Sword and Shield map

[StrikerAY]

I'm starting a map which will be almost impossible, if not entirely impossible, to do solo. The map will work like two kinds of maps. The first is the shield, like old Helena and foutpost, in which players will try to defend a town. Second, the sword, another group of players will use an underground passage to enter the enemy fortress and kill their leader. The reason the level will not be solo-able is that the enemies attacking the village don't stop spawning until the enemy leader is dead. Thus at the very least you'll need two players, one for defending and one for attacking.
There will also be mini bosses that guard the entrance to the main boss. Each time a mini boss is defeated by the attacking players, a mini boss will be spawned and attack the town (to keep things interesting for the defense). When the attacking players reach the boss another boss will be spawned for the defending players. The boss for the defense cannot be killed (keeps re-spawning) until the attack's boss is killed.
My hope is that this map will encourage teamwork. If anybody has any suggestions or doesn't like this idea let me know and I'll take them into consideration. I'll post more as I get closer to completing this map. Currently I'm thinking of naming it Ms_mountainpass, if the name is already in use I'll change it.

 

[J-M v2.5.5]

A map that will be impossible to solo.
While I've heard that one before, I've never actually seen it happen.

While the idea is interesting, many current maps that are supposed to be impossible to solo try to achieve this goal by means of what I'll just call artificial difficulty.
A prime example is the_wall. There's just so much monsters cheating there, you wouldn't believe it. List of offenses include:
- Apprentices shoot Dwarven bolts that do fire AND regular damage (player Dwarven bolts only do fire damage)
- The projectiles from the Torkalath bows from Shadowarchers somehow push you back (Torkalath bows, when in the hands of players, don't push monsters back)
- Boss monsters regenerate even while you're attacking them (I sure wish I could use Rejuvenate while a monster was attacking me)
- Monsters with axes or blunt weaponry have rediculously low hit rolls (whenever I use an axe or a blunt weapon, I get garbage hit rolls)
- Some Elves can stun you for abnormally long times
- The Apprentices never miss; they have dead aim, whereas just about every other archer monster ever made doesn't have dead aim

While I could probably spend two hours straight explaining why the_wall is easily and by far the worst map ever made, the point I'm trying to make doesn't need that much explanation:
Your idea for an impossible-to-solo-map is good, as long as you don't go for artificial difficulty, i.e. monsters that are basically huge health bags with cheap attacks and regenerate-in-your-face hacks.
Throw in a puzzle so now and then, and vary the monster types you encounter. I'm personally am not a fan of "rainbowing" your monsters (using every element possible) so I suggest you stick to one or two elements. Hard hitters with low HP (like Humansteak once suggested) are also good to use. If you're killing a lot of foes that can damage you severely while they don't take that much time to kill (the aforementioned 'hard hitters') it does feel like you're making progress, whereas killing one Torkalath Elf every three minutes doesn't really feel like progress at all.

Other tricks to make your map more interesting:
1) Make some custom monsters by means of HP, damage, speed, armor and elemental immunity multipliers/parameters, glowshell effects, demon blood, custom names.
2) Throw in a few monsters that only spawn if

• there's a certain number of players in-game
• there's a certain amount of total HP in-game
• there's a certain amount of average HP in-game (use avghp triggers for this one)

3) Maybe have players besieging the fortress find a key they need to open a door? There's a ton of unused keys, such as key_brass, key_gold, etc.
4) Add some nonlinearity in the fortress siege route.

 

[FER]

Another thing could be doors that work with 2 levers to open, or traps for monsters like garontho in calruins.
Maybe some 3 way route where each way gets sealed when 1 player passes by.

 

[StrikerAY]

Your idea for an impossible-to-solo-map is good, as long as you don't go for artificial difficulty, i.e. monsters that are basically huge health bags with cheap attacks and regenerate-in-your-face hacks.
Throw in a puzzle so now and then, and vary the monster types you encounter. I'm personally am not a fan of "rainbowing" your monsters (using every element possible) so I suggest you stick to one or two elements. Hard hitters with low HP (like Humansteak once suggested) are also good to use. If you're killing a lot of foes that can damage you severely while they don't take that much time to kill (the aforementioned 'hard hitters') it does feel like you're making progress, whereas killing one Torkalath Elf every three minutes doesn't really feel like progress at all.

