A little leery of the ‘climb’ portion - it seems (at least, to my understanding of the concept) like it would play out a little too similarly to the ‘bridge’ portion of the Reckoning, and likewise be very easy to ‘game’ as far as supers and the dreaded ‘meta’ go...
... but I love the idea for the final stage! Both teams essentially competing to burn the boss, burn each other (with the ‘benefit’ of doing so just the lost of damage inflicted, rather than the ‘heal’ of current Gambit), a goal for your more Sentry-style players to chase in the chosen - all very well thought out!
How large would you think the final arena should run? I’ve always thought some kind of PvPvE event in a much larger space than Gambit would be fun - something almost the size of a (single area) patrol zone, but that would probably be too large/encourage too much sniper/linear fusion play for something like this.
Cheers; well done!
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I think the Arena would be HUGE. Essentially you would be zoning into a different portion of the map, with almost a full PVP map open to play. Think something like the layout of Equinox, but in the outer area (in-between the two forts) would be where the primeval spawns. The forts would be where Chosen can spawn-in, and the Prime would be maybe 150% bigger than they are currently, maybe even having a situation where they are standing / hovering off the side of the map?
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I think a bigger arena would definitely be interesting (and totally agree on the bigger Primeval, if that was the case - something along the lines of the D1 Taken Champions, perhaps) but I think you’d still have to do something to mitigate the loadout bias toward long-range weapons that would create; at certain health intervals, the Primeval generates a shield, like the Fallen Walkers, maybe, to force the players to get closer to the Primeval (and each other) to damage it? Or go the other route, and steal a page from battle royale games, where the arena starts off large, but steadily shrinks as the match goes on? I think a hovering off-map Primeval is a good idea in theory, but I don’t know how well it would work in practice - I keep thinking back to the final story mission boss fight in the Taken King, which I always thought was a little underwhelming, partially due to a similar mechanic. (Just me, though.) As for the climb section, I wonder if you could double down on the different lanes element, making something almost akin to a maze (and yeah, procedural generation would DEFINITELY be required there). Maybe even incorporate some light platforming, or a sort of risk-reward of ‘if the team splits up, they’ll find the route up sooner, but if they stay together, they’ll gather motes faster’. Plus, making the climb portion more inherently close-quarters might mitigate the long-range bias of the Primeval stage. Again - all of this is just spitballing; ideas are fun!
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I can definitely see the similarities between the climb and the bridge, but what I was aiming for in that situation would be a sort of risk / reward situation that teams can tackle at their own pace instead of something where the pace is dictated for them. Do you climb as fast as you can, seeking to get to the next tier before the other team? Do you farm up a larger number of motes to slam the other team and try to stop them from climbing? And I think that the climb wouldn't have timed gates that you had to capture. The course would be set out as-is (Potentially semi-randomized so that people don't just stick to one route) and your team could proceed up at their own pace. I think maybe the only part that's going to be hard to figure out would be how the banking goes - something where the bank is only active for 30 seconds once the first person throws in motes, so it encourages the team to stick together. But that can definitely make it easy to grief others in the same match.