At the moment, I feel that DE’s are just massive zergs with no co-ordination or tactics needed. There are some exceptions, of course (Tequatl and Jormg), but other than that, it just tends to be ‘place AoE down to tag as many mobs as possible’.
Proposal 1 – Give DE’s More Than One Facet To Them
In order to make DE’s need a certain amount of co-ordination in order to be successful, give players more than one ‘objective’ that they have to defend / take / insert other task here.
Let’s compare Tequatl to The Shatterer, for example, ignoring possible issues with scaling.
With Tequatl, not only do you have to take him / his bone wall down, you have to defend siege weapons, kill the Fingers, defend the big laser, kill the big exploding mobs ect. All at once.
Compared to The Shatterer, everything happens in nice clean phases:
He lands > you hit his toenail > takes off > healing crystals > you get the idea.
My proposal would be create more DE’s that have more than one facet to them.
Using the Pertinent Path events (Pertinent and Shelter’s Camp) as an example:
Defending
These are both linked by a tunnel. Have both events happen at once.
One event fails, the undead from the failed camp would be able to flank the other camp by going through the tunnel, ramping up the difficulty for the camp that’s still fighting. Undead would also undergo work at the failed camp, creating barricades, traps and siege weapons to fortify the camp.
But that’s not all.
Being dead and all, and so close to Zhaitan’s influence, our (and the NPC’s) bodies are used to add to his ranks. If an NPC falls DURING the event, after a certain amount of time, they too will be turned. This is to add extra weight to failing an event / not reviving people and NPC’s.
Losing both camps would be disastrous. These camps would give the undead a foothold to make attacks of outlying camps (Jofast, for example), ramping up the difficulty immensely during these events.
So here we have:
- Two camps that need to be defended.
- NPC’s / Players need to be revived.
- Failing one event makes it drastically harder for the other.
Taking It Back
Taking back these camps will be a big task: the undead have had a chance to settle in, they’ve got catapults that bombard, they have barricades up, restricting movement and traps that make you susceptible to being rooted / knocked down ect, all which could be fatal because of the siege weapons they have.
Like the undead, you can hit the camps from both sides, or rush one camp and then flank them. Of course, larger groups will be more likely to be hit by the siege weapons.
Here we have:
- Defenses and careful movement being needed while taking down obstacles
- Weighing up the pro’s / cons of two different approaches
NOW! That might have not seemed very multi-objectivey. Which brings me onto my next proposal.
Proposal 2 – Events That Evolve In Difficulty
Now, this is not the same as scaling.
Take the Camps from above, for example:
You manage to defend the camps in succession. The undead, being incredibly intelligent, try another approach.
They bring Veterans with them, as well as built Siege weapons quite far from the camp that are bombarding (and I mean, you have very little chance of dodging them without moving into another) from a distance. The gaps between the weapons are also quite far apart, meaning you can’t just AoE them all down. Leaving the siege weapons keep hitting the camp will end up destroying the walls, killing NPC’s ect, meaning more Undead can flood in.
The event plays out like outlined before.
So now, we’ve added another objective:
- Take out the Siege weapons
Again, complete this, and the Undead change approach: They bring Risen that can Ward the weapons from damage. To damage them, you have to kill the Warder first, who’s a Champ guarded by Vets. This adds another objective:
- Kill Vets and Warders
You see where this is going?
Of course, there would have to be an Ultimate Difficulty State (maybe a part of Zhaitan comes and joins the fight?)
Have events ‘evolve’ in difficulty, not just by upping numbers of mobs and health / damage, but increasing the number of ‘problems’ the players have to deal with, means players have to work harder and, if done right, need to co-ordinate more: who’s going to take out the weapons? Who’s going to defend?
TL;DR:
Proposal One – More Facets To Worry About At The Same Time To Promote Organisation
Proposal Two – Add More Facets As Players Become More Successful During Events To Stop Events Becoming Trivial And To Increase The Chance Of Failure
P.S.
Working on the Player-Created Content angle, maybe the community could come up with the ideas, then you just create them. I for one, as would many others probably, would love to be a part of improving this game
Time is a river.
The door is ajar.