What does Treasure Hunting mean to you?

Back to this ... eyes closed ... thinking/dreaming ...

The former civilization at Arkadia was at a high level. They got space ships and were able to defend their planet against a big fleet of aggressors from somewhere in deep space. Milton Lee is assuming that their technology was slightly higher than ours. If I read the stories right, no one won the battle. But both parties went the path of destruction. What could probably remain from that?

Mutants. Like the ones at Calypso resulting from radioactivity and such. Survivors, but with significant modifications. From both sides ... former Arkadians and from the attacking fleet ... so mutations from plus aliens and double plus aliens. Creatures that have learned to survive and defend themself from all menaces. Evil mobs even beside the natural fauna.

Items. After such an epic battle you will find a lot of wrecks. There must be parts remaining in them. Weapons, healing and teleporting equipment, rusty armors, machinery parts of more or less usefulness. Probably artifacts with no meaning ... just looking good. The lost culture of the Arkadians must have had tons of scientific and industrial laboratories developing spaceships, weapons, communication systems as well as items of daily use like vehicles or washers. Dunno what potential is in this thought. Finding Blue Prints maybe.

Missions. This high industrial and military standards lead directly to an accordingly cultural standard. What about libraries? Filled with informations about this culture? Just to continue or retrofit the story of our current colonization process? Not to speak about starting missions from that. Unfinished old projects of Arkadian scientists, hints to interesting archeological projects and places.

Estates. Arkadia must have been a planet with high and growing economy/culture/science. They should have had impressive public as well as private architecture. Dave just foreshadowed a modular estate system. It would be sooo cool to be able to modify my home ;-) ... buying single components of a house and set them to a place of my own choice. That's a dream I guess ;-) A more practical idea is to be able to buy/occupy nice houses of the former residents. The war couldn't have destroyed everything.

 

I like the idea Wistrel has for talking NPC's if used correctly. Sadly this has been recently tried on RT with the talking mobs repeatedly saying the same thing over and over and over again...Actually made me leave RT. Last thing we need is an annoyance like that. Timers and location related triggers need to be set not only to start theses NPC's talking but also to shut them up after a given point.

I liked the map making setup for Starcraft as the triggers there set the ability to play a prerecorded message and to show an annimated picture of the NPC used durng the speech parts. I used that alot when I played with my own maps and linked senerios. It was fun making them but also time consuming. It was made a little easier for voice overs when I set the effects rack to my PA system in the loop for recording them.. Phase shifters and chorus's go a long way with harmonizers and vocoders to make varied voiceings.

Making worlds is fun even if just on paper, but to see one come to life in a video game has just got to be a major rush the entire time you work on it. I know the excitment I had running my old missions on a lan setup with friends. Cant imagine something global like EU. Id prolly pass out or have a heart attack from the strees if it was well recieved or not. At least on the lan if I bombed with something I could tell my friends to shut up and drink more till they liked it.

 

Part 1
I second everyone with the legends, stories, and especially Indiana Jones reference
One thing I think would be cool is an addition of legend tellers. I think it would be great if there are hidden tribes of the remaining indigenous peoples who have a story... From that story comes a legend of damsels in distress, ancient evils, hidden treasure, etc. Killing local mobs/robots may earn you a map or hint or something. But it should be something that you have to think about. It would be nice if someone with an Opalo could figure it out and get it. What I mean is brains as opposed to brawn (ie firepower).

Part 2
If one finds a treasure does that mean the legend is dead? Say for example some are story/mission based does the first person to finish the story kill the story for others? Will it be like an area that once "mined" will be absent of all treasure? If so will there be notification that such and such a treasure has been found so stop looking for it? I can think this would be helpful to know especially for noobs.

Part 3
Riddles: Something silly- Monty Python What is your quest scene anyone? Or something more classic like Bilbo Baggins getting the ring from Smeagol.

Codes: Something that would be great for robot treasures.
Thanks in advance

 

Why not something like a scientific treasure hunt?

