Foundation for lore

[ven]

One major premise of the game is that most of the lore must be created by the players. However, the tools for that are mostly meta, as we have to rely on the forum to create it and keep it alive.
I think part of the reason why the game feels barren is because all the stuff we do doesn't transfer well into the game world. Battles are fought, history happens, but that doesn't show easily. Everything, from open landscapes to villages and kingdoms, looks and feels the same from the outside, even though its not. Some single player games counter that feeling by adding their own lore, but that's not the case here.

The suggestion is that we be given some tools to create some lore for the game. In other words, we need tools to make generic stuff more meaningful for us and for the unknown random player.

For example:

• Upon inspection, some items above a certain q would display the name of their crafter and place of origin, like "Ring crafted by X, in the kingdom of X".
  
  
• Weapons, in particular, could have a name given to them by some special action, costing gold, crystal or something to engrave. It could even show a list of its kills by another special action.
  
  
• Skeletons, as someone else suggested, would give some information on when and how the player died.
  
  
• Parchments should be more useful. They could be used by anyone to replay a song, be bound into rolls or books, send messages to people when they're offline, or even by a king to deliver messages directly to the hf of all his vassals, and so on.
  
  
• Expensive special king actions that create a permanent scent-like marker somewhere, allowing random people who are actively tracking to find out that "here queen X was crowned", "here a major battle between X and X was fought", etc.
  
  
• Monuments or large structures for community projects could be implemented. Huge trees that need top farming, water and soil to grow, ice colossus, wicker man, and things like that.
  
  
• Villages should have more customization props disguised as quality of life furniture, like tool racks to hang stuff outside, statues or mannequins that can be dressed in clothes and gear, torchpost additions that change ambient light color, glass display tables for curios, shelves for the same, and so on.

Things like these may seem like minor stuff, but when a world lasts for as long as w7, for example, they accumulate and leave a residual story of what happened in it. Then, when a new player arrives at the game, he won't be facing an empty world, but rather a world that already has its own history, its weapons, its legends, and a tangible culture. Because even when factions quit, what they did would still remain in some manner. I think this would be a good way to turn the stuff that we already create into more concrete game content.

[ATHF]

For example:

Upon inspection, some items above a certain q would display the name of their crafter and place of origin, like "Ring crafted by X, in the kingdom of X".

Weapons, in particular, could have a name given to them by some special action, costing gold, crystal or something to engrave. It could even show a list of its kills by another special action.

Skeletons, as someone else suggested, would give some information on when and how the player died.

Parchments should be more useful. They could be used by anyone to replay a song, be bound into rolls or books, send messages to people when they're offline, or even by a king to deliver messages directly to the hf of all his vassals, and so on.

Expensive special king actions that create a permanent scent-like marker somewhere, allowing random people who are actively tracking to find out that "here queen X was crowned", "here a major battle between X and X was fought", etc.

Monuments or large structures for community projects could be implemented. Huge trees that need top farming, water and soil to grow, ice colossus, wicker man, and things like that.

Villages should have more customization props disguised as quality of life furniture, like tool racks to hang stuff outside, statues or mannequins that can be dressed in clothes and gear, torchpost additions that change ambient light color, glass display tables for curios, shelves for the same, and so on.

Looks lovely.

[ven]

Nice bump! Some of those suggestions were already implemented and some others were developed further in other posts, but the main idea still hasn't been addressed:

we need the means to generate lasting player-made lore so that worlds become more interesting as they age. Currently it seems that what happens is the opposite, and the older the world, the less appealing it gets.

[Finigini]

+1

Also would be cool to have things that carry over worlds that are pure lore but may or may not also effect game play. An example would be the "Ragnarok" event during the end of world 9.

[ven]

Gonna bump this because the destruction of the Northern Kingdom today is a historic event, but we don't have proper means to translate that into the game.

Events like that should somehow result in the creation of historical items or landmark. Maybe the gear worn by those who destroyed the coronoation stone should get a special label like "Wielded by X during the battle for Kingdom X". Or maybe the map could have another layer indicating that "In this area once stood the kingdom of X".

[loftar]

However, the tools for that are mostly meta, as we have to rely on the forum to create it and keep it alive.

I do like some of the suggestions, and some are already on the table, more or less; but I would also like to state that in principle I don't necessarily mind that much of the lore is meta. Lore is usually better off as unstructured "prose", than as rigid mechanics.

[ven]

I also think lore shouldn't be too rigid, but players should be able to experience some of the world's history directly through the game, and for that we need a few more tools to register culture and events. Maybe even something simple like a destroyed coronation stone of a large kingdom producing 4-5 unique fragments with a proper identifier, kind of like that "piece of the Berlin Wall" thing. Small stuff like that have the potential of becoming interesting items as the world progresses.

[synaris]

i would fucking LOVE to see songs being written on parchment allowing others to replay them, statues of certain characters ect. hell in game books where we could write our own stories would be great as well.

i remember in world 7 when i came across sprite art in an abandoned village. i was like "holy shit" wondering what happened to the players, how do i make awesome sprite art? this place was huge, what made it fall? i visited it a lot when i went out hunting. even took a few screenshots. i THINK the village was called heavy rains.

so yeah, player made lore should be more of a thing. i woulda loved to find more artifacts left behind by that village.

[sMartins]

However, the tools for that are mostly meta, as we have to rely on the forum to create it and keep it alive.

I do like some of the suggestions, and some are already on the table, more or less; but I would also like to state that in principle I don't necessarily mind that much of the lore is meta. Lore is usually better off as unstructured "prose", than as rigid mechanics.

Well, I see what you are saying but I think also having all the players involved in what it's happening in the world could be potentially a great idea. The problem is how?
Perhaps one king in the world, 1 person at time, and all the players would receive news about his incoronation/death/war etc.... eehh, a kinda of BattleRoyale for who play the king ( and maybe a queen also).
Yeah weird idea, but if you can see what I'm saying about getting all the players of the server involved in some way ... that could be a huge thing, in my opinion, players could choose to join the fight, which side to fight with, or just going to watch the battle (and dying ) ... something in this direction could be huge to me.

[Luanes]

I really like the idea of naming or crafts. Maybe on the craft screen we could input a "name" for every craft on a batch?