The LoTC Caveman Experience

[Barcardi 489]

Hey guys,

 

So I never know how to crack on with these shit, so I will just break it down as easily as I know how. Caves! They're a mad thing, aren't they?

I don't know if you guys ever explored the caves that connected the Haense and Numendil, but I made them as apart of a venture to see about asset spinning to try and construct large-scale caves which would innevitably put you travelling underground for ages; unknowing of where you are, or what direction you are going. If you've fucked up and you're walking into a dead end, or maybe some darkspawn or bandits are waiting around the corner waiting to rob you, murder you or inflict you with what curse they may bare. That was the general gist anyway, and the initial idea was meant to branch from that.

 

There was also the addition of hopefully someday, having clearance to put metal or plant nodes deep within them, or mining nodes to allow out of nation ore gathering in risky scenarios. Archeology world building, or even treasure hunts like the Uncharted & Tomb Raider games. You could potentially hide your lair deep inside one, and have the main entrance and control point in a hidden location difficult to locate. Maybe even ultimately having smuggling routes into cities for darkspawn, or wanted criminals hidden by parkour routes and death traps where one wrong move will result in your demise. The caves were designed to cause suffering and potential death to traverse, because in the realm of cave diving, that is the reality. But, of course this caused backlash.

 

I don't know if anyone remembers, but there were genuine death traps which caused people to lose their stuff - which sucks, I know but this wasn't designed for the slice of life roleplayers who wanted to explore without risk. This should have the same consequence as wondering around a spook base = potential death or injury. Of course, there are always a few bottle necks with the current design.

 

Originally it was built from a cave system that took me around 40-50 hours to complete, which acts as around 50% of the asset list. Then when the Haense cave was built, that added the remainder. This gave me around 9 assets individually and took around 6 hours to make the extension from Haense to Numendil, and now from a little messing around and trying to experiment with a new formula (I had theorised how to try and build an all purpose asset, and use ChatGPT to render the commands needed to work it for the tunnels but this was ineffective, and ultimately as difficult to render.) Now with a bit of experimentation with World Edit, manual building and just general labour, i've come up with a list of 22 assets with some of these still being a work-in-progress, however colour developed so they can have individual textures to spice up the designs as I was told some of it looked the same. But, we were ultimately cut short due to doing this as an unsanctioned operation without approval from Admin.

 

Even when I dissapeared from the server due to my life happening, I was recieving routine messages per week from people asking about the cave and when they'd be extended or overhauled as people found usage for them. The people I was expecting to use the caves as well, and for that I am forever happy because it meant the work got to the people who needed it. But, I am trying to prove this with the community that this as a concept will work, or at least be used by a section who will create a good roleplay area with it.

 

Ultimately I don't care if this is used for a staff event, player event, lair, exploration or otherwise - these are quality of life improvements for a very specific subsect of LoTC who I know can make some good roleplay out of this, and ultimately expand this out to other sections of roleplayers who will benefit from the expansive and open nature of this concept. I believe with around 50 more hours worth of asset building, and bringing that list potentially to 50-100 assets of unique looks would allow the map to be fully designed to allow a cave dweller to go from one end to the map to the other, and maybe travel to the other quarter and the job to be done and operational within 30-40 hours of arranging.

 

So again, what are your thoughts? Who hates the idea, who likes the idea, who would find value in it and would actively or even semi-actively use it? Whose already explored the caves and wanted to add input, who hasn't but likes the idea? Even just sharing the link aids massively.

 

Just for reference, anyone who is looking for the caves can find them in these locations:

[gremlockgremlin 755]

Can we dwarves do a moria expedition larp finally? 

[Helmet 1454]

Rather than fanboy over how awesome these caves are, im just going to compress my thoughts into a couple bullet points with paragraphs beneath them in spoilers to explain my reasoning.

