Mario Party, Uther Party + other wc3, Itadaki Street / Fortune Street + Dynamic Team

[Shougun]

Has been a desire of mine stated here and there but never called out specifically, and then ty_taurus caused me to want to post it here.

General concept is a new mode for the Saucer, split into two ideas. The first:

Mario Party, Uther Party, Itadaki Street / Fortune Street, Skibi Party:

In general this would be a new content that organizes many mini-games, including existing mini-games, and turns it into an overall content piece for group content with elements of competition and team work.

Here are some videos of example content for people who haven't heard of any these:
Mario Party: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y9BKCVx_mNk
Uther Party: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Np9dN5MTeU
Skibi's Party: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tr_U99-tTPc
Pyramid Escape: https://youtu.be/1w7wQx5-msg?si=Koly3lUUy5EhJvDX&t=79
Itadaki Street: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vIuO7wFh_9k

I assume most will know Mario Party, and I'd say Uther Party is very similar. The twist on the last three would be, Skibi Party takes mini-games and places it in-between Tower Defense content (so after ever few rounds of Tower Defense you get a mini-game with everyone else). Pyramid Escape wraps everything within a escape theme and also tends to spend more time on each mini-game (so less mini-games, but more investment into each one). Itadaki Street, which I took from ty_taurus, appears to be monopoly like game mixed in with mini-games (so unlike Skibi which is tower defense this then is monopoly).

The general idea here is that you get to have a lot of social fun with other players while goofing off on mini-games. I would try to limit the amount of time it takes to start a Saucer Party (lol), so if you can get 8 awesome, if you can only get 4, fine, heck excluding certain mini-games even 2 might work. Also consider fill in AI (although this would add potentially a lot more dev time...).

If mini-game ideas needed to be suggested or general format, I can, and I'm sure others can think of something- but I believe just seeing the above videos can give a really strong idea of great potentials and go from there. With your team, team vs team, and FFA competition.

--

Now for the other item, Dynamic Teams. I want to put this on FATE section as well but I believe a new party type should be added to the game to increase the smoothness of social aspects.

Dynamic Team in context of the saucer would basically create a Saucer Party-lite experience. You can choose to turn of dynamic party (entirely, or just for saucer). What will happen is as you complete content, like GATEs, or after certain conditions for mini-games, you will get into a party that doesn't cancel your queue.

This will build in chat, which is the first benefit, but it will also start to add objectives that come with benefits. Like a GATE pops up and it will be like 'complete the GATE!' and you go over there and trigger the GATE and it will pull everyone in (with a yes/no). By the way, like Island Sanctuary, please ensure the instanced GATEs don't interrupt queues either. There will be a leaderboard and benefits for competing as a team (even the objectives could be dynamic).

May even have some tweaks, or skills depending on the objective. Like if it was a "get as many people to complete the GATE as possible within X time from start" (which the dynamic team will watch for people not doing anything, or alternatively add people in the instance if they are not in a team). When in the team with a team objective it might be players get to cheer players at infinite distance which gives them a slight slow fall / ability to modify their fall while falling. Or a long cooldown ability to give them a "reset fall" that lasts for 30 seconds (or until they fall). Alternatively it might be get X to the end first, which is competitive (and ends when the # needed to get to the end get there), the people who get there first get a bonus but others still get stuff too. Abilities added then to mess with each other, with effects that are more powerful for those in the lead . Another example is dynamic parties created for Cactpot Jackpot, and there might be dynamic teams, with abilities to cheer and firework placed on the hot bar, and if anyone on the team wins there is a minor boost to others in that team. With the highest winner getting highlighted with glamour show lights, and the winning team getting an effect too.

If you really wanted could make Dynamic Team chat act as /say with infinite distance for players in the team (and normal say distance for everyone else). Not confident on that one, but it could help ensure that not only do people chat, but the existence of the teams increases the social element of even people not in the team. Now the main reason I had originally thought of this (I think calling them fire teams before), is for open world so players will get dynamically and smoothly sorted into parties for open world content without losing their queues or ability to queue.

A thing to note is there should be a way for a Dynamic Team to be shifted into a static party if players want, and there will be a message if the dynamic party is considering to remove you (like you haven't done anything for the last 5 minutes), AND therefore static parties should be able to enjoy the saucer dynamic content as well (if there is any added unique for that, if it's all in the Mario Party idea then that's fine). Dynamic party will have a special icon on the party list so it's obvious, anyone in the team can invite anyone within that dynamic parties jurisdiction into the party (jurisdiction meaning the zone or content concept, like anywhere in saucer, or a specific open world zone), an ability to initiate a vote (with cooldown) to switch to a static (static parties kill the queue, this is just a regular party).

--

TL;DR: Two ideas to increase social element within the saucer. One more dedicated and specific and the other more seamless, dynamic, but less fixed.

Thank you for reading