Ok, i wrote this for a topic where there was a discussion about how to make the game progressively harder. I wrote this, and i think it needs its own thread.
So, the points are:
You want to make the game harder as the player progresses.
You want to make the survival aspect of the game more noticeable.
You don’t want to make the hard gameplay come with time.
We only have a way out of this. It is not nerfing the actual items and stuff. Water is ok as it is. If you read the lore, you could get that it is not actually going to change. Or at least that is what i think.
I have a suggestion: Triggers.
Events that trigger things.
My principal suggestion is lore-based. If you don’t know a lot about the lore, it may spoiler everything a bit.
The thing is that in the labs there is supposed to be portals. Like the portals that sometimes spawn in the middle of the place. I have the idea of a huge underground place, the final room of special labs, that have a really big machine with a command interface. You enter there, and activate, before hacking it. A portal appears.
We now have the World Creator. What it means? It means we can have multiple worlds in the same game folder. Cool. What about, with activating that portal, triggering series of events that conduce to… Level 2.
In Level 1, the Earth, portals start to appear. Weak NetherCreatures start to spawn. Hell on Earth. The thing is to not make the game more survivor oriented, but to add better ceratures. Different things. All corresponding to the Lore, of course.
In Level 2 (the one you opened, the one you enter in the portal) is totally different. Is the Nether. No grass. Red rock is your dirt. Lava everywhere. Cities? I think they are some kind of Nether villages with creatures living in them, aggresive to you. No place to hide. It is very hot, you can’t carry much clother, or you will burn alive. It is really dark, all time You can see just 5 tiles in front of you. The Nether has food and water. The water is not good. The animals have to be distainted, like the zombies. There are, sometimes, portals to come back. Giant creatures without eyes follow your essence everywhere. Lots of artifacts. Lots of temples. All is red as lava. Doom on Cataclysm.
As you go, you go deeper in the Hell, activating different portals or maybe going trough caves that go deeper in Hell, different levels. You could have End Game content. You could have better weapons. As you go, you find more temples, at a point where you can see some kind of civilization in there, that does not like you. Places like the labs, where you can see notes and stuff that tell you a bit more of Lore. Say hi to the Devil from me.
That was the post. I think it is one of the only lore-based ways to make the game progressively challenging, interesting, mysterious and it gives more than enough place to add whatever it comes to our minds to play with. The Nether is like a playground now, some people want to add it, some people say it is ok how the game is right now, so this could satisfy both teams, you don’t want to go to the Nether and make Hell On Earth, don’t activate the portal.
lol