» Mon Dec 14, 2015 1:43 am Hey there! New to the forums - just had an idea floating around in my head for a number of months now that I figured would be good for discussion. What do people think of multiplayer dungeons or outdoor instances being introduced in The Elder Scrolls 6? They could simply be larger dungeons than found in multiplayer, or even serious outdoor encounters like military sieges, all with more intense creatures to fight. I'm thinking monsters and humanoid enemies with complex mechanics that you would actually have to dodge, parry, or block, and boss fights with enemies that would take even longer to kill than the Dragons did in Skyrim.
Voice chat would have to be enforced so that people could communicate properly - the audio source could even be linked to your character's headspace so that the voice direction sounds realistic to your party in relation to where you're standing (think Rust, or ARK).
There could be a level requirement so that nobody joins a party without a decent amount of abilities, and players too far apart in power or ability would not be partied together. When partied, the instance would take your levels into account and scale the ability of the monsters to meet the average level of you and your teammates. It could even generate different enemies in different areas to accommodate for the party's specializations. Just for an example, let's say you had a sneaky character, a heavily armored character, and a restoration character. There could be multiple enemies sitting around a fire or a table that the heavily armored character would taunt and draw away while the restoration mage sits back and heals. Meanwhile, the sneaky character is going through the shadows around the back of the instance space and taking out some archers/mages that are striking the tank from afar. Or even just taking the time to sneak up on the group that the tank had just pulled to unleash some massive sneak attack damage. Otherwise just striking from afar with a bow. Because you had a healer, there could be less enemies that deal more damage. Or, in another case, if you had a different type of mage, it could scale to have more enemies that deal slightly less damage since there's no one to heal. Things like that.
You'd have to be limited in the number and power of utilities you could bring along (potions, scrolls, food, etc). I'm thinking the higher your group's average level, and the relatively higher difficulty of the particular instance, the more money your 'sponsor' (General in the case of a military siege, wealthy collector in the case of a dungeon crawl for a mysterious artifact, etc) provides your group to purchase supplies before the encounter. The power of the items you can buy would adjust to fit your group's average level as well.
I think most people would likely do it with friends, so there would be no worries with player responsibility/punishment for trolling or refusing to communicate, but in such case as while using a public queuing system, at the end of an instance (or after a certain number of wipes), the party is asked if they would like to rate the other players in the dungeon. Player skill would be the basis of the rating system (and in such case, the computer could prioritize them to be with others near the same rating), but there would also be options to report for trolling, refusing to communicate, etc. If the majority vote agrees on the player report, then the reported player is kicked from the instance and sent a message regarding their behavior. If a certain player receives the same reports multiple times, they become locked from using multiplayer for a certain period of time.
So, what do you all think? Sound like fun? Waste of resources? Maybe not in release, but as DLC?
