New Q4 system will be some kind of ‘Endless Dungeon‘

Thormar

MrSpaM wrote: »

If the reward for finishing the dungeon...

How do you finish an endless dungeon?

RupzSkooma

Thormar wrote: »

MrSpaM wrote: »

If the reward for finishing the dungeon...

How do you finish an endless dungeon?

With endless playtime + 1

Masteroshi430

I can imagine an endless grotto or can be (will probably not be lore accurate) an endless tower and you clean it stage by stage, with rewards increasing in quality and leaderboards keeping track of the further stage you cleared.

FeedbackOnly

Just 2 dos dungeon without healer nor tank?

Natakiro

I really hope this can be solo'd, if desired. Yes, playing with a buddy would be great if it's a friend, but I would hate for it to become another RND thing. Even if "buddy" is limited to just a companion, that would be better than something so similar sounding to an existing system. If it isn't able to be taken solo, I will probably have little interest in it, in the long run. Sad that they're giving up a dungeon and area for that (despite complaining about RND, I actually love dungeons, probably my favorite non-overland content; I enjoy that I can do a lot of them SOLO.) And the reward system will have to be considered; something endless like that would need a reason to play it. But hey, at least it's guaranteed to interest me more than the card game, which I literally never play.

Either way, it is far too early to begin to tell what was even meant by "endless dungeon with a buddy", so I will reserve judgment and not have any expectations until more info is given.

Vrienda

Actually kind of worried this'll have cosmetic rewards I care about... hopefully it's just full of housing stuff so I can ignore it. Maybe a mount for clearing floor 150. Just no character cosmetics please.

Then again it's duo so I suppose I could just buy a boost...

Lugaldu

Vrienda wrote: »

... hopefully it's just full of housing stuff so I can ignore it.

If that's the case, then I can't ignore it, even if I feel like it right now.

FrancisCrawford

AzuraFan wrote: »

If I can take a companion in and have a chance at surviving, I'll give it a try. If it's basically a dungeon balanced for 2 players, I won't be interested.

If it's basically a dungeon balanced for 2 players, what would be so hard about soloing it?

React

Jaraal wrote: »

React wrote: »

I like the idea of a duo arena experience. It's a unique format we haven't seen before. I just hope that they make it reasonably difficult on vet/hardmode, and provide meaningful rewards. Weapon-ultimate altering weapons, normal and perfected, would be cool.

It would definitely go against their "raise the floor, lower the ceiling / close the skill gap" mantra. Giving 99th percentile weapons and armor to only the 99th percentile-skilled players would be devastating. The best PvPers would be undefeatable with gear only they can acquire, and trial groups will require only the elitest of the elite with the rarest gear.

I think the backlash would be enormous.

That seems a bit dramatic when the difference between normal and perfected gear is one 75% power line of stats, such as 1k pen or 100 weapon damage..

Jaraal

React wrote: »

Jaraal wrote: »

React wrote: »

I like the idea of a duo arena experience. It's a unique format we haven't seen before. I just hope that they make it reasonably difficult on vet/hardmode, and provide meaningful rewards. Weapon-ultimate altering weapons, normal and perfected, would be cool.

It would definitely go against their "raise the floor, lower the ceiling / close the skill gap" mantra. Giving 99th percentile weapons and armor to only the 99th percentile-skilled players would be devastating. The best PvPers would be undefeatable with gear only they can acquire, and trial groups will require only the elitest of the elite with the rarest gear.

I think the backlash would be enormous.

That seems a bit dramatic when the difference between normal and perfected gear is one 75% power line of stats, such as 1k pen or 100 weapon damage..

Sure but people are predicting some sort of scaling difficulty and appropriate reward with these new dungeons. Unless the gear caps out relatively low, then there will be super rare gear available only to the people who can progress the farthest. And if the top gear available is of average quality, then there's no real reason to push the dungeon to see how far you can get.

It's a Catch-22.

Jaraal

FrancisCrawford wrote: »

AzuraFan wrote: »

If I can take a companion in and have a chance at surviving, I'll give it a try. If it's basically a dungeon balanced for 2 players, I won't be interested.

If it's basically a dungeon balanced for 2 players, what would be so hard about soloing it?

Because based on ZOS' past patterns, they like to throw in artificial gating mechanisms to keep solo players from doing multi-player content. Pressure plates, pin down moves that must be interrupted, and the like. There's no reason to believe they will change their tactics going forward.

