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[VirusN (as seen on TV!)]

The plan is to make them super awesome, and almost unique, items, with plenty of crazy effects and abilities to choose from.

I got this idea after reading this: let's say your dungeon heart (or another object, let's call it a "dungeon source") is (for example) a giant battery:
this allows you to place traps and devices that work with electricity, like electric fences, or movement sensors (instead of, let's say, a "magical" type dungeon source, like a mana orb or something ). This also limits the items you can use (example: the magnetic field generated by the battery doesn't allow you to use magnetic devices, or something like that)..

The "hurt but not kill" thingy reminded me of this: http://rpgmaker.net/games/2068/

Also, excuse the poor english. 

[Xion]

what if you could use the hearts in one of several ways:

1) Use them as a heart in a dungeon of your own design. Straight-forward.

2) Use them as a heart in yourself. Gives you permanent abilities and stat boosts not tied to any equipment, but tends to be mostly passive effects like health regen, increased defense, speed, attack, etc. You can only have one heart at a time, and when you put a new one in yourself the old one dies forever.

3) Use them in items. Grants both passive and active abilities when using the item, like a sword that ekes out tentacles to lash otherwise out-of-range foes, or a helm that grants you telepathy and increases warns you of nearby traps. They tend to be more powerful than putting the heart in yourself, but can be lost like any other item. Also there is no way to get the heart out of the item.


Question: What if a heart is stolen by two people at once? Since they're not playing alongside each other no one would know, and it would suck to -almost- steal it, and have it vanish from your hands as you were right near the exit, since someone else got it first. Or would they both just keep it? Assuming dungeon diving sessions can go on for some time, it's possible that a number of people can be playing for a while before all getting the heart at different times, isn't it?

[Droqen]

Answer: I don't know ): I've considered this myself.


1/2/3) I think I didn't make this clear, but the idea is that a dungeon heart would be a piece of equipment, like the sword of wtf-ery or something equally ridiculous.

[Xion]

OH.

I was totally thinking it would be a

heart.




I still think it'd be neat to take a super awesome heart and stick it in your chest/sword

Like A Boss.

[Droqen]

XD

It totally would be.

Actually, it'd be cool if Dungeon Hearts could come in several types, unique items being one, and super awesome enchantment hearts being another... ahhh

[Destral]

I've skimmed/read most of the posts, so I might repeat stuff that has already been said.

Firstly, dang this sounds awesome. If this was a social network game, I would probably play it.

Thoughts:

1) I'd say, when you start out, you start with a small dungeon. Say, you have a grid that is 10x10, and you can carve out 50 squares to start off with. So you make your dungeon, place a few monsters and traps, and place your dungeon heart.

While your dungeon heart is in the dungeon, it acquires experience slowly. This experience goes towards levelling the heart. When the heart levels, you gain access to more traps, stronger monsters, and can carve out more space to make the dungeon bigger.

When your heart reaches certain levels, you are given the choice of expanding your dungeon grid. You can do this by making the grid bigger, keeping your current dungeon layout, or you can reset your dungeon, moving it to a bigger, blank grid where you can start from scratch. The second choice might, in a facebook game, cost you 1 droqredit or whatever. Or not.

2) Your dungeon heart's exp is tied to your character's exp. This means that you can go into other people's dungeons and try to reach their heart. When you do, you can steal some of the exp the heart has, based on the heart's level and how much exp it has accumulated towards the next level. Exp you steal from someone else's dungeon heart is added to your own. Likewise, others can sneak into your dungeon and steal exp from your dungeon heart.

3) If you really want to allow players to take their dungeon heart with them, it might give them a bonus to stats or something, but if they die in someone else's dungeon, their heart loses exp, which goes to feed the heart of the dungeon they are in.

4) Your dungeon heart determines what you can equip and what you can use in your dungeon. It also determines what other dungeons you can go into. So if your dungeon heart is level 10, you can go into level 8-12 dungeons (the spread should be determined by the power differential from one level to the next).


5) Perhaps, apart from traps and such, players can also try to place things in the game that give them resources to further buy/upgrade their dungeon. I don't know how involved you'd want to make it, but it would make sense that if you have certain monster types, they can 'work' in your dungeon to create resources over time. These resources would then by used by you as the player to further enhance your dungeon, or research new traps, or hire more monsters. At the same time, however, the places where these are created can be attacked/destroyed by players who visit the dungeon in order to steal your resources for their own use.

Maybe I'm just rambling. In any case, this sounds like it could be awesome, and I look forward to seeing you start a devlog for it!

[TobiasW]

5) Perhaps, apart from traps and such, players can also try to place things in the game that give them resources to further buy/upgrade their dungeon. I don't know how involved you'd want to make it, but it would make sense that if you have certain monster types, they can 'work' in your dungeon to create resources over time. These resources would then by used by you as the player to further enhance your dungeon, or research new traps, or hire more monsters. At the same time, however, the places where these are created can be attacked/destroyed by players who visit the dungeon in order to steal your resources for their own use.

