- Jan 5, 2018
- 63
- 113
Introduction
After playing various games, I wanted to be able to discuss, share and perhaps hear from other people a brainstorm of potential, workable ideas with discovering new dragons in the wilderness.
Savage Hunt has an issue with its inception from a design perspective. The idea sounds good on paper, providing previously reskinned market dragons as dungeon encounter opportunities, but the execution is lacking. Upon acquiring the dragon, there is no conflict, an item containing the dragon is merely added to your inventory. It *does* encourage you to run dungeons more, making dungeon ancients less mundane - but it reintroduces what was wrong with the egg system, where rarer dragons were just given to you immediately, and it subtracted some scarcity to to the ownership of these dragons in itself.
For comparison, Dungeon Ancients on spawning, provide some kind of conflict before the dragon wis caught. There's an engagement in between, where you fight the dragon. The death of it results you having to start over of course, a mistake that you'd have to live with, but upon getting its health low and capturing it - is a participation in making the dragon your own. Think about how, when you play a pokemon game, when you go to battle and catch a legendary pokemon, the feeling is very similar. But imagine if the legendary was just added to your character? The distribution events pokemon games had that just gave you the legendary pokemon probably left you with something missing - there was a time you were able to battle these event legendaries on special islands in older pokemon games and they were far more interesting in my personal opinion.
This is why this thread comes in. Instead of offering instant gratification through an item being added into your inventory,all suggested encounters discussed here while be trying to actively encourage engagement and capture of a dragon.
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Anyway, let's discuss some potential spawn methods.
Spawn Method I:- Scavenger Hunt - Region Edition
Imagine this. A dragon appears randomly in a location, in one of the multiple zones and remains there between 20 to 30 minutes. In the chat, there would be a printed announcement reading "You sense a powerful dragon nearby" if you happen to be in the zone where it appears. It doesn't have a pathway and will sit in the designated area.
Image created with assistance from Gervis.
So in this example, if you see the message in Korhala, it has spawned in Korhala somewhere, in some likely less ultilized locations on the map. It will remain there for 20 - 30 minutes before despawning and respawning in another zone in a random location again. Upon finding and capturing this dragon, it would respawn within a duration of 3-4 days.
Spawn Method II: - Savanger Hunt - Zone edition
Same scenario again, but this would be a more common dragon that would spawn in a random area, exclusive to that zone. To prevent chat spam, no message would be printed for this dragon's appearance, and it would be down to the player to seek it out on their own merit. This dragon wouldn't change location every 30 minutes, as there are finite spawn areas for one zone, and it would defeat the point if a played could sit in a location and merely wait for it to move there. So in this case, it would stay at the point until capture or despawn by other means. These could spawn once per day, like Lunar Frost.
Spawn Method III: Zone/Server Based Statistics Event
If there is a way to track internal server based stats, or zone stats (Such as dungeons ran by all players, bosses killed, monsters killed, dragons caught.) these scenarios could be used to incite either an event or spawn that leads to a dragon. Potential options could be a boss automatically spawning somewhere that requires takedown, granting players a dragon each. Or that the dragon itself is a boss.
This is mostly inspired by the Dragon War event in Sitheran. By completing so many PE's several times after each other, the event would trigger and cause bosses to appear throughout the zone. Once defeated, players with the highest scores would be granted a Hellblood Egg and other rewards.
I understand statistics are quite broad but this in turn can offer quite a bit of flexiblity.
Spawn Method IV: Super hidden Dragons
Image by Yuuyake.
Borrowing from Hazul and Phantom Stone, Some dragons could merely be completely out of sight until a certain condition can be met. Taking a note from Final Fantasy XIV and how it deals with the weird ways S Ranks can spawn, there are two cases where S Ranks can spawn by simply walking over the spawn point with a pet out. I don't know how viable this is on Dragon's Prophet, but the game can probably at least compare player X, Y and Z with the target X, Y and Z, so the player alone walking over the location might be enough.
