Cooperative play - Dungeons?

Lately everyone’s been obsessed with the raid nerfs, and there were tons of complaints regarding the desire to drop out of alliance wars when they first started… so I thought I’d actually suggest a new feature be added that encourages cooperative play. Besides, competitive play wasn’t what brought me here to begin with - it was the fact that so many game types are merged into one awesome game here - so why not continue the trend?

Dungeons would be a great way to bring people together, although it would require a lot of work to get it done right. What I’m thinking would be the first step is a party system. Alliances are great but the reason a party system would work better is because dungeons need a more strict timeline to complete if you want the challenge to be worth the rewards. Speaking of rewards, that would be the whole motivation for implementing a new feature so lets get this proposal out of the way: shared but guaranteed drops. If 4 people work together where the aim is to win rare loot, they should not have to face RNG at the end. By having the loot shared, the teamwork going into a Master Thief’s hideout (for example) is because I need trap tools, while player 2 needs a hidden blade and player 4 could really use that last poison dart. Thematically the dungeons would be able to guarantee a 4* material drop and two 3* materials, without breaking the game so long as players are limited to the quantity of dungeons they can participate in over the course of a month.

So now that we know why we want to play, how do we set it up? What I propose is 5 different dungeons, and several stages leading up to them. If you really want to push the cooperative nature of the feature (and at the same time dissuade multiple accounts from a single person) - you could carry over the feature from Alliance Wars where each hero is only usable 1 time throughout the dungeon. Players would choose 15 heroes to bring with them, and then progress through 7 to 9 stages before arriving at the final boss, who should take a few flags to beat. Each stage and the final boss would require a dungeon flag per attempt, so with 3 teams per player the number of flags used per dungeon would max out at 12. By limiting the rate of regen for dungeon flags, and capping it at 3 you can easily regulate the participation in dungeons monthly - or down the line introduce a new flask from your recently introduced super titans to regen 3 dungeon flags even.

But if we’re going to introduce dungeons, they gotta have an increased level of difficulty right? So in my earlier example of the Master Thief’s hideout - you could reintroduce the easter eggs as unstable potions… in an ice dungeon you could bring back the frozen tiles so the giant ice construct at the end isn’t just another pushover. With dungeons the possibility to change up the gameplay and make it tougher exists, whereas just adding higher level titans only means higher monster stats and more difficult to handle special skills. I really think a new level of cooperative play would bring a much needed element to this game, and be a refreshing chance to break away from pure RNG without breaking the rate of advancement in the game. And if parties weren’t only limited to alliances members - there’s a reason for a friendslist to be added, a way to play with folks I get along with (or hell even those I don’t) on the forum that aren’t in my training alliance. Season 2 is necessary because autoplay doesn’t bring anything to the entertainment factor for those that have been here over 5-6 months… but when you’re ready to start your next big project I really hope you consider this at the least a source of inspiration for what comes after.

Now, the extra details I considered because I have a hard time stopping the creative juices lol.

Master Thief Hideout - poison darts, hidden blade, trap tools
gameplay mechanic; unstable potions (functioning like easter eggs)
8 stages of bandits, Master Thief special skill cleave and counter.

Ice Dungeon - mysterious tonic, warm cape, orb of magic
gameplay mechanic; frozen tiles (like the winter event)
7 stages of ice creatures/cryomancers, Ice Construct special skill Glacial Shatter.

Orc Stronghold - royal tabard, hidden blade, sturdy shield
gameplay mechanic; revenge arrows (like alliance wars. I know people hate them but I love the challenge and it makes sense in this dungeon)
9 stages of various orcs, Orc General special skill Khan’s Order - always starts with 2 support orcs when a dungeon flag is used.

Ancient Monastery - farsight telescope, trap tools, warm cape
gameplay mechanic; rainbow tile (for each turn the tile is not used it changes to another random element, these tiles give bonus mana to enemies hit by them and none to a hero)
8 stages of monks/guardian spirits, Temple Guardian special skill Rite of Judgement.

Elven Tomb - mystic rings, orb of magic, sturdy shield
gameplay mechanic; trap tile (tile counts down similar to the easter egg, but instead of damaging all heroes if not used - only hits the hero in line with it, deals 33% more damage to any target affected and removes mana instead of granting any)
9 stages of skeletons/mummies, Undead Elven Lord special skill Midsummer’s Dream - always starts with 2 support skeletons when a dungeon flag is used.

And some extra details on party mechanics…
Each party of 4 consists of a leader and 3 members. Parties that are formed unlock a party chat tab, and only exist for a 2 hour time period. The person who invites others to a party becomes the leader, and players can be invited from either their profile or a friend list. Players must be online and in the same game version to be invited. Invitations must be accepted to be added to a party, and are generic system messages to avoid harassment concerns. Players can only send out 3 invitations in a 10 minute window to reduce spam, unless of course an invitation is declined, or a player disconnects/logs out from the party. Before entering a dungeon a party leader must either choose to randomly distribute rewards or assign members to recieve them - and the designation is shown to the rest of the party before flags are used. Once a dungeon is started no new members can be added to the party until completion/failure occurs.

That’s all I got, hope you enjoyed the read.