The Mighty Quest for Epic Loot, because why even bother trying to get along?

[Aldurin]

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Ok, so this ubisoft's attempt to grab at the free-to-play market with The Mighty Quest for Epic Loot (www.themightyquest.com), and the idea is actually surprising. The (rather cheesy) video above shows it's a raiding game where you have to design your own dungeon to store your own loot to mitigate other people taking it, while you're out attempting to bypass other people's designs to get their stuff. I'm not really making this thread because I think it will be fun (it could be if done right), but because I can't wait to see it destroy itself.

The concerns:
1. RPG elements (mainly the leveling) brings in the factor of "well what can you do to stop them? they're too high of a level for your defenses to matter". Sure there may be countermeasures to make sure that level-grouping comes into play, that way you aren't able to farm level 1 players (oppress the lower class!), but it does throw a wrench into the whole skill-and-strategy aspect (imagine if a 1v1 fighting game had long-term leveling that carried across all matches, affecting things like damage and health).
2. Free-to-play, this means that there are things you can buy in the game without a doubt. This could very likely be pay-to-win, especially if it goes beyond something like an insurance policy if your own defense fails.
3. Metagame stagnation. Like any game with a high competitive focus, this will be picked apart until a few "perfect" defenses are found, which will quickly mean repeatedly encountering the same optimized layouts over and over after this game is finalized. If the defensive possibilities are too strong, it can render a layout completely unbeatable, driving successful raids to a halt.
4. The game may very well be bad. Like, Dungeonland bad. The character/class/item sides of the equation need to make sense and be fun to play, and the trailer indicates this may be going towards generic bland-flavor RPG mechanics.
5. Haters are gonna hate, even those who don't realize they're haters. I see this game destroying relationships, maybe even causing a few divorces. There are people that will take this too seriously.

I don't know, I might sign up for the beta later on, but this thread is more for speculation on how badly this will go. I'm leaning toward the "grab some popcorn and get a good seat" bad.

[Arcanum]

The game may very well be bad. Like, Dungeonland bad.

Fuck you Dungeonland is great.

[Seil]

Relevant. (www.nuklearforums.com/showthread.php?p=765911)

[Amake]

The first thing they focus on if they're any clever is to make sure a "perfect" defense is easily beatable because the attacker knows what's going to happen where. The way to win, offensively or defensively, should be to predict your opponent's move and not let them predict yours. I'm going to try it just to find out if I'm right about that.

[Magus]

This looks fun, don't know why everyone seems to be HOPING it is bad...other than hate for Ubisoft (I share in the hate to quite a bit of an extent).

[The Artist Formerly Known as Hawk]

Does actually look pretty good. Reminds me of this old cyberpunk/hacker style wap game whose name I forget that had a similar premise, except you set up computer programs as your defence and had to steal better programs off your enemies in order to improve.

I would hope that there are enough different types of traps/minions/room layouts that there can be so many different viable builds that there would be no one "perfect" setup, and I would imagine that there would be some trial and error as you attempt to break through certain defences, for example if somebody favours lots of fire and lava traps and you forgot to equip an item that reduces damage to fire then you're pretty stuffed, so you'd have to respec and try again with the right gear, but now you've had to remove your +1 against spiders sword to make room and then you find yourself up against the last giant spider boss you didn't know was there, etc.

And of course, you can bet that new weapons/items/traps will be introduced over time, so there should be a constanly shifting metagame to keep things interesting.

[Bells]

i'll sign in for the Beta, this sounds like a game made FOR griefing, like... trolling is the way to win. Should be a mess, but a fun mess...

[tacticslion]

Just going by the preview, it seems that even if you get "stolen" from, you still have treasure - i.e., even if you get robbed, you don't "lose", per se, someone else just "wins" (though there may be some associated penalties for doing so, that's unclear).

That seems like a pretty decent way to create a griefing game, though, of course, I could see some grinders setting up things. My guess, if I had to, though, is your more "valuable" the more traps and difficulties you put up, and the more successful raids you make.

So that would mean that the more successful people are worth more, while the less successful are not worth as much (and thus not worth raiding).

[Bells]

if there is no sense of loss what's the incentive to defend? Just leaderboards? If you never really loose your loot or your stuff, i would just focus 100% on offense to reap players above me and only form a good defense when the power leveling for offense became stagnant.

[phil_]

if there is no sense of loss what's the incentive to defend? Just leaderboards? If you never really loose your loot or your stuff, i would just focus 100% on offense to reap players above me and only form a good defense when the power leveling for offense became stagnant.Leaderboards are powerful motivators for some people. Arcades ran off the high score table for a decade, people buy crap games just to up their gamer score, etc. A leaderboard based on successful repelling of attacks with no input from one's success at attacking others would incentivise making a strong dungeon.

Plus making one's own dungeon is part of the game and presumably fun. If your dungeon isn't repelling intruders, that's just an extra incentive to get out the dungeon blocks and play architect some more. Even without a tangible loss, the feeling of making a working virtual thing (in this case, an effective death trap) is its own reward, especially if its seen by other players (which it inherently is, since it's killing other players if it's working).

Either way, it looks like you lose some cash when your dungeon fails, judging from the video. Maybe the rewards are greater than the losses (Like, you lose 10 gold and the conqueror gains 12 gold), thus setting up one of those Mafia Wars-type scenarios that work so well in FTP where the numbers only go up.

[The Artist Formerly Known as Hawk]

The knowledge that you're making other people lose is enough for some as well. So, say that you focus more on attacking and don't bother building a decent defense at all, then maybe like tactics said, you become more valuable and worth being attacked by others, so peope start grinding you to earn easy gold.

Well, you don't want that, you want people to try and attack you, fail, and lose a load of money, because being a dick is probably a part of the game.

Also it may be the case that while you don't lose anything from people defeating your dungeon, you may gain stuff from them failing at it, which is probably a better incentive to make you work on defense as well. Imagine going away for a day or two, then coming back and finding that ten people all failed to steal from you and you've made say, 100 gold off of each of them.

[Krylo]

Man you guys should rewatch the video.

Every time someone loses there's a little +2. When the guy wins there's a +0.

It's pretty clear that you get a reward when people lose to your dungeon.

[Bells]

well, i didn't watch the video cause im at work now (im being productive!) but that's good to know.

Playing defensive might be a cool strategy too, luring people into your dungeon, making them think it's easy when it's not... that deceiving aspect would also be very cool

[tacticslion]

Man you guys should rewatch the video.

Every time someone loses there's a little +2. When the guy wins there's a +0.

It's pretty clear that you get a reward when people lose to your dungeon.

It's like you're judging my sharp-eyed laser-like focus that's never ever wrong when I'm not distracted by an infant, which I was during that post.

Sheesh! I mean, I made an interesting discussion and everything!

Stop judging meeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!!1!one!

But in seriousness, that's actually cool and good to know. Thanks, Krylo! That makes good incentive to be defensive, too, I'd guess. What does that do, do you know? Also, what did he get when he won? Just gold? (No time to really watch right now.)

[Krylo]

It was just a little +2 with a trophy next to it, man. I dunno.

[Magus]

He got +2. If he gets another +2, he'll probably have +4.

[tacticslion]

+4? +4? I would pay greatly for a cure such as that!

Hehe, the title's because no one here would know what a webcomic is. Oh, wait, it got cut off by the word-limit before I could explain that it was a reference to-

Sorry. I'm lacking sleep and this is my definition of humor, apparently, when sleep deprived.