Shrines

[Potjeh]

For hearthling pilgrimages, of course. They'd basically be player-built quest targets. But unlike the natural ones, they wouldn't be unique, ie there'd be specific types of shrines and going to any shrine of the type required by your quest would complete the objective. The types can be shrines to different gods, natural forces or abstract concepts, depending on where we want to go with the flavor. Shrines should only appear as quest targets for quests given by NPCs within a reasonable radius of a shrine.

The shrines would be a realm object, as their main purpose is to create gathering places for realms' populations. To entice the realms to construct them and leave them open to public, XP rewards for completing quests that involve the shrine should generate twice as much authority as normal XP gain. Also, quests involving a shrine should give XP to the realm even if they're completed outside of the realm. To entice the hermits to complete shrine quests, they should give better rewards on average. The exact rewards bonus could be a subject of competition between realms - ie a realm could invest authority beyond base upkeep into a shrine to increase it's bonus, but this would be measured against other shrines of the same type in the world, and this extra bonus would be awarded from a finite global pool according to relative investments. The idea is that the more authority you pump into your shrine the more visitors you'll get (due to better rewards) and thus generate more authority. However, a bidding war of sorts against other realms could make it unprofitable, which I think creates interesting points for inter-faction politics. Especially if the shrine users couldn't actually tell how much of a bonus it gives, which would make propaganda important.

Shrines could also be required for higher end credo quests (Mystic and Tailor would qualify already). Credo quest would require specific shrines depending on flavor of the quest and the shrine. This could be exploited to further differentiate realms, by making different shrines require different sets of realm policies to function. Of course, you could always quest to another realm to get a credo you really want, but generally it'd be easier to do your realm credos, so populations of different realms would be specialized in different ways. This could also provide long term goals for realms, by locking away some specialist credos behind a set of authority-intensive shrines which require fairly dense population to pay for. Ie something to encourage big open cities like Brodgar.

Finally, it'd be awesome if some of the shrine quests involved slaughtering domestic animals at the shrine.

[loftar]

One need perhaps not exclude the other, but one thought we're entertaining is to deepen the system of the current natural spirits (by which I mean the spirited trees, stones &c) so that they both maintain relations with players who complete their quests, and so that they "level up" (by some definition or another) the more of their quests are completed. On the one hand, this would give each spirit a more meaningful identity, and also higher-level spirits should, in one way or another, give heftier rewards to players who complete their quests.
I envision the effect to be that groups of players can work together to level up their local spirits, and also would want to keep them open so that unrelated players can help out with "feeding" their local spirits and keep them safe from marauders; and, ultimately, that large factions would construct what in effect are shrines to their main spirits for everyone to visit, having become essentially a local divinity.

[viznew]

One need perhaps not exclude the other, but one thought we're entertaining is to deepen the system of the current natural spirits (by which I mean the spirited trees, stones &c) so that they both maintain relations with players who complete their quests, and so that they "level up" (by some definition or another) the more of their quests are completed. On the one hand, this would give each spirit a more meaningful identity, and also higher-level spirits should, in one way or another, give heftier rewards to players who complete their quests.
I envision the effect to be that groups of players can work together to level up their local spirits, and also would want to keep them open so that unrelated players can help out with "feeding" their local spirits and keep them safe from marauders; and, ultimately, that large factions would construct what in effect are shrines to their main spirits for everyone to visit, having become essentially a local divinity.

..... omg that sounds amazing lol

[Amanda44]

I think you are both onto something here ... it would be lovely to reward players who bother with the quests and complete them, also better rewards would hopefully prove an incentive to get more ppl doing them. I think the credos were a good addition, I don't particularly enjoy doing so many but the benefits to me are worth it, not so much the ordinary quests where the novelty has worn off and the rewards for the most part are just not worth the time it's taken me or the distance I've travelled to complete it.

Tying them into realms is a great way to help keep them safe and for converging players together, my only concern with that is that certain factions may not behave in the way you expect.

Finally, it'd be awesome if some of the shrine quests involved slaughtering domestic animals at the shrine.

Lol.

[jorb]

What loftar says, but I like Potjeh's input too.