Tommy_The_Gun

Here are my hopes what it will be:
- A dungeon crawler rouge-like experience.
- Made for either 2 players or 1 solo player with a Companion NPC.
- Smart mm, so that if you will be playing solo you won't encounter "2 pressure plates" mechanics.
- Daily Quest based (just like Arenas).
- Procedurally generated dungeon, that is made from different "bricks" or sections.
- Each room / section of the dungeon will have different objective. Sometimes it will be a puzzle you need to solve that opens the door to next section or kill a boss or find a key etc.
- The deeper you go, the harder it gets - bosses are more difficult, puzzles get more complicated etc.
- From time to time you will encounter a "safe room" with a wayshrine that will act like a check point, so you can pause & continue from this point the other day.
- The rewards after reaching certain point of the dungeon need to be substantial. Otherwise it will get boring soon & people won't play. Maybe it would be nice to introduce a token system so you can trade it for item sets from other dungeons ? Idk.

Hurbster

It can't be endless, not with the engines draw distance...

peacenote

Stinkyremy wrote: »

Aardappelboom wrote: »

I like the idea alot, but it doens't live up to the expectations of cutting an entire zone and a dungen DLC. I was expecting something a bit more...longterm?

I don't like the "with a buddy" comment either. I didn't hear companion and I just hope it's not a mandatory 2player group thing.

This is what I am dreading.
I want challenging content that isn't some damn arena that I can do solo, you know, so I can actually use the classes, skills and create builds not just in theory but that can be used on content.

I would hope very much, to fit into current game alignment, if it IS duo content, that it would be like our dungeons now where you could go in by yourself with a companion and that companion despawns if you go in with two real players. With a normal and vet option so soloing is possible on normal.

I fear the opposite... that it is called a dungeon but the buddy is NPC only and not real people. That's not a dungeon, to me. I'm here for multiplayer content and that would be a bad trade if we gave up two 1 - 4 player dungeons for a solo- only endless one.

I really hope they gave it some thought and have flexible options to appeal to multiple playstyles.

jad11mumbler

I'm hoping it's in the Battlespire.

LukosCreyden

As someone who loves the deep dungeons in ff14, I am all in on this idea.
New type of content that is (hopefully) highly replayable? Sign me up immediately.

I just hope it has a large variety of rewards to be found and earned.

Thormar

Tommy_The_Gun wrote: »

Here are my hopes what it will be:
- A dungeon crawler rouge-like experience.
- Made for either 2 players or 1 solo player with a Companion NPC.
- Smart mm, so that if you will be playing solo you won't encounter "2 pressure plates" mechanics.
- Daily Quest based (just like Arenas).
- Procedurally generated dungeon, that is made from different "bricks" or sections.
- Each room / section of the dungeon will have different objective. Sometimes it will be a puzzle you need to solve that opens the door to next section or kill a boss or find a key etc.
- The deeper you go, the harder it gets - bosses are more difficult, puzzles get more complicated etc.
- From time to time you will encounter a "safe room" with a wayshrine that will act like a check point, so you can pause & continue from this point the other day.
- The rewards after reaching certain point of the dungeon need to be substantial. Otherwise it will get boring soon & people won't play. Maybe it would be nice to introduce a token system so you can trade it for item sets from other dungeons ? Idk.

This is basically Daemonheim in Runescape, which also has a reward system called Dungeoneering tokens.

Thormar

Hurbster wrote: »

It can't be endless, not with the engines draw distance...

At most the engine/renderer loads and renders assets for the current room/level, previous and next room.
The dungeon could be 500 levels but as far as the renderer/engine are concerned there's only three rooms - prev, current and next.
As a result draw distance has no bearing on the dungeon's level count or how 'endless' it is.

Jaimeh

I actually hope it's properly balanced around two-people, so that players have to theory-craft optimal duo combos for the run and so on. It will super interesting. So much of the content is already solo-able, I hope this is a proper challenge for two players.

DMuehlhausen

Terrible. People have been wanting Solo Story Mode dungeons for years. Instead we get a 2 man endless dungeon. really lame and shows they don't really listen to what people are saying they want. In my 8 years now playing I've never heard anybody say they want an endless dungeon.

nb_rich

This can work, but im curious about how the rewards are going to work.

