Ruin Design Discussion

They did that for Lake Jyun, and I'd love to do it myself—we can take that idea and apply it in a whole bunch of ways, though we can't do it willy-nilly before players catch on to what we're doing and get irritated, or before it simply loses effectiveness.

One potential idea are Reaverbots that burrow themselves in the wall. Perhaps we could make a ruin based around the concept of earth, or something to that extent.

Here's something I contributed to in the past—a Reaverbot submission!

—I guess it's similar to your idea as well. Either way, Reaverbot stuff can be reserved for another thread.

I can't emphasize this enough: PUZZLES

The ruins need puzzles and logic-defying atmospheres. Adventuring is one thing, but that gets boring very quickly when all you have to do is get from point A to point B. I'll draw some ideas up once we get to that point.

But look at Zelda: Skyward Sword—the enemies are the puzzles!

And, honestly, I'd like for combat to provide challenge and contribute to pacing in ruin design, more so than more sedate puzzling. Puzzling can slow down the generally-quicker pace of a MM game, but making the enemies multi-faceted can get two birds with one stone, while also leaving room for exploration.

I, for one, would like to see greater emphasizes on ruin verticality. And of course a better lock-on system for that.

And also ruins being less cut and dry in the sense that you're not always exploring some ancient building full of rooms and corridors. I think it would be interesting if sometimes you weren't even exploring a ruin ( in the tradition sense ) but let's say, for example, a giant Elysium Space Shuttle which would serve as a ruin - but would also be an excellent reason to have unique game-play elements that would be a little weird to have in a normal ruin.

Also these " crazy " ruins would be a nice reason to show the players more of the Ancients way of life without coming out and saying it.

And of course unique Reaverbots that make usage of the unique ruin layout.

The Lock-On system worked fairly fine for the second game. It's the first game that was the problematic one for most people.

What I meant was sometimes I had problems hitting enemies that were directly above me in the Legends 2.

For some reason in most games you can't aim/look directly above you - which I find to be very annoying. I don't know if this is due to programming issues or that it doesn't actually work so well but I wish this would get addressed.

Camera issues—if you wanted to look upwards in most games these days, the camera would go through the player character model! An easy fix is to raise the camera above said PC model, allowing you a clear look upwards when locked-on to something like a flying Reaverbot or one on the ceiling.

@Pizza, for everything else: I pretty much covered solutions to that in the big Ruin Design thread, which I posted on the first page.

I'm all up for more verticality in the ruins.
Maybe something to make floors not about elevators but being able to climb/fall trough them. That may be a bit complicated on the loading times though.