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"ticket123" a pink heart-shaped ticket
I remember, involve me and I
learn.
-Benjamin Franklin
Though, I usually just don't log on for the duration.
I remember, involve me and I
learn.
-Benjamin Franklin
And that's a viable IC response to that thread of RP--'oh, people are trying to steal my blood and I don't want them to? Guess I'll hang out where they can't get to me.'
My artifact idea is the first 'splintering essence' of spirit shards from some of the last druids in the basin. Spread across all off the lands, players will find monsters driven into madness and when defeated, their corpse will reveal a spirit stone and a message. Each fragment is split up into pieces and when assembled, you get a full message of one of the last druids asking you to take care of one of the spirits. The assembled spirit stone contains a fully enraged spirit of one the world's Animal spirits. PC's must purify the stones by absorbing the madness into themselves, and fight the madness made manifest in their spirit's crazed form. Upon being defeated, the stone changes an reveals itself and changes into the spirited form of the creature, periodically granting you a gift of calling upon it every so often.
Spirits revealed every year will be random and sporadic. Shamans inherit the burden of the sanctuary to repel the madness from harming the spirits further. Spirit stones can only be traded with others while the spirit is trapped in its own madness inside the stone. Spirits grant powers to individuals that reflect within the eyes of mortals and undead, having no qualms to allegiance as those who set them free they grant them their blessing. Spirits you bond with always begin at its weakest state and grow multiple levels unlocking new powers longer they inhabit you're soul At first, this is a taxing process to end/will that progressively gets easier with every bond level. For Example:
Squirrel bond begins with gifting foraging---lvl 2 grants digging---lvl 3 grants squirrel flaps ((like grecht flaps))
Deer bond begins with scent---lvl 2 gives stag hide ((+5 resistance cold))---Lvl 3 gives prancing ((enemy enters room, you prance out of room))
This idea gives something that was lost to the world a little bit of new life that could make a neat yearly promo! I had to read alot of sham a nom a ding dong books and found a real sudden GAP ever since the re-design. I would love to see metamorphs brought back in some way. Thanks everyone!
Thanks Obyn!
Idk. I cured my little vampire because wtf, poke poultice with syringe? Stick bandage face, stir vial with needle? Eat testicles for rebounding? Takes me 40 minutes to resupply myself.
Ok back to my corner.
Allow the transfer of previously owned artifacts to someone else. For example, if people have the Snowswell snowglobe but no longer use them or find it too tedious, but someone else wants to use it consistently, Player A can "sell" the snowglobe to Player B and have it transferred to Player B permanently, at a tedious cost or something.
Obviously this would need admin approval so it doesn't get transferred from one character to an alt via a middle man. Still would be pretty cool though.
Think this would be really cool. Would totally sell my snowswell to someone who would actually use it. With wights not being instanced, and being as obnoxious as they are, I rarely ever bother.
The concept: For a nominal credit fee (I think 500cr is a good price) you start out with an artifact that does nothing. I take that back. You get an artifact that adds a line to your ARTIFACTS SHOW line. Yay. The power of the artifact, however, lies in that it is an adventure filled with quests, danger, and potentially random acts to unlock various powers. To prevent it from becoming a ridiculously powerful artifact, perhaps only 3 effects can be active at any given time.
Once you've purchased it, there might be a few unlocks that are known. For example... Kill 100,000 gnats. Progress should be trackable so I can count how many gnats I've killed. Once I've completed this crazy undertaking, I gain a power I can activate on my artifact. Perhaps I now can use the SWAT skill without needing to have access to it. Please note that this is an EXAMPLE and I'm not advocating everyone gets to use SWAT if they kill a stupid amount of gnats. Is there even a SWAT command? Or perhaps if you land 10 Anihilating Critical Hits in a row you can unlock a +1% to critical strike chance. Ideally there would be meaningful rewards to cater to one audience, and perhaps other more flavorful results for people who don't care about +1% to crits. Maybe if you eat enough rocks your eyes glow blue and have an occasional ambiance message.
Some of the rewards can be static and always obtainable, and perhaps other can be coded in an rotated out or are a one-time thing. Maybe if you're logged on during Aetolia's 20th birthday you unlock a special ability where when you detonate fireworks they also explode with confetti that colors the room all crazy colors for awhile. Whatever. Actually, I like that one.
Side idea: confetti poppers. 5k gold. Lets you POP them and changes the color of the room description text to a variety of neat confetti-like colors for 5 minutes. One time use. OK, back to what I was thinking.
