Every month, on the fifth of the second week, the titans cometh. The titans fucking cometh.

Their legs, long bound, give us the glimmer of hope we need.

Long gone are the times of the weak Titans. We took for granted the stupid, lumbering brutes.

Every part of the Titan is now a weapon. No longer do they ignore our attacks, no longer do we use them for req. This is about survival.

Long gone are the happy times of waiting for them to be defeated. I plea, all able contestants, from Pittsburgh, to AceHigh, to Kittania. From NewHome, to Cyber City, to Central. Take up arms, fight for your homes!

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This is what I picture Titans should be like. Not something you casually fight when you get to a high DK amount, but something to UNITE the island. Sure, there'd be req and prizes in it for fighting and killing them, but that's not the point anymore.

I'd like to see it not be something that is easily ignored, but still not detrimental to roleplay.

And I've thought through, and discussed many angles.

I present to you, my modest document, for public approval, in hopes that this would provide an adequate solution, for all parties involved.

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Make titans tougher.

No longer do they ignore our attacks, no longer do we use them for req. This is about survival.

I'm not saying change their attack or defence, I'm saying crack that motherfucker's health up to incredible amounts. Now, with the current system, that'd just be insane. Titans would get to the outpost before you could kill them, even with a brick force attack! That's why I propose to...

Make titans slower.

Their legs, long bound, give us the glimmer of hope we need.

Make them in chains that limit their leg movements. They move slow not because they're lumbering oafs, but because they CANT move fast. Make it take multiple newdays for them to reach an outpost, to give all on the island a chance to fight. Now, this would be inconvenient, with a shitton of superpowered Titans slowly lumbering around, so I also wish to....

Put spawning on a timer.

Every month, on the fifth of the second week, the titans cometh. The titans fucking cometh.

Make them spawn on a schedule, like the one day a Titan is allowed from it's prison, or the one day they become powerful enough to break free. This would undermine the req farming of the previous system, but the point--at least the impression I got--was not to give the power players a way of racking up Req, but to give a sense of warfare going on.

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Now, I'm going to address some issues that may come up, just to avoid unneighbourly conflict.

Calm your ass down. You'll still get req. It just won't be a casual thing anymore. Leave the req system in place--ramp it up if you need to--but since they spawn less with this system, it wont be possible to just run around, kill some Titans, and call it a day. I wish for Titans to be taken SERIOUSLY, not as a joke as they are now.



"The audience does not always know what it wants." That is to say, do you REALLY want a mechanic like it is now, or an epic team fight to take down a huge boss-esque monster? Sure, it kills a lot of things that were good about Titans before, but I feel this is the lesser of two evils.



This, I'm not so great with. It shouldn't be TOO hard though. Just replace the spawning code with a timer, crank up the health, and let it loose.



Door's over there.

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Now, I'm not one to deny another solution, or even adapting parts of this into the current system. Hence a forum post instead of an email.

Tear into this like a pound of panthzer meat!

While I understand the thought behind proposing the change I'm not in favor of it. Why? Because that change isn't, in my opinion, in the spirit of the game. This game strongly promotes participating in activities that you find enjoyable. That's the reason so many of us play. Personally, I love to build and travel, Jakell love to kill Titans, other people enjoy RPing, and still others just love DKing. And all of those activities become easier the more you do it (yes even RPing!). Why take away or change what people enjoy doing?

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I love spambots: I'm in mania to here Tickled pink as thwack to obligation on a glimpse of you all

Because, as far as I can tell, Onslaught and titans were put in to make things interesting, combat-wise. Now, it's "leave it to the tough guys" in regards to titans, instead of a challenging aspect of gameplay that makes things much MORE interesting. I'm not saying this idea is perfect, hell, I can see a Titan showing up and being mostly ignored as it heads for Pittsburgh and destroys it. But the idea behind this is to create a sense of unity among those interested in the gameplay aspect. With Titans now, it's "Okay, gargle, plasma gun, gravity suit, kill twelve titans, call it a day". My vision is to have it that even those without a shit ton of DKs can make a difference, that the mob is needed. So that titan fighting isn't limited -- mostly by it not being worth it -- to the Elite and the Veterans.

