Minigame: Bounty hunt!

Feature Requests and Game feedback
1

When crime breaks out from time to time, who better to do something about it than a strong hero?

A kingdom like Whitehelm or Sword’s Edge may offer this minigame, in which you can try to track down and apprehend a criminal–a randomly chosen common, rare, or ultra-rare troop. (It should however not be inanimate, like a fortress gate. An automaton would be okay,) They’d be given a randomly assigned name, something appropriate to their kingdom and race. Your job is to take them down, but you have to recruit hunters. You’re given a list of, say, 6-9 level 15 troops to use and can spend gold to recruit each one. The amount would depend mostly on their rarity. Only they can help you in the bounty hunt, and they don’t count as your regular troops.

From there, the trail would take you to any of the kingdoms you’ve unlocked. There, you’d open a tavern option (which could also be used as a site for future minigames) where you could find out some rumors about your quarry. This would act like a mini-quest, even giving some fun dialogue to your teammates and whoever you meet there. At each stage you’d end up fighting some folks that the fugitive left as obstacles in your path, and at later stages that could include an epic troop or two, maybe even a legendary. (And sometimes, as a bit of flavor, maybe there’d be a random chance of fighting another bounty hunter’s team.) The enemy troops would get the same kingdom-level advantage as you, except when facing another hunter. Defeating any enemy would give you a chance to recruit them–permanently dismissing one of your people in their place–for additional gold. In this way your team can grow stronger. The defeated team points you to the next kingdom.

Finally after a number of hops from kingdom to kingdom, you’d have the chance to face down the fugitive themselves, with significantly boosted stats, and they’d have the toughest helpers. Upon defeating them, you would earn something worth the gold investment: a magic key, or perhaps a small handful of gems. (Or instead, a couple of treasure maps?)

The fun of this would be in using an Arena-like “random” team, hopping around the map so that it feels like an adventure, and of course making the common troops feel more alive. Like the arena, I picture a troop offer for your team and any defeated characters at the end of it. I don’t think auto-leveling to 10 or 15 is necessary, but this might be a good way to pick up a legendary troop you don’t already have, for a reasonably hefty gem price. I think the gem price should depend mostly on the chance of getting these guys in a chest.

Developer challenges:

  • You would need a random name generator that can be seeded differently for each kingdom. (I doubt the programmers would be upset about getting to play with something like this.)
  • The minigame itself obviously has to be developed, and the tavern built in.
  • The various random dialogue would have to be written in. I rather think this is the hardest task of all, but it’d be worth it in terms of building world flavor.
6 Likes
2

That idea is actually rather fun!

The dialog writing part is actually the one I’d find the coolest to do. :stuck_out_tongue:

Rumor has it, Mark the Shark left some bodies over the old port… you should talk to the Captain, he’s the one who found them. He’s heading for Pridelands right now. I’d catch up with him if I were you.
Don’t listen to all these drunkards, they have no idea what’s REALLY going on. See that miss over there? They say she used to hide your felon in her shop. And when you look at her, you know he’s still sticking around.
You’re going to Karakoth, heh? You’re dead wrong pal. Your guy had a picture on his table, looked like a forest map. If I were you, I’d revise my plans.
That old-looking fella? Sure, he was there just two days ago! Greedy rascal, that one. Kept talking about some buried chest in the mountain, and didn’t even tip properly. Not like you, heh mate?

1 Like
3

i think it’s an awesome idea!

definitely something, what the gems of war team should think about. :yum:

4

I like this :smile:

Localisation / translation would probably be the biggest cost / issue for the development team…

What do you think @Sirrian?

5

That was my thought too–plus the writing itself of course.

6

Very cool idea! Lots of challenges to doing this sort of thing, but I’m sure everyone will have a read over. Love all the creativity I’m seeing on here at the moment :slight_smile:

7

Refreshing this post, because I think now with GoW 2.x its time has come again. This was suggested back in the days of 1.0.6, before some of the current elements were in place. At the time there were only two types of keys, and no traitstones. The level cap for each troop was 15, and we had no mythics or ascension.

With the game as it stands now, I think I would alter this to be more similar to Explore, in that your opponents would have semi-random numbers of traits, but so would your recruits–yet to amp up the difficulty, your recruits would have fewer traits on average. The teams you’d face should be basically the same as Explore teams, except of course they might include your designated target who may appear in several battles (and obviously the last one).

With the way the game economy has changed, the entry fee should be higher. In fact since I envision nicer rewards now, it should be much higher. It should cost more gold, or possibly gems and/or glory, and maybe each tavern stop along the way could have a different price to get information–e.g., maybe one would require a treasure map, but in return for the sacrifice you’d get something really special. Traitstones, gem keys, and event keys become possible rewards now. The final reward for finally apprehending your target ought to be something nice, like maybe a few special keys (gem or better) or an arcane+ traitsone.

8

I love this idea. Might I suggest instead of treasure maps the reward is a single arcane from the kingdom in which you finally catch the bandit!

That way the whole time you are anticipating the goal!