What I miss on Calypso since years is scientific research. In 2007 I asked David Simmonds if it would be possible, that we colonists can do some research to get new things. Like a mission chain to get a BP totally new tool, weapon or armor part. So, we do the research and don't even know, what we get exactly. And the new BPs are coming from you (MindArk to that time), so no problem with balancing, because even if we don't know, we can only get, what the company is willing to give out. And it would be more natural than the actual "here is a number of new BPs".
But sadly David said to that time to all suggestions: "Not before VU 10."

Now we have VU 11.4.5, in less than two weeks planet NextIsland is coming online and still we don't even have all the pre VU10 systems back.

The problem for me was and still is, that we colonists are said to colonize a planet, but actual aren't allowed to.
For example: We have components we build since years. e.g. the Durable Coil. Why aren't we allowed to use the parts and build a magnetic accelerator? Like a MagGun. Think of it, we have all parts we need, but we aren't allowed to use them like a normal thinking human!
Or vehicles. We have matter/antimatter reactors, quantum tunnel technology - but we had no wheels for years! Now we have, but what are we allowed to use? Vehicle designs that are thousends of years old! Think of it, we are in the future! And we use a swedish military car - the RG 32M "Galten" - from 2009...

So, can we PLEASE get some treasure hunt on scientific and result-oriented basis?

 

What pops into my head.... pirates! Long John Silver and company, Yellowbeard, Johnny Depp. But thats just my imideate association with the term "treasure hunt".

If you ask what i'd like on a planet themed to be a treasure hunting place - obviously I'd like if there is treasure to be found. I had an idea about introducing Metal Detectors, posted under Wishlist. That idea might be relevant here.
Imagine using Detectors to find stuff other than ores/enmatter - other treasure burried in the ground. It could be the remains of a settler, armor set complete (but badly decayed, not L), weapon and other gear. Or just a few rounds of ammo someone lost.
Sometimes maybe alien artifacts - art, weapons, BP for a spaceship, whatever.

A treasure hunter might very rarely find an item that is only partially burried, but most all of the time a Detector would be needed. With some appropriate escavation tool. As per my wishlist-post - bigger and better Detectors available to those with higher Detector skills and the cash to pay.

I would like to have caves, some submerged perhaps, with strange and dangerous wildlife protecting good treasure hunt spots. Underground caves, tunnels, like in Elder Scrolls IV Oblivion for example, could be something. Some narrow and dark, claustrophobic, others opening into huge subterrain halls, mazes, forgotten war machinery (that sometimes works and shots at you). Caves are cool for treasure hunts!

Also large and very dense forests would do for me. No earth style pinetrees please, think alien. Explore to find old campsites or ruins where someone may have left something years or aeons ago, items now sunken into the ground after season upon season of grass and leaves falling and rotting to dirt on top of things.

Perhaps some previous civilization had one or more bases in orbit, SD (Strategic Defence)platforms or something on one or more moons - those could be places to explore for lost treasure. If we had flyers that could reach near space (not big enough for interplanetary travel) we could fly out into orbit and look for old satelittes and shuttles, maybe we would find some cool stuff that any space pirates out there missed. Proper sci-fi treasure hunting!

What does treasure hunt mean to me? As a kid I had the good fortune to live close to nature, I would roam about the local forest playing Robin Hood or something - and always explore and also look out for stuff. Someone might have dropped a coin while walking a path - some small tree might seem particularly well suited to become my new bow, empty bottles always good cause there was a cash-for return-empties thing. Playing in the forest was treasure hunting, and it was fun!
So I guess treasure hunting for me is about exploring places I have not yet been as much as looking for stuff. If Arkadia offers enough exiting places to explore (caves, ruins, forests, spacestuff, and so on) it's already treasure hunter's environments.

Now, just add treasure

 

Yep was one of my favorite movies when I was younger!!