It's going to be inconvenient. I imagine keeping outposts from being torn to bits in the beginning was, too. But the idea is to improve on the Titan idea. It's going to require some things to be taken away, but if done right, it'll be much better than the current system.

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"There can be no progress, no achievement without sacrifice"

-- James Allen

I see what you mean about titans? Really, I do. But I don't think anything that forces people to work together is going to achieve results beyond being annoying.

We have Onslaught, which is supposed to mean that players bind together to save the outposts. This worked like this really well for a while. Then people got bored. Onslaught got really hard. Some people have joined together to form the OST, now, but (sorry guys! go ahead and prove me wrong!) I don't know how well it will last. People joined in groups to fight Onslaught at the beginning, and most people don't do that anymore.

We have Places, which we were told would require lots of people to work together to make something. Lots of people worked together to make things. But a lot of really big Places are a single-person venture - a lot of time, and a lot of hard work, sure, but a single-person effort. Loads of people build by themselves. We have the option to have dwelling building be very collaborative - and some people use it, lots don't. Probably most don't.

We got Titans, which we were told would require a bunch of people to take down, and we got that neat thing where you could see who else was fighting the titan with you, to get a sense of camaraderie. That is pretty cool. When it started, I remember going out in groups with my clan to go take them out. But most of the time now, I'm out killing titans by myself. For a lot of people, they were cool when they came out, but they're not their favourite thing, so they don't bother with them anymore. Single players go out and take them down - and some aren't superpowered, they're just persistent.

So here's three times when we've been given something that was intended to be a group effort, and people sometimes play it as a group effort, but, overall, it is mostly single players doing things. This is just how the Island works, as far as I can tell. It's a single player game in a lot of ways. It has to be - that's just the format. And when we are forced to work together - like when Onslaught was really, really hard - we still don't, not enough. The Island was absolutely clobbered when Dwellings were first introduced and everyone quit fighting Onslaught to go build their house.

Frankly, I think there aren't enough players on the Island to force a collaborative effort. There's usually about 30 people online when I log in to biff titans in the morning. While I'd love to see a huge titan spawn, if it happened only once a month and forced us all to work together? Well, I probably wouldn't play for the rest of the month, except to roleplay. There are a lot of people who really enjoy killing titans. If they only came out once a month - well, there goes those players' fun. Like Lunatick said, the game promotes doing whatever the heck you like - I agree that it's not really in the spirit of the game to say "Hey you all have to do this right now" or "Hey that thing you always liked, you can't do it anymore except on this day".

Lastly, I'd actually be in favour of titans being faster - I mean, look at that 100 million + hp wall in Pleasantville.

I was composing an answer, and then Ada went ahead and said it better than I could.

So I'll boil it down to: Sticks don't work; only carrots do.

Allow me to nitpick, because I'm missing the reasons that makes this is a change worth making.

Why the fifth of the second week? Why not the second of the fifth week?

Titans move one square every two hours. That's not particularly fast, yet you want them to go even slower? Then where is the thrill of the hunt? There needs to be a necessity to kill it now, instead of tomorrow.

This is a technicality, but bigger Titans aren't stronger Titans. They're just bigger Titans. Now imagine you have 60 hitpoints, versus the 60 million the Titan that towers above you has. Heck, make it 6 million. Any sensible person would run from such an unfair fight.

What, Midgets aren't allowed to fight Titans?

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http://maniak.cu.cc/

I'm the sort of player who finds onslaught a mild irritation and completely ignores titans. I've got no objection to either, as I realise that other players enjoy them - fair enough. So my opinion here might not be worth much, but here it is anyway.

Ada's given an excellent analysis of the big picture, this is more of a detail.

When titans first came out, I did go hunting them as part of a team spirit. Then I saw the big hitters doing more damage per hit than I was doing in an entire game day. By a long way. I stopped pretty soon.

As far as I can tell, this sort of thing is just as likely to happen under your scheme as now, so...what really is the difference?

As long as we are talking in a purely theoretical sense about ways Titans could change to make them more fun for more people, let me bring up a suggestion I made when Titans first came out. It wasn't implemented then,* so it probably won't ever be -- but I still think it would be a game-changer in a good way.

Allow critical hits.

That is, set it up so that with every blow, everyone, from the rawest rookie all the way up to Jakell, has a small but measurable chance of hitting a vital spot on the Titan and making an Instant Kill, which would gain them the entire (remaining) reward.

