Event Suggestion?

[Zerrif]

I was talking with Panda a little bit and we started experimenting with some ideas that were leading me to develop this concept. I was inspired by Nara's recent Run Hydro, Run! event, in which she summoned Hydro monsters that were not treated like pets from eggs-- they took damage, were targettable, and attacked things on their own.

Event: A Dangerous Escort

GM: Oh no, I've lost Panda's pet ____________! Oh man oh man, she's going to chew me out for this one!

The event starts with the players on a map, and with the GM disguised as a monster. The goal is for the players to make it to the end of the map with the GM disguised as the "pet". Everyone has to be alive when they get there (it's a server-wide, work together event sort of thing for the first part). Strewn throughout the map are various other monsters, that they can choose to ignore, or kill on the way there. The pet could even be blocked or "guarded" by an MVP that first stole it, to work with the story of the event.

Variation: Everyone is a novice and the map is strewn with porings or bomb porings. Not everyone has to survive to the end-- and GM's can give mercy every so often.

Once they reach the disguised GM, he/she has a dialogue thanking the players for finding it, and now they're about to go home. But wait, the monsters are back?

The GM now appears as a GM with the summoned pet in tow. This is where the things I'm not sure of come in. I know that during Run Hydro Run we were able to target the hydros (although we couldn't kill them), and I remember them having taken damage from us.

When I tested with Panda, it seemed that normal monsters were not able to target the summoned monsters. While the summoned monsters will attack the regular monsters, they detect it as rude attack, and will react accordingly (most likely teleporting away).

If the summoned pets can get hit by some sort of AoE, this is how I propose the second phase of the event goes. The event no longer becomes just a free exp event in which they kill stuff on the way to the GM, but also an escort mission out. The map is suddenly strewn with volatile creatures that will explode and do damage, harming both players and the summoned pet (for example Summoned Marine Spheres from dead branches are aggressive, or Constants).

The players need to escort the GM back to where they began, where the pet will then be "safe". During this phase, there will be no more map resurrections, and everyone does not need to survive. All that is needed is for the pet to arrive safely. If the pet survives, everyone receives a good prize. If the pet dies, everyone receives the exp and loot they got, and maybe a prize for trying.

Variation: If done as a novice event, the exploding monsters are bombporings for obvious reasons. The pet the GM summons should also be weaker in comparison, since bombporings maximum explosion damage is only 50.

Now here are some problems I can already see with this event.

- Players may run ahead of the GM and detonate the volatile monsters early, leaving the GM with a free run through. (Although I'm hoping that this problem is balanced out by the fact that a) There's no more map mercy, so they can't just blaze on ahead and b) If they run too far, they'll just leave the GM defenceless.)
--- Leaving the GM defenceless means little though, since monsters won't target the GM or target the summoned pet. This basically means that the GM has to be in the fray of players for things to start detonating around it, unless the GM shrugs their invincibility. But then if the GM dies, the pet will die too-- which could be another thing to protect. The GM could stay at 99/1 with stats built for survivability, but will not be able to attack or help other players. It just walks.
- The volatile monsters don't explode unless they've taken damage-- so people can just tank it and ignore it as they walk through. (This could b e remedied by making or copying a monster, and changing the AI to detonate once they're in melee range, regardless of HP values)
- Since the pet could be targeted, the pet could be given heals if this is done as a non-novice event. (However, this could effectively be a good way to keep the pet alive)

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All in all, it's sort of a meld between an escort and a bombporing style event. But I don't know how well it would run simply because of the AI not reacting to fight each other. Thoughts?