There could be some kind of sign that the dragon exists in the world (as opposed to FFXIV's "your guess is as good as mine" approach.) like how Hazul announces his presence in the chat, or how Phantom Stone leaves piles of excrement in his wake.
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Methods to make Dragon Encounters more challenging.
When I talk about this, note this is only for newly added dragons and not pre-existing ones. I don't think it would do any favours to modify old ones when their capture methods are ingrained and it wouldn't be fair to new players trying to capture them.
Challenge Method I - Run 'n Gun
Image by Yuuyake.
This isn't really a new idea. In fact it's completely borrowed from the Anniversary and Christmas events, meaning it might not be worth looking into. But the concept in itself does open up some interesting options for us. To explain the concept for those who are out of the loop, these dragons would run very fast/slow to begin with, and as they were hit more by select items, they would go faster/slower. Introducing a concept like this into the world opens up some options for us:-
The big one is flying dragon races. This would *only* work on sky islands as mounted abilities are activated in the air there, but there could be select roamers that move quite quickly. They would have to be just fast enough that a fully leveled to 100 dragon could catch up to it without marketplace P2W suppliments and could use the concept of slowing down as the health of the dragon gets lower and lower. HP pools would have to be smaller on these dragons due to how little damage mounted abilities deal, but so long as they are entirely airbourne enough, no ranger or sorceror should be able to shoot them down. They would also have to be in a location where customized housing cannot be abused to gain extra altitude. The only issue with this method is providing a method of capture, as your skillbar is disabled for the mount bar will on your dragon, so something would have to be worked out that you could capture airbourne dragons. If it does mean that they have to be closer to the ground and in range of 'rangers' they would need a bigger health pool to compensate. However, if there was a script to get the dragon to land when its health is low, this would probably bypass all capture issues in the first place.
Land dragons could also exist as well as normal, requiring them to be damaged to slow down/speed up as opposed to being hit by event items.
Challenge Method II - Nightmare Dragons
It's a dragon but it's... level 114!? It is quite possible with enough dragon influence to capture a dragon 6 levels higher than you. This is just a simple concept. Extra hard, extra challenging to capture dragons. And no, you do not need a dragon drive potion to do so. Enough influence stat should get you right on the money. Why do I suggest this? This is mostly because you can already capture dragons 5 levels higher than you very easily with a lower level of DI, and these harder ones might encourage people to create builds into Dragon Influence specifically. The extra level might make them a bit tougher to fight too.
Challenge Method III - Not quite "Haterslayer" Tier debuffs.
If you've ever (or never) run Miroth Fortress, Shax Hybrids do this horrid thing to you. They give you a debuff called "Tick-Tock!" that lasts 5 seconds, and when the counter reaches 0, you explode. You can iframe out of it, but it's tricky to do. Of course you won't die, but it's an annoying CC to be aware of.
Image by Yuuyake.
But then Death Phantom exists. Death Phantom is like that one guy in a DnD session where he tries to make a mary sue of a character. Lots of health? Check. Lots of damage? Check. Instant cast spells? Check. And if he hits you, you not only get reversed controls, but you get zeroed on Dragon Soul and Action points pretty quickly. This ain't as fun. Pick *one* to instantly remove. Reversed controls are fine to deal with too, so long as it's not coupled with some of this nonsense. Twinhead was never this rude.
But giving dragons interesting debuffs besides "Your AP and DS is 0 now" might sprinkle some flavour into the fights themselves. Make them do a mechanic where they switch from reflecting magical and physical damage. Make it so that they have a magic shield that absorbs damage before they can be hit. Heck, take the idea from the Ironfang Fortress last boss where you can only damage a dragon with *spears*. Give him a buff that makes him super immune to conventional damage, and put lots of respawning spears next to him. That'd be crazy.
--------------------------
These are all I can come up with for now. If you feel like contributing to the thread, now is a good time. As I think of more things to add, I'll continue to update the thread.
