Combat is the most interesting part of the game, however playing through the current story multiple times to engage in it can become dull. As a means of testing the campaign module system, and getting more feedback focused around combat, it would be nice to have a Gauntlet type campaign that functions under the following conditions:
- Players enter with four level 1 characters.
- Players are thrown into a series of encounters on different (if possible)maps, where combat is the focus.
- Every encounter provides enough experience for the next level. Players are given the option to Long Rest after each encounter, so that they may level their characters.
- Once all encounters are completed, the campaign ends. Losing an encounter (all characters fallen) also ends the campaign.
This could be a barebones (voice acting and story-wise) campaign aimed at the combat portion of the game. Obviously, the team is focused on more important tasks but it would be nice as an extra if time permits.
Something like this is definitely needed but if I was the one to suggest how should it look I'd do it like this:
- you start with a party of any combination of levels,
- you are thrown into the area with multiple merchants that have all items in game for free,
- you have NPC's that give you any amount of xp you want,
- would be awesome if you could go back to any level but it may be impossible/difficult to implement but an option to reset a specific character to lvl 1 would be all right too,
- you can rest whenever you want,
- you can specify in which area you want to fight and with what you want to fight and whether you are surprised or you initiate combat and maybe even a level of lighting in the area (it could be easier to just implement a set of various area/encounter combinations),
- training dummies whose stats you can set or who have stats of certain enemies,
- if your party dies at any time you are returned to the main hub.
This would make theory-crafting much easier.
This could also lead to more testing being done on the combat and character creation side of things and thus more (and faster) reporting.
I like this idea a lot, I'm glad I'm not the only one who thought about it
I had an idea of one more area that could prove useful - one with various chasms/cliffs so we can easily test where we can climb/jump. Answering "can my character make this jump if I buff him with jump spell? Can he if I cast expeditious retreat as well? What if he drinks the potion of strength?" kind of questions. And also "does levitate help with getting in places" - it doesn't. But having this kind of area would enable people to easily discover it on their own if they wished so instead of asking on forums.
I had an idea of one more area that could prove useful - one with various chasms/cliffs so we can easily test where we can climb/jump. Answering "can my character make this jump if I buff him with jump spell? Can he if I cast expeditious retreat as well? What if he drinks the potion of strength?" kind of questions. And also "does levitate help with getting in places" - it doesn't. But having this kind of area would enable people to easily discover it on their own if they wished so instead of asking on forums.
A playground type area for testing various abilities would be useful.