Boss System feature - Dimension Nexus Adventures

• Boss System

Now I do apologize in advance, I am trying not to be too technical here, which is not my strong suit. This is the first of our series of feature explanations, which will bring full discussions about every feature of the game.

• What is a boss?

First off, our bosses are like those in comics, they want to rule the multiverse, every player’s server which is set to multiverse is eligible to be attacked. Regular multiplayer servers can even upgrade to this mode. Now, these bosses only attack a dimension once, which is why we will be continually developing new bosses. This gives you a bit of a unique experience for your server, and the servers that also face this boss.

StatisticsSo lets go through some of the backend boss statistics:

• Boss name
• Boss strength
• Boss stats
• Boss minion pool
• Boss generals
• Boss species
• Boss dimension

Some of these qualities are obvious while others aren't.

The Boss strength is how many times the boss must be "defeated" before you get to the final battle. This makes you effectively chase the boss through a few dimensions, say 3, before he's finally defeated.

Boss stats are obviously things like the physical appearance, fitness, etc.

The idea of a Boss minion pool is that every boss draws their army from a pool of minions. During our crowdfundings, you can pay to be a minion even. Minions are listed by types including race, tech level, and dimension. This way we can pull from a databank of minions so that we can even vary the minions in the game for you.

The idea around Boss Generals is that each boss has 4 set generals, these are basically sub bosses you will encounter. Some bosses will "save" their generals for their last stand, some will use one in each dimension they are in.

• The main event, part 1

So, a boss has entered your server, how do you know? Well this is not an easy thing sometimes. Bosses have personalities, some are heavy handed, obvious of something going on while others are subtle, using subterfuge. To truly know what is going on, you simply have to go about your daily life for most players. Players who are guards, leaders, politicians, and adventurers, will end up probably finding out first.

• So let’s use an example, a necromancer:

So if in your server, you have no players playing villains, no one's doing necromancy, undead popping up could either be a normal event, some sort of magical mistake, or a boss. Yet when it comes, how do you tell?

• Player villain - Obviously if you confront the necromancer, and they’re speaking obviously through a microphone, or your guildmate starts cackling wildly on Ventrillo when the attack starts.
• Magical mistake - If the local mages guild lets out some strange FX, and suddenly the dead start rising, its time to probably hang a mage from his tower.
• Normal Event - Gotta dungeon of undead, with a necromancer in it? The dungeon overpopulation system may come into play for the attack. More on that when we get to the dungeons feature explanation.
• Boss - The most probable way to know that this is a boss is that unlike any other way this will happen, the minions will be far more unique in look. They will probably also have directives from their master to do certain things. Granted, a player can do just as well with this, but only the unmasking will tell so to speak.

Now, lets say you've figured out this is a Boss, main reason? Magical items went missing, witnesses reported the smell of rotting flesh in the area of the time of the thefts. And this boss was a subtle one, so they spread out the attacks to multiple cities, building a base of operations, and an adventurer stumbled upon it. But thinking it was a regular dungeon, bringing, say, 10 people to clear it. One poor sod came back, with a warning, having been spared by said boss.

Now you may say, this sounds like a player right? Our new AI is able to work like this, which is what makes this boss system nice and unique. Now, at this point I should explain mechanics before continuing of what has went on server side.

Server Mechanics and Data Analytics Part 1Multiverse server has a listing of bosses, and a listing of server id's each boss has visited to know where not to send them.

When a server's total played time average of all players on server reaches a certain point, it becomes eligible for a boss attack. When the boss attack is over, the server lists bosses defeated 1, the count of time spent on server is reset, and the new timer is initiated to allow for rebuilding. Just because you hit the hours, doesn't mean the boss will come immediately. Our system randomizes it, as well as each boss can only be in one server at a time.

The reason for the boss only being in one server at a time, is because each boss has an events database, personality database, and other things that make it all run correctly. If we had two running, we'd probably just corrupt the boss data at this time. Plus it goes into the interesting aspect of if you have "trade partners", servers you connected to via a dimensional nexus, they could send out a call for help.

Now, once the boss attack begins, multiple things happen:

• Server peak times are now received, most servers when a boss attacks will start moving towards being online at the same time, in a way, in raid mode. Their players will want to band together to fight the boss. Our system will detect these peak times and make minor events happen outside of peak times, for instance, hints at movement of the minions, preparations for attacks. During the peak time each day is when things will take place.
• The peak times are now logged and our Data Analytics goes to work. We now check other servers for similar peak times, setting up for the next boss stage when everything gets fun.
• Events Database is now accessed by the server (not the boss), choosing things in the same "genre" of the boss to happen. This can be events like plagues from killing tons of zombies and not burning the bodies (from detecting what goes on on the server) to a NPC Hero rising up if players are being pushed back too far. Even the possibility of a NPC helping with RnD, or mysterious events, possibly that diety you worship helping out if things start to go bad.
• The events will never be powerful enough to destroy all life as we know it, or give you the golden sword of boss slaying so to speak. There minor events that add flavor to the event.
• Once a server is chosen that pairs with you, a primary connection is made between the servers. This enables us to allow for a smooth transition between servers when the time comes.

