Layout of Acts

Your lootsystem forced me to this.
Fill missing parts of explanation with your fantasy.

Lootsystem with timer, could bossfarming become allocated, will there be mobs left if the boss is dead ? Is there adrenaline picking up items after the boss is dead ?
How to balance Bossfarming and Trashfarming. How to make Trashfarming more interesting and Bossfarming less repetive.

For me the answer is: lesser Waypoints, zones whith more Elites, search for the boss.

What i call the tube:
Since Hellgate, all developers should know that players hate tubes atm. They are way to linear for a creative mind.

D2-akt3-tube: http://img585.imageshack.us/i/tubelayout.jpg/
While Hellgate had a much more clustered Map, it still consisted only in tubes leading away from town, you did them once and done, switching to the next tube.

complex-randoomised-layout with X- and T-junctions:
http://img535.imageshack.us/i/complexlayout.jpg/

Attributes:
- Jepp i know its really hard to programm:
Can lead to many broken maps
- Dead-ends: You can increase the rare,elite,legendary-mob density there. Also you could change the monsters lvl, amount, difficulty, loot, ... .
- Run in Circles syndrom:
I´m lost and i don´t know where the act ends
- Hit the Wall: You enter a new zone and suddenly are slayn by monsters that are way higher than your char
- I lost my Party/ I cant find this quest: You wanted hard death-penalitys, now you can run around and enjoy the landscape.
- Hidden Passageways: Could be fun, lets see where it leads to.
- Loading times: I dont think this will have an impact.
- Time played / Loot received - factor can vary too much
- Who in party decides which way to go ?
- More combinations of Crossovers(Forest-Strand, Hills-Strand, Cave-Strand) needed

Your thoughts ? Could this add to the game ?

The epitome of linear maps has to be FF13
http://ps3.kombo.com/images/content/misc/final-fantasy-xiii-extreme-linearity-side.jpg

They really screwed the pooch with that one. Someone actually did the whole map somewhere, and it's just one long tube except one central hub at the very end that quickly rejoins into more tubes.

I vote thousand times for the idea to make trashfarming as attractive as boss fights. Lets bring up my favourite Titan Quest - here the trashfarming was encouraged with trash-only specific drops, which were really essential for end-game chars. I think that random combinations of trash mobs can be as challenging as bosses, thus bringing more excitement to the gameplay (and corresponding rewards) and less uniformity to grinding.

Search idea is good, can be introduced by making centain attribute enhanced champions to drop items with a MUCH higher probability of corresponding prefix/suffix. For example, int-enhanced ("cunny") chamion drops +int enchanted int-related items.

Btw TQ:IT map was one long static tube, but it was a fun to play. HG:L however was sometimes really annoying to explore (Cathedral-type, Necropolis or sewer-type maps).

"

Lachdanan wrote:

D2-akt3-tube: http://img585.imageshack.us/i/tubelayout.jpg/

This is a VERY poor representation of act 3 from diablo II.

First there was the jungle with various interlinking tubes, numerous dead-ends, ad an entire area that did not need to be explored for the main quest (great marsh). Sometimes the great marsh was connected to the flayer jungle, and sometimes it wasn't.

Then there was kurast, made up of several wide open areas. They had to be explored to find the correct temples with the various quest items in them. Kurast had a large maze-like sewer beneath it with multiple entrances that linked two of the above-ground areas.

Then there was travincal, a static boss fight area, and finally the durance of hate, a huge multi level dungeon complex that was halfway between a wide open area and a maze.

If you ask me, D2's act 3 was a great example of an interesting and varied layout. In reality, it's more like the picture in your second link that the first one.

Agreed, you activated some grey-cells in my brain, i totaly forgot about the sewers and the little temples.

I tried to paint it better: http://img846.imageshack.us/i/tubelayout2.jpg/

I don´t count the jungle as very randomised, these dead-ends were just a result of a missing interlink.
The trees were their way to stretch the area out of our viewrange, which resulted in the thinking it was a maze.

I didn´t want to talk about the sizes of the areas, we have to less information to do so. On the other Side, we know the tileset of act1.

To stay on the act3 example:
Imagine a randomly generated hidden passageway that leads from marsh back to flayer, and in the next game it could be from upperkurast to durancelvl3(big questmistake), or once it is missing completly.
Basically a much higher randomisation of acts.

Spiderdungeon and Forgotten-Tower are nice examples for 3-lvl-deep dungeons, but they were static, and always were created for a quest-purpose. Such dungeons could still be attached to the picture in the second link.

Perhaps its just my fear after reading the PoE-Areas section, that it could be way to linear for my taste.

---
i would make a clear flag related boss event . once you cleared a boss area at each difficulty if you went back to the cleared area the boss would spawn up to 2 maps away from its nest ambush style after having killed a #dev number of regular mobs .

surprise ! its da boss nom nom nom .

this process would continue until reaching the boss nest , where it will be waiting for you like normal .


random boss placement after initial clearing could be good . a boss arena where bosses get an overall powerboost based on your stats/level/gear could be good . quick access to cleared bosses with incresed challenge .

Conceptually, the only way to make a game not linear is by making it sandbox like. So I guess what you are advocating here is the illusion of non-linearity by a more complex ramdomization of the areas AND a randomization of the area's monster difficulty(level). This would cause,when you replay the game, to not use the same path over and over again, but you will still have to go from point A to point B.

Of course its just a illusion, you will need a tube where you can branch off

Randomisziation of areas: yes, amount of same connected zones 1-3, is_branchable, can_backbranch, ...

Randomisazion of monster: Nope, but if you do the above, you will end with Dead-Ends, in these last zones of a simple-branch, you could increase the Elite-monster density for example.

( This comes from HGL, if you had a mf-guardian and went into deep wilds, with the correct combination of monsters, you would end in a mass-elitemob-map[Densitiy] . Basically evry 4th mob was rare, this was fun ^^
Magicfind in Hellgate increased the "Rare,elite,legendary"-amount --> more drops )

Tried to color it: http://img801.imageshack.us/i/complexcb.jpg/
Branches are red, "B" could be good for farming, this time no luck with evil-vahss-nest.

--
Vahss3 somehow remembered me of Planet MULE and Crystite ^^
Randomly placed Nest, if you are lucky its on a route. Vahss-mirrors-mobs in adjacent plots. "count the mirrors to guess how near you are to the nest"-while fighting zombies. ^^