ELDER REALMS: An Endgame Idea by Puffagod

#101

In response to the Ocean-biome mockup meme, I took up my fallow pen and doodled a Gurgle…

image
image.jpg522x772 205 KB
‘Nerf me!!’
#102

A doodle?!!!

Pretty detailed for a doodle by my standards:joy:

#103

haha trying to get back into practice C:

#104

You have an eye for art like my sisters do. (I do too I guess but I’m painfully slow and I’d rather read than draw lol)

Goodness, imagine fighting a Gurgle during early flash days of this game!
The true killers of the realm, channeling the ungodly powers of the so called Oryx lag in massive bursts; they themselves have only glimpsed the true powers that create such devastating effects to the heroes. Space and Time dispassionately attempt to fix the rift for their own pride’s sake, whilst Death merely gazes over in subtle, ghastly mirth. Oryx himself has no true understanding and power over this phenomenon. He is as blind as gods before him. There are powers far greater at work, ones that the only the denizens of the glitch can possibly understand…

Jk XD

Wouldn’t it be amazing and stupid to have a normally medium difficulty dungeon become rigged to intentionally lag like that? Will you run and hide, predicting your enemies, or nexus in fear of death? There’s already The Machine with its joke DC attack.
(Just an amusing thought; I’m not actually hoping for it)

#105

Oh no, I wasn’t hashing the cult system in a way to rid it. I’d love to preserve it. And true, most people soloing are probably amazing players to begin with. There are minimum requirements to enter the Elder Realm anyway.

It helps to know that some of the cult process is unexplained, so I’ll hold off assumptions and wait to offer more suggestions until later with more information inbound.

The scaling system could get tricky in the realm setting though, as it’s not clear cut like a dungeon. I’d hate to fight monsters scaled to the population of the realm, but scaling monsters to the player base in a vicinity would be a programming nightmare for this game, I’d imagine.

#106

YES!! <3

Thank god!!

Yes… the scaling is based off the number of people in the Temenos (taboo zone) of the Agalma - potential converts to its respective Secret. And - as with everything else in the Elder Realm - it’s not really designed to be realistic (or even possible) to add - 'tis a closet drama, forsooth, just for fun! C:

#107

The closest I can think of is if you scale it by how many people are in a biome at a time; as for the overlaps in the biomes with merging tiles, it would be forced to count the stray tiles far into the next biome as far as they may cut. At least that seems liveable, even if people are a little spread out in the same biome.

And yes, sadly, I know this’ll never come to fruition. But I’ve always been one overanalyze games, plot and mechanics wise, especially with my siblings. They seem more alive with that approach! I can at least have the vision of this being possible.

#108

If I would express my suggestion to the problem of health scaling, it would work like this:

Make it so that the Agalma opens a portal to a dungeon that leads to the boss, with a player cap of 45, this solves the problem of health scaling and makes it so that you won’t end up being left out of a cult if the number of players fighting the boss exceeds the cap.

After the boss has been defeated, the portal can either be reopened to allow new recruits or replaced by a pressure plate that player could stand on to join a cult, I prefer the latter option, if only to make the realm close faster, the initial cult bosses could be like the lucky gods of the normal realms.

Also, I would have it so that the cult events are scaled to the numbers of players in a cult, but to avoid steamrolling, I would have it so that if a sufficient proportion the damage done to a cult event is done by the respective cult, say 60-80%, then a mark will have a guaranteed chance of dropping for one cult member. These marks behave exactly like the books in the bridge of woe, and have their own quest marker, and must be brought to the Alagma to spawn the next world event, if the mark doesn’t spawn the same cult event will respawn in about a minute.

Edit: to reduce farmability, the cult events only drop loot if they will drop a mark, and the marks are only visible and can only be picked up by members of the respective cult.

#109

Wow… some very nice thoughts indeed!

Y’know I think I’ll probably just add this… an elegant solution. Many thanks! Although I disagree with the pressure plate - it would be a shame not to ‘prove your worth’ and set the stakes that way…

This part I’m not so sure about. Isn’t it pretty troll-able - get a mole in a Cult, and then swoop in with an unaligned troop and murder the boss to prevent the Elder Realm from closing? Also, having to carry the mark back and forth would substantially increase the amount of travelling you’d have to do - not only slowing down the process but increasing the risk of death in transit. What happens if the mark-carrier dies with it, purposely doesn’t pick it up, or purposely keeps it in their inventory? And, if it behaves exactly like the Bridge of Woe books, some poor soul would have to sacrifice their ring slot for it - which, in such a brutal world, people would be very disinclined to do. Also, I’m thinking it might be a bit too complex for solo players to pick up and understand… whereas ‘join a cult: do its bounties’ seems more accessible - if not also more fallible to workarounds.