I agree could be a very usefull tactic when thinking of missions!!

 

Some awesome replies especially Erastothenes! And lol talking mobs! Didn't think of that one before! what do they say? "stand still while i nom you!" Great to hear too that attention to detail is going to get priority. I actually sent a bunch of suggestions to ma or fpc today about just that sort of thing.

I like the idea of mazes, that's cool. Is it possible to include more environmental dangers too? I mean like a gas mask that works a little like the toxic shot.... Or armour? That protects you totally or partially against a methane filled atmosphere in a cave. I mean not instadeath but health deteriation. Firing a gun in such atmosphere may cause death too cause it ignites the methane

We now have fall damage so narrow ledges and deep pits can be used to create treacherrous path ways. Maybe we need to acquire planks to cross ravines.... Kinda the way McCormick uses stuff to find bugs What about timed environmental damage? So we have to GO at JUST the right moment....

can we have pitch dark places? How about a head torch?

 

Environmental dangers YES, could make things very interesting. And to be able to use stuff, like planks to get across ravines - more interaction with the environment- again YES! Torches for pitch black places, also in very very deep water! Creative Wistrel

 

Anyone remember Myst? Those puzzles and type things would go hand in hand with treasure hunting I think. I don't know how hard it would be to implement because they can't always be the same all the time since the answers would quickly show up on the forum and other places.

I would like to see team treasure hunts where it takes more than 1 person to solve something.... not only would this help societies but the community as a whole to work together. The first example that comes to mind is something like 6 players all need to stand in different spots and / or do something at the same time for a treasure to be found. Possibly each spot gets different treasure and can only be gotten once per player. That way you actually have 6 treasure hunts in one as everyone would need to be at each of the spots to collect them all. Of course, once activated have to start over. Anyway, might be a good way for a more difficult hunt and again, good for community building and cooperative game play.

 

YES! I second, third and fourth that!

 

Space Mining? Cooooooooool!!!

 

Myst was elegant, superb graphics for its time. I really liked it!

 

I tried Myst when it first came out but my computer then was too gimp so I could never really get into it. Thats when I found MMO's and started to build better ones so Myst fell to the wayside.

 

Yes yes yes! I'm excited too. Team missions like what we used to do with beacon missions. Wooooooot. There'll be stuff for friends and soc alike to do. That'll be cool. Hell yeah! Shucks. I'm hyper now. Apologies...

Environmental dangers...definitely possible to work out as there's already a precedence in PC. Gonna push it to the development team. They're gonna hate me for constantly buzzing around their work area. "Mwahahaha", evil laughs...Like what Dave has mentioned, the missions we're making currently cover much of what is suggested, concept wise. The implementation could still be tweaked to a certain extent as long as the boundaries of limitations are observed.

By the way, "Stand still while i NOM you" cracked me up. But my personal preference would still be mobs that make sounds instead of speaking.

 

I see.. Pirates.. A Map.. no.. a piece of a map.. solving mysteries and puzzles to get the whole map, follow the map, find the BIG treasure.. that is, if somebody else didn't get it find it first.

 

The Da Vinci Code style

If I do this Treasure Hunting thingy I will probably do something like this:
(may be in The Da Vinci Code style)

Every month place new unique item hidden somewhere on the planet. Or if you are more entusiastic place more items like that.
Then make NPC (1 or more) that willl give the starting mission, which will be to go to some place and find some clue or NPC with directions to the next point, and then the next and then the next until you get to the place with the unique item.
Who get's there first win the item, no second place prize.
All this places will be with creatures so you have to kill them not just for the loot and skill, but to progress to the item.
You can make few of those quests - easyer and harder so the old players can search for better item with harder missions and the new players can go for easy item.
I think the idea that times mathers will pump some more adrenaline into players and make them run faster and faster everyway they can to get first to the item.
And if you put some real uber items there the real hunt will begin
damn I'm gonna prepare my weapons and running boots right now if you make this