The general idea is best described by a walk-though of how I see the activity, what it leads to and why it would be interesting.
Walk-through:
After months of training, saving and searching the lakes, Seek pulls out his golden field compass and checks his map one more time. The spring sun rises in the east and Fount is once again empty - a perfect time to find out if this thing works. His thoughts drift back angrily as the memory once again surfaces that the Kami have been hiding this from them for so long - a way to probe the subtle fields around Atys that lead to weak points in the planets auras and a way to portal to the vast riches in the depths of the planet.
Holding the field compass in his hands, he mumbles a few words causing the tiny trombosite needle inside to hover & glow. Seek smiles gleefully to himself but quickly steels his nerves & ebbing concentration as the glow flickers & fades. He sighs and updates his map; it's only a weak reading but it gives him a range and approximate direction of where a fissure might be.
He sits, allowing his concentration to return and thinks back to his training - maybe 4 or 5 more readings and he'll have a complete fix on the fissure. If he can find the weakness in the field before others arrive, he should be able to set-up a portal generator and break through.
Standing, he sighs to himself, of course - that's only the first step - he'll need to deal with whatever is on the other side before he can start prospecting for materials - and, with Jena willing, the portal will still be open for him to return; if the portal closes - he'll have to start again and find a way out. Portals are tricky - they can lead you in/out of the known lands.. or take you deeper to more dangerous and less explored places - so far unmapped by homins. Taking one last look at the picture of his loving wife Anju, he snaps closed the compass and walks towards the rising sun and readies himself to triangulate where the fissure might be. If Jena is willing, he'll be able to find the seeds of a rare Axe plan that he can research to make for her.
Details:
The general idea is provide a vehicle to allow connections to permanent instanced ring scenarios. Permanent in the sense that they continue to exist but are only loaded or instanced when a portal to them in found. These scenarios are intended to be hard - and to provide things to all players - mobs to fight, bosses to kill & exciting new things to forage. The specifics of the new things to forage/craft will be posted in an upcoming thread as per the thread norm.
Finding a portal involves skill (training), tools (something to triangulate down where the portal is & something to hold open a portal) and experience. Portals are dynamic - moving around a zone over time and having a lifetime of their own. Moving through a portal causes it to take dmg - so only so much mass can be put through it (affected by the number of players/mounts/packers/equipment they bring).
Current game mechanics are in place to support much of what has been described so far - although new skills & equipment would be required to find/locate/open the portal. Once you locate a portal - it could be activated by using an item - which would then instance something like a touchstone to move between zones.
Once inside the portal - the exit would continue to exist for x hours or until the mass moved through it exceeded its threshold - at which point it would collapse. Finding your way out means starting again the cycle of triangulation - which ofc may open a portal to the known lands (which may or may not be where you started) or deeper into another scenario..
Outstanding questions:
What's inside portals...
That's a content question which I hope to answer in a follow-up post.
The idea is that they're hard.. Almost too hard to solo without care. It's designed to encourage teams to work together inside them. Ideally people will go there for a while to work on something, gather all they can - and then find their way out.
What happens on Death inside a portal?
Good question.. No idea :) You return back to "home"?
Let's try to avoid dying :p
How much mass or people can go through a portal?
It would vary - some would allow just a little, others would allow a lot. I imagine the zones they lead to will vary a lot - easier zones will allow less mass, more difficult zones would allow more.
The Q of the zone you're coming from would affect where the portal leads to - lower Q's lead to easier zones. Higher Q'd zones would, more often lead to harder zones.
Walk-through:
After months of training, saving and searching the lakes, Seek pulls out his golden field compass and checks his map one more time. The spring sun rises in the east and Fount is once again empty - a perfect time to find out if this thing works. His thoughts drift back angrily as the memory once again surfaces that the Kami have been hiding this from them for so long - a way to probe the subtle fields around Atys that lead to weak points in the planets auras and a way to portal to the vast riches in the depths of the planet.
Holding the field compass in his hands, he mumbles a few words causing the tiny trombosite needle inside to hover & glow. Seek smiles gleefully to himself but quickly steels his nerves & ebbing concentration as the glow flickers & fades. He sighs and updates his map; it's only a weak reading but it gives him a range and approximate direction of where a fissure might be.
He sits, allowing his concentration to return and thinks back to his training - maybe 4 or 5 more readings and he'll have a complete fix on the fissure. If he can find the weakness in the field before others arrive, he should be able to set-up a portal generator and break through.
Standing, he sighs to himself, of course - that's only the first step - he'll need to deal with whatever is on the other side before he can start prospecting for materials - and, with Jena willing, the portal will still be open for him to return; if the portal closes - he'll have to start again and find a way out. Portals are tricky - they can lead you in/out of the known lands.. or take you deeper to more dangerous and less explored places - so far unmapped by homins. Taking one last look at the picture of his loving wife Anju, he snaps closed the compass and walks towards the rising sun and readies himself to triangulate where the fissure might be. If Jena is willing, he'll be able to find the seeds of a rare Axe plan that he can research to make for her.
Details:
The general idea is provide a vehicle to allow connections to permanent instanced ring scenarios. Permanent in the sense that they continue to exist but are only loaded or instanced when a portal to them in found. These scenarios are intended to be hard - and to provide things to all players - mobs to fight, bosses to kill & exciting new things to forage. The specifics of the new things to forage/craft will be posted in an upcoming thread as per the thread norm.
Finding a portal involves skill (training), tools (something to triangulate down where the portal is & something to hold open a portal) and experience. Portals are dynamic - moving around a zone over time and having a lifetime of their own. Moving through a portal causes it to take dmg - so only so much mass can be put through it (affected by the number of players/mounts/packers/equipment they bring).
Current game mechanics are in place to support much of what has been described so far - although new skills & equipment would be required to find/locate/open the portal. Once you locate a portal - it could be activated by using an item - which would then instance something like a touchstone to move between zones.
Once inside the portal - the exit would continue to exist for x hours or until the mass moved through it exceeded its threshold - at which point it would collapse. Finding your way out means starting again the cycle of triangulation - which ofc may open a portal to the known lands (which may or may not be where you started) or deeper into another scenario..
Outstanding questions:
What's inside portals...
That's a content question which I hope to answer in a follow-up post.
The idea is that they're hard.. Almost too hard to solo without care. It's designed to encourage teams to work together inside them. Ideally people will go there for a while to work on something, gather all they can - and then find their way out.
What happens on Death inside a portal?
Good question.. No idea :) You return back to "home"?
Let's try to avoid dying :p
How much mass or people can go through a portal?
It would vary - some would allow just a little, others would allow a lot. I imagine the zones they lead to will vary a lot - easier zones will allow less mass, more difficult zones would allow more.
The Q of the zone you're coming from would affect where the portal leads to - lower Q's lead to easier zones. Higher Q'd zones would, more often lead to harder zones.