It may seem counter-intuitive that making Titans easier to kill would make them more exciting, but think about it: Little would change for big hitters trained at Tynan's and loaded up with buffs from all the pubs; they can usually wipe a Titan out in a few minutes anyway, which... as you say, HM, is rather discouraging for others to witness. What this would be is a lottery-style equalizer, so that all the other players would also have a chance of hitting a big jackpot.

Right now, new players usually try fighting a titan once. It's an interesting novelty. Then they get their reward of 1 or 5 req, and decide, quite reasonably, that it's not worth the effort. I think we'd see a lot more mid- and low-DK players trying their luck if there was some luck involved.

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* And having looked at the code since then, I can see why. But it wouldn't be harder than Puzzle Combat.

Yay!


It's just a date I plucked out, no real relevence.


That's... A good point. I just heard complaints of them being too fast as a common occurrence.


The point is to have it be a BIG thing. Something that those who wish to prepare for.


They'd more likely be pilfering the pockets of knocked out contestants!


Heh. This is the sort of thing I like to see. I hadn't considered a few points in here, but, the point was to make titans interesting, not to make it fun. In retrospect, it's not the greatest suggestion, but take it with a grain of salt. I'm only putting up possible features, and this was written in a conversation with Omega, so really, you can't expect much from it.

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Also, as I'm tired of all these goddamn quotes on this goddamn post, I'm going to address it manually.

To sessine's critical hits idea: YESOHGODYESPLEASE.

To Hairy Mary's post: Fair point, my idea was to instill a bit more camaraderie into the system, while making Titans less of a joke.

Oh, by the way,

Cyb especially has a problem, because it's very close to the edge of the map, and it's not as well travelled, so people don't always notice the titans. As an aside for people like HM who don't pay much attention to titans: if you are digging through the Scrapyard up there, and you see a there's a titan headed for the outpost, can you mention it in Loc4? If I see that message in time, I'd go for it, and I think a lot of the other titan hunters would too. I like breaches, but I feel bad for Cyb.


Collin: making something more interesting and making it more fun ought to be the same thing. I personally would see titans as both less interesting and less fun altered in the way you've suggested - and, like I mentioned, I think everyone would make a good go of it, but only for a very limited time. Then it would just be back to the same crew that are doing it now, or even fewer of them.
That sounds really harsh! I do not mean to be harsh here. I just sincerely do not believe you can force Islanders to co-operate. We like being loners. Even when we say it would be more fun if it's collaborative, people inevitably end up doing their own thing more than they work together.

Ada: I shall keep a look out for titans when I'm up in CC and report, in the spirit of all working together. But...I know what I'm like. Someone posted recently about what happens to group endeavours and how long they last. I'm as bad as anybody like that.

Collin: Fair play for coming up with suggestions, just be aware that around 98% of them don't pan out for one reason or another. It can still make for an interesting discussion, and help our collective understanding of how the Island works. This one has made us think about titans and group efforts, which I think has been fruitful.

How about a Titan Mating Season, or some such, when they are meaner and tougher? Then you have the normal fighting plus the preparation and working together.

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"Courage is the price that Life exacts itself for granting peace" - AE

I'm gonna opt out of being the one to explain Titan reproduction.

As someone who made a wiki page under the word "Titans", I'm obviously the authority on everything Titan. Or even just really big. Let me explain the perplexing riddle of reproduction to you.

When one Titan loves another Titan very much, then they-- no. Wrong explanation.

Every once in a blue moon, Titan mating season starts. During mating season, an ungodly number of Titans race around the island, trying to put their grubby giant-sized mitts on Horatio, who moves about as he pleases. In the process, they trample all over the Outpost walls you worked so hard to build. Oh, yeah, and due to the life cycles of the local phytoplankton, the Titan's main food source, they're twice as big and twice as painful.

When enough Titans latch onto the Drive, they all explode, scattering their... pollen... everywhere. This... "pollen" eventually floats back to the ocean, where the [Redacted] are, completing the Titan life cycle. This pollen does absolutely nothing to non-Titan entities, and most certainly doesn't get them pregnant at all, no sir.

