VR event - Help needed!

[Amaterasu]

So, I'm finding myself a little lost because in order to make the upcoming VR event to promote the Shardworld appealing, I want to switch things up. In light of DA2018 being a tournament-style setup with a twist (the losers bracket, I mean) I'd like to turn my attention to something different. The problem is, I have no idea what!
Hence why I decided to rename the VR tournament to "VR event" - perhaps it'll be something else entirely.

This event will be taking place a while into the future - I don't want to throw a new event while everyone is still recovering from DA and Dark Data. No solid dates yet but it's probably not gonna happen before October 2018 at the earliest.

Some background to fill in everyone who doesn't know what I'm talking about: [spoiler]TLDR: The Shardworld, an as-of-yet unreleased MMO set in the Dataverse, is almost ready to come out of development. To attract players and promote the game a massive trade fair complete with PR people to whip up the hype, overpriced merch and a big event to top it all off is held in Coruscant. You can either use the provided VR stations in Coruscant or a VR station from a base you have access to.



The 'Shardworld' is an upcoming thing I have been developing on and off for a while now. It's intended to be an MMO set in the Dataverse, which can be accessed through VR stations in your base or the public ones in Coruscant. In order to 'promote' the game with a big event, I aim to organize an event in the style of the Camelot Colosseum or Dante's Abyss.

Keep in mind that this is entirely my personal view of how things COULD go! None of this has been approved or refused by the staff yet, and thus is subject to change.

The Camelot Colosseum event has drawn a lot of attention to Minas Tirith and the Kingdom in general, and although the glorious Empire remains stronger as a faction and has nothing to fear from Aragorn, the God-Emperor has decided that it is time for Coruscant to do a little PR of its own and remind the people why they're the biggest and best faction in the Omniverse. Conveniently the Prime Aeris, who has disappeared into the Dataverse almost three years ago and has not been heard of since, is in need of some aid to thrust her Magnum Opus, the MMO-game 'Shardworld', into the Omniverse's mainstream.

Held as a massive trade fair sponsored by the Empire where everyone is welcome* as well as being live broadcasted through the Dataverse, the event is sure to draw the masses. And like any hyped trade fair there's overpriced food to be had, merchandise from baseball caps to plush toys of the Shardworld's most fearsome bosses is sold everywhere and PR people of every company that has their hands in the Dataverse gaming business, from OmnIRaidCall to MMR-Masters, are there to hype up the masses and fire their T-Shirt cannons into the grasping hands of fans. Devs and PR Secondaries working under the big boss Aeris herself are present to show screenshots and trailers of the game and booths are available to both the public and the press to play demos of small polished parts of the game.

But of course, the big main event that is supposed to REALLY draw the masses is going to be the Shardworld VR event. Held in the Dataverse to promote the Shardworld, the MMO Aeris has developed, and show the game off as a tech-demo, the participants get to take part in some sort of event, with prizes redeemable in the game being distributed to the winners.
Being very aware of the risk of hooligans, fanatic fans, terrorists, saboteurs and similar unsavory elements the wise and generous God-Emperor offers a set of protected VR Stations in Coruscant from which the participants can partake in the event while Stormtroopers and other security elements protect them from interference**. Of course, if you have access to a VR station in your own base or that of a friendly Prime you can participate from anywhere in the Omniverse.


(*) Individuals with a bounty in the Empire may or may not be arrested at the gates
(**) Participants with a bounty in the Empire may be allowed to participate in the tournament, but good luck getting out afterwards[/spoiler]

The event should be something combat-themed as is the case for just about all events here. Co-op? Maybe. The only rule is that there must be a single #1 winner, but that's easily solvable if there's 2+ people at the end, through a good old fight.
I've juggled with the idea of it being a tournament with points, where people can choose to play it "safe" (1x combat score multiplier, 1x points multiplier) or "risky" (0,75 combat score multiplier, 1,3 points multiplier), asymmetrical 1v3/1v4 matches where the one player is given a huge cool boss character to fight as (something like Evolve), co-op fights against NPC bosses where points are distributed based on performance (maybe even with categories one winner for "damage" and one winner for "co-op"?) and a few other half-baked ideas.

What would you guys like to see? Did I miss any good concepts? Any and all suggestions are welcome! I may create a poll in the future, this is mainly collecting ideas right now.