After playing various games, I wanted to be able to discuss, share and perhaps hear from other people a brainstorm of potential, workable ideas with discovering new dragons in the wilderness.
Savage Hunt has an issue with its inception from a design perspective. The idea sounds good on paper, providing previously reskinned market dragons as dungeon encounter opportunities, but the execution is lacking. Upon acquiring the dragon, there is no conflict, an item containing the dragon is merely added to your inventory. It *does* encourage you to run dungeons more, making dungeon ancients less mundane - but it reintroduces what was wrong with the egg system, where rarer dragons were just given to you immediately, and it subtracted some scarcity to to the ownership of these dragons in itself.
For comparison, Dungeon Ancients on spawning, provide some kind of conflict before the dragon wis caught. There's an engagement in between, where you fight the dragon. The death of it results you having to start over of course, a mistake that you'd have to live with, but upon getting its health low and capturing it - is a participation in making the dragon your own. Think about how, when you play a pokemon game, when you go to battle and catch a legendary pokemon, the feeling is very similar. But imagine if the legendary was just added to your character? The distribution events pokemon games had that just gave you the legendary pokemon probably left you with something missing - there was a time you were able to battle these event legendaries on special islands in older pokemon games and they were far more interesting in my personal opinion.
This is why this thread comes in. Instead of offering instant gratification through an item being added into your inventory,all suggested encounters discussed here while be trying to actively encourage engagement and capture of a dragon.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
Anyway, let's discuss some potential spawn methods.
Spawn Method I:- Scavenger Hunt - Region Edition
Imagine this. A dragon appears randomly in a location, in one of the multiple zones and remains there between 20 to 30 minutes. In the chat, there would be a printed announcement reading "You sense a powerful dragon nearby" if you happen to be in the zone where it appears. It doesn't have a pathway and will sit in the designated area.
Image created with assistance from Gervis.
So in this example, if you see the message in Korhala, it has spawned in Korhala somewhere, in some likely less ultilized locations on the map. It will remain there for 20 - 30 minutes before despawning and respawning in another zone in a random location again. Upon finding and capturing this dragon, it would respawn within a duration of 3-4 days.
Spawn Method II: - Savanger Hunt - Zone edition
Same scenario again, but this would be a more common dragon that would spawn in a random area, exclusive to that zone. To prevent chat spam, no message would be printed for this dragon's appearance, and it would be down to the player to seek it out on their own merit. This dragon wouldn't change location every 30 minutes, as there are finite spawn areas for one zone, and it would defeat the point if a played could sit in a location and merely wait for it to move there. So in this case, it would stay at the point until capture or despawn by other means. These could spawn once per day, like Lunar Frost.
Spawn Method III: Zone/Server Based Statistics Event
If there is a way to track internal server based stats, or zone stats (Such as dungeons ran by all players, bosses killed, monsters killed, dragons caught.) these scenarios could be used to incite either an event or spawn that leads to a dragon. Potential options could be a boss automatically spawning somewhere that requires takedown, granting players a dragon each. Or that the dragon itself is a boss.
This is mostly inspired by the Dragon War event in Sitheran. By completing so many PE's several times after each other, the event would trigger and cause bosses to appear throughout the zone. Once defeated, players with the highest scores would be granted a Hellblood Egg and other rewards.
I understand statistics are quite broad but this in turn can offer quite a bit of flexiblity.
Spawn Method IV: Super hidden Dragons
Image by Yuuyake.
Borrowing from Hazul and Phantom Stone, Some dragons could merely be completely out of sight until a certain condition can be met. Taking a note from Final Fantasy XIV and how it deals with the weird ways S Ranks can spawn, there are two cases where S Ranks can spawn by simply walking over the spawn point with a pet out. I don't know how viable this is on Dragon's Prophet, but the game can probably at least compare player X, Y and Z with the target X, Y and Z, so the player alone walking over the location might be enough.
