I would love to see more of the other-world, and that got me thinking what If over time the other-world started to take over earth. It could work like this, after several in-game years more and more of the map starts changing into and invasion of our world, shops would become weird conversion towers and churches converted into alien covenants filled with the poor souls of unworthy cultists.
Time span is up to the player or you can turn it off, this was intended to ramp up difficulty and provide end-game content. Nether world events
YEAR 2
-River’s change turn into magma or acid flows
-Triffids spawn rate increases around forests
-Plains start taking an other worldly appearance
-Rain rarely happens acidic forms of rain appear more
YEAR 3
-Building’s in towns start falling apart and become their nether counter-parts
-portals start appearing more commonly
-Fungaloids start colonizing the plains
-Butchered corpses appear more commonly along roads
-Lava cracks appear along roads more
-Netherum creatures start becoming more common in towns
-Random earth quakes that collapse walls due to reality shifting
YEAR 4
-Rain no longer exists Acid rain forever
-Nether building are finished and replace the original buildings
-Portal core’s appear in nether-buildings
-New nether cities start to become settled in the plains
-Character picks up a nether related trait
YEAR 5
-Higher leveled enemies appear
-earth quakes stop
-Nether weather takes affect
-Spire’s begin to appear near temples
-Hell on Earth
New Items, Terrain, and enemies
Items:
Magma or similar high heat resistant suit: prevents you from burning alive in magma and/or lava
Magma beasts molten heart: This grenade like weapon has a high splash damage radius and leaves behind scattered lava
Strange mask: Has the power to call down a meteor strike, also you scream as you do it. (add majora’s mask reference here)
Various whips: They can have spikes and have them be made out of poisonous thorns
Alien Tomes: That allow you to control your powers easier and suffer less cons from them
Terrain
Portal cores: you can destroy these to reset the terrain back to its earthly state
Magma flows: Magma beast’s appear here and you instantly get the “hot” status. (have a small chance for spontaneously combustion)
Conversion spires: Cultists and enslaved humans are here also you can get a whip here. Lower levels contain a succubus boss enemy.
Feeding pit: Human flesh and rotten meat here. Most lower level humanoid’s spawn here along with a pit of nether animals (like Jabberwocky)
Alien covens: This used to be a holy place, Generals try to bring more reinforcements through here. Crazed humans and cultists spawn as well
Human settlements: Remaining population of what’s earthly is here, NPC’s
Eden’s: Allows animals to survive with a small lake in the middle
Acid flows: Acidic rivers
Enemies
[glow=red,2,300]Succubus[/glow]: Looks like pale but beautiful woman, but reveals her true form the closer you get.
Abilities:
-lures players in with cries for help
-Can bite for critical damage
-Has a mass of many arms that have a large grab area
-Will pull you apart limb from limb if enough damage is taken
[glow=red,2,300]Unrested souls[/glow]: Ghost’s that just wander around crying or yelling in rage
Abilities:
-Just lowers morale for the player as he/she hears the grief of the dead
[glow=red,2,300]Generals[/glow]: These cultists got their reward they now have a tentacle beard, gray skin, and are now 6 ft tall and have large talons on their feet
Abilities:
-Psychokinetic power’s you obtain by eating them
-Hovers above the ground
-A low humming noise can be heard when their near
[glow=red,2,300]Crazed humans[/glow]: Malnourished skinny and have yellow teeth and eyes with their mouth always in a smirk.
Abilities:
-They can jump on you Gollum style and scratch the crap outta you
-They laugh hysterically causing distress when heard
-They where a loin cloth and have very good homemade weapons
Psychokinetic powers and how they work
Traits
-Electricity: You can manipulate technology to do your will and shock them until there nothing but fried parts
-Mind control: You can manipulate the minds of your enemies as well as having the chance to cause cranial explosions
-Telekinesis: You can manipulate the gravity of object’s to throw at your enemies
-These are just the basics I don’t know what else to add
Effects of these powers
-Strange dreams similar to the mutation dreams
-Generals attracted to you the more powers you get
-Your mental state takes a toll you will start crafting random items at odd times and you hallucinate
-You will take damage from your own mind if you have a low intelligence
-Sometimes your powers will randomly go off
So tell me what you think about this idea and feel free to critique and add on to the idea!
