how the attacking fleet/Armada/maybe other convoy approached (I suggest it be randomized by the game which is attacked first). The plunder could be based on current plunder formulas PER fleet or could do something else (I am staying away from rewards/bonuses for now). If CJ is interested in not having as many repeated battles against big enemies, then this could be used in the current national rank missions too. Also "convoy" could be an action for how to use Armadas so that there are Armadas protecting cargos/traveling together.


Because these are pretty special types of ship groupings (Armadas and Convoys), I think that there should be a limit on how many a guild and nation is allowed to have. I think that for guilds, it should be based in part off of how many players and ships are in the guild. For nations, I think that it should be based off of players, ships, and ports for the nation. Perhaps a formula that would lead for smaller guilds/nations to be able to have 1-2 Armadas and larger guilds/nations to have 3-4 Armadas.


Fighting mechanics:
If there is going to be a new "battle engine," then I would love to see the implementation of ships speed and range of cannons be added into the calculations. Each ship has a range for their cannons to be able to fire, and whenever an enemy is in range, they will fire. Therefore, fast ships would be able to get into range quicker and possibly fire first based on their cannon range. Ideally, ships that are faster than the enemy and that have a longer range would be able to stay in range of their cannons but out of range of their enemies cannons. The Pirate Flagship might really be able to benefit from this aspect. However, that last part might be too complicated.

So with these mechanics, slower ships of the defending fleet would be engaged first by the fastest ships of the attacking fleet, not in the order that the player listed his ships in the fleet screen. This would require players to be tactical with ALL ships in the fleet instead of mainly the first and last ship in the fleet. With this, I think that it would make sense to change the plunder from just the tail ship's price (10% of base cost) be changed to the entire fleet's base price of ships, though with a lower percentage ( sum of base cost of fleet ships * .01). I am proposing a 10x decrease in the percentage instead of 5x decrease because the other ships usually are worth more (higher base price cost).


So those are my current thoughts on improving the battle structure and the ability to have more than 5 ships/1 fleet fighting together at a time.

Slindur

[Shadowood]

I do not really like that people will be forced to lose again and again against NPCs -> Some other form of a battle engine is needed. One where all attacking fleets will be combined and attack on the same time. So they will either lose all together or win all together.

Thank you for your feedback and a clearer direction on how you think this should go. I will put some more thought into it.

However, I do think that loses are needed and acceptable, as long as the NPC is sustaining DMG. Even with combining fleets and attacking at the same time.

I see some pros and cons with combining fleets.
* Pros
- Communication
- Teamwork
- Sharing the load, risk, dmg, turns (however the new system may work)
- Guild based rewards

*Cons
- Some individuals want to be #1. I am good either way, but do like being #1 from time to time. I am competitive and I see a lot of other players that are this way too. I love my new guild and the guys in it, but I want to rub it in Vane's face when I dish out more dmg then him. LOL.
- Timing, depending on how the system is set up, timing may be an issue as guilds are built with people from all different time zones. Being able to attack SOLO solves the issue for most. Coordination could be hindered here.

I will work toward a solution for all this.
Thanks again for the consideration.

[Slovich]

I would like to see fleets that are designed to give people special rewards or gold for attacking them. Like when ranking in a nation you have to beat certain NPCs to rank but, these fleets would be open to anyone to attack and get rewards for doing so. Course to keep one person from taking everything I would suggest a 1 attack per hour on the NPC.
Rewards would be based on the amount of damage you do to the NPC with the person doing the final hit getting a special reward.

[Shadowood]

You should read over this idea and comments from Admin...

viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2997