So I've been toying with an idea to improve the amount of rubies/diamonds gained from dungeons (and to increase its excitement) and I was hoping for some feedback before I sent the suggestion to Mobage. I apologize for my wall of text.
The basic idea is a random chance each dungeon mission to start a swarm mission immediately following. The player then gets to pick additional allies (I'm thinking like 3 to 6 maybe) and the swarm starts with a similar wave like feature to raid bosses with the exception that there is no enemy health, only wave apon wave apon wave. Each wave deals damage, which can vary based on dungeon difficulty and floor lvl, and when you die or finish a set number of waves you get rewards based on how many you finished. And allies would get spoils also, aka gems!
My thoughts for choosing additional allies are:
1) spreading the love of gained rewards
2) the face card of each ally would add to your HP, letting you battle longer
Now for some questions:
1) which would be better: having raid style seals that "die" from any single hit or creature seals that have HP?
-if raid style: it would be fast which would follow the swarm mentality "I'm being swarmed by hundreds of cockroaches, it doesn't matter how I kill them just do it quickly." Skills, for example master attack would finish off the whole group, bringing in a new wave immediately. Not sure what rewind or cage would do. If you miss a seal the wave hits you harder.
-if creature style: they would need to be of the lowest level possible to promote the swarm mentality or it just wouldn't work. You'd still get the same number of throws before the wave did damage and if you can't finish them off then that wave hits you based on how many are still alive. If you kill the whole wave, no damage that wave. Should these swarm creatures be capable of capture? I'm thinking not. After the wave hits, living creatures leave just like raid style for the new wave. Skills are obvious. Rewinders and cagers could prevent the creature from attacking maybe? Would that work for the raid style seals also?
2) should allies attack? If raid style then no but what about creature style?
3) should swarms be infinite til you die or finite based on dungeon/floor?
-if infinite, should difficulty ramp? If you're Zimidar, you could probably clear 100+ waves, what challenge would it offer the veterans? (Does anything challenge him anymore?)
-if finite, how should the number of waves increase? Random? Based on floor lvl? Double the floor lvl sounds fair to me.
4) what about rewards? It's obvious that you shouldn't get better gems than the dungeon floor you just finished, but how many gems should you get for finishing 10 swarm waves? 30 swarm waves?
5) what about EP? If it's infinite, base value of EP per wave? If it's finite, should only get EP only if you finish all of them?
6) what should ally rewards be? 1/3th the total gems if 3 allies, 1/4th if 4? Or should they be divided evenly so everyone gets the same number including you?
That's everything I can think of at the moment. Please let me know your thoughts and suggestions, even if you hate it. Thanks for reading!