Based on some of the things I've read and what I've seen playing the map seems to be an under used tool that could add a lot of depth to the game. Besides what others have suggested and discussed I have a couple of my own ideas to add to the mix.

First, the numbering system. Half of it is wrong. When compared to a grid map going up from center is positive and going down is negative. In this game left and right is correct but going up is negative and down is positive. Really small I realize, but I noticed it instantly and find it odd.

For an actual suggestion, Houses and Stores. I do like the idea of coming across random things like this I just don't like how they aren't really anything right now. Finding a house or a store is the same as finding a corpse, except it requires an extra click. I would like to see them actually mean something. Like the house could have a tougher human denoting the extra defenses of a house and/or additional bodies thus giving more souls than a normal human encounter. For the store perhaps there is a human defending it like normal, but you also get more cash because of the cash register. Both of these need something to make them more unique than just a corpse with an extra click.

I also wouldn't mind being able to run into vampires while hunting. These encounters would be tougher than humans and would give additional blood. This helps add a greater mixture and depth to the map, but also for those high level players gives them NPCs in their level range that give more blood than attacking low level players. Blood prize would be based on distance from 0,0 just like all other rewards.

I know others have discussed having spaces on the map that you can take over and control either as players or covens or both. Until such a system gets put in, if it does, you could implement part of that system by showing other players in the zone you are in. This would need to be in place for the other such step but I'm guessing this would be pretty simple to accomplish since the game already tracks everyone's position already, it just needs to show it. You could implement an attack button on that screen as well to add to the experience of finding someone. You could even give the attacker a +5% to their attack since they ambushed them on the street or something.

I was going to mention this in the spells thread but here works as well. It could be interesting to implement a spell you could cast on a zone that increases soul payouts and increases the chance of finding a humans for the next X hours. If NPC vampire encounters were implemented you could have a similar spell for drawing out NPC vampires and increasing blood payouts. This would be interesting and useful for players and covens when they start occupying zones on the map as their territory saying this is our land and our members will have access to these spell boosts.

LOVE IT!

How the hunting works now, it is rather repetitive and so I don't actually use that aspect a whole lot. Making it a whole lot adventurous, and giving us more to do, would get me to use this feature a whole lot more. If we had say NPC's within this map feature, humans to attack and even spell boosts, they all allow for a more interesting feature AND it adds just that extra bit of blood and soul shards to earn.

For the NPC's that can be found, maybe have them based on hunting level? So the further our hunt skill goes up, the higher the NPC, and the higher the blood we get from defeating it and a bonus chance of gaining extra soul shards.

Nice suggestion Squishymaster! This could definitely make hunting more fun and worth the turns!

I like the idea of seeing other vampires on our "street"

Good ideas, I kind of disagree with Psy and think the vampires found should scale with the level of the vampire otherwise these vampires will be impossible to kill at early levels and just take a few hits from the high levels. The reward should be based on the hunting level though.

I honestly don't know what the Hunting level calculates right now, seemingly nothing as I believe what you encounter and it's difficulty is based on it's distance from 0,0. If that is the case I would imagine you could just have the vamps be based the same. Since high level players are farther out than low level players it would automatically be balanced.

Psy, I'm surprised you don't use the hunting feature much. Even though it is slower blood than clones it still brings in blood and certainly brings in more cash. Plus it is nice when you have too many turns to just bounce back and forth between a couple squares that are your level range to burn turns and find humans and money.

Your hunting level x3 equals the total number of units from the center 0,0 you can travel without receiving the notice that you can go no further to receive rewards. The farther you are from 0,0 determines the average reward you will get in blood and money from humans and how strong they are. If these updates were incorporated I would agree that there would need to be some scaling with your location on the map or the players level rather than hunting skill, otherwise these encounters would be badly balanced and unpredictable.


Edited at 08/23 18:01:49

I gain more more money killing other vampires than I do via hunting, Squishymaster.

If we have NPC based on our hunt level, how would they be impossible to kill? I didn't just mean Vampires either. Throw in some mythical animals in the hunting...at least that way, there is more than just NPC vampires to kill.

Even if it's not based on hunt skill, base the NPC characters off of that players Vitality OR level, or even put a whole range of NPC in there at various levels, vitality with a range set of different default stats. Make it interesting. That way, even the players starting out have a chance of fighting NPC. You could also take what Squisht said about NPC in the area of what the hunt skill allows, and have NPC based around there, getting stronger as you climb in hunt skill. Still too weak as you climb to kill the other NPC? Climb back down and stick to the area with the NPC you defeat. Again, you can base each set of NPC with a random set of stats, and just increase the higher you get.

Have Vampires roaming BUT also add in some other NPC too. As Jason said....scaling would need to happen.

There have been cases where players died atempting to kill a human because their hunt skill has given them access to sections of the map they can't survive. That is why hunting skill would be a risk in using for the scaling.

What about bosses? I've seen other games with maps where they have big bosses to kill occasionally either by covens summoning them in secret locations for them to kill alone and/or ones that spawn somewhere randomly on the map and announce the location to everyone as a group challenge. Once the boss is downed the coven would get some reward for kill to use towards future summons or whatever the coven would spend resources on. For the game wide boss all players who attacked the boss would split a prize pouch based on the bosses level. This could be a fun addition as well.

Bosses could be random however with the nature of the game only requiring the occasional login to spend turns perhaps set times for spawns would be best. Covens obviously would find the times that fit best for them. With the map design the way it is though I feel like boss spawns if implemented would have to be set to certain parameters so it didn't spawn too far out. As for the boss itself I feel like this might be hard to implement with the current system for monsters. There would have to be a new system added for the bosses though to track health over multiple attacks as well as attacking it. Though as long as the health tracking was implemented you could just have people heal move away and back again.

Rewards are tough for bosses and players. If reward is split by damage obviously high level players will reap the rewards, though they would deserve some more since they did a lot of the damage. You could help spread it out more evenly by having one part of the prize pool spread by damage and another by number of hits. That way the big hitters still get more but the lowbies still get a chunk.


Edited at 08/27 20:08:28

Does money on corpses scale with distance? Because it doesn't seem so, but it should.