Dungeon Keeper?

[Destral]

5) Perhaps, apart from traps and such, players can also try to place things in the game that give them resources to further buy/upgrade their dungeon. I don't know how involved you'd want to make it, but it would make sense that if you have certain monster types, they can 'work' in your dungeon to create resources over time. These resources would then by used by you as the player to further enhance your dungeon, or research new traps, or hire more monsters. At the same time, however, the places where these are created can be attacked/destroyed by players who visit the dungeon in order to steal your resources for their own use.

Dungeon Keeper?

I guess. It's one way of creating loot to entice players to attack other people's dungeons, while at the same time giving the owner of the dungeon a reason to place stuff that will cause them a net loss if another player attacks their dungeon.

[ollie]

I think the idea of the dungeons levelling is awesome as it turns the convention or player levelling on it's head. Someone mentioned Facebook as a platform - that could be really cool as then you've got a built in user base and way of 'marketing' (urgh) to relevant people.

The thing I'm not 100% clear on though is whether people build 'a' dungeon, or can submit many. The way I'm picturing it in my head is that you'd have a 'pet' dungeon that starts off fairly small but as it levels up or you find 'x' item in somebody else's dungeon it can grow in size.

The other thing would be whether or not it can 'level down'? Maybe if a player completes it without dying the dungeon loses experience? Of course it would need to take a lot more to bring the dungeon down than it does on the way up but it might be interesting.

I really like your premise 

[_Tommo_]

I don't think that allowing permanent damages to the dungeons is a good idea at all.
If a dungeon levels up, then permanent damage is levelling down , and that's just unacceptable for a lot of players... just look at the other thread on the topic!

[Chromanoid]

I've skimmed/read most of the posts, so I might repeat stuff that has already been said. Firstly, dang this sounds awesome.

*signs*

I also thought about such a game, but dungeons more like Spelunky levels...

Dungeon Hearts would be a good point to monetize. The first dungeon heart is for free. You can build a dungeon per heart. If a dungeon's heart is stolen, the dungeon instantly becomes "forgotten"/"hibernated". You have to buy or steal a heart to revive your dungeon. The heart always has the level of the dungeon. You need a level 12 heart to revive a level 12 dungeon. This way multi accounting does not work to gain hearts for high level dungeons. Some traps/buildings as well as some equipment for the hero require dungeon hearts (heart/money sink).

There should be equipment that is soul bound and that is attached to the hero even after dying.

Dungeon builders can accept "storage quests" for special items. These items have to stay in the dungeon for a period of time. If no one can get the item in this time frame the dungeon builder gets a reward/XP. Accepted quests are announced in public and one can browse dungeons by quest items.

BTW there is a dungeon keeper-esque game on facebook -> http://apps.facebook.com/dungeonoverlord/ quite nice but it gets a bit boring over time. It has dungeon raiding and building in it, see http://www.insidesocialgames.com/2011/01/28/dungeon-overlord-brings-nostagically-evil-strategy-to-facebook/ for a gameplay summary.

[TobiasW]

Random idea: Instead of wearing down of traps etc dead players leave skeletons in the dungeon (maybe until they are cleaned by the owner or a specialized monster or the magical heart or something) - thereby warning other players!

Will there be methods to identify traps?

[Chromanoid]

How about a trap detection skill?

@dungeon-heart-accessibility-detection:
Dungeon builders have to bring sacrificial offerings to the dungeon heart after dungeon layout changes to make it accept its new/changed surroundings. You have to ua goblin with average abilities (according to the dungeon level) to approach this. The monsters of the dungeon will not attack the goblin, but traps work as usual. Same procedure for storage quests: the dummy goblin has to bring the item to the desired place...

[Droqen]

Woo! Skeletons.

I think that damage to dungeon systems, if it happens (I'd like it to), will have to be a conscious action on the part of the invader.


... Also, maybe it costs money for invaders to do things like smash stuff, and the dungeon keeper simply has to close down the dungeon for a day to do maintenance?

As a dungeon keeper, of course, you wouldn't want to do that, but after a certain point it'd be worth it to fix everything.

Chromanoid: Storage Quests sound sweet. Perhaps they could follow dungeon heart rules, leveling up if people die trying to get it -- and the more it levels up, the better the reward you get (even if only slightly) from the quest.

[Chromanoid]

Skeletons could be a good incentive for visiting the game on a daily basis. The dungeon keeper just has to click on them to remove them... When he does this, he gets a very small reward too. Friends of the dungeon keeper may be able to do this too (help friends mechanic)- only works well when the dungeon map is always revealed.