One thing I might consider doing (on a slightly different note) is limiting the spawn positions of Agalmata to OCEAN, LOWLANDS and MIDLANDS bands - to make the first step of the journey more accessible. Event Bosses spawn in a set biome (or range of biomes) - so exploration would still be necessary to close the Elder Realm, but just with slightly more forgiving gatekeeping.

#110

Okay, now that I think about it, I would probably do away with marks and just have a taunt from the respective secret, if the cult boss is defeated probably.

But if we were to not implement a “cult damage threshold” I suppose that another option would be to make it so that the cult event set piece spawns first and the cult event only spawns when cult members get close to the setpiece, that way unaligned players can’t steamroll through cult bosses scaled to only about 5 cult members without letting the cult members a chance to get their DPS in.

One more question, do you need to be in the correct cult to be able to get the best drops from the corresponding cult event?

#111

I like the idea of the cult bosses being in the safer zones, actually. For some reason I was thinking they were more towards the middle-ish; that certainly solves a couple issues I had! See, I definitely had some assumptions.

#112

Yes, they spawn in every biome, scattered all throughout the Elder Realm (the world events too)… specific details to come :slight_smile: Although you can probably guess many of them just based on their designs!

#113

I have an idea for how the mini map would work in the elder realm.

I love the idea of exploring and that it is a central theme.

I think when players load into the realm the spawn points should be scattered. The reason is to ensure that there aren’t huge clump of players. If spawns are scattered and only a handful of players spawn together, this will better suit the exploration theme of the realm.

Also, I think the mini map should be completely blacked out when you first spawn. You can still see your location as a white arrow ( as in, the white arrow on a black map will still let you know whether you are at the top or bottom of the map).

^^^ with this in mind. The map will begin to reveal itself based off where the player had actualled explored. Essentially, the only way to get a full map (biomes, players, and enemies) would be to have actually walked across it.
Perhaps the teleportation shard will reveal the entire map while players choose someone to TP to. The map would then return to show the tiles that the players has actually explored.

If my poor writing skills failed to convey my idea coherently, a easier way to think of it would be how the map in Civilization games work c:

#114

If I understood you correctly, I believe that was the original intent listed in his document, yes. The multiple spawn points was vague, but anything you explored would indeed stay explored! I would hate it otherwise with a place as difficult as this.

(Also, I love Civilization; I grew up watching my father do games such as Civilization IV, Sim City 4, and most of the Myst series! Fond childhood memories of mine for sure. :smiley:)

#115

Its so amazing but will it ever be considered I’m sad that it won’t …deca would make lots of money game needs more content got bored and ended up playing on a private server since theres so much content!

#116

No I think I get you! Only thing is that other players and quest dots would always be visisble… otherwise it would just be impossible to get anywhere lol. But as for the rest - it’s already like that: blacked-out map which only updates when you actually go to places – and the places you go to stay explored, as XBookwyrmX said, remain discovered even if you re-load :slight_smile:

#117

This isn’t an insult at all to the quality but the sheer scope of this makes it very unrealistic, i mean, it has more enemies than the entirety of vanilla Terraria (almost 600), 38 planned bosses AND planned dungeons, that would be coding, polishing and balancing an entire game worth of content ontop of RotMG, simply not realistic for DECA’s design team size, however, Puffagod is still a great designer, he should be involved in the realm rework. I would LOVE to see more biomes, procedural worldgen, more expandability, better, more threatening enemies and bosses, and more distinct areas overall, like in this design doc, implemented into the realm rework whenever it comes.

#118

Might I interject,

This is a whole design plan. Realistically, if this was adopted by Deca, each part would be put in phases, lots of work would be put in, and Puffagod would be directly involved. In addition, in most, if not all projects, companies work in phases and split up work and put it all together. Considering the sheer size, this would also be an eventual goal, much like me getting a colo sword. -_-

#119

XD

I’m not even dreaming of doing that. I’m just ST set completing, pet leveling, and getting around to achieving a white star rank that I’ve been so lazy about…

#120

Yes… although I will stress again that I never really intended for this to be added to prod… its mostly just an excercise in ‘game design’ i suppose, and storytelling without ‘telling a story’. If I wanted it to go to prod, then I wouldn’t have made it ‘Elder Realms’, and it wouldn’t have turned out nearly as fun! C: