Skill Checks, Traps, Puzzles and Voting Choice in Dungeons

evilsquirrel03

I like to hack and slash like everyone else, but I think large parts of what make D&D an awesome experience is still being overlooked and neglected.

Skill Checks:
I know they're in the game and I think that it would be nice to see a rouge have the capability to sneak by a room to lower a gate or disable a trap that would be very problematic for the party. I can picture a dungeon with a creature that the party could bypass with the cleric or paladin's diplomacy check, or a stone door that could only be pried open with the strength of our trusty warrior.

Traps:
Make dungeons truly dangerous! Give us portals that split up the party and spikes that make terrain hazardous during boss fights. Corridors that constrict and crush or deadly pools of acid that lie in wait.

Your engine is already fully capable of one-shot us with creatures, we've seen that over and over. Now try your hand at making the environment that we encounter more treacherous; I think it would be a welcome change.

Puzzles:
Make us play Simon to open an alternate route or figure out how to safely escort an innocent through the dungeon along with us. Give us timed puzzles to figure out or reap the consequences of failure. Challenge more than our button mashing skills.

Voting Choice:
The dungeons always seem so linear, give us multiple paths to arrive at the end and different trials depending on how we choose to get there. Make the group decide how to tackle tasks and let us vote on how we decide to move forward. The Illusionist's Gambit already proves that there is a capability for team input in the game so expand upon it.

PVP:
Perhaps this can be incorporated into the dungeons in some way? Give us the opportunity to challenge an enemy adventuring group and duke it out for the main prize. Or perhaps the ability to time our progress as we achieve objectives and the first team through wins. There is more to PVP than just beating on each other in an arena.

Random Encounters:
Let's have a dungeon where the team has to set up camp, perhaps the campfires can be incorporated. If not for us then to give NPCs a chance to rest. This would be the perfect time to hit the party with a random encounter (maybe). Something that would incorporate some of the above into an element that makes the adventurers decide how to handle the encounter.

The campaigns are a great way to tell a story, but the grinds are getting a bit tedious. If you could randomize some of the elements above and fold that into the hacking and slashing that we already do people might spend less time on salvage runs and more time just enjoying the content.

moogie101

Apart from the PvP I absolutely love everything you've suggested & can't imagine why a lot of these things haven't already been included as most now seem so obvious. I hope you'll be forwarding these suggestions on to those in charge.

spelldazer

Pirate King has a mini game and it is a complete waste of time. What would be cool is a soloable mini lair, like the ones in Well of Dragons, that included some mini games and class specific quests/checks.

mordekai

This, is EXACTLY why I wish we had The Foundry on XBO.

There are a couple of problems associated with complex puzzles and skill runs in an MMO.
First, after a few runs the solution is simple. (I just did EE for the sixth time, and knew the answers to the test questions by heart).
Second,sadly, is the issue of if not "lowest" common denominator, then at least the problem that not enough players want to think AND grind...

It looks like Cloaked Ascendancy might actually address some of this kind of thing, and I hope they've found a good balance.

But if we could create our own content, then it would be up to the player to choose. Fancy a hack n' slash? Great.. Fancy a puzzle pit? Crack on...

evilsquirrel03

Foundry would be a very welcome addition to the X Box and PS4, though I really don't see a feasible way that they'd be able to pull this sort of thing off. As far as the solutions, a lot of skill checks are based on the random luck of the dice so sometimes you'll succeed and sometimes you'll fail. What happens to the party due to passing/failing would be determined by the dungeon. I just think it would be a neat mechanic to add to the current "I run to group of mobs, kill them, repeat" that we currently have.

I look forward to seeing what's coming in Mod 11. I've been doing my best to avoid spoilers so i'm pretty stoked. The idea of letting the party choose to continue in the Illusionists Gambit is in part what sparked this thread honestly.

mordekai

If the argument against Foundry on console is that the interface and general set up doesn't work well with consoles, I'd be happy to direct them to the stuff my 8 yr old does on Disney Infinity, and what my 12 yr old does with Project Spark.
I also imagine that the platform conversion process involves either some sort of data translation or emulator, I doubt that all three platform variations are drawn from scratch on three different versions of the game engine tool set. So they could probably offer a PC based Foundry that would allow user designed content to be uploaded through the translator into the XB Foundry.

Neverwinter Nights 1 & 2 both included the tool set version of the game engine as part of the game, so UDC was easily available. The PC version of the NWO Foundry does, sadly, look limited by comparison, with little or no capacity to sculpt terrain, and change the map, but I would still love to get my hands on it...

sundance777

I am sure a smart programmer could randomize the game/skill checks/portals etc so the choice provides different results each time up to some nominal limit but that limit should be high enough so that it is not easily repetitive and predictable. Right now it seems the limit on varaitions through most of the game is about 3 - 9, which takes all of three runs to see it all....dailies included. How about 27 or 48 variants...it would make the game more interesting for sure.