A never-ending "onslaught" like mode

[G_Hosa_Phat]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but based on the descriptions I've heard so far, it sounds like the Eternal Championship is the Devs' take on how to implement this idea. I'd still like to see this idea implemented as something separate from the Eternal Championship, though. I think this is something that could appeal to both solo and group players of just about any caliber.

[Muljo_Stpho]

The Eternal Championship sounds like it's modeled after the Taris Dueling Ring. A series of boss fights, basically. I think it's safe to assume that the characters gathered around in the Zakuul cantina near the elevator down to the arena will be the opponents. (Some of them at least. We've been told that there are 10 encounters in it, and I don't think there were 10 characters hanging around.) Just as the arena in KotOR had its fighters hanging around waiting for their next fight. Edited January 20, 2016 by Muljo_Stpho

[G_Hosa_Phat]

Ahh, you're probably right. It's been so long since I've played either of the KotOR games I had totally forgotten about that element. It's definitely more reminiscent of that concept than this one. But, with the addition of something along those lines, there's always hope that other new game modes like this could be added.

[Vhaegrant]

/signed

 

Sorry, didn't find this thread earlier when I searched for it. I've always heard the game mechanic called 'Attack Wave'.

Started my own suggestion thread on it a couple of weeks back.

 

If it could be implemented it has a great potential for allowing solo players (or groups) to compare their ability by seeing what wave they can reach, rather than just saying 'Oh yeah I can beat that boss'.

 

It also allows for a comparison between class/advanced class/discipline choice. Do any have a significant advantage when playing solo content.

 

With a bit of ingenuity the solo version could be expanded to focus on role specific tasks, in a different thread I suggested a Healer focused wave mechanic.

There are a number of turrets that have been damaged by enemy artillery, engineers have to go and fix them and a healer needs to go out and make sure they stay alive long enough to get the task done.

The waves would be reflected by the rate, damage and AoE of the incoming damage to the engineers.

 

It also goes a long way to bridging the t***** issue that many players feel content is too easy. This sort of mechanic is play to fail. It gets progressively harder until you hit a point you can't get past... either get better gear, more buffs or improve your skills.

[G_Hosa_Phat]

/signed

 

Sorry, didn't find this thread earlier when I searched for it. I've always heard the game mechanic called 'Attack Wave'.

Started my own suggestion thread on it a couple of weeks back.

Thanks for the vote of support, Vhaegrant! I've been following this thread for quite a while, and still hope to see an implementation of this make it into the game some day, no matter what they call it. I believe I found your thread Wave Attack Mechanic, and I think you'll find in my outline post that we have many of the same ideas surrounding the implementation.

 

While I tend to lean more towards the solo version of this, I believe many of the people in this thread are looking for a multi-player environment for implementation. Luckily, I believe that there are already several instances of "scaling" in-place throughout SWTOR that should make either scenario possible.

If it could be implemented it has a great potential for allowing solo players (or groups) to compare their ability by seeing what wave they can reach, rather than just saying 'Oh yeah I can beat that boss'.

 

It also allows for a comparison between class/advanced class/discipline choice. Do any have a significant advantage when playing solo content.

 

With a bit of ingenuity the solo version could be expanded to focus on role specific tasks, in a different thread I suggested a Healer focused wave mechanic.

There are a number of turrets that have been damaged by enemy artillery, engineers have to go and fix them and a healer needs to go out and make sure they stay alive long enough to get the task done.

The waves would be reflected by the rate, damage and AoE of the incoming damage to the engineers.

This is pretty much exactly the kind of thing I was envisioning myself. While it may make the idea a bit more complex than necessary, I think it would be awesome to tailor the encounters to the class/role make-up of the party currently playing.... No healer/tank/DPS on your team? Certain objective waves are excluded from the rotation.

 

Like I said, though, this could potentially add a few too many variables into the mix for what should be a relatively simple "survive until you die" mechanic.

It also goes a long way to bridging the t***** issue that many players feel content is too easy. This sort of mechanic is play to fail. It gets progressively harder until you hit a point you can't get past... either get better gear, more buffs or improve your skills.

Another benefit in this case is that players will actually want better gear in order to compete in this area. This can drive players to some of the other end-game content that seems to go languishing because so many players have already "been there, done that". Getting a group of players that are newly driven to improve their gear could very well re-invigorate the Flashpoints and Operations afresh.

[Clone_Enforcer]

Picture this: 4 people start out in an area and enemies of increasing difficulty keep spawning, endlessly getting more and more difficult until eventually reaching the point of impossibility (after a long while, and obviously some groups would do better than others) - at which point the whole thing can be restarted immediately and/or rewards dispersed, etc. AND, a solo mode with the enemies geared towards only one attacker.