The map will not be solo-able because no player no matter how high their stats can defend the weak villagers while also killing the boss. Even using summons, a player can't be in two places at once. Summons eventually unsummon on their own and won't know how to defend villagers just delay some enemies.
I hope that I won't have to give the enemies more stats just to make it more difficult. Also, the enemies that will attack the villagers will be relatively weaker as their infinitely spawning ability will make them a challenge enough to protect the villagers from. I'm also thinking about making attack paths that can be blocked off by the defense players to make things easier on them if they can spare the manpower to attack the bridge or knock rocks down into the path. After I've completed it I would like the head villager to reward the players based on the number of surviving villagers.

Another thing could be doors that work with 2 levers to open, or traps for monsters like garontho in calruins.
Maybe some 3 way route where each way gets sealed when 1 player passes by.

I don't know about the double lever idea, sounds good, but I'm not sure if I want to use it, don't know why though. I do plan to have 4 mini bosses that the attack group needs to kill to gain access to the main boss, but I don't want to use the 3 route method you mentioned because this level might already be too heavy on the sever for the spawns. Thanks for the ideas, but they won't work for this level. I'll definitely want to do that 3 way route thing on another level.

 

[jon50559]

Out of curiosity, what's your mapping ability? Have you ever mapped before/have much experience?

 

[Crow]

Awesome ideas, I love it! I would definitely like to see steps taken to develop gameplay that is fun because it's hard, not painful. Gameplay that is both challenging and fun is not an easy thing to accomplish, especially with how limited we are with this engine compared to the new stuff that's out there. Well done.

I don't mean to insult our scriptors or anything, I truly do appreciate your work; However, I would like to start moving away from the current trend, being that for the most part, when we need harder monsters to fight, we just add health, damage, and abilities that are, on top of being annoying, are also mostly unavoidable. A monsters "hardness" should be how many things you need to watch and be able to avoid or counter, not how many people you have to soak up what they can dish out (to an extent).

That being said, us of the non-scripting/non-coding community need to realize that coding or scripting the kinds of things I'm talking about has got to be exponentially more difficult, so please exercise patience and understanding when preparing a rant. Though not a game coder specifically, I am a computer science major, and I can probably imagine what it would take, so take my word for it

 

[zeus9860]

Do like the idea, i support most of JM's reply but i sort of dislike FER's idea in a way, i mean, it comes to the point of making an objective in a map where it requires 2+ players to get further. For example, if the map was to be done by 2 or 3 players, 1 or 2 of them stay behind protecting the village, the other 1 goes deep and attacks and ends up in a dead end where you require another player to help you out to open a certain door... This only takes effect if it was put in the map and they had to be both used at the same time to open a door, just hate that kind of stuff. If it's 2 levers for 1 door and both can be used without being at the same time it is good.

For some reason i'm having a bit of trouble typing stuff in english wtf >_<

 

[The Man In Black]

That was the idea behind the Bloodrose crystals. We wanted to make sure that at least 4 people were in the server. Of course, Squirrel went on to throw in pits-of-death and Thothie went on to make a boss-of-rape ;-)

 

[HumanSteak]

The type of gameplay that is interesting is a little like foutpost was at first. Back then, everyone was like "OMG kill lobbers! - I'm on it! Get his attention!" That felt awesome. To make this map sensational, you'd just need mobs with specific roles, or classes. None of these mobs should have a zillion hp. If we had a few healers, mages, attackers and defenders every waves, now that'd be just awesome.

Healers could have low hp and cast some AoE mass healing spell. (OMG kill healer!)

Attackers would have low defenses and low hp, but would be super fast and deal massive damage. (OMG Stop hiiimmm!) Just like the brawlers were at first.

Defenders could have nifty armor rating, making the ethereal useful, slow with low damage attacks but lotsa stuns, and would be unstoppable unless the healers are down. (OMG kill healer again!)

Then spell casters, would be rainbow annoying things, casting ice sheild on it's allies as well. They could have that annoying force cage spell that would make teamwork much needed, the icey encasing attack of the cold ladies in a quick missile and maybe Maldora's chain lightning. Maybe divide them by element so they don't crash the server by spamming chain lightning all at once.

Ok I get it, I'll start over for the spell casters:
Ice mage... hey what about re-using the 4 mages in lodagond-1 for this map? with different elements? y/n?
Ok the ice mages could have that ray of ice they already use, with a cold lady freeze effect, and they would ice shield allies too.

Fire mage make Circles of fire just like the elementals do, and toss uber fire balls.

Lightning mages do chain lightning just like maldora and that annoying big pushing lightning bolt.

Poison mages would cast this annoying ever lasting poison making one unable to heal himself for a long time, making envenomed plate and rune blade useful, and also toss highly dangerous acid bolts.

For the attack version of the map, we could deal with hxbow guys using steel bolts as well as many catapults.