I added more sci-fi elements!
When I meant by flaming whips was you can pour gasoline on them. As for the switching it off in the options it would be a good idea because do you know how bugged this feature would be and that and I know I’d get my ass kicked trying it out.
Well that’s what the spell books are artifacts that you read to conjure up or inflict damage.
For instance a glowing,whispering spell book can make a random enemy have rays of light shoot out of their body causing anyone near-by to become blinded as the target incinerates. It would be an artifact of Soul Glare.
I do like the idea of the world itself getting harsher as time goes on, I would be down for harsher seasons, formation of new triffid groves/fungaloid spires(lots of these, they seem to be the most hated lair)/giant insect hives, earthquakes, more acid rain, that sort of thing, but not so much the rivers of lava and demons.
I see your point I don’t know much about the nether world itself really I think its well hell so maybe the enemies could just be called the names and have their appearances be more alien. I don’t know I’m not the developer.
To me it seems that the amount of time for the world to undergo this change is a tad bit long. Perhaps the timescale of this could be configurable? Such as at the end of every season, at the end of every two seasons, three, every year, every two years, and so on
The environment getting harsher is something we definitely want to happen, and a lot of what you’re describing is similar to what we’re planning on, but with some extra detail we’ll likely snag
The concept GlyphGryph has been working on is that there are various zones that are aligned in one way or another, and as time progresses that alignment becomes more and more severe and the zones expand. If you want to survive long term you’ll have to defend your patch of normalcy against the hordes of undead, fungi, plants, and nether creatures, either that or give up and learn to live with them. So the stuff you’re describing would happen in nether-aligned areas.
The thing about fire whips is they really don’t accomplish that much, they do in fact create a ball of fire, but it’s too diffuse and short-lived to accomplish much of anything. If you hit something with them just right, they could light clothes on fire I guess since they’d basically spray you with gasoline then ignite it, but it’s not that much gasoline.
The magic and fantasy themed stuff we’re pretty strongly against. It just doesn’t fit with our view of the game world. For the demonic creatures, that might mean re-theming them a bit to be more sci-fi-ish alien creatures rather than being blatantly fantasy-themed, for spells and such it means they’re pretty much out.
Yea drop the demonic stuff keep the names maybe? But give them more alien flare like the Succubus could instead change into a grotesque mesh of humans (like The Thing similar to the dog in the mines). As for the Generals they could look like Cthulhu and have physic-beams instead of spell’s. The spell books could be psychokinetic power’s you gain by defeating generals.
Hah, if anything GlyphGryph is even more rabidly anti-psionics than he is anti-fantasy, and I’m with him for this game at least.
“weird stuff happening around you” psionics is a maybe, but “Activate bla power targeting x” is out for the game.
You can get the same effects with various scifi widgets that you just activate, or for that matter wrap it up in a CBM.
As for names, sure feel free to make a huge bull-horned monster that has some kind of flame weapon and call it a Balrog you know? The main thing is that the description puts it in the right context.
Note that it’s specifically actionless psionics I’m against.
Telepathy that is actually “these monsters have an organ that can generate and receive electromagnetic signals (or you mutating the same organ) which allows detection of other such organisms and basic communication through manipulation of these broadcast signals” is okay with me. It can even get a lot weirder than that. But it should at least be explainable with some sort of psuedo-science if not real science, and each instance should be limited in scope and explainable on it’s own without conflicting with anything else. Because an action means we can do interesting stuff like provide the player a way to create a device that can track and intercept these “psychic” powers.