Only things I can see them giving as a reward for a endless dungeon is mats, gold, supplies like mount upgrade books (will make sense since a new class is coming out), weapon and spell power pots and even transmutes. The supplies can go up in rarity based on the stage you are on in the endless dungeon assuming the mobs come in waves. Transmutes can be provided 1 per stage/wave or 10 on after completing every 10th stage/wave (every 10th stage/wave can be a boss). This should be once a day to avoid people from restarting and just going to stage/wave 10 to obtain infinite transmutes.

I don’t really see the point of sets being in an endless dungeon especially if its not a new top tier set for PvE (can put in PvP set to but most people that play PvP just stick to that and wouldn’t want to spend a bunch of time in a endless dungeon). Also with gear set collection people would just do the first few easy wave of mobs to obtain the set piece, equip it to add it to the collection set then restart to obtain another piece of gear. Only way to go around this is to have gear drop at certain waves (eg gear drops at wave 10 then weapons start at wave 20, jewelry wave 30) the downside to this though is if you collect all the gear your doing those beginning waves for nothing and just a waste of time.

They can also go the route of having something similar to arena weapons but if this is a “dungeon” it wouldn’t make a sense and as I mentioned before people will just do the easiest part, get the weapon and equip it then restart to get what they want and be done with it.

jaws343

Thormar wrote: »

MrSpaM wrote: »

If the reward for finishing the dungeon...

How do you finish an endless dungeon?

My best guess would be that the dungeon ends when both players are dead. As long as one person lives, the dungeon probably continues.

Basically working as a sort of survival dungeon. Kind of like the Call of Duty wave modes against the NPCs you could do.

At least, that is what I would like to see. Where the further in you go the difficulty ramps up and the rewards/score you earn get better.

Thormar

jaws343 wrote: »

Thormar wrote: »

How do you finish an endless dungeon?

My best guess would be that the dungeon ends when both players are dead. As long as one person lives, the dungeon probably continues.

Basically working as a sort of survival dungeon. Kind of like the Call of Duty wave modes against the NPCs you could do.

At least, that is what I would like to see. Where the further in you go the difficulty ramps up and the rewards/score you earn get better.

Truth be told, my question was posed more in jest.
I do agree with you though that there is indeed a way to prematurely end the dungeon, under the conditions you describe.
Also as you say difficulty has to ramp up the deeper you descend into the dungeon. Primarily I'd think as a way to justify better loot - why have increased difficulty if loot qualify is about the same.

Araneae6537

Am I the only one who heard that and thought it sounded like some kind of hell? Trapped in an endless struggle that is ultimately futile? I enjoy the combination of exploration, combat, and story that the regular four-person dungeons are. I don’t enjoy arenas that much, especially BRP. But it’s a new type of content that hopefully will be enjoyable to many, if not to me, and I’m excited for first two updates of this year.

SaffronCitrusflower

The only way this is a good idea is if they mean finally fixing PvP performance and making Cyrodiil great again.

chessalavakia_ESO

Honestly, I think it's the card game all over again.

Taking an idea from a mobile game ZOS makes and then attempting to adjust it to work in an MMO.

It's likely going to ram into the same issue the card game hits where your primary audience isn't necessarily really that into style of content and won't be great at it but, the people that might be quite into it will be good at it. Thus leaving you with a challenge of where to place the difficulty.

Tra_Lalan

For me this was the most exciting information from yesterday's stream.

New class is cool, but the idea to make a new class isn't something new. Same with the chapter zone. It looks very good as for a chapter zone. But we already got so many cool zones that it is hard to get excited about it.
Its like getting a new bicycle for xmas every year. After some time you would only be "meh" about it.
(also, as usual, the bike has those wheels for little children attached, so you wouldnt fall - i mean die in the trivial overland )

Watching this stream I really hoped for something fresh and replayable. The Q4 idea looks most like it.

luen79rwb17_ESO

I have to wait and see the mechanics and what is its added value to the game and to my time.

So far it seems again like something noone asked for.

Mesite

I enjoyed Torchlight. That could be endless. It was a dungeon.

Torchlight had a pet you could load up with all your items and send off to town and it would sell the stuff you didn't want. I imagine there will be merchants in the endless dungeon instead.

Castagere

I wondered when an MMO would do this. There is a mod in Torchlight 2 that adds one to the game and it's a blast to play. In T2 the lower you go the harder it gets but you get a lot of loot drops on the way and travel to town saving your spot so you could sell and check gear then go back to where you left off.