Revisiting the beliefs system

[Sevenless]

Just spent 30 mins typing this out, and my browser crashed. >< Carpal tunnel and all, this might be a touch brusk as a result.

Death/Life

The grievous damage is currently considered laughable by most warriors I talk to. It has been used occasionally, but it's agreed that it gives relatively no benefit for the cost of having 66.6% as much life as a full life char.

Lets make archery useful: viewtopic.php?f=2&t=31833&start=10#p416956

Xcom highlights why archers are in general not terribly effective right now. Their only use is against towns you vastly outgear. One suggestion made was that archery could be given bonus damage against armour and effectively be an armour breaker.

I wouldn't necessarily want to see bonus hitpoint damage for them though as archery is a much more simplistic form of combat and buffing to a primary combat role would probably take away combat complexity. That however is a somewhat uninformed opinion as I am not a combat type.


Martial/Peaceful & Tradition/Change - The issues

The problem with the change slider is that basically everyone needs it. The only roles that can get away with pushing tradition are miners and warriors by and large.

So what we're having here is that the characters who should be risking the most in PvP have the option to risk the least. And the carebear characters on the other hand stand to lose the most in combat. Now I agree that not every carebear character is controlled by a peaceful player, but the point stands that all peaceful players will be using carebear characters.

In general, we want carebears around. They give the game life and depth, they give warriors things to raid, they populate trade threads, you name it. The point is, why do they have to risk the most right now? Shouldn't warriors, the ones getting thrill from combat, be the ones with the bigger anti on the table? Less impact of death on carebears = more of them willing to start over after death. This in turn means more targets to raid as the gameworld ages since less have been forced out of the game.


What could be done to address the issues

I propose that all death penalties be moved into the Martial/Peaceful slider. Peaceful having the least loss on death, martial the most. To compensate, characters with full martial could have a % bonus to UA, MC and MM as well as the 20% damage bonus.

The idea being that warriors to be effective would really want to push the martial slider, but this would also increase their risk in combat. And due to the ancestor system, moving the death penalty away from trad/change does not render that slider useless.

Edit: Pushing towards martial would have to increase the tradition