[Bandit With No Name]

Holy shit Shardworld has been in Dev for like, 4 years hasn't it?

[Bandit With No Name]

Also, I'd v love to see you take advantage of the VR setting. Make it weird. Also: I expect the burnout on pure tourney PvP to be extreme, so I would suggest giving it PvE elements

[Amaterasu]

More like 2,5 I first asked around on October 2015 :frog:

Definitely gonna make it weird :derp: Maybe everyone gets extra-fancy armors like legendary WoW armor or the like. The tournament is gonna be to promote the game, Aeris is going to want to lay it on thick to make it mouth-wateringly awesome and attract players.

[Bandit With No Name]

You could have a portion where people have to pick which bosses they want to fight, based off the loot they drop. Then if they run into each other they can choose to work together or fight the boss, but the boss only ever drops one of each item.

[Handsome Jack]

Make it a Raid Boss. Kinda like Dark Data, but without the slog through to Nebula. Just drop the players in, give em a Mission, and let them follow their HUD to the boss. Or drop them right at it.

Good Boss Idea: Diablo.

[PepsiWhirda]

You could have a portion where people have to pick which bosses they want to fight, based off the loot they drop. Then if they run into each other they can choose to work together or fight the boss, but the boss only ever drops one of each item.

Love this idea. Especially if picks are done blind.

[Bandit With No Name]

The bosses could have different difficulties, requiring different word counts and quality scores

And yeah, Whirda! The people secretly pick their boss fights and then they all just show up and have to decide what to do and when

You could easily include a lot more FIRM numerical aspects to gamify it to fit the theme

[Link]

Mmmm sounds awesome either way. A dungeon crawler could be brilliant fun

[Yu Kanda]

Throw some puzzle/ maze levels in there and you got yourself a game!

One of my characters will be in

[PepsiWhirda]

Throw some puzzle/ maze levels in there and you got yourself a game!

One of my characters will be in

They have some programs that procedurally generate rooms/fight areas for D&D campaigns. Could use that to give people/groups a unique encounter in each room, which they have to survive until they reach a final boss.

[PepsiWhirda]

Double post... really?!

[Cirno]

You know if it's allowed you could make it more like a video game and have classes and stuff where the person picks one and gets temporarily new moves, powers and proficiencies (and can't use there normal stuff for the duration of the thing) also count me interested.

[Amaterasu]

I could see using a generator for Dwarf Fortress esque Forgotten Beasts, to create a series of bosses! Awesome ideas so far, thank you so much for all the input! :yay: Here's an idea based on what you got:

Perhaps there are different boss difficulties, each requiring a minimum score to beat, but the score accumulates if you can't beat them in one round. So a boss requiring 10 points would be defeatable in one round where you get 10, or two rounds of 7 and 3. There's the option to fight as a group, where your points add up and thus can down a boss much faster (though of course stacking 3 men on an easy boss is going to be overkill). Of course the required score to beat is hidden though, to prevent math-based optimization.

Each boss drops "loot", aka points, which people will need to decide how to distribute if they fight as a group. Do you take on bosses solo to have all points to yourself? Will there be factions that boost one of their members by forming big groups and downing even the hard bosses in one round then giving all the points to that one guy?

The problem I see with this is that it's going to be a very 'linear' progression with no surprise twists, unless people go for risky plays. That, and there will be no player interaction outside of the co-op groups. Hmm... should we throw in some PvP rounds where players with lots of points are worth points for defeating?

You know if it's allowed you could make it more like a video game and have classes and stuff where the person picks one and gets temporarily new moves, powers and proficiencies (and can't use there normal stuff for the duration of the thing) also count me interested.

Something in that vein is going to happen in the Shardworld's main game. I think it would be a bit too complicated to put in classes for the tournament.

[Bandit With No Name]

I would love the Bosses to have specific loot linked to them, like WoW bosses.

I'd also love to see word count difficulties posted openly, so that people can tactically decide where they wanna go, and what loot would benefit their style/stats the best. People with similar builds would be trying to get the loot off the same bosses, which would be a cool aspect.

I also had an idea for a Boss:

FLAPPY FISH
Writing Quality: Excellent
Damage taken if failed: Instant death w/ respawn
Post length: 100 words