Dungeon Swarms

[tcalvin42]

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!

[IgneelHF]

I love this idea and imo it could make a lot of the "raid only" players actually play dungeons as I myself currently only farm dungeons. I'll try to answer your questions in order they are posted.

1. I think the creatures of the swarm should be single hit kills it just fits the swarm mentality better. Reference rewind and caging skills I think that maybe have them slow down in the speed they approach you would be a good idea for those.

2. Allies should not attack but should add to your health or something of the sort.

3. It should be infinite and starting difficulty is based on what floor/difficulty you are on and should increase through more waves (I still think this would create quite a challenge for even the vets with everything :p)

4. I'd say give whatever gems that floor gives so for example you are in master floor 20 for every 10 floors you get 10 diamonds. (This could obviously be adjusted as necessary for other floors/difficulties)

5. I say don't mess with anything here. Keep it the same point value as what regular monsters are in the dungeon.

6. Hmm this I think is tricky and I'm going to ignore lol..

[tcalvin42]

Thanks for your opinion! Been a little busy to respond til now.

1. Reference rewind and caging skills I think that maybe have them slow down in the speed they approach you would be a good idea for those.

not sure I follow you on this one. If its in the raid style of wave, they all show up, you attack, then the boss/wave attacks. What do you mean by approach?

3. It should be infinite and starting difficulty is based on what floor/difficulty...

So to increase difficulty of a single hit seal, there are more of them and they hit harder. Maybe there could be a timer for each wave and if you don't kill them all in that time they hit you?

4. ...every 10 floors you get 10 diamonds.

That's what I was thinking. So in the normal progression of the floors: novice = 25 emeralds/wave, expert = 2 rubies/wave, master = 3 rubies/wave and 1 diamond/wave, and hell is (I can't remember)

5. ...same point value as what regular monsters...

So... each wave equals one monster? otherwise the points would get a little out of hand.


Anyone else with thoughts on ally rewards? Or any part of this?

[chophack]

Calvin,

I'm just thinking if they up the # of diamonds given on replay a bit to make boxes easier to empty would go a long way.
Your idea for swarms is fun to ponder! I hope they try it!!

Vr/chophack

[tcalvin42]

I completely agree Chop.

Ever since hell started giving 80 diamonds per floor 20, it has made grinding a tiny bit easier but it's still a grind that takes to much time for the vast majority of players. I'm hoping they understand how bad dungeon events are at the moment and that's why they started the Chest of Destiny. Another reason why I want to iron out the details of the swarm mission is to make it more appealing to Mobage. *fingers crossed*

[IgneelHF]

1. Hmmm well I guess I thought of it more like the enemies will start at a certain distance from you and they continue to get closer until all are dead or they hit you and rewinds/cagers would slow this forward progress.

2. This goes back to my first idea with the enemies "approaching" but they would approach faster, have more to hit, and hit harder as difficulty increases.

3. Yes just like that and I believe hell is 1.5 diamonds on repeats of floor 20 and 2 on the first play through

4. I guess that would probably be smart so there isn't really a way to abuse it and get tons of points lol.

And in regards to the ally rewards maybe give them a % number of the total that you got? I'm just not sure on that because I could see it make clearing boxes ridiculously easy..Maybe it could be like a "mission" get taken on this amount of swarm quests and you get such and such amount of whatever gem the quest was for..

[tcalvin42]

Igneel, you have given me a fun idea that could work really well.

I'll have to think on this and will update soon.

[IgneelHF]

Glad I could help and plz do I look forward to it

[tcalvin42]

I lost count of how many times I changed this around and tweaked it but I think it'll be a lot of fun.

Your suggestion of approaching monsters gave me the idea. Instead of static waves of 2 to 8 creatures that only replace after all have been killed, each time you kill one, another pops up and the turn counter represents how fast they're approaching.

At first they can have high approach numbers, getting "closer" as the new monsters spawn in. When the counter reaches zero, it hits you and keeps hitting every turn til you kill it. Then a new one can swarm in until that wave is finished or you die.

Each wave should be the same creature. Skills will have no change: rewind will push the swarm away and cage will freeze them in their approach.

Allies could attack with this style but if they do, should face card HP be added?

I'm leaning toward a finite number of waves. Maybe double the floor that spawned the swarm, so if you found it on floor 6, you have a max of 12 swarm waves. And master floor 20 would give you 40 waves. I can't imagine wanting to battle more than that. 40 could even be too many -> you might start to go crazy.

Gems and EP:
I think that, given the above, the first half of the available waves will give 1/10th the gem rewards of the source floor per wave and the second half will give 1/5th. So a swarm from floor 20 has a total of 60 diamonds for completion. Floor 19 will give a total of 57. Novice floor 10 = 750 emeralds. Expert floor 10 = 60 rubies.

EP could be per wave or per creature, leaning toward per wave myself.

Ally rewards... I don't know. Maybe they should only get gems if you finish the swarm.

Difficulty can be adjusted with number of monsters per wave, initial approach number, initial monster count, and attack power. They should be one hit kills in my opinion mostly but at the higher waves, harder to kill creatures could be spawned.

Thanks again for your help on this.

[tcalvin42]

Anyone have any suggestions?
Love it? Hate it? Am i wasting my time?
Do you prefer the original idea or the revised one?