• The main event, part 2: so you got this far huh?

It wouldn't be a boss, wanting to rule the multiverse, if it didn't make you go to new dimensions right? Well this game will be no different. So you had a few week long micro events as the boss was preparing. You accidentally stumble across the boss's base making it move up the time tables. And after a hefty protracted battle, and a lot of dead pc's and npcs. And you've taken out one bad mother of a general, you charge for the boss's room. Well, this boss won't stand for this, and the energy well behind him looks bad. Apparently, the boss had prepared a little surprize for you, you didn't let him get fully set up, so you got to me here, but what about this?

Now your entire server playerlist watches as the world bends, warps, and looks way different. In fact, where there was a castle, is now the middle of nowhere, but the boss is still in front of you, but uses magic to teleport away. You go to the city you came from, and it isn't there. You search for a while and finally find a city. Time to get to a tavern and...is that a gun?

Your fantasy server just was transported to a wild west server, or maybe sci-fi, steampunk, cyberpunk, modern, post apoc, etc. We’re starting out with just fantasy, so at first it'll be different variations of fantasy.

[Note: Our plan is that every 6 months after release we will release another dimension. We have 7 planned at the moment.

So, to continue here, you're now on someone elses server. There's a few questions you have to ask yourself:

• Do I have my type of magic / reagents / ammo / etc available here, or do I have to learn something new.
• Does my species exist here, will they know how to medically treat me if I get injured.
• Do we have a language in common in or out of game.

This will be where our gestures system will come into play for language barriers, among other things. Medical treatments will also be listed in the real health system update.

So, what's next?Now the server looks at the boss and asks "how many more defeats till final showdown". In a way most of this is wash rinse repeated right? Well not quite, a general's been setting up shop here for quite awhile, in fact once the server was set up. It’s quite possible they knew a boss was going to hit them. Since they didn't see anyone new in the area they thought they were still in the first server. Come to find out, it’s the the second.

So, this boss needs to be defeated 3 times before final showdown let’s say. That means another server is matched, and we go about this again. Once the final defeat happens, you simply return to your server. Anything you purchased in those dimensions or learned comes with you. Since we can support multiple data connections and character database links, your characters data is always safe on your server encase something bad happens. Like say, the server you’re on forgot to pay its host.

So what happens to the event? Servers are live backed up on our end, including yours. And your server operator can choose to host their server temporarily to continue the event.

• Player Bosses???

This is where we start having some fun. Let’s say you're playing an “evil” character on a server. You end up winning, while dealing with the hero underground of the other players, and rebellions, you could start researching how to breach another dimension. Now you are the boss, sending minions into servers.

Or you could be a server of villains who have a leader, or one villain who has taken over the other villains operations. The way this works is almost the same as the regular boss system, except the attacks are directed by a player, still under the guidelines of our death system. If you don’t have an emergency way out, you could be killed, permanently. So anyone attempting this has to be smart about it. We’ll discuss the death system in another post but for now, lets think of a possibility.

You make a magical or technological system to keep yourself alive, so how do you get rid of this guy? Well one way is to attack that home dimension, help the underground/rebellion out. Another way would be to simply disrupt the technology of magic. Everything has a way around it in our system, which will be explained further in tomorrow’s RnD post. But you should now get a little bit of an understanding of how careful a player boss has to be. While you could become very powerful, you will make a lot of enemies.

• But, this boss is cool!

Ok, lets say now that you have a boss attack that you enjoy too much. The fallen hero, our final planned boss (The Dimension Clasher), or any number of others. You could simply decide to serve them. If it’s just a few players helping out, then the system remains a “trying to take over the world” style system. However in the case of a playerbase of all villains, they could decide as a server to join. Once they've taken over their server, and given the boss a place to call home, the fun begins. This enters a new type of boss staging, where now attacks are from your server to others in the bid for the multiverse. Even the possibility of multiple servers, allying with multiple bosses, and ending up in skirmishes against each other.

What does this mean for the game, are we all going to end up fighting for the bosses? Definitely not, not everyone wants to play a villain, and some servers are multiplayer but not multiverse enabled, meaning they don’t get boss events, or ability to get attacked. They can still connect with each other but the two server owners have to do that on the console of the server. This will be explained more in our Multiverse methodology post.

What we see it as, is a dimensional game of cat and mouse, the rise and fall of heroes, in other words, a truly living game experience. And when we get to talking about events, you will see how we plan to be able to keep our events fresh and new.