Sweatlord_STG wrote: ↑Mon Aug 25, 2025 9:36 am
Lemnear wrote: ↑Sun Aug 24, 2025 5:44 pm
EXTRA by FROM:
A sort of new Shadow Tower ONLINE , where the goal is to reach the top, rather than descending (or descending, doesn't matter at all). A sort of single, gigantic multiplayer PVEPVP dungeon with perma-death and friendly fire. In perma-death, NOTHING is saved; everything you have remains at the point of your death. Any other player can be an ally and then turn out to be an enemy, even the keys to open doors can be stolen, as can all your equipment. Extremely difficult, with multiple paths, secret routes, countless traps and dead ends, multiple ways up, narrow spaces, wide spaces, vertical and non-vertical spaces, the tower is labyrinthine, and the bosses are unforgiving. The map is an object you create as you progress, and can be stolen by other players who may not have explored the same areas as you at the time, and can be useful to them. It can also be donated, like any other object.
Writing messages isn't unlimited, but it's a consumable. Your player name can be changed if you steal everything and use all of someone else's equipment, allowing you to disguise yourself and subjugate other players if they've joined your team. The idea is to encourage everyone to be "Patches" when needed.
You can save your game at certain points in the tower, so you're not forced to finish it in a single session.
Multiple starting classes, limited passive equipment loadout, and NO ability to stockpile excess gear; whatever you leave behind could be someone else's treasure, and they could use it against you. Why even be PVP? Resources are generally limited given the duration, and at a certain point you'll be forced to steal them from others (healing, materials to upgrade weapons, or mana potions).
Every time you die, you restart with a new character, from outside the tower, and you must reach it before you can enter. Each time from a different point but the same distance, and the first dangers may already appear from here (easier, obviously).
There's a bounty system for the most cowardly players who kill multiple players, and a fame system for those who have progressed far in the tower. There's no leveling system; your "level-up" is the equipment, spells, and armor you obtain while exploring, which become increasingly rare as you ascend each floor of the tower.
Unlike NightReign, it can be played at your own pace; there's no timer, but at the same time, you'll find fewer resources and will have to take them from others.
The game must be almost impossible, a truly epic undertaking, where reaching the top is NOT the norm, but the exception.
Therefore, it requires discovering your ideal path, excellent memorization of all the traps, and the ability to deal with hostile players. Climbing the tower, if played non-speedrunning, takes at least 30 hours.
Perhaps this is impossible to implement because it's a risky and crazy concept, but it's very much in line with what a dungeon actually is, in the most fantasy sense of the word.
You might encounter more organized groups (maximum 3 players per team, but the total is 24 per session). A simplified dialogue system with direction indicators where to go and where not to go, or a way to signal your intention to join the group of players. No vocal chat.
Being an online game, the tower emerges from the ground, periodically rising a few floors (a sort of GaaS Season), making it increasingly taller.
The idea is to show people's true "dark soul," their trust in others, or their lack of remorse in betraying someone.
NGL. I love the idea. This kind of game, by From. Would be so fucking hype. I have to keep thinking about this. Like with traps that make you fall down to the previous floor, or even further. But sometimes that could also turn out to be an advantage, as the traps or the places they send you back to, contain items or stuff that you would not have found otherwise. Or secret optional rooms where you can't escape and you have to fight a mini boss. That boss might drop something interesting, and after defeating it there are three things that can happen: You stay on the same floor, or the game sends you back downstairs by one floor or more, or you actually go upstairs by one floor or more, could be through an elevator that you can also fall off if you're not careful. Also there could be (rarely) merchants on the way where you can buy stuff.
Have you ever played Spelunky? It is 2D and it's not a dungeon crawler, but it has a very similar appeal to me. I highly recommend playing it. Trust me, it is a super awesome experience where you also keep learning from your mistakes and all that, while your goal is to make it further downstairs. Each run is different, etc.
Yes, great idea!
I feel like this kind of "Isekai Dungeon MMO" is missing in a certain sense; they're all open worlds with gigantic worlds that you can eventually complete, regardless of your skill level.
Instead, I'd like an "MMO" where several heroes undertake a feat no one has ever accomplished, a monumental and legendary undertaking.
It could be a Shadow Tower, but also a Castlevania, basically; the concept is similar. A lone hero, a company of knights, and so on, all crowded together in this enormous and deadly dungeon.
No sidequests, the only quest is to defeat the Final Boss, which perhaps no one has ever even seen.
Actually, a couple of years ago, some programmer friends and I brainstormed the idea; even the shadow of the tower was mortal (insta-death) and rotated with the sun like a sundial. If you didn't want to cross the more open plain to avoid the shadow, there was a forest on one side, thick enough to be out of the shadow of the tower, but full of carnivorous and/or poisonous plants, wild beasts, and hunting traps. The area is a huge basin, so it's a circumscribed circle around the tower.
Obviously, you need a lot of people for something like this, but it doesn't hurt to dream.
There was also a Diablo-style "Cursed Item/Weapons" system.
The idea was that EVERYTHING was lethal, including poisoned healing items (realistically, you don't know what you're picking up, it's the same in D&D), and this also applies to wizard spells; they could be curses instead of normal spells. Mimic-ladder, a boss who summons players he kills... external parts of the tower with large terraces and stairs/slides (or trapdoors that make you fall down). Each floor increases the difficulty as you ascend, and some paths lead to higher floors, thus suddenly increasing the difficulty but shortening the journey.
Maybe even some underground entrances to the tower.
The idea, however, is that it wouldn't be procedurally generated, but that the map would always be the same, thus creating communities where people could show off what they'd discovered, more unexplored areas of the floors, rare bosses etc. There would be a few NPC merchants, but any player could also be a merchant and set a price of their choosing for their goods, or make a trade. The dialogue system also included the names of players you met, and you could warn others about their reputations, such as warning that "guy X" is a bastard, or that someone up ahead is looking for allies, or that "knight Y" helped you get there, you could also declare which object you were looking for among those you have lost or that you know you need.. etc.
Ultimately, it's easier to make it a D&D campaign, haha.