The problem with psionics is that there’s nothing you can do with classic “psionics” psionics that can’t be done better and work more effectively at enhancing the games thematics by replacing it with something that has a legitimate cause-of-action. For ESP, we have a variety of actionful ways to expand the characters sensory range - for most of the energy-based psychic powers, we have plenty of ways to pseudomagically shoot lightning and fire.
If you want to create some extradimensional based psuedoscience reason for something psychic-like, fine, but ensure that it has an actionable element, like all the psionic analogues we have already - if we can avoid taking cheap shortcuts, we should, and if we can’t, we should avoid going there altogether. The key is that we don’t want to make normal “humans” special magical beasts or ascribe some magical power to their soul, which is what most psionics is about doing.
I really, really hate this suggestion. Just… all/most of the portals have shut, most nether creatures can’t survive in our plane for more than a few seconds (lore!!!) and it just… doesn’t seem well thought out to me. Those time scales are RIDICULOUS! And how do you expect things to transition into their nether forms? Instantly? Gradually? What if a player’s in a house when it transforms? Or if they destroy the house, what happens?
I don’t think the regular world should turn into hell too. Instead portals should work both ways , to hell and from hell , so if you want an end game adventure just hop in a portal and have a ride to your death because nether doesnt contain oxygen and is 1000 degrees hot.
As Kevin mentions, though, I do want the stuff to expand over time.
kilozombie - actually, it’s different for each creature - many of them can survive at least a few hours, and indefinitely as long as they remain close to an open portal. And some of the creatures, specifically the triffids and fungaloids and the netherum (as long as they have a host) can continue to spread out and expand even without that.
I’d love to see triffids and fungaloids eventually, slowly, take over a town, turning into a fungal/animated plant controlled hellhole.
I’d also like to see the portals that remain open strengthen over time and introduce a variety of other options, but I’d like the changes to the areas they roll over to be an effect of their action rather than a weird transformationy magic thing. A portal to a dry, hot world might tear wider and wider over time, leading the surrounding areas to become barren desert-like wasteland as sand and dry heat constantly blows in from the portals winds… meanwhile, this creates violent storms all around the edge of the area.
[quote=“GlyphGryph, post:14, topic:2779”]Note that it’s specifically actionless psionics I’m against.
Telepathy that is actually “these monsters have an organ that can generate and receive electromagnetic signals (or you mutating the same organ) which allows detection of other such organisms and basic communication through manipulation of these broadcast signals” is okay with me. It can even get a lot weirder than that. But it should at least be explainable with some sort of psuedo-science if not real science, and each instance should be limited in scope and explainable on it’s own without conflicting with anything else. Because an action means we can do interesting stuff like provide the player a way to create a device that can track and intercept these “psychic” powers.
The problem with psionics is that there’s nothing you can do with classic “psionics” psionics that can’t be done better and work more effectively at enhancing the games thematics by replacing it with something that has a legitimate cause-of-action. For ESP, we have a variety of actionful ways to expand the characters sensory range - for most of the energy-based psychic powers, we have plenty of ways to pseudomagically shoot lightning and fire.
If you want to create some extradimensional based psuedoscience reason for something psychic-like, fine, but ensure that it has an actionable element, like all the psionic analogues we have already - if we can avoid taking cheap shortcuts, we should, and if we can’t, we should avoid going there altogether. The key is that we don’t want to make normal “humans” special magical beasts or ascribe some magical power to their soul, which is what most psionics is about doing.[/quote]
Ok I see, fuck it lets bioshock it Gene-splicing drugs for everyone weee.
But in all seriousness I can see where your coming from it’s a science-fiction game and I some times forget that.
Ok I figured out how to explain the humming of the generals wear these mouth pieces that amplify their humming noise to the point you take cranial and torso damage. So there’s a greater risk as you can both die or become deaf. When you kill them you butcher their corpse to get their “hum glad” which you can weaponize to create a noise trap that lures zombies to their doom.
Actually bioshock doesn’t bother having a method of action for many of it’s powers. I think we can do better than that. (But it’s not a bad starting place)