There could be some kind of sign that the dragon exists in the world (as opposed to FFXIV's "your guess is as good as mine" approach.) like how Hazul announces his presence in the chat, or how Phantom Stone leaves piles of excrement in his wake.
-----------------------------------------------------------
Methods to make Dragon Encounters more challenging.
When I talk about this, note this is only for newly added dragons and not pre-existing ones. I don't think it would do any favours to modify old ones when their capture methods are ingrained and it wouldn't be fair to new players trying to capture them.
Challenge Method I - Run 'n Gun
Image by Yuuyake.
This isn't really a new idea. In fact it's completely borrowed from the Anniversary and Christmas events, meaning it might not be worth looking into. But the concept in itself does open up some interesting options for us. To explain the concept for those who are out of the loop, these dragons would run very fast/slow to begin with, and as they were hit more by select items, they would go faster/slower. Introducing a concept like this into the world opens up some options for us:-
The big one is flying dragon races. This would *only* work on sky islands as mounted abilities are activated in the air there, but there could be select roamers that move quite quickly. They would have to be just fast enough that a fully leveled to 100 dragon could catch up to it without marketplace P2W suppliments and could use the concept of slowing down as the health of the dragon gets lower and lower. HP pools would have to be smaller on these dragons due to how little damage mounted abilities deal, but so long as they are entirely airbourne enough, no ranger or sorceror should be able to shoot them down. They would also have to be in a location where customized housing cannot be abused to gain extra altitude. The only issue with this method is providing a method of capture, as your skillbar is disabled for the mount bar will on your dragon, so something would have to be worked out that you could capture airbourne dragons. If it does mean that they have to be closer to the ground and in range of 'rangers' they would need a bigger health pool to compensate. However, if there was a script to get the dragon to land when its health is low, this would probably bypass all capture issues in the first place.
Land dragons could also exist as well as normal, requiring them to be damaged to slow down/speed up as opposed to being hit by event items.
Challenge Method II - Nightmare Dragons
It's a dragon but it's... level 114!? It is quite possible with enough dragon influence to capture a dragon 6 levels higher than you. This is just a simple concept. Extra hard, extra challenging to capture dragons. And no, you do not need a dragon drive potion to do so. Enough influence stat should get you right on the money. Why do I suggest this? This is mostly because you can already capture dragons 5 levels higher than you very easily with a lower level of DI, and these harder ones might encourage people to create builds into Dragon Influence specifically. The extra level might make them a bit tougher to fight too.
Challenge Method III - Not quite "Haterslayer" Tier debuffs.
If you've ever (or never) run Miroth Fortress, Shax Hybrids do this horrid thing to you. They give you a debuff called "Tick-Tock!" that lasts 5 seconds, and when the counter reaches 0, you explode. You can iframe out of it, but it's tricky to do. Of course you won't die, but it's an annoying CC to be aware of.
Image by Yuuyake.
But then Death Phantom exists. Death Phantom is like that one guy in a DnD session where he tries to make a mary sue of a character. Lots of health? Check. Lots of damage? Check. Instant cast spells? Check. And if he hits you, you not only get reversed controls, but you get zeroed on Dragon Soul and Action points pretty quickly. This ain't as fun. Pick *one* to instantly remove. Reversed controls are fine to deal with too, so long as it's not coupled with some of this nonsense. Twinhead was never this rude.
But giving dragons interesting debuffs besides "Your AP and DS is 0 now" might sprinkle some flavour into the fights themselves. Make them do a mechanic where they switch from reflecting magical and physical damage. Make it so that they have a magic shield that absorbs damage before they can be hit. Heck, take the idea from the Ironfang Fortress last boss where you can only damage a dragon with *spears*. Give him a buff that makes him super immune to conventional damage, and put lots of respawning spears next to him. That'd be crazy.
--------------------------
These are all I can come up with for now. If you feel like contributing to the thread, now is a good time. As I think of more things to add, I'll continue to update the thread.
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