Now with all this, every mobs have a role, as well as every players too without having to hack at one mob for 3 minute to kill one. If these suggestions get taken in consideration, this would be the best map ever

TL;DR I has ideers

 

[StrikerAY]

(OMG kill healer!)
For the attack version of the map, we could deal with hxbow guys using steel bolts as well as many catapults.

I like the healer idea! After I have finished the shape and most monster spawns I'll see if I can set these up (maybe the mummy priests? gotta see how they react to other mobs and cut their health down a little, don't wanna use all mummies though).
The catapults gave me an idea, I could make every couple waves spawn catapults behind the enemies wall, so the attack players will have to take them out for the defense players.

That was the idea behind the Bloodrose crystals. We wanted to make sure that at least 4 people were in the server. Of course, Squirrel went on to throw in pits-of-death and Thothie went on to make a boss-of-rape ;-)

What 4 players? I always just shoot across the level to activate them.

Out of curiosity, what's your mapping ability? Have you ever mapped before/have much experience?

I've done mapping for some HL stuff, but not MS before. Its been quite a while so I'm getting help from Srgnt Rehab.

 

[The Man In Black]

I said the IDEA was

You don't have to reuse monsters like that - come up with the theme of monsters (such as all orcs, bandits, trolls, whatever) and we will come up with the scripts that make them do what you want.

 

[Thothie]

Who's "we". >_> My docket is waaaaay overloaded, or we woulda had a patch out over a month ago... So plz reuse if you can, or better yet, get CrazyMonkeyDude to help you.

If we're lucky, however, we may have a mechanism through which mappers can create their own scripts and test them for submission soon.

[the_wall whine]

Torkie Xbows don't do fire DOT. Dunno what gave ye that idea, lest maybe you got struck in the back by a fire Spiral Torkie Chaos bow blast at the same time (not that anyone has any right to b*tch about a 2000+hp monster doing sh*t the player can't). But, on topic, the aim and blast is designed to force teamwork to take a Torkie bowman down. Granted, a Leadfoot Pot would bring a quick end to the requirement.

Similar with the Torkie Wizard's sphere of dewm. It either requires two players, or one player willing to do a lot of hit and runs. The Khaz Cultist Elders on KFortress work under a similar premise, as does Ihotor, his paralaization ray, repulse field, and army o dead.

Also, in regards to the "cheating" regeneration of bosses on The_Wall, every boss, from the Thornlands Spider to Maldora does this. It's to prevent a single player from doing repeated hit and runs on the boss until it dies (especially with AOB). The old method used to entail bosses (and indeed any monster) regaining half their health or more if they got a kill - which lead to folks yelling at newbs "feeding bosses". (These days, monsters without the boss flag still regain health, but they only get the max health of the player they killed as a "morale bonus", so newb feeding woes should be minimal.)

Suffice to say, the little dungeon master who runs about lighting all those torches also hands a potion of regeneration to every boss.

In anycase, my only misgiving about the_wall at this point is in regards to its stability. The amount of complaining I get from some folks on the subject suggests, while I didn't quite succeed in making it "unsoloable" as intended, it is at least nearly as difficult as I hoped for.

 

[Thothie]

That was the idea behind the Bloodrose crystals. We wanted to make sure that at least 4 people were in the server. Of course, Squirrel went on to throw in pits-of-death and Thothie went on to make a boss-of-rape

I had no idea that was his intention, or I woulda arranged the scripts to deactivate the element charged crystals after a time, and suggest he place them in separate rooms, so they couldn't all be struck from the center of the floor or just by running about a bit. (Granted, I didn't get much of a look at that particular boss chamber until just before its release.)

THERE SHOULD BE A BOSSROOM WITH 15 ATHLON BOSSES!

What yer describing, StrikerAY, sounds suspiciously like the siege system in Old Helena, and although no player, to my knowledge, has gone far enough beyond godhood to save every civilian there by himself, some particularly nimble and patient ones have already pulled rescuing two or even three on their own, and surely, eventually, some players will be able to save all four on their own with a minimal employ of clever tricks.

As the Pimpsta quote suggests, while such a suggestion was clearly just silly at the time, there are already maps that do nearly that, statistically, and players can already solo those. We're a long way from the day where player power is going to cap out (barring my sudden demise), so you can't depend on making a map "unsoloable" by just using monsters with extreme stats, even if it means defending papier-mâché targets from them.

The Svencoop bit, where two players are required to open a door, or some such, isn't much use either. It does make the map unsolo'able - but it doesn't really offer much sense of teamwork. You might as well just flag the map to not begin until more players are present.

