How would I create an "escape" system which would incentivize players to contribute rather than camp

(Rather long title :stuck_out_tongue: )

Firstly, some context:

A friend and I are working on a little game horror/escape game which takes inspiration from a whole lot of others in the genre (piggy, amogus, murder mystery, and a whole bunch other)

The main idea of the game is that you would have a monster/killer, a bunch of players, and a hunter. The goal of the monster is to kill the players, the goal of the hunter is to kill the monster, and the goal of the players is to escape. (Unlike most of the games we took inspiration from, there are multiple escapes which players could contribute to in order to escape. Each escape has a limited amount of players able to use it once it is opened in order to make the other escapes useful)

We’ve got the design of the monster and hunter pretty much figured out. However, we couldn’t really figure how the escapes should work. We simply could not think of a way for the escapes to function that wouldn’t cause players to camp the escapes instead of actually trying to contribute.

We’ve got 2 basic designs, and a bunch of additions to each in attempting to solve our issue:

Idea 1

This was the original idea we had: A single person would choose who gets to go into the escape.
We originally had the person who placed in the last piece of what is needed to repair the escape choose, however, that obviously would be weird, so we thought that the best way would likely be letting the person with the highest contribution to said escape method choose.

The main issue with this is:

  1. What if they don’t choose?
  2. What if the player wasn’t close to the escape? (a possible solution would be to either wait for the player, or only allow the choosing of players at the escape, but both would have other issues)
  3. What if they only choose their friend?
Idea 2

Our second idea was to simply let players enter the escape themselves. The idea would be that after opening the escape, it would wait until it is either full, or a timer runs out.

This would obviously incentivize camping the escape, so I also proposed that there be a few spots of the escape reserved for players who contribute more. (that would open up to others after the timer is close to running out)

Problems with this method:

  1. Feels very artificial (as in, my proposed method to prevent camping)
  2. Still doesn’t prevent camping (theres still gonna be a few spots available to everyone, so people would still camp those)
  3. What if the spot was held but someone came over and was stuck outside? (theyd have to wait, which isn’t exactly what you want to do if the monster is chasing you)

(Sorry for the long post, but idrk how i’d shorten it without losing some information)

  • The first method would probably work (the issues wouldn’t actually be a problem)
  • The second method would probably work (the issues wouldn’t actually be a problem)
  • Neither methods would work (the issues would be too problematic/ theres a way better solution)

0 voters

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Ez:

Add an anti-camp. Everyone who stays in the same zone for a lot of time (e.g. 30 sec) will get their position reported to the monster.

EDIT

Or you can just let life go. They'll eventually be found by the monster. This option is actually good. This could make it more interesting

I’ve thought of that, but they can stay near the place still

and forcing players to run around wont work either, its not even hard to run in circles

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bump it up please i need answers

NONONO don’t do that! That can get you flagged it once happened to me!
Don’t bump!

oh wait so then wth do i do : P

I honestly dunno :stuck_out_tongue:
But perhaps you could give the monster a speed boost when close to the escapes, then just let life go. If they camp and do escape, they deserve it, because they were standing still in a more dangerous area.

Following this, you could give the monster speed boosts eventually (e.g. every 30 seconds) so players will know that they need to help or they’ll die

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