- Layout incites a sense of discomfort/being lost, enhancing immersion

Spoiler

Repeating assets are not always a bad thing, and theres enough variation to make each chamber feel different enough from one another if you really squint (placement of plants, as an example).
The assets that are being reused are specifically cave layouts/shapes of the rooms. Theres enough variety to run into different/new cavern shapes every now and then, and even after running around for +30 minutes in the caves I've yet to find them all- making it fresh enough to not feel lazy, but repetitive enough to hammer in the feeling of "Hey, have I been here before?" which I personally love from both an OOC and an IRP standpoint. OOCly, its just good maze/game design, disorienting the player. IRPly, its a terrifying and nagging feeling of getting no where closer to the exit, not given to your character by any supernatural properties but instead just simply by it's layout.

- Design in certain areas place emphasis on claustrophobia/self doubt, enhancing immersion even further

Spoiler

The lower areas of these caves are a lot tighter, some forcing you to crouch or even crawl in order to traverse the area- and certain water areas will force your character to take at minimum ~5 hearts of damage from drowning if you aren't careful.
Why are these good? Well, it uses mechanics from the game itself to leave an imprint on oneself OOCly and IRPly.
Crawling/crouching is a far better way to show to a player that a place is cramped, rather than having a build someone can OOCly run through easily with a sign saying IRPly the place is very tiny and hard to squeeze through.
The especially large water sections which can give drowning damage as you traverse them however, maximize the self-doubt someone may have both OOCly & IRPly when exploring- as the air pockets are usually just out of reach before you begin taking damage, or out of sight. This screams (if it hasn't been yelled enough lately) that the environment itself is hostile and dangerous- and while places like the ice caverns in Almaris were terrible at showing this via randomly dropping you 100 blocks if you weren't careful, the caves succeed by slowly ticking away at hunger/health through these slow acting hazards. It's nothing to worry about if you have food, but if you screw up enough/run out of food it can become lethal. And people aren't FORCED to go through these hazards either, theres usually an alternative route around them too.

- Acts as a stage for more interesting avenues of RP

Spoiler

Probably the simplest to explain.
The freedom both ST and Players have when hosting/setting up events is a lot more grand.
Theres plenty of room for player hosted events.
Alternatively, imagine a PVE event where a node of metal or loot has been left somewhere in the cave, and the goons gotta find it.
ST hosting more traditional events can sett up ruins/entrances to their event sites within these caves, and leave hints throughout or outside of the cave itself as to the location of the event site. Think mori ruins, dwarven architecture, nature-infested areas, volcanic caverns for lesser dragon lairs, etc, etc. 
Even spook players which can establish their lairs inside, and hunt people in these dizzying caves when they attempt to find the lair inside. This shit is MADE for werewolves, paleknights, wights, & vampires to flourish within, and for normal folk to really feel the weight of such a journey from both an IRP and an OOC standpoint.

ST management, if they were to shoot caves like this down, would be missing out on a LOT of potential fun- whether it be player held events or not. Actually good cave systems are either restricted to 1 time events, or are very limited in design due to lack of assistance from the server. Let them actually be apart of the world/map.

Edited October 21, 2024 by SlitheryC1

[King_Kunuk 3022]

Cave systems and the deep dark

[kuebiko 684]

i really like these caves, and i would love to see them utilized more for events and player builds. Please give us a secret lair in the big scary cave. It would be so rad. My only input  has to do with players dying while exploring the cave, which serves no one. Yes, your slice of life explorers won't go venturing in but by killing players mechanically on accident the caves are punishing players for being curious. The water part is fine, but there probably shouldn't be areas that nearly kill a player. 

[Aquarius 87]

I feel I should certainly comment on this, as I actually have done some interactions with the caves fairly recently. 

I had explored the caves a couple times, and only recently, did I along with a group find a hidden door in the cave. It was here I made a bit of an exploration team, made it an official heist, and got to explore things a bit further into the cave. While we were a bit disappointed there was no loot to be had, it was still a rather fun experience, and I would certainly look forward to expansions to how the caves work.  

Getting more official stuff connected to the caves could be great, and I hope to see it in the future.

[Onnensr 1908]

As the latest victim of the water portion, please for the love of God add more air pockets. All my air and 98% of my healthbar is insane.

