A proposition regarding Nelson's idea of implementing "Excursions" into Unturned II

Disclaimer: I understand very well that the Unturned II category of this forum contains a ton of suggestions that are being dished out on a daily basis and that Nelson may or may not have the time to review them all and that this specific topic that I’m addressing is still “very conceptual” as Nelson wrote on the Trello card and that it’s nowhere near being a priority but I would just like to contribute my take on this very specific topic since I might not have the time (or the same train of thought) sometime in the near future, so might as well put this one out there for the people on this forum to discuss.

I’ve been digging around the Trello and found that Nelson would like to implement an excursion concept sometime in Unturned II’s future development:

And as he currently sees it, he’s planning on allowing the player to “travel to the alternative reality” to carry out quick looting missions. And I couldn’t help myself but compare this to Tom Clancy’s The Division’s missions where you enter a highly infected area and whatnot (never played the game, just saw some videos when it first came out). So here’s my take on refining this idea so that when (or if) the time comes during which it will be implemented, my ideas will finally become somewhat relevant:

  • Make the excursion area a similar location to that of current 3.0 safezones as to avoid having players camp the sites to snipe survivors coming out of the excursion will valuable loot.

  • Replace the idea of an “alternative reality” with an actual real-time location that can only be accessed through the excursion prompt as to conserve the integrity of space-time in the current game session therefore keeping players immersed and not actually taking them on an alternative timeline quest in a different isolated environment while the rest of the players on the server are still on the current map. But this could be entirely irrelevant if excursions are to be implemented into singleplayer as well, in this case an alternative reality or even a campaign mission that jumps back and forth in time to help the player piece together the lore of Unturned would be perfect.

  • Piecing together what we said earlier, excursions can be accessed through a prompt located in the safezone (e.g.: an NPC with some form of transport, a blockaded tunnel etc.) teleporting the player (and his chosen teammates) to an isolated map on the server where the players will fight and loot their way through highly infested areas and returning to the safezone entrance they came from with the loot they successfully gathered.

  • Every excursion is an isolated instance of any other excursion in progress, thus players cannot meet non-teammates when on excursions. Now I’m no programmer and have no idea if this is feasible or if the engine can handle such a task so this part is up for edition if a more-knowledgeable person can give us some insight.

Thank you if you read the entirety of the post and I completely understand if the entire thing sounds very abstract and might be difficult to grasp but just try to compare it to The Division’s missions, it’s kinda similar.

What do you think?

1 Like

The darkzone is a PvP-esque area at the center of the map.

The alternate reality thing is part of the (albeit conceptual) Unturned II lore. Makes more sense for it to follow the planned lore imo. The alternate reality is planned to be similar to the Upside Down.

It’s feasible. Those are termed instance dungeons (often shortened to just instance) in MMOs.

7 Likes

Some other possible solutions include:

  • Put the entrances in locations that players can’t camp out at, like deadzones, volcanoes, or glaciers.
  • Don’t have the entrances be predictable locations built into the map. (Could be done by having some level of randomization to where these entrances appear, or by allowing players to use consumables/buildables to access the excursions.)

Not sure where the idea that time isn’t running parallel in the two dimensions comes from. It would really negate a lot of these problems if it did.

This doesn’t seem to avoid the immersion breaking transition you were worried about earlier, and has less of an in universe explanation than traveling to an alternate dimension would.

4 Likes

Molton and Harvest already got everything I was going to say, but I would just like to point out that for a first (real) post, this is incredibly well done. It’s clear you’ve put effort into thinking of original ideas, practically justifying them and even being considerate of common meta such as oversuggested topics. While there are some holes in this concept, they are rather well addressed by you, and generally this post is done at a higher level of quality than that of most people here, including many Regulars (not going to point any fingers, y’all know who you are :smirk:).

Nice job!

3 Likes

In hindsight, maybe “teleportation” wasn’t the best word to use when describing what would happen during an excursion. What I really meant is that players seem to enter an otherwise inaccessible location on the map but of course, unbeknownst to them, the behind-the-scene mechanics actually take them in an isolated instance in order to avoid any further contact with the outside and any unwanted trespassing into the excursion area by players that may have found a bug were it an actual location on the large scale map.

I’ve heard a lot of suggestion towards this that it should be similar towards The Division’s dark zones where it’s extremely confined or dangerous such as a Scorpion 7 headquarters. There’ll be unique loot within but similar to a Starcraft II evolution mission where there’s two choices (items) you can find, but they’re mutually exclusive, meaning you can only take one per excursion. These might be items such as high power weapons and ammo, or maybe something that’ll increase your base like a special sentry or more efficient generator.

1 Like

I was thinking of it being more of a “dungeon raid” kind of gameplay, where you take out enemies and get out alive with any valuable loot you find.

The excursion could end in a variety of ways, either by killing all the enemies present in the current excursion or maybe completing a specific objective such as rebooting a generator or finding a certain note or the excursion could be more of a laissez-faire all you can loot buffet where you get as much loot as you can and leg it before the sheer amount of zombies overruns your team.

Excursions are supposed to be literally impossible to live in for more than a certain amount of time. This should be done via enemies in the excursion areas as well as likely a constant source of radiation. There should be gear that lets you withstand the radiation, of course, but there should be nothing to make you immune. Between the constant rush of enemies (there should be very large amounts of strong enemies constantly coming your way, making sure you drain through ammo quick) and rad damage, this would force players to leave at a certain point. Good loot could be scattered about and would certainly be a risk/reward situation.

1 Like

This topic was automatically closed 28 days after the last reply. New replies are no longer allowed.