Mini events are random occurrences that happen when you do certain things. For example, you decided to cut down trees. You chop some trees, you know, just a normal day then you decide to cut more and more trees and suddenly, a mysterious man appears and teleports you to an isolated place. You talk to the mysterious man and he says things regarding you cutting trees and stuff, and now he wants you to plant trees in the area. Once you're done planting the trees, the mysterious man says stuff like "Next time don't cut trees blah blah blah" and gives you something as a token of reward. You get teleported back to the place you were before. After that, well continue what you were doing of course [besides cutting more trees or if you dare]. Mini events can range from helping a poor man to acquiring the lost gem to killing evil chickens. Most of these events would warp you to another place although they can also happen from where you are but, it might be difficult since planets are randomly generated and who knows, catching a flying pig in a dark, sophisticated environment with lots of tentacles and not-so-friendly-creatures? Sounds fun but it's weird....well anyway, depending on the mini event, teleporting to a randomly generated place would be easier. During a mini event, the inventory or some of the HUD might be disabled. Some mechanics of the game might be altered to. Depending on the mini event, the player might only have a sword or a flashlight. Some events might show a new interface of buttons and stuff to complete the assigned task. You may not choose to do the task or simply ignore the NPC but, in doing so, you would be teleported into another place [in starbound] with no rewards. They won't teleport you to a dangerous place but they can teleport you far from where you were before. Regarding rewards, it depends on how you've done the task and how much you've progressed [if there is a level/experience system then that would also matter]. High geared/level players would be offered better rewards than lower level players and players that have a record of completing the events will also be given better rewards. Rewards range from small acorns to rare vanity stuff. Mini events might also lead to another place where you can capture a specific animal or discover other stuff [treasures, plants and what not]. Mini events won't happen immediately by doing things which will trigger the event. Instead, they have a tiny chance of occurring once you've met the requirements. Sometimes, they won't appear at all. If you have consistently completed events successfully, you would encounter them less frequently. So basically, mini events are rare. Ba dum tssss! Note: When the NPC gives you a reward and your inventory is full, he/she will ask you to drop an item from your inventory.
Reminds me of the random events they have in Runescape. Still, I'm not very inclined towards taking players away from what they're doing and putting them somewhere where they may not want to be.
I think you are playing too much Runescape,but yes,that idea is good. You are happily adventuring through the planet,and then,someone spawns,and teleport you to an event room,and he requests something for you,and if you complete with success,he give you an awesome reward.But when fail...Let's say...Futz.
A bit too close to Runescape if you ask me. I'm pretty sure at least 3 of the suggestions were actually in the game. But as a general idea I think it's great, I wouldn't be surprised if they didn't already put thought into it.
Oh! those could be secret easter-egg side quests! And they reward unique items, with unique random stats "The ancient chop-chop waraxe of the wicked hellish midnight" "Stats: + 1 atk"
I was thinking of a quest/easteregg that was The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy related like you start out with a towel in the beginning of the game or The Restaurant at the end of the Universe or something like that.
I'd rather things more fitting into spacey theme and less of a need to warp people away. Stuff like Meteor showers, finding stranded people and the like but more creative (people stranded on meteors?) Not everyone has friends that play this game, and a lot of people aren't interested in playing with randoms online.
I'm not too keen about the teleporting to random places every single time; wouldn't it be just simple to have random NPCs show up at different parts of the map with quests, and that's it? If you can't do the quest because of environment, or just plain lazy, you can walk away from the NPC so he's a little ways off the screen, and a prompt on the bottom of the screen can come up saying "Do you wish to continue such-n-such's mission/plea/quest?" asking you to press "y" or "n". It'll go away only when you make a response, but it really doesn't get in the way, since it is just a tiny prompt, anyway. After another 10 minutes of being away, the message will show up again, in case now you do not wish to do it. Any thoughts on that tweak?
Yea, I really didn't like the "randomly teleport player away from X with no regard for what the player wants at all or how it would fit in the theme of the game" thing going on. But random events that do fit and make sense would always be welcome.
