Battle Arena

New building & end-game content.

The Battle Arena of the Gods is a very special arena built into a copy of Marion Crypt 2. To reach it, a player of sufficient strength need only say 'join the battle arena' in any safe room. They'll be teleported to the Battle Arena. Thereafter, saying 'leave the battle arena' will return them to the safe room from which they left. (AdminGoToLastSafeRoom is a new capability that can be used by other content as well)

Inside the Battle Arena, you will be placed into a spectator area in the middle, and you'll be unable to attack or cast. You will be able to see Team Zandramas displayed on your minimap by green halos, and Team Zaphod in red.

Saying 'join' will switch the user to one of the teams and throw them into the fight. Normal guild / soldier / shield relations do not apply. Both teams see their teammates as green halos and the enemy as red. Saying 'spectate' will return you to spectator mode.

The arena randomly distributes 9 flags instead of statues. Any given player may grab up to three flags. Anyone carrying a flag has a special highlight halo for easy detection (yellow and green for allies, yellow and red for enemies). Saying 'flags' will tell you how many flags are carried by each team and how many are neutral.

A team must control all 9 flags for 3 consecutive minutes to win. Dying, leaving, or going to spectator mode will randomly redistribute the flags and abort the timer. Saying 'time' will tell you how many seconds are left, in addition to the arena noises and messages screaming at you. You can't miss it - but I expect winning will be way harder than it sounds.

Every member of the winning team receives the full value of the jackpot. Losing team members receive 1/3rd of that value. Say 'jackpot' to see that value if you aren't following kill messages that also boost the jackpot. Each individual kill rewards the killer directly and adds to the jackpot. Rewards are small; players are meant to build up cash over time and lots of fighting among dozens of drivers. Players trying to sneak in and kill their own characters will find they're really wasting their time. If the Battle Arena works out, xp towards HP will be added as reward for winning very large Battle Arena fights.

The Battle Arena includes:

* fake deaths like the Tos Arena (you return to your team's base with full health/mana/vigor, held for 6 seconds)
* no reagent costs for spells
* no arrow depletion
* no durability hits for weapons or armor
* no line of sight fizzles or misses
* it is possible to improve skills and spells in the Battle Arena, albeit at a -90% imp penalty.

Many of those bullet points are part of a new room conditional called IsNoCostFightingRoom, so other rooms can be made 'free' to fight in for future content (real / fake deaths are separate from this). The entire Battle Arena concept itself is fairly generalizable, too, so we can easily make Battle Arena copies of almost any suitable room in the future if we want to.

For event purposes, the jackpot can be boosted by an admin, or, in the future, by several outside 'seed' scenarios meant to contribute real combat and real risk to the thing while you build up a jackpot worth fighting for.

I'm thinking the fights here should get pretty crazy. As I've eliminated every 'cost of doing business' even down to removing the need to walk somewhere, there's no reason 40 people can't pile in and suddenly 20v20 on a random night. Heck, you're even getting paid in shillings and imps to PvP. Have fun.