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Opinions: Player Made Instant Death Traps/Slow Death traps
fallensbane
Member, Neverwinter Beta Users, Neverwinter Guardian Users Posts: 118 Bounty Hunter
I am curious what you guys think of implementing Instant Death Traps or traps that are guaranteed to kill a player slowly over time if they mess up? Currently the traps in game are meh x 1000 and I came up with some interesting ideas. Was debating on possibly using them on sidequests type things. But also giving strong warning that making a mistake will be bad. The slow death traps would be things players could escape with the help of another player.
Dreamscapes Campaign
I. Darkly Dreaming / NW-DPSH505XY +Daily Foundry!!
II. Shattered Dreams / NW-DGARDHDR7
Post edited by fallensbane on
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Caves have the pit thing built-in(as my poor rogue has discovered multiple times in some maps) and it works. Death will just send the player back to the respawn point. The trap-a-player stuff's a bit riskier, since while the player can always click the escape button on the minimap, you lose all your progress! You'd want to -really- make sure that the player understood that A) what they were doing could lead to that outcome, and
Either way, I'm curious to see what you make!
Short code: NW-DJGYNI7NH
In this old school-style adventure, the hero(es) explore an old ruined castle while searching for a fabled magic item at the behest of a wizard.
Dreamscapes Campaign
I. Darkly Dreaming / NW-DPSH505XY +Daily Foundry!!
II. Shattered Dreams / NW-DGARDHDR7
The developers carefully considered giving us access to kill volumes, but decided against it. This was for good reasons.
Don't try to work around the issue. Just don't make death traps in the first place. They are never fun for the player anyway, and this is supposed to be all about the players.
Don't forget caves, which players can build with, and don't seem to work well with rogue teleporting powers, haha!
Although to be honest, Tilt, I love your stuff, but most players don't truly appreciate the elaborate dialogue or the nonlinear stuff, so I'd consider your work aimed at the niche audience that does. Foundry missions with death traps are going to be the same thing. They're not designed for mass appeal, but they'll be interesting and unique for those that are looking for something different.
And like anything else, they have to be done right(basically not just used to grief players) or they'll be as awful as stacking too many encounters can be!
Short code: NW-DJGYNI7NH
In this old school-style adventure, the hero(es) explore an old ruined castle while searching for a fabled magic item at the behest of a wizard.
WIP
As my experience as a DM, very old one, Death trap are not OK, unless you advertise the fact before hand. In fact some P&P module I played *were* intended to be full of death trap.
Trap that kill somebody because they are too low on health or whatever, fine. Trap which are dedicated to outright killing the player at full health are not OK, unless you advertise the fact in your module description, and even that will get you a lot of negative feedback.
In fact let me correct that : as a palyer made module, never ever do a deathtrap in a MMO. Ever.
NW-DMIME87F5
Awaiting a serious response from the developers on the abuse of the review system by other authors.
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Pretty sad that I REALLY want to try new foundry content, but I end up just running the same 5 over and over because they are balanced so much better than others that I can actually finish them. My frustration is getting pretty high, but then again it's only an F2P game... O.o
I've actually starting toying with the idea myself of having quests that with one wrong turn you can be perma-trapped/killed/imprisoned with a notice along the lines of "Your quest ends here, you were unsuccessful in trying to <objective>". However, it can't be due to one slip up, but more a series of fatal mistakes in my opinion; don't punish the player for HAMSTER up by accident.
The issue here is 1) The testing capabilities of the foundry are a JOKE. Unless you have a level 10, 20, 30, 40, 50, and 60 version of each class you can not properly test your own work. 2) Instant Death isn't bad if there is a warning, all classes are equally capable of avoiding it, there is a reason for it to be there. This is a big part of why falling in caves currently has a kill volume and why at least 1 of my caves currently has areas where the player can indeed fall off. 3) The encounter scaling is not in the author's control. Many do not realize that the mobs have special abilities that are not unlocked until after level 30 as they stopped playing at 15 and started authoring UGC. Having never seen the higher levels they can not create content that is geared toward that.
I completely agree that the current version of traps is ridiculously under-powered. I fervently believe in well placed traps to keep players on their toes. I also believe that death in this game is a bit more punishing that most of the foundry authors realize and as such it shouldn't be so quickly used as a goal. I have in the past detailed how to properly create a pit trap that results in instant death, I will not be re-sharing that information going forward.
Even then some idiots will be furious because they died playing. They will give bad reviews.
In general I'm not doing such traps or hazards. It is not very appealing for more players. My main concerns are always playability and accessibility when building anything.
Authors really should have at least one character at 60, preferably not TR or DPS oriented GF as those classes give very screwed view what is soloable and what isn't. Otherwise it's authors fault- quest isn't properly tested.
Or, Cryptic could give us working respec for DM characters, or ability to copy, import and respec our live server toons.
Try this one:
http://nw-forum.perfectworld.com/showthread.php?271912-UGC-Witch-Hunt
It's fairly soloable at 60 though it also means that before 30 lvl difficulty is very low.
