Lots of interesting stuff, though some of it doesn't really mesh with my current vision for the game or player needs.Dybbuk wrote:My friend and I spent a good hour or so talking about what we think TH could use, and here are some of the ideas we came up with:...
One of the benefits of the pit as it stands now is that it's always a difficult fight, whatever your level/status. It's the only place in the game where, no matter your situation, it should be a fair (or at least decent) fight. So I'm not ever going to change that. Taking it away would leave a lot of people feeling, "where the heck can I go now if I want a challenge?"
What I've mentioned that I want to do is to have other high-level areas that progress/scale in different ways. The tiers you mention there would be a good option; when you hit a level that's too tough, you can go fight in the pit some more until you level up and can handle more. I'd also like to stress different types of fights, so it's not always just "beat up an enemy that's as tough as you are." One of the things that's slowed me down is your suggestion (and my thoughts on it) are hovering around the Fernswarthy's Basement zone in KoL, and I'd like to work in some distinctive differences from it, if possible.
I'm definitely not going to reduce the level cap; in fact, I plan to raise it or eliminate it. For a lot of veteran players, gaining levels/xp is the only sense of progress they've got. Locking them in at level 20 (or even 50) can't possibly be satisfying. The answer isn't to trap them, but to provide more higher level content.
It's really not necessary to point to/repeat comments from earlier posts in this same thread. I know it's there. If I haven't done anything yet it's because either I like the idea and just haven't had time, or I disagree with the idea. Either way, repeated calls for the same action will tend to annoy me rather than help me. It's one thing if it's been six months and you want to see if it's still a valid suggestion, but you're talking about a post you made just three and a half weeks ago. There will eventually be class-specific items. There will eventually be more items and a greater variety of them. But keep in mind it's taken me a full year to get 300 of them into the game--there's only so fast I can do things, and there's *lots* of things to do. Class-specific items in particular are tough, not only because it's a completely new thing to code, but also because I end up doing the same amount of creative work for 1/4 of the playerbase, meaning in a utilitarian fashion that there's less "fun" for the amount of work, or four times as much work to get the same amount of fun in the game. So right now that means it would be neat, but it's a bad use of my time.
Also, I'm not sure I see a major distinction between having a riddle that takes some work to unlock the new area, and adding a quest in an old area. Both provide the same amount of enjoyment, roughly, to the players, I think. Maybe I'm wrong about that, I dunno. But I'm not sure it's a fair objection to say it would have been better to expand existing areas--I think that's a break even, at least. In this case the new zone is also the first step towards the process that will provide both higher level content, a new quest, something of a puzzle, and a number of other features that people have been clamoring for. So I'm on the path you want me to be on, you just don't know it yet. (I realize that you probably couldn't know it, as the development plans aren't posted anywhere, so I'm not holding that against you.)