Thank you for your time.
The above explanation is a lie, of course, but, in this economy, what isn't?

I have thought for a while, that having a variety of Titans would be interesting. Larger, but tougher slower ones could be excellent; right now they are level 20 monsters, and we could probably bump that up a fair for real beasts.

Additionally, faster, but smaller ones could be fun. Imagine having small Titans (perhaps only several thousand hp) sprinting around the island. Perhaps they make a little more noise (so that low-DK people could hear them from further off), and would be worth significantly less requisition (several thousand each? Perhaps as much req as their health), but would be killable by just about anyone with a bit of time on their hands.

Just making the Titans bigger and slower just means more fun for me, and folks like me . This last big wave, I was able to take down a few of the 25+ Mhp Titans each turn, and so bigger things just mean low-level folks would have less reason to attack the beasts, and I would spend a whole newday on one beast, instead of several.


I always thought it would be sweet if the Titans swarmed with the phases of the moon, both new and full. That way I could look out the window to see if it was a good day to fight Titans.

This would, though, remove the dependence on the state of the island for Titan breeding. Right now, when I am really in a mood to hunt, I can ramp up the Titans, and take care of them pretty well throughout the siege. If they were spawned by outside forces, we titan-slayers might not be too around to keep the numbers down. Having the system respond to our pokes and prods means that once we stop provoking them , they calm down, which is a real necessity at times.


I love this idea, but would alter it slightly. Currently, there is a bit of a bug which still keeps damage from the killing blow from giving you a reward, doing a large percentage of damage (anywhere from 10-50%) might be a better system, and avoid dealing with this bug a while longer still. Also, say you have several people beating on the legs of a Titan, doing very little damage. then, all of the sudden the other gal strikes a surprise killing blow. I would feel pretty upset at having wasted several minutes doing almost no damage, while the other person gets a huge reward.

Potentially, you could have several of these "weak points" which could get taken out, and would then no longer be a weakness. I am thinking along the lines of two Achilles tendons, the spinal cords, the wrists, the eyes - all those soft and vulnerable parts. These should be a once only weak spot, though. Once you blind the creature, further stabbing in that region should not be particularly special.
Shucks, you could even have (borrowing from Shadow of the Colossus) a series of these weak points, that you could only take down in order; cutting the Achilles tendons, would drop the thing to the ground and cut about 20% of it's health, and from there you could start taking down other pieces like the knees or hands for example (this is all still by rare random chance, of course. this would not be a targeting thing like I have grown to love in the jungle). Working your way up to the head for a finishing move could be quite the group endeavor for rookies, and if there was something like a 1/10,000 chance (it would have to be really low, otherwise anyone could take the thing down over the course of a hundred or so "ten hit" attacks) of getting a sweet strike in, a group of several people ought to be able to take down a beast over the course of a few minutes if lucky to several newdays. I do not expect that these weak points should be visible, but it should come up as a small notice or the like. I would imagine a message along the lines of "Jakell scored a lucky blow, and deeply wounded the Titan!"

Having visible targets (such as the achilles tendon, eyes, ect) could be interesting; if you were able to aim for them, and then possibly have a small chance to hit that particular weak point. The downside would be somewhere along the lines of wondering how a person is able to climb up the thing's front to stab it in the eyes, and be able to hang on for several hours.

One other strategy for making Titans attractive to low-level folks would be to have a "per-attack" reward; hitting it once might get you one requisition token, twice two, ect... the reward could grow linearly, or exponentially if we wanted to be generous. I would not care for this personally, as I occasionally take the things down in one hit, so there might need to be a combo of number of hits and damage dealt. This seems unnecessarily complicated to program and keep track of, though.

Puzzle combat for Titans?

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http://maniak.cu.cc/

What is puzzle combat?

Puzzle Combat is the official name for the new Targeted Combat!

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There are two secrets to success. The second one is to never reveal all your secrets.

Targeted combat is indeed called Puzzle Combat because it includes a puzzle. For each monster with targets, there is a specific sequence of hits that will keep it stunned; if you solve part of the sequence, the game will remember for you and remind you when you meet that monster again.

(But I admit I haven't been trying, at all, to solve it.)

Oh gosh, please don't add that for titans. It takes long enough to take them out just mashing the X key, unless you're going all out with buffs.