Then there are the hidden unlocks. Maybe if you get slapped by five different people on top of the Great Rock you unlock a flat +100 HP bonus. But you wouldn't know it existed until someone slapped you on the Great Rock, then under your progress bar you'd get "???????????????????????? 1/5" And when you realized it you'd be going "Dang, what happened" and you'd race through and try and reconstruct everything you did from your logs since you last checked your progress to figure it out. There are also a few ways this could go down to try and limit people from just sharing the information openly. One being they're just there and if people really want to ruin the thrill for others, so be it. Or, offer an incentive of diminishing value on the unlocked benefit based on how many people unlock it. Or, have it be a limited unlock, i.e. the first 5 people to get slapped atop the Great Rock can unlock it, then you can unlock it for posterity perhaps but you don't get anything for it.
Clearly, I don't want to be studying. But, I had been thinking about ways to liven up the game. There's an aspect of competition, if you're fighting over these unlocks, and I'm sure there is a way to bring meaningful conflict into it. It's also something that can constantly be updated and refreshed, so it doesn't have to get old and stale. Meanwhile, there's a lot of room for creativity to put in new short little quests and small events that can actually have some meaning without having to be all "Boom, Moghedu just got destroyed. Yep, that happened." I feel like perhaps I'm just rambling at this point, but I did want to get this idea out there. It just seems like the only thing to do when I log in is to chat OOCly with other people and/or bash mindlessly and/or try and run a circuit of quests to make some gold. Whoopdeedoo. It's become repetitious and monotonous, and even the Major Foci haven't piqued my interest because I'd have to basically pick the right time to be online for it to go down.
Another side idea: Having a few times throughout the month with pre-announced times that Major Foci are going to spawn. Otherwise I suspect I might get lucky sometime in the next twelve months and be online for a half of one or maybe a whole one. I know a lot of work went into coding the system it but at least my perception of it is that it's a very limited participation thing.
Anyways, to summarize: An interactive artifact with variable benefits based on unlocking those benefits through a variety of means, from the downright grind-y to the obscure and silly and everything in between.
Any feedback from players as to whether you think this might be a neat idea or if it just plain sucks and is dumb would be appreciated. TTFN!
Only issues I foresee are to do with implementation and manpower. Someone needs to constantly creak their brains to churn out and implement the little activities. I'm guessing celani could be primed to do it since the activities seem quite questy in nature.
Shouldn't be an artifact, though. Fun should be held for all!
Base totem/fetish/icon/statue/rock/whatever is some amount of gold, perhaps some quest to unlock. Level 1 allows you to unlock everything, but limits you to 1 active power at a time with limited switching, i.e. you can switch it once every 6 IRL hours or something.
For a nominal credit fee (250 credits?) you can upgrade to level 2. 2 powers can be active at a given time, and you can change one of them every 4 IRL hours.
Level 3 (500 cr?) enables 3 powers to be unlocked with one power allowed to be changed hourly.
Level 4 (1000 cr?) enables 3 powers with unlimited instant changing of powers.
Viola. Numbers are rough for illustrative purposes only. Fun + money = funmoney.
I guess one thing I hadn't thought about would be how updating each artifact would be. Given that there would need to be a mass update and I don't know if the game supports a "I have changed this item, now all items in the game of this type are matched to reflect this!" or not, could also be an issue. Because I have vague recollections of things getting screwy and there being posts like, "If you xyz is still doing abc, ISSUE yourself and Soandso will fix it for you." But maybe I'm crazy.
Crazy like a fox...
Also if it let people who didn't belong in cities enter.
More fighting between people that like fighting isn't a bad thing!
A talent_boon artifact? Works like all the other boons, but for talents?
Some sort of equivalent for forging? Like, when you go to apply a custom design to it, it doubles the number you get?
Some sort of (fairly expensive, probably) shop add-on for more space? Like. Gives you an IN room (with a locked stockroom door down etc) so you can more stock things and 1) not have the main shop be stupid cluttered, and 2) have more space (equal to the base amount of a normal shop in the city, not including artifact shelves which could maybe be bought for the additional room, too?). Could only be placed in an existing shop, owned by the person to whom the artifact is loyal to.
Dunno. Something. >.> I would happily 'downgrade' to something like this and condense my shops into one space per city. Oooor just make shelves stackable. >.>
Also one that lets you sell indivual dye uses in a shop.
Also one that lets you colour your dye stuff that's on a crafting shelf--like, if I have 'a pair of gray socks' 'a pair of gray boots' and 'a pendant of gray quartz', that are all dyeable, want to be able to have it default to the colour I want on the shelf, with the intent that people can still dye it a different colour, but if I want an outfit to be together, I can colour the entire thing the same colour to indicate that. Or maybe I think purple quartz looks the coolest, etc. I know a lot of people search wares by colour, and don't bother looking through the dyed stuff.
Also, to be a broken record, the dyekit artifact really needs a price reduction. It is a convenience item for the CASUAL CONSUMER/USER, in line with the pigeon and letter satchel, NOT an artifact for the CRAFTER (like carving knife or spatula). It is way too expensive for the consumer side of things.