That is where I differ, my main concerns are always that the setting is true to itself. If instant death is called for that is what I will put in the module and there will be a warning to that effect. If people down rate it for that reason I can simply disregard their comments as their own fault. If my content doesn't do what they want it to do, that is not my problem. There is a reason this is MY content.
I'm all for traps, actually I love finding them, and figuring out how to avoid them; if I can avoid it I am fine with it, even if triggering it could kill me outright.
I do think maybe another line of info should be added, and that is what levels the quest was tested for. Like I said, I REALLY want to try new Foundry content, (it's the only reason I play the game TBH), but being forced to escape, (or actually log off because authors seem to forget to put in emergency exits), 9 out of 10 times sucks. I can't even leave a rating or give the authors a heads up, unless I come here.
More of a scream for help to the Cryptic Foundry Devs, then a real gripe fest directed towards player devs.
With proper forewarning, this is a fantastic idea in my opinion. My module allows the player to surrender, which causes something like this to happen, and most people have found it pretty hilarious. The module even has an 'are you sure?' line in it where it informs the player that it's a bad idea to surrender to vicious monsters. These kind of warnings are the most important part if you decide to include stuff like this in your module, because it lets the player make the choice rather than just creating a huge "GOTCHA!" moment.
Short code: NW-DJGYNI7NH
In this old school-style adventure, the hero(es) explore an old ruined castle while searching for a fabled magic item at the behest of a wizard.
Emergency exit is now built-in button in the lower part of the minimap. There is really no reason for separate abort exits.
I'll be honest, I hope it's an improvement to the test capabilities of the foundry, up to and including companions, being able to invite friends to group with you to test, respecs that work as well as being able to pick gear score target ranges (t1, t2, etc), and perhaps even a tag for quests that are in a test stage that can be reviewed even if not finished but can not be star rated. I opened my current quest up in a VERY early prototype and got great feedback from people like Zovya, Kamalicious, Tilt42 on things that could be better.. but I also got my only 2 star ratings from two people who were upset that it was in a test state even though the intro clearly stated it was a test version.
The idea that all authors should be required to have a level 60 character of specific class to test their own work is simply a ludicrous expectation. I can not for the life of me play the CW or the DC, any testing I was to do with those classes would not be accurate and it would be a huge waste of my time and IRL money (since I'd have to buy multiple character slots to do that) to level a character I had no interest in except to do flawed testing with it. I also know there are several authors in the community who have no interest in anything other than authoring content. They do not play the game itself and have no interest in doing so, one stated openly that the prospect of a character wipe where he had to play back to level 15 just to use the foundry again would be enough for him to walk away from the game entirely. Those people would suffer greatly from this type of a requirement and it would reduce the pool of creative people creating content.
No, the answer to that issue is proper testing tools and encounters that scale more evenly. CR has seemingly been completely forgotten in this game. The DMG covers CR quite extensively but the devs have decided instead to throw out the system this was supposed to emulate for their version. Now they need to fix their version, since they didn't bother to test it before implementing it.
QFT and emphasis. Testing in a joke, insta-death is fine if there's a reason/purpose behind it, and encounter scaling is broken. Especially the special abilities part, as it helped me learn something new. My main is 15. I leveled them just to do Foundry work.
Hammerfist Clan. Jump into the Night: NW-DMXWRYTAD
That being said, I love the Foundry, warts and all, but I'm excited to see Cryptic improve upon it as soon as possible, and being able to make test characters up to 60 would help a LOT.
Short code: NW-DJGYNI7NH
In this old school-style adventure, the hero(es) explore an old ruined castle while searching for a fabled magic item at the behest of a wizard.
I've heard this from a lot of people at level 60. I consider this a huge failing on the part of the game designers, honestly! Potions, injury kits, etc should be a completely negligible cost at the level cap. It forces people to make a "Foundry alt" but then they can't get the diamonds from daily foundry runs.
I personally think astral diamonds should be an account thing, not a character thing, but that's a different post entirely!
Short code: NW-DJGYNI7NH
In this old school-style adventure, the hero(es) explore an old ruined castle while searching for a fabled magic item at the behest of a wizard.
A workaround may be to be disable injuries when dying in a Foundry quest. I mostly do Foundry quests with alts lately (they get XP and I prefer doing them with a Guardian Fighter instead of my CW), but potions are less of a problem since typically you find more in UGC than you need.
ADs can be transferred between characters on the same account by posting them on the AD/Z exchange at a rate that no one will buy them at (50:1), and then cancelling the listing. This puts the AD into the shared exchange balance and all characters can withdraw them. This seems to be the method used in STO and CO, too.
Nice! I hadn't thought about transferring ADs like that. I hate injuries, personally. They force me to waste money or stand around for a ridiculous amount of time at a campfire. If I ever do end up making a Foundry mission with "death traps", I'll just put teleporters at the bottom of pits that take you to a "You Died" room with an explanation item/npc and an abort door(if I go for something hard where they have to try again from the beginning every "death") or a teleporter back to the beginning of the dungeon.(If I want to make it more user-friendly!)
Short code: NW-DJGYNI7NH
In this old school-style adventure, the hero(es) explore an old ruined castle while searching for a fabled magic item at the behest of a wizard.