I recently started playing Dungeons & Dragons Online (DDO) because several of my pen & paper group plays it. For all its flaws, being an old game and such, it has some things I really like, interactive traps, puzzles, and locked doors.
Throughout every dungeon, characters with appropriate Spot skills, characters notice traps in the world, then with a Search check, they can find levers, boxes, etc., that can disable the traps. Alternatively, you can run through them, and hopefully survive. There are also a lot of hidden/secret doors that block off areas, waiting to be found. I imagine the perception skill in Pantheon to be similar. I hope it works this way, with traps, hidden doors, and such.
Most dungeons have large puzzle areas, where you have to move floor tiles to enter areas/disable mobs, etc. Or they make you travel to various parts of the dungeon to activate levers/switches to open/activate different devices/doors. This adds a little fun and slows down the overall speed of the dungeons.
Several areas have locked doors, hidden treasure, quest NPCs, etc. You need to pick the locks in order to open the doors and get to the goodies inside. Usually rogue types have these skills.
Lastly, they have a lot of breakables, such as barrels, crates, etc., that potentially hold potions, keys, coin, etc., similar to the Diablo series.
I would like to see these types of systems in Pantheon.
That's something I'd love to see implimented in some dungeons. However, there would need to be some sort of procedural generation to placement. The problem becomes that if static in spawns, after a while all locations will be mapped out, so you'll know where they are and with traps you'll know how to avoid them. And in an open world that's free of instances, that could be a real challenge to design. Last thing you want is a random trap spawning on a group mid-combat. But it is something that could be fun if done right.
I tink you got something good there Beefcake. I like your ideas.
I've played games where there are brakable objects. Some "drop" stuff, some do not. Like your key idea; it could be any random barrel.
@Kratuk I'm not overly concerned with somebody mapping a whole dungoen. I think we've all had notepads full of diagrams of dugeons. I still have a folder of maps from EQ sitting in a file somewhere. If you wanna spend the time to map the whole thing, go right ahead. I think that in itself is an accomplishment.
Aarpoch said:I tink you got something good there Beefcake. I like your ideas.
I've played games where there are brakable objects. Some "drop" stuff, some do not. Like your key idea; it could be any random barrel.
@Kratuk I'm not overly concerned with somebody mapping a whole dungoen. I think we've all had notepads full of diagrams of dugeons. I still have a folder of maps from EQ sitting in a file somewhere. If you wanna spend the time to map the whole thing, go right ahead. I think that in itself is an accomplishment.
I don't mean you really have to map it out on paper. You'll probably know where static ones are after a time or three through. That's where I was saying a little randomization would help keep it a bit fresh. Now if there are a fairly limited number of spawn points, yeah, then the mapping comes into play but you do extend the freshness of it a bit. DDO had some creative traps and I enjoyed accidently stumbling into them from time to time. But they were designed for instance runs and were pretty detailed. I'd like to see something like that in Pantheon, but realistically I don't see it being as detailed in the open world. But I have been wrong before. I'd be happy to be wrong here. :)
I think that they mentioned in one of the videos that they would have "procedural" generated mobs, so I could see how something like that could be done for objects. Just treat it as some sort of mob. Mobs have drops too. So just make it with really low hit points, depending on how much damage it could take.
For traps, I would like to see some sort of "sense traps" to go along with the disarm.
One thing that I haven't seen anything about, but I haven't really done any in-depth searching, I probably should, but I'm not seeing anything in any of the streams about pick pocketing. I'd be really disappointed if there isn't that skill in the game.
Grizzly said:About DDO it has one of the best treasure chest solution every one gets sometinhg and you see what the others get so you can ask for switch and trade .
They also have an interesting re-roll mechanic. Although it involves a small purchase from their cash shop, which I am not in favor of, you can re-roll the loot from chests.
Just a general +1 to this idea. I am a huge fan of interactive environments, especially in dungeons. Some of my favorite dungeons from various games were ones that would split the party, and the 2-3 groups would have to solve puzzles (and fight things) in order to open up the path for the other side(s) to advance :)
I do enjoy puzzles, traps, hidden rooms etc Don't remember which rpg it was I played, but you had to figure the floor puzzle out to gain entrance to the small dungeon. Sorry played too many games over time, can't remember which it was now. hehehe I asked one of the Devs about that very thing, early on in development, kind of hinted that those were some things I'd love to see in Pantheon. The Perception system of course, is right up my alley, and I LOVE puzzles. :)
Cana
DDO did a lot of things right that other games don't do. The standard traps/locked chests in most dungeons being one of them...eventually they ended up taking the puzzles to an extreme which took away from normal gameplay and made you feel like you were playing an online puzzle game at times. Like anything, it is a balance. That being said, EQ and VG could have both improved by taking some of the trap features from DDO. We are already taking a system that is very similar to DDO, progeny, so that is on the right track imho.
