Arena Realm Suggestion - Community Theorycraft Project

Greetings Devpeoples,

This post is part of the Community Theorycraft Project. Something where multiple members of the community gather together to discuss existing and potential new additions to the different elements of this wonderful game. Things we'd like to see, we'd like to change, and ways to go about doing so.

This post is to supply a potential new Realm to travel to, a Multiplayer focused Arena. With the latest release of the new Charm of Brawling bringing Player vs Player combat to the Realms, we figured providing an environment suitable for the community to interact in a competitive environment would be incredibly beneficial.

As always, thank you for your time and continued development of this wonderful game.

Arena - Major Realm Card

Realm Effects:

"Gladiator's Virtue"

Significant Non-Weakspot Damage Decrease
Health Regeneration Disabled
Comfort Disabled
Hunger Disabled
Rest Disabled

Note: The reasons for these particular Realm effects is to make dealing damage to players more than a 1-shot experience, which it would currently be with how combat functions at this time. With these effects Players may still deal damage, but it won't be enough to instantly kill every person, unless they are accurate enough to hit the much-lauded Head Shot, a Weakspot that appears on Players whilst in this realm.

Additionally, the disabling of many effects means Players within the realms all have an equal playing field for Health Regeneration, Comfort, Hunger (no food buffs), and Rest. They neither suffer from the negatives or benefit from the positives.

Whilst we can't enforce balancing on items/etc, these kinds of effects we feel -can- be influenced as an innate part of the Realm, and hope are acceptable (if not ideal).

Specific Realm Attributes:

Perpetual Daylight
Combat Allowed
Maximum Player Count: 20
Maximum Independent Structure Count: 20
Maximum Structural Pieces Per Structure Count: 50
Maximum Placeable Items: 50

Within the Arena, the maximum player count is increased from 6 to 20. To compensate for this, the maximum structural build pieces available within the realm is reduced by approximately 90%, and Placeable items by 70%.

Why to allow construction?

We decided to keep construction available, but in a limited capacity, as we believe it to be a valuable element to the Arena Realm. It allows Players the ability to create unique experiences within an Arena, crafting different challenges such as mazes, obstacle courses, and even fortifications for mock assaults.

We view the Arena as being more than just a place to bash heads in repeatably, but as a place the community can use to create and host events with multiple participants, be it races, capture the flag contests, or even a Realmic Olympics.

Realmic Portals:

Much like Vaults, the Arena realm has no portals inside it. Players within the realm have no capability to take advantage of Realm Portals to travel unintentionally to other Players realms, it is a safe environment for all (aside from the combative nature of the Arena itself, heh). To return from them, Players will need to use the Return to Respite function.

Private Arena Realms:

With Arena's created as a Private Realm, the only way to currently gain access to this is to be invited by party members within the Realm. To enable an element of "moderation", we propose that within these realms, the Host of a Private Arena has a similar menu element for the Party/Social screen, showing all Players within the Realm, allowing them to invite people without being partied, and providing an option to "Force Respite" someone. Essentially, giving the Host the ability to forcefully kick troublemakers from the Arena and send them back to their respite realm (or to a realm like The Watch).

Note: If a player is kicked from the arena, they are 'downed' instantly while their realm loads up, unable to attack or be attacked or be revived. They are literally being held until they leave for their home realm. If a player leaves the realm, similarly they are 'downed' until their realm loads up. This limits the capability for toxic elements to damage the community by entering such Realms and intentionally causing trouble.

Whether or not there could be a kind of "Vote: Kick" system at some point may also be worth looking into.

Public Arena Realms:

Additionally, in the same way Vaults can be, Players can select the tick box for Public or Private Arena's when opening the portal. Players travelling to a Public arena enter the normal environment of any public Realm.

Note: We are somewhat concerned about how a Public realm would actually play out as. With issues with exploit-created items, and potential toxicity, we would hate for such things to negatively impact the community at large by becoming a part of Public Arenas.

There is already significant negative elements from exploited items being brought into public Vaults, to give us a view towards how this could impact Arenas.

Whilst we'd want to recommend the Arena be -only- private, allowing people to control who gets invited, and those who upset community events can be policed by the community itself, we also feel it's worth giving a public access version a chance.

If it causes problems from negative elements, there exists the possibility to just remove the Public option entirely in response.

Biomes:

We would like to suggest something interesting in regard to biomes, and that is that Biome cards are -optional- to use with the Arena card. A Player could just play the Arena card itself, with zero biome cards attached.

When doing so, the Arena itself is a completely blank combat area, set upon the dirt floor of an ancient, overgrown colosseum. The area is completely empty, no large rocks, boulders, etc. A completely blank slate.

When played with a biome card, however, the Arena's floor is shifted to one more akin to the biome card played, presenting suitable obstacles, etc. Each opening would play into the procedural generation, allowing people to find unique appearing Arena's, populated with POI's drawn from the appropriate biome.

Desert

Set upon the sandy deserts, this Arena's floor may have dotting it large rocky pillars, arches, automaton wrecks, even pits and chasms to jump over to fight within. A large plateau may sit within the centre, or at either end, to require players having to overcome the height challenges.

The upper areas of the colosseum are littered with broken and destroyed automatons, providing an eerie silent audience to all that transpires below.

Forest

Set within the loam and grass of a forest realm, this Arena's floor may be broken with a small river crossing through it. Large rocks, various trees, and broken things may be found within, presenting a challenging environment to take cover within.

Possibly broken floating vestiges of Herbarium realms in the air above, forest Arena's can present very unique challenges.

Swamp

A damp and soaking floor, this colosseums edge has small waterfalls allowing water to enter it. Rocks and slight hills, occasional fae remnant, the environment presents a difficulty one to sneak up on someone, every step a splash to be heard.

Many different appropriate Fae buildings, even shipwrecks, could be present.

Contributors:
Double Space Su, Kahz, Phylon, Shrike