Tower of 500 Levels

[CygnusX]

You wake up to an unusually high level of commotion outside.  You go to your balcony and instantly realize what all the fuss is about.  In the forest, several miles from your city, a black onyx tower has risen from the earth that extends above the clouds.  As you sit there, gasping at its magnificence, one of the King's messengers burst through your chamber door.  He asks you to start gathering your things as the King requires your immediate attention.  As you begin looking for your sword, the messenger, speaking from his own nervousness, begins telling you the rumors he's heard of the tower.  It seems the night patrol first noticed it shortly after midnight, catching one of the watchmen's eye as it gleamed in the light of the full moon.  The first patrol on the scene has discovered a large iron door at the bottom of the tower that allows access inside.  Several guardsmen have gone in, but none have come out.  The King request that you gather a group of your choosing and enter the tower.  It is imperative your Kingdom be the first to discover the mysteries the tower conceals before a rival Kingdom has the opportunity to claim its contents as their own.

TLDR:  A large tower appears suddenly over night.  You have bee charged with entering the tower and uncovering its mysterious contents.

What are some things you'd expect to find/do in such a tower?  I have considered:

Sneak around, explore, search aggressively.
Monsters... lots and lots of monsters.
Multiple floors which need to be climbed.  There are harder monsters the higher you travel.
Health Shrine - Heals your missing HP.
Traps - That need to be dodged (agility), disarmed (wisdom)
Gold - For new weapons/items (you get a special device before your mission that turns gold into goodies).
Torches found on walls - Allows you to search more aggressively without the fear of sneak attacks from monsters.
Ferries - that bring you back to consciousness if you get knocked out.
Wake up several floors down from where you were after getting knocked out.
Rankings - Based entirely on the floor your'e on and your Xp.
Socket Items - To put in your weapons/armor.
Level up after fighting monsters.
Join a group and share inventory.
Trade w/ other players.
Find a statue that appears to be blocking an object.  Do you have the strength to move the statue?
Find a secret staircase.  Do you go up?
Find a treasurechest, do you have a key?  Also, find key.
You find a scroll.  Reading it, and giving 100 gp will give you +1 STR.  Do you use it now?
Find a health potion, greater health potion, greatest health potion, etc.
Find a library.  You read a story and gain +15 experience.
Quests?  Example:  Find a book.  Book contains story about a good wizard locked away through a blood seal.  Find a room of summoning.  Find a vile of blood.  Pour blood on seal?  Yes/No.
You sneak up on a member of a rival team.  Who is it?  And, do you want to attempt to knock them out?  Yes/No.
(From LORD) - You find a wall with some etches.  You decipher them (shoutbox).  Do you wish to add your own etchings?

Some other juicy bits.  The tower is alive.  You will be greeted by a set of eyes in the wall of the tower that predicts your upcoming death.  As you climb the various floors, the tower is pleased at your success, and begins telling you why it exists.  The tower is a jail, meant to seal away some of the most vile creatures that ever existed.  Until yesterday, it had been buried in the earth so that no-one could ever enter and nothing could ever escape.  But, like a splinter in the human body, the earth has rejected the onyx tower due to the evil it contains.  The tower is now allowing various adventurers to enter in hopes that one of them can defeat the evil within before it grows strong enough to escape. 

[leZourite]

Looking forward to play this game when it's finished !

[CygnusX]

Also, I want to make this into a grinding game.  IE, no turns per hour, rather 1 turn ever xxx seconds for as long as you're sitting at your computer.  If anyone has any suggestions for the formula for determining wait between actions, I'd like to hear them.

[saljutin]

easy solution:
give lots of turns but limit max turns
similar system every generic FB game uses and mafia game

[CygnusX]

yeah, the mafia game is what i was going after for turns.

The reason for this is 3 fold:
Problem 1) In most BBG systems, players lower in rank (late joiners, made an early mistake, etc) have difficulty passing players higher in rank.  To compound this even further, turns by-the-hour limit the rate at which a player can grow as the #1 player will likely use all his turns just as the #2 player.  To compound this even further still, rank swap isn't as bad as players feeling 'defeated' that they cannot do anything to climb to the top.

Problem 2) When a player runs out of turns, they leave.  By limiting the time before a new turn is generated to just a few seconds or just a few minutes....  a player is more likely to stay on the site.

Problem 3) I have had players directly tell me that they are OK w/ grinding to get ahead, which was a total shock to me as a developer.

I'm currently considering starting a player w/ one turn per 3 seconds for the first 10 actions, then slowly increasing the time between actions by 1 second for each click over 10.  Ie, click 11 is 4 seconds, click 12 is 5, etc.  I'll continue this until 5 minutes, at which point I'll convert to some sort of (clicks^(1/a)) type of addition formula where a > 1.  I also plan on letting the user 'level up' by click 8.  That way, players will hopefully feel that their account has value, and will want to continue adding to its value.

[Chris]

Play: Adom, Nethack, Crawl and Angband if you haven't yet.