» Wed Feb 19, 2014 11:51 pm In a recent interview, one of the devs replied to a question on Darkness Falls type dungeon as follows:
Brian Wheeler: Everybody always asks me that and all I can say is that, if we’ve given you everything you want so far for PvP massive scale feedback, just, you know, stay tuned. We’ll have more information on something that people have been asking for for a long time and I’m working on things that will try to give that same sense. Right now we have the caves, where you can go into them and kill people, but obviously people want things that are a lot more involved, like you guys said, like Darkness Falls.
In case anyone doesn’t understand what Darkness Falls is, the easiest way to describe it to people is a single PvE space that only one alliance has access to at a time. People have been asking for that for a long time. It’s stuff that’s on the radar, but I can’t go too much into when or how it will come into the game.
I think its important we the fans have a discussion about how this could be implemented and what we would like to see in it. I will try to summarize what the original DF was about so that those not fortunate enough to live the days of glory have an understanding.
A) HOW THE ORIGINAL DARKNESS FALLS WAS:
You can google Darkness Falls Map to have an idea of the layout.
Each faction was able to enter DF through either their relic keep at the frontier (Cyrodiil in our case) or a portal found in the PvE part of the land.
Once inside, you had "rooms" which had mobs starting from lvl 20 and the further you delved into the dungeon, the higher level the mobs became. There were also certain bosses and minibosses.
The 3 entrances for each faction were connected through a series of maze type design. If you had a strong team that could take on all the mobs, a person entering from Faction A's start zone could go all the way to Faction B's or Faction C's start zones in the dungeon.
Moreover, if you were the stealther type and knew what you were doing, you could also go solo to the Faction B or Faction C's start zones and pray on lowbies from the shadows. Hunting enemy players that prayed on your fellow lowbies was one of the best feelings of "protecting your realm".
Players from lvl 20-50 wanted to go in there and hunt the mobs to obtain jewels, which they could use as a token for some very nice gear from vendors. There was the risk of being hunted by an enemy player but the reward was great if you survived.
Now here is the catch:
When you are in Darkness Falls and another Realm takes control of the portals, you can stay in the underworld until you exit (via a portal) or /release on death. This means that while adventuring in Darkness Falls, please be aware that you will probably run into members of opposing Realms. RvR combat is fully supported in the underworld, so beware. When portal control changes from one Realm to another, those members of the original Realm that had control are still able to adventure throughout Darkness Falls, so long as they don't release on death. As long as they are resurrected on death by a friendly healer-type that is with them, they can stay in Darkness Falls for as long as they want.
So even when your realm lost the keeps and your faction can no longer use the portals to go in, if you are inside the dungeon (or logged off and returned later) while another faction has access, you and your friends can remain inside and hunt as long as you dont wipe. This meant a thrilling fear and avoidance of death, of taking every step very carefully, so that you can remain alive and kill more enemy players before being sent back to your faction.
B) HOW I THINK THE TESO DF DUNGEON SHOULD BE:
Certain games that I do not even want to name took on this idea and removed the core elements from it and gave us twisted versions. A dungeon which opened to the realm with most points, which allowed players inside to complete dailies. BAH.
For the DF Dungeon to be a success and become as addictive and relevant as it was, these are my suggestions:
1) Allow lower level players to go in without any stat boosts. Place NPC's in increasing difficulty starting from say lvl 20 with increasing difficulty the more they go in.
2) Similar to jewels in DF, have the NPC's drop a certain token, which could be gathered and exchanged for rewards. As for rewards, you could make the entire dungeon a dwemer ruin theme, whereby the tokens give some cosmetic/utility items such as summoning dwemer spiders/spheres or some gadgets like rocketboots. Things that won't make a player OP, but will make everyone after lvl 20 want to go and take the risk.
3) Remain loyal to the original DF design where the 3 faction's zones within the dungeon are interconnected through mazes and dangerous passages and create patrols in such a way to allow for a crouched skill game - DF had the limitation where pretty much only skilled stealther classes could go to the other faction's starting zone in the dungeon, TESO has the benefit of ALL characters being able crouch! Make use of this!
4) Similar to DF, retain the system of being able to remain inside the dungeon even after your faction loses control to it, until you die and there is noone to rez you.
5) A separate ranking table / leaderboard for players inside DF - who is the ultimate terror machine in DF with most kills? who spent most time in ther? etc.
These are my ideas and what I remember of one of the best experiences ever in my mmo life. Please correct me if any of the info I provided are wrong about the past DF and please add in your thoughts and suggestions on how DF should be implemented.