Everything else though was awesome, stumbled upon it genuinely not knowing what it was and my travelling companion and I stuck around for a long, long time just enjoying the mystery of it (if it was an event, some crazy elaborate entrance to a lair, etc). I always hoped LOTC would have more random, strange, interesting map locations not entirely connected to some on-going narrative!

[Barcardi 489]

16 minutes ago, Onnensr said:

As the latest victim of the water portion, please for the love of God add more air pockets. All my air and 98% of my healthbar is insane.

Everything else though was awesome, stumbled upon it genuinely not knowing what it was and my travelling companion and I stuck around for a long, long time just enjoying the mystery of it (if it was an event, some crazy elaborate entrance to a lair, etc). I always hoped LOTC would have more random, strange, interesting map locations not entirely connected to some on-going narrative!

 

Honestly, this does keep coming up and I am considering it. The underwater sections were designed to take out half the health bar as a general for the idea that going under is always a risky move, but I will see about an adjustment in the further sections. They were all tried and tested manually to see the variance anyway, but yeah. Definitely is something I will keep into account. I'm glad to hear it was found in just general exploration though, that is the intention with a lot of these. While the major spots would be visibly obvious, there is hidden entrances/exits and will eventually be a secondary line above or around the caves such as crawl spaces or drop points to ambush or escape when needed.

 

44 minutes ago, Aquarius said:

I feel I should certainly comment on this, as I actually have done some interactions with the caves fairly recently. 

I had explored the caves a couple times, and only recently, did I along with a group find a hidden door in the cave. It was here I made a bit of an exploration team, made it an official heist, and got to explore things a bit further into the cave. While we were a bit disappointed there was no loot to be had, it was still a rather fun experience, and I would certainly look forward to expansions to how the caves work.  

Getting more official stuff connected to the caves could be great, and I hope to see it in the future.

 

If I am greenlit, I am hoping to add some mining nodes as the basic starts. A lot of nations safeguard their nodes which is understandable, and I understand having open nodes may cause a bit of havoc with the market but given the circumstances you could be in with the caves, and if properly coordinated with the villainy arcs of LoTC - I feel like this is an easy win for everyone. Alongside that, I am hoping to include further questing in a sense to explore for archeological roleplay if I can secure the lore involved with it. But again, awaiting greenlight.

 

47 minutes ago, kuebiko said:

i really like these caves, and i would love to see them utilized more for events and player builds. Please give us a secret lair in the big scary cave. It would be so rad. My only input  has to do with players dying while exploring the cave, which serves no one. Yes, your slice of life explorers won't go venturing in but by killing players mechanically on accident the caves are punishing players for being curious. The water part is fine, but there probably shouldn't be areas that nearly kill a player. 

 

Originally, they are easy to pass and are vetted multiple times by multiple people to see the complexity of the task - or at least this was the original case with the first cave. I understand it isn't an easy win, but it keeps to the dangerous nature of the caves and poses a non-active risk for those exploring it. I'll draft a few ideas though, leave it for parkour with diminishing health if failed.

 

3 hours ago, King_Kunuk said:

Cave systems and the deep dark

 

I can do cave systems, the pain of a deep dark and trying to get that approved seems a lot worse. I can barely build a cave under the wilderness without chaos ensuing.

 

3 hours ago, SlitheryC1 said:

Rather than fanboy over how awesome these caves are, im just going to compress my thoughts into a couple bullet points with paragraphs beneath them in spoilers to explain my reasoning.

- Layout incites a sense of discomfort/being lost, enhancing immersion

  Reveal hidden contents

Repeating assets are not always a bad thing, and theres enough variation to make each chamber feel different enough from one another if you really squint (placement of plants, as an example).
The assets that are being reused are specifically cave layouts/shapes of the rooms. Theres enough variety to run into different/new cavern shapes every now and then, and even after running around for +30 minutes in the caves I've yet to find them all- making it fresh enough to not feel lazy, but repetitive enough to hammer in the feeling of "Hey, have I been here before?" which I personally love from both an OOC and an IRP standpoint. OOCly, its just good maze/game design, disorienting the player. IRPly, its a terrifying and nagging feeling of getting no where closer to the exit, not given to your character by any supernatural properties but instead just simply by it's layout.

