New content: Duty Invasion (Tactical PVP)

[LeoLupinos]

Wait, calm down, it's not what you think!

Sometime ago i saw a game (Breach) content called Veil Demon, and it consists into a player controlling a ghostly mass that follows the players around, summoning creatures and spawning traps. The Veil Demon itself can not be killed, so players must endure its pestering through the level. It's controlled by AI, and by a player in PVP mode.

With that in mind I've come with a more Final Fantasy'ish approach to it. I find it best fitting to a new mode of Deep Dungeon content.

The objective of the Ghost player will be "Causing a wipe once" within the time limit, with a reward of "Gets the final standard duty reward". While the objective of the party players would be "Survive the Spirit and complete the duty", with a reward of "Standard reward".

I find it better to have 2 modes:
Normal: Causing wipe does not end the duty, and prevents more invasions.
Hard: Causing wipe ends the duty, but if succeed, players get "standard reward +50%". Friendly fire enabled. Increases invasor duty timer limit, reduces cooldown of all Malicious Curses and Malifestation everytime a player receives avoidable AoE damage, misses mechanics or dies.

Now, what actions that ghost invasor can have to make a fair encounter?
I did thought of a original system, and some double edge actions that focus on confusing the players and luring them to make the wrong decisions, but if used wrong, it can become a fail to the invasor.
In hard mode, players can heal monsters and damage other players and monsters can also heal players and damage other monsters in this duty content, both directly or AoE. The decision making will be key to duty completion.

System: Malicious Curses.
* All of them share the same cooldown
* Can use on player or monster
* Target is immune to the same Type of Malicious Curse for 45s
* Is a buff/debuff with a delay of 5 seconds to take effect. It's important to have that delay, so that the players have a chance of adjusting to do the mechanic properly.

I've tried to balance all of the examples around using on monster or player:

Disease:
Inflict target with Malicious Curse. After 5s delay, turns into disease for 20s. Visually decreases Max HP proportionally with damage received. Esuna will remove the dbuff icon, but the dbuff will still be there. Heal to 100% original Max HP to cleanse it properly. SCH Fairy will not heal the affected player, as she sees it always 100% HP as everybody else. Can be cast on monster/boss to prevent players from keeping track of the HP.

Reverse:
Inflict target with Malicious Curse. After 5s delay, turns into Reverse for 20s.
Player: Received damage turns into received heals, and received heals turns into received damage. Esuna inflict bad breath statuses.
Monster: Damage dealt turns into received heals, and heal dealt turns into damage received.

Illusion:
Inflict target with Malicious Curse. After 5s delay, turns into Illusion. Visually Reverts the % values of HP for 20s. Tip: Can be cast on monster or player comboing with reverse to confuse players.

Shuffle:
Inflict target with Malicious Curse. After 5s delay, turns into Shuffle for 15s. Changes location with the farthest party member if players, or monster with farthest monster and increases movement speed, but shuffle Movement keys/autorun every 3s. Esuna can dispel it, but Shuffle will refresh again every 3s, for 15s.

Stealth:
Inflict target with Malicious Curse. After 5s delay, turns into Stealth for 10s, becoming invisible to targets farther than 3 yalms. Monster or Party member's HP values and location will not update if they are beyond 3 yalms, they will stay there until the 3 yalm condition is met. Can be dispelled with received AoE damage after initial 5s.
If target is monster: Not revelable by AoE for 5s and the next AoE mechanic is invisible, dealing 20% more damage.
If target is player: Not revelable by AoE for 5s and can't receive heals or damage directly if more than 3 yalm. AoE heals or damage can be received regardless of distance.

Berserk:
Inflict target with Malicious Curse. After 5s delay, turns into Berserk for 20s. Increases damage dealt, Heal dealt, received damage, received heal for every % of missing HP up to 100% increase for 50% HP missing since Malicious Curse starting point.

Bomb:
Inflict target with Malicious Curse. After 5s delay:
* If HP is more than 30%, turns into Far Bomb for 30s. Instantly ignites when HP reaches 15% with a large Doughnut AoE.
* If HP is less than 30%, turns into Bomb. Ignites after 5s with a wide AoE.
Bomb and Far Bomb inflict 99% Max HP damage within its AoE. Esuna instantly ignites Bomb.

True Reflect:
Inflict target with Malicious Curse. After 5s delay, turns into True Reflect for 10s. Reflects 100% of damage and heals back to caster.

Runaway:
Inflict target with Malicious Curse. After 5s delay, turns into Runaway for 10s.
Player: Get to top enmity if move, loses all Enmity if standing still.
Monster: All players target monster for the duration of Runaway if Monsters move,

Soul Swap:
Inflict target with Malicious Curse. After 5s delay, turns into Soul Swap for 20s. Swap HP bars with target's target Enemy/Ally. Respectively swapping incoming damage or heals.

Actions and abilities:

Malifestation: The next Malicious Curse don't have cooldown. 60s CD.

Jail: Places a visible trap on selected location and summons a destructible jail at the caster location for 60s. Can be triggered after being placed for 3s. Once triggered, teleports player/monster to jail. Jail has the same HP and defense as the player, or a default HP if monster. Player/Monster is not targetable inside the jail, but can target others outside the jail.

Puller:
Summons a destructible totem and marks the targeted player/monster. After 10s pulls the target to location and binds it. Destroy the totem to remove it's effect.

Wall:
Summons a destructible wide wall for 20s. After being placed for 3s it will harden up, locking any Player/Monster who is inside the wall with petrification debuff for the wall's entire duration. The wall has the same HP and defense as the first player, and a default HP if monster. If no player/monster is inside the wall, it will have default HP. Outside players/monsters can't attack or select things inside or through the wall.

Call Ally:
Monster/Totem is teleported to you. 60s CD.

While not complete, I hope you can think of multiple deadly combinations of Malicious Curses with the actions. I also hope this can give you a good view of my idea. With the right level design of monsters actions and bosses mechanics, it can be some trouble.

What do you think? I personally don't want another deep dungeon if they all will be a supper copy of palace of the death. They've made so little changes to HoH, I don't feel the next one being so different. And the PVP is so serious, I would like a PVP content that promotes laughs, while being unique and different than other MMOs.

Maybe it could be implemented with a new turn based content of FFXIV. I wonder how they could implement turn based, maybe a turn based PVP would be fun with high tactics. But let's stick to what we have for now.