 

Yes, im taking this from FPS games like Halo and Resistance but it is incredibly fun especially with a group when all you wanna do is shoot stuff and blow crap up. Halo has like a bunker with medpacks and stationary guns to make it easier, which sure I would be for that, but it would be cool if it had a unique SWTOR flavor to it.

 

plz?

 

I can go with this, but I would prefer it with 3 companions out at the same time instead of a group of random players. I'm just an introverted kind of guy that enjoys single player games more.

[Lecto]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but based on the descriptions I've heard so far, it sounds like the Eternal Championship is the Devs' take on how to implement this idea. I'd still like to see this idea implemented as something separate from the Eternal Championship, though. I think this is something that could appeal to both solo and group players of just about any caliber.

 

I'll be honest, when I first herd of the Eternal Championship I thought for sure it would be similar, but it's not sadly -- not even close. To start with it's more single player content, which doesn't make any sense to me at all. Couldn't they have just scaled the mobs for more people? I just don't think it's good policy for an MMO to disincentiveise group play.........

 

On the other side, at least something similar to what we want is in the game......which means it wouldn't be that hard to program down the road. I'll come back to this thread to compare after the release of the Eternal Championship, but I'm not expecting great things overall.

[SicilFyra]

Just yes. Yes please!

[Vhaegrant]

Thanks for the vote of support, Vhaegrant! I've been following this thread for quite a while, and still hope to see an implementation of this make it into the game some day, no matter what they call it. I believe I found your thread Wave Attack Mechanic, and I think you'll find in my outline post that we have many of the same ideas surrounding the implementation.

Thanks, and that is indeed the thread I was referring to, glad to see it garnered such interest

While I tend to lean more towards the solo version of this, I believe many of the people in this thread are looking for a multi-player environment for implementation. Luckily, I believe that there are already several instances of "scaling" in-place throughout SWTOR that should make either scenario possible.This is pretty much exactly the kind of thing I was envisioning myself. While it may make the idea a bit more complex than necessary, I think it would be awesome to tailor the encounters to the class/role make-up of the party currently playing.... No healer/tank/DPS on your team? Certain objective waves are excluded from the rotation.

I would hope that once the mechanic for putting in waves was mastered (being able to scale up the mobs in a consistent fashion, keeping track of progress) it would be able to be rolled out to cover several aspects. I would like to see separate missions for solo or group and the solo content also having scope for role specific training. Not a singular mission that adapts for all.

I think this is a good style of gameplay to have as standalone content (when I say standalone, I mean not required for progression). This means individual missions do not have to be tailored for everyone to be able to complete (I feel this has severely hampered the challenge level available for the core levelling experience) but can be very specific.

The bonus with an attack wave mechanic is that it is self regulating, you wouldn't need to specifically tailor the waves to the participating group, just have some means of comparing the wave they get to. You do not expect a group of DPS to get as far as a trinity group, but you should be able to compare the progression of a DPS group to other DPS groups

Like I said, though, this could potentially add a few too many variables into the mix for what should be a relatively simple "survive until you die" mechanic.Another benefit in this case is that players will actually want better gear in order to compete in this area. This can drive players to some of the other end-game content that seems to go languishing because so many players have already "been there, done that". Getting a group of players that are newly driven to improve their gear could very well re-invigorate the Flashpoints and Operations afresh.

I think the bragging rights are an important drive for some players. There will be those that will push themselves to see how far they can go with the worst gear

But most of all, I think this kind of gamemode would serve an important bridge between solo play (and having absolutely no need to master your role) and group play.

 

The biggest difficulty would be getting the reward balance right. Because MMOs seem to be in the mindset that you have to bribe players to do content

[Muljo_Stpho]

On the other side, at least something similar to what we want is in the game......which means it wouldn't be that hard to program down the road.

 

Yeah, we'll see what ideas can come to mind when we see the whole Eternal Championship in action. See where we can say "now if they just add this element on top of that thing they did there..." We may get an idea of how that system can be expanded into something else.

 

Hmmm... I just had a random idea not really related to this response or anything...

 

It's too bad the level sync system isn't flexible enough to change dynamically... (Before we saw it in action the logical expectation for level sync was that they could fine-tune it with separate settings for each region of a planet with buffs that you gain/lose automatically just like the damaging debuffs for exhaustion zones, fire, etc. But instead of that, all we got was a single planet-wide locked-in-place setting.) If they could make level sync work more flexibly my idea would be that they could use level sync to help ramp up the difficulty.

