Suggestion - New Game Mode (Destiny)

by wintermuteprime, Tuesday, October 21, 2014, 08:42 (3474 days ago)

You have all these wonderful textures, and weapons and creatures and people want to get more replay value out of the game, but something else to do with large groups, aside from Raiding the same map all the time. How's about a Last Stand/Horde mode...but with a few special twists.

Bungie would need to design a 'castle'. The castle could be the same design and either they could choose to design a mini-map specifically for it, to place it, say at the bottom or top of a hill, on the edge of a cliff or whatever...OR they could choose to just drop the castle into a random planetary environment, which could get them more mileage out of the already-awesome environments they've created.

Now, I know this might sound like just another boring old Horde mode, but that's where the glory of Destiny and all it's cool features come in. You can go in with any size of group, and play to either defend the castle itself, or to stay alive (without leaving the castle's grounds).

Either way, we would have to put a 10-second kill barrier on people who leave the castle, to prevent them from just running off and surviving a wave or whatever. These gametypes would be separate from normal field activities, so a 7th player couldn't just randomly wander into your encounter.

Anyways - The MEAT of the gamemode: You're either playing to defend the castle itself, in which case the castle has a 'HEART' that only has so many HPS, or you're playing to stay alive (limited respawns between rounds or no respawns...pick your poison).

The design of the castle is important, because you want to give players multiple things to consider, and defend. There will need to be a long bridge/ramp/drawbridge that the enemies must assault in the front of the castle. Players can attack right from the bridge if ballsy, or use defensible windows inside to shoot from, or snipe from the battlements if they so choose.

But the castle also has a 'dungeon' entrance, where bad guys can also sneak in. Here would be where you send in some invisible guys to really mess with the players. Dropships can also fly right over and drop enemies off on the battlements. To make it even more difficult, there should be a landing pad off the back of the cliff that the players have to watch for small groups of enemies to be dropped off at. Perhaps for the dropship factor, there is a generator OUTSIDE the castle that players must defend (which would typically be targeted by enemy snipers), or else the enemy can fly over and drop people off on the battlements and the back landing pad. Perhaps 2 separate generators.

Rounds would get exceedingly more difficult, based on enemy volume, aggression, shield type, rate of fire and accuracy. Players could assign difficulty modifiers to the game type of their choice...even a bread and butter mode where everyone starts at level 1 with white weapons and armor and goes from there, gathering drops and being given random items inbetween rounds.

There would also be a 'door' to the front of the castle that the players could 'fix' by holding X...but it would take a VERY long time to fix, and the more people, the better. The 'Heart' of the castle, or whatever, could NOT be healed. The shield generators COULD be fixed/healed.

You would be given between 20 and 40 seconds inbetween every round to equip your new stuff, and fix whatever you decided was priority, and then the enemies would start spawning in.

The beauty of this would be the variety of it. You never know what weapons you're going to end up trying to defend with...so one game you could be the auto rifle player, on the drawbridge, or the shotgun guy in the basement smashing off invisible sword-wielding vandals. Or maybe you're the battlement sniper. Maybe you rotate, depending.

The enemies scale slightly faster than the players, to ensure a challenging and ultimately, an end to the experience, but not unfairly. Players could watch the other players still alive (if killed) to root them on or give advice. If all players die, game over.

Think of the variations that you could have with an all-Captain wave (ugh) or maybe Hobgoblins, Psions and sniper Vandals (all yellows). Maybe Goblins can teleport right through your front door. Maybe actual boss monsters show up and storm the castle keep.

I kinda like the idea of it being one fixed castle location...so you are basically just defending the front, bottom, top and landing pad in the back...but a 4-sided design lets you just drop it into any planetary map and go to town with creatures. The monster configuration coupled with different terrain and kinds of cover available to them would ALSO give them an ever-changing set of variables to keep it 'more' random, and thus, fresh.

Just an idea...I see a lot of already-existing content that could be quickly shaped into something like this. Heck, they wouldn't even need to design a castle...just pick an isolated hill, like in the wrecked shipyards of Cosmodrome, or something along those lines. All you need is a little AI modification for dealing with generators and doors as targets, in addition to reminding them to charge in, rather than defend an area, and some UI for the game type, and a little more code to give you a 'blank slate' character (if you chose that mode)....

It would definitely take a little focused effort...but most of the work is already done. Just thoughts. Pick apart, or add suggestions as you see fit. Long days, Pleasant Nights, Guardians.