- Design in certain areas place emphasis on claustrophobia/self doubt, enhancing immersion even further

  Reveal hidden contents

The lower areas of these caves are a lot tighter, some forcing you to crouch or even crawl in order to traverse the area- and certain water areas will force your character to take at minimum ~5 hearts of damage from drowning if you aren't careful.
Why are these good? Well, it uses mechanics from the game itself to leave an imprint on oneself OOCly and IRPly.
Crawling/crouching is a far better way to show to a player that a place is cramped, rather than having a build someone can OOCly run through easily with a sign saying IRPly the place is very tiny and hard to squeeze through.
The especially large water sections which can give drowning damage as you traverse them however, maximize the self-doubt someone may have both OOCly & IRPly when exploring- as the air pockets are usually just out of reach before you begin taking damage, or out of sight. This screams (if it hasn't been yelled enough lately) that the environment itself is hostile and dangerous- and while places like the ice caverns in Almaris were terrible at showing this via randomly dropping you 100 blocks if you weren't careful, the caves succeed by slowly ticking away at hunger/health through these slow acting hazards. It's nothing to worry about if you have food, but if you screw up enough/run out of food it can become lethal. And people aren't FORCED to go through these hazards either, theres usually an alternative route around them too.

- Acts as a stage for more interesting avenues of RP

  Reveal hidden contents

Probably the simplest to explain.
The freedom both ST and Players have when hosting/setting up events is a lot more grand.
Theres plenty of room for player hosted events.
Alternatively, imagine a PVE event where a node of metal or loot has been left somewhere in the cave, and the goons gotta find it.
ST hosting more traditional events can sett up ruins/entrances to their event sites within these caves, and leave hints throughout or outside of the cave itself as to the location of the event site. Think mori ruins, dwarven architecture, nature-infested areas, volcanic caverns for lesser dragon lairs, etc, etc. 
Even spook players which can establish their lairs inside, and hunt people in these dizzying caves when they attempt to find the lair inside. This shit is MADE for werewolves, paleknights, wights, & vampires to flourish within, and for normal folk to really feel the weight of such a journey from both an IRP and an OOC standpoint.

ST management, if they were to shoot caves like this down, would be missing out on a LOT of potential fun- whether it be player held events or not. Actually good cave systems are either restricted to 1 time events, or are very limited in design due to lack of assistance from the server. Let them actually be apart of the world/map.

 

Big appreciation, my friend. Definitely gave the best and most useful review while testing the new designs.

 

3 hours ago, gremlockgremlin said:

Can we dwarves do a moria expedition larp finally? 

 

I had to google it, but theoretically you'd be able to travel to every end of the map with majority of places being interconnected to large tunnels across the map with their own subsections, tunnel lines and so forth. Numendil and Haense was a proof of concept of a long range tunnel.

[Unwillingly 18096]

4 hours ago, Barcardi said:

don't know if anyone remembers, but there were genuine death traps which caused people to lose their stuff - which sucks, I know but this wasn't designed for the slice of life roleplayers who wanted to explore without risk.

just gonna come out and say that people didn't dislike this because "waaahh my slice of life I dont like risk" people disliked it because it was uninteractive to fall into a 50 block deep death pit out of nowhere and pop before u can even emote or react. if u wanna invoke "risk" there are ways to do this other than popping people MCly and masking it as risky exploration RP bc the truth is that it's just unfun to most players and if the majority of people dislike it it's probably for a reason

 

like I don't know, make paths that require u to parkour through and strategically navigate, make labyrinths or hidden areas to discover, and if you really want to make "traps" just let people fall into an inescapable pit so they can SS out afterward. popping people on purpose for shock value is just lame

[FlemishSupremacy 6115]

An expansive underdark WOULD help us get more mileage out of our maps 

 

Personally, I was a big fan of exploring the cave system

[Enlightenment 2295]

^ real

[Laeonathan 5889]

i am a cave supporter