The only real effective "this absolutely requires teamwork" game I've seen, that doesn't rely on some arbitrary gimmick, is Left4Dead - where players are constantly placed in situations that render them helpless, and another team member is absolutely required to save them (even if sometimes said team member comes in the form of a semi-competent bot).

Suffice to say, anything along those lines requires scripting galore.

 

[StrikerAY]

I think I didn't explain this map well enough in some sense. The reason that I don't see this being solo-able isn't that you'll simply be defending weak npcs. Defending the npcs is only half the map. At the same time some player(s) are defending the npcs, another player(s) has to take a side path to get behind enemy lines and kill their boss. It would almost like someone doing old Helena while someone else was doing bandit keep, but the actions of the person doing the keep effects the person doing Helena. Occasionally people on the offense might switch off with people on the defense, or give them support so they can heal up.

 

[The Man In Black]

I was offering to do the scripting, as I'm trying to learn and it doesn't seem as though they'd be THAT complex.

 

[Jon]

summon undead ftw

 

[StrikerAY]

For the offensive enemies that are attacking the town I want to use something that logically can come infinitely. Something like undead or animated armors any other suggestions?

 

[The Man In Black]

Animated armors, personally, but that may just be because they're so much less used than skeletons. It also goes along with the idea that this is the 'shield' portion of the map.

 

[Thothie]

If ye have an invading army, anything can come near infinitely.

 

[StrikerAY]

If ye have an invading army, anything can come near infinitely.

I just wanted it to be logical that its infinite; something like the boss is summoning them. I always think it is weird in games when a small building produces infinite security guards, even though a building of its size wouldn't even employ more than 20 guards max, or fighting any army, eventually you should leave some sort of hole in their forces, logically speaking. Other than a small logical snag, anything works.

Speaking of the boss summoning them. Would it be possible for there to be a boss attacking the shield group such that when it dies the sword boss will move to a certain spot in the room and zap a crystal for a while to revive the shield boss. I want it to work so that the shield group kills their boss, and while the sword boss revives the shield boss it'll be completely vulnerable for the sword group to get in some good hits.

 

[The Man In Black]

Aye, entirely possible.

 

[Monika's_BFFEx0256]

If ye have an invading army, anything can come near infinitely.

I just wanted it to be logical that its infinite; something like the boss is summoning them. I always think it is weird in games when a small building produces infinite security guards, even though a building of its size wouldn't even employ more than 20 guards max, or fighting any army, eventually you should leave some sort of hole in their forces, logically speaking. Other than a small logical snag, anything works.

Speaking of the boss summoning them. Would it be possible for there to be a boss attacking the shield group such that when it dies the sword boss will move to a certain spot in the room and zap a crystal for a while to revive the shield boss. I want it to work so that the shield group kills their boss, and while the sword boss revives the shield boss it'll be completely vulnerable for the sword group to get in some good hits.

I think it should be the other way around, the shield heals the sword... seeing as the sword attacks and shield defends.

 

[zeus9860]

Yeah but then who would revive the shield boss if it gets killed? If im not mistaking he wants the shield boss to be endlessly respawning when the other boss (sword) is still alive. If it went the other way around it would be pretty easy: *camps in town for the boss arrival, kills it, cast summons and other minions to protect town's people, rushes to the sword boss and kills it, the end, zeus wins the map solo and gets plenty of rewards* :roll:

 

[StrikerAY]

Yeah but then who would revive the shield boss if it gets killed? If im not mistaking he wants the shield boss to be endlessly respawning when the other boss (sword) is still alive. If it went the other way around it would be pretty easy: *camps in town for the boss arrival, kills it, cast summons and other minions to protect town's people, rushes to the sword boss and kills it, the end, zeus wins the map solo and gets plenty of rewards* :roll:

Sorry I got a little bit confusing there. When I said the shield boss, I meant the one attacking the town, because the shield is the group of players protecting the town. The shield boss won't spawn until the sword boss is reached, so camping in town will only net you some exp which you can get anywhere else. Although, it looks like Zeus may have gotten what I said, I managed to confuse myself.
The whole point of the shield boss respawning is so people can't abandon the defense, like Zeus said. There are two reasons I want the sword boss to move to a location and spend time to revive the shield boss. First, it lets everyone know that the shield boss will not respawn if the sword boss is killed. Second, it gives the shield players more purpose. While the Sword boss revives the shield boss he'll be fairly vulnerable to attacks because he isn't moving or attacking, thus the shield players open an opportunity for the attack players.