Invasion Events / Roving Armies

[BacchusTheLewd]

Hello, I am new to the forums and thought I'd post about an idea I've had for some time. When I played Minecraft, I was always struck by a lack of player challenge when encountering hostile mobs both spontaneously and regionally (dungeons, nether, ender dragon, etc.). In other words, and much like in Vintage Story, mobs are more or less inert, given to attacking once a proximity alarm is hit but are otherwise non-threats with the right precautions, regardless of area. Why aren't there zombie, or skeleton bosses? Why don't hordes of zombies come out and attack my base, and break its walls? In VS, after iron, why am I still on drifter corpse detail cleaning up these grey golems that sometimes hurt but aren't physically threatening and can't even challenge my defenses without just teleporting into my base? Naturally, players should always have obstacles and seek to overcome, anticipate, and devise new methods of dealing with those challenges; thus, with that in mind, I think some kind of hostile army or horde appearing and attacking the player(s) would be a lot of fun.

In Minecraft they added Pillagers but they still do not give the stakes or threat largely because, unlike the player, they still cant break things. Now, MC is MC and VS is VS, and both tend towards different points (VS is vastly improved here) on a moving scale of mechanical complexity and world gen incentivizing and challenging survival, building, and crafting. What I am getting at is the fourth dimension to gameplay (combat) often gets added as an afterthought. This is to say that it is one thing to have the sort of combat expected of a large, open world adventure game (no is asking for chain attacks and parries) where building and crafting already take center stage, and it is another to be lazy or forgetful of what seems like a natural progression, mainly in PVE. After those domestic tasks are accomplished and the basic necessities in pantry/hunting/mining/agriculture/arming are met, why not raise the stakes (as an OPTION) and introduce some real menace to what portals already sort of do. Bring on the hordes of hell! Bring on migrating bands of barbarian pigs and goblins! Let drifters teleport but have open portals disgorge the most corroded and horrific creatures there are; ones that can't even teleport, much less exist without an open warp gate. Let them break my walls! Scale mob capabilities in harming the player with those already available to players in being able to modify (limited to basic materials, perhaps) the environment.

On the PVP side, the natural evolution to what I am describing is player-led cities, nations, and factions. All of these are very popular and its not like they lack depth when it comes to building and physics (mainly thinking of MC, whereas I'm sure there's been plenty of talk on that side of things in VS before as regards PVP), but in terms of PVE, essential as that is to VS, I think there's a lot of room for growth, even more so given the different ways larger, more aggressive and destructive events could be introduced narratively. Raise the stakes! Temporal storms are begging for something like this. Equal or even better than any story element or game mechanic alone, this provides the sort of organic, player-driven attachment/history which would give greater meaning to everything from weapons, specific buildings/castles/towns, to material storage and basic survival. "My bastion held them back!" "They tore through our stores and we'll be scrambling to make it through winter." Love the game, hope something like this gets added.

Edited September 19 by BacchusTheLewd

[EndlessOats]

Absolutely agreed, and it is talked about quite often in the lore about this exact thing happening as well. All hail the Lords of Rubble.

I think the drifters should stay as is (though I'm not super happy about temp storms as a mechanic), and this threat should instead come from Locusts and similar. Hordes of locusts looking for new places to establish nests, roving bells that summon that horde (which can be hidden from), things like that. Drifters feel like a sort of omnipresent and aimless threat, like a disease (which seems intentional). The locusts seem like they should be consuming anything they can, grey goo style.

I like the overall concept though, it should definitely be an option at world creation though, same way cave ins are.