 

I mean, consider the henchmen in bounty week. To be fair they're all kind of easy regardless (they aren't the main attraction of the event after all, the kingpins are), but they scale to many different levels of "easy". Fighting a specific one on Coruscant / Dromund Kaas is a completely different fight from fighting that same one on Voss because of the level difference. You're synced to the same level as them either way, but the lower level fight just feels like the AI is slower and not using all of its abilities. The lower level fight is a faceroll pushover while the higher level fight lasts longer and at least pretends to be a slight challenge before falling. And the kingpins Grov (Hutta) and Brogon (Ord Mantell) feel a lot weaker to me now that they're always level 12 for everybody than they did before 4.0 when they could be level 50 or 60 or whatever to match your level.

 

So here's what I'm picturing: Eternal Championship sounds like it's just 10 specific challenges, just 10 battles of player + companion vs some named Zakuul champion + his/her adds. That's not an ongoing repeatable format like any of these ideas for waves of enemies. It has a discrete stopping point. But what if it didn't have to end there? Suppose that you enter the challenge and it's scaled and synced down to level 10, you beat the 10 bosses, and then they all start asking for rematches so you go through the 10 fights again scaled and synced down to 20 instead. Round 3, scale and sync to 30. 40 for round 4, 50 for round 5, 60 for round 6. Or the levels could increment in 5s instead of 10s to get even more rounds out of it. Of course that kind of implies an eventual stopping point as well once you reach 60 or 65 scaling. Unless...

 

Okay, making this thought get even crazier... Always apply both a bolster and a sync for every round. For example (and I'm just going to throw some random numbers around without checking what gear is actually at what levels) maybe:

* round 1 bolsters to rating 50 gear and the sync and enemy level is 10

* round 2 bolsters to rating 80 gear and the sync and enemy level is 20

* round 3 bolsters to rating 110 gear and the sync and enemy level is 30

* round 4 bolsters to rating 140 gear and the sync and enemy level is 40

* round 5 bolsters to rating 170 gear and the sync and enemy level is 50

* round 6 bolsters to rating 200 gear and the sync and enemy level is 60

* round 7 bolsters to rating 230 gear and the sync and enemy level is 70

* round 8 bolsters to rating 260 gear and the sync and enemy level is 80

* and so on and so on

 

This would ignore the normal level caps, obviously. This would allow the format to extend indefinitely. Select an initial item rating to bolster to in round 1 and an increment size for each additional round's item rating such that around 60 or 65 you will reach close to the current introductory endgame rating of 208 but the growth in your stats beyond that will be outpaced by the growth in the enemy's strength.

 

edit: And actually, looking at it again I'd maybe just start round 1 at 50, not 10. The idea would still be to start out easy with a bolster rating that's basically overgeared for that scaling and then to have the enemy's growth from the increase in levels outpace your growth from the increase in bolster. By round 3 or 4 you should effectively be undergeared for what you're going up against.

 

edit2: Maybe it doesn't really need flexible syncs after all. You're level 65 and you enter the arena and...

Round 1: scale enemies to level 65, bolster to level 65 / item rating 210

Round 2: scale enemies to level 70, bolster to level 70 / item rating 220

Round 3: scale enemies to level 75, bolster to level 75 / item rating 230

Round 4: scale enemies to level 80, bolster to level 80 / item rating 240

 

Something like that? They'd just have to redefine the starting point for round 1's scaling when the level cap goes up so that it's always starting at the level cap.

 

edit3: I cringe at the repetitiveness of it all though. Maybe only the first round goes through all 10 in order and the rematch rounds will select 3 of them at random? That way the scaled ups rounds are a little unpredictable

 

Also, group play could be treated as a separate thing where the group goes through a shortened round 1 against specific pairings of enemies in sequence (so 5 fights in that first round) and then the rematch rounds throw random pairs at you for 2 fights in each round.

 

Solo play would be all about dealing with the fight mechanics of each boss individually. Group play would be all about having to deal with the chaos of two different boss fight mechanics at the same time. With the increased scaling for each additional round in both cases.

 

edit again: Would it be sadistic of them if they made bosses in the group fight grow stronger when the other boss falls?

Edited February 6, 2016 by Muljo_Stpho

[Clone_Enforcer]

You know what would be even more cooler for this? If we have 3 companions out at the same time while doing these kind of onslaught matches.

[Lecto]

You know what would be even more cooler for this? If we have 3 companions out at the same time while doing these kind of onslaught matches.

 

For the running idea in this thread no, but I'd totally sign off on this idea for the Eternal Championship since it's solo content anyway.

[Muljo_Stpho]

For the running idea in this thread no, but I'd totally sign off on this idea for the Eternal Championship since it's solo content anyway.

 

I think we would have seen something about that already if they were going to do it, so I think they've only balanced the fights against a player with 1 companion. Setting up something for a player with 3 of their companions would make sense for a solo-only mode though.

 

Although... Well, the latest twitch stream showed a bit of Eternal Championship and there was something about a [solo] weekly and a [solo+] weekly. Solo really does mean solo / just you and the companion / no outside help. But they said that solo+ means you grouped with one other player. Maybe the solo+ mode could be scaled at a point that would be reasonable for a player with 3 companions? (It's wishful thinking, probably. But we'll see.)

Edited February 12, 2016 by Muljo_Stpho

[Lecto]

Just a update as to the viability of "onslaught":

-----

1). These would be quick, cheap, & easy to develop....which seems to be what Bioware is looking for. All you need to do is create arena maps for existing or new NPCS to spawn in. Heck, you could just recycle old game elements to make these...you know like they did with all the uprisings......

 

2). Uprisings proved that Bioware has the ability to spawn waves of NPCs.

 

3). Eternal Championship proved they can make wave bosses.

 

4). The "Temporary Ability Bar" can be used to for class abilities as mentioned earlier in this thread.

 

Regards,

~Lecto-Sama

 

PS: Please just rip-off "Gears of War" 3 or 4 horde mode already.........

[Psychopyro]

STO did this with the Kobayashi Maru... I'm not sure anyone actually managed all 10 waves until well after power creep had made it doable...

[Darkbloom]

Just a update as to the viability of "onslaught":

-----

1). These would be quick, cheap, & easy to develop....which seems to be what Bioware is looking for. All you need to do is create arena maps for existing or new NPCS to spawn in. Heck, you could just recycle old game elements to make these...you know like they did with all the uprisings......

 

2). Uprisings proved that Bioware has the ability to spawn waves of NPCs.

 

3). Eternal Championship proved they can make wave bosses.

 

4). The "Temporary Ability Bar" can be used to for class abilities as mentioned earlier in this thread.

 

Regards,

~Lecto-Sama

 

PS: Please just rip-off "Gears of War" 3 or 4 horde mode already.........

 

It's surprising to me that they haven't produced something like this. It's a game mode that some percentage of the player base would love, and would certainly give that group a reason to want to grind gear.

[G_Hosa_Phat]

Just a update as to the viability of "onslaught":

-----

1). These would be quick, cheap, & easy to develop....which seems to be what Bioware is looking for. All you need to do is create arena maps for existing or new NPCS to spawn in. Heck, you could just recycle old game elements to make these...you know like they did with all the uprisings......

 

2). Uprisings proved that Bioware has the ability to spawn waves of NPCs.

 

3). Eternal Championship proved they can make wave bosses.

 

4). The "Temporary Ability Bar" can be used to for class abilities as mentioned earlier in this thread.

 

Regards,

~Lecto-Sama

 

PS: Please just rip-off "Gears of War" 3 or 4 horde mode already.........

Thanks again, Lecto, for bringing this idea back to the top of the heap. I haven't been in-game much of late, but ideas like this and the other ones I've linked in my signature could potentially draw me back in. As I've stated many times, bringing in more diverse game styles like these could really help SWTOR appeal to a much wider player base. I really hope that these ideas haven't gone completely unnoticed.

 

...and according to Musco in this post, the Suggestion Box forum is more than just a sounding board for players to vent:

 

Fear not, they are just doing their part! We absolutely read the suggestion box forum so don't worry about ideas/feedback not being seen there.

 

-eric

 

Let's just hope that's true.

Edited February 8, 2017 by G_Hosa_Phat

[G_Hosa_Phat]

I realize that this is an old, mostly defunct thread, but I still believe in the idea of adding new game modes to SWTOR. Now, however, with the release of 6.X, we're going to have to come up with a new name. Perhaps "Incursion" or "Swarm"...

[Townowi]

The closest things currently in the game that could look like a "swarm" type of scenario are the turret defense in Kaon and the first stage of Colicoid Wargames (the most important difference is that they have a set total number of items to kill), and the second boss in Chiss to a lesser extent.

 

Uprising maps could be reused for that purpose. In fact, some uprisings are so trash-heavy it would give an idea of what to expect in a never-ending "swarm" type of thing.

[Soljin]

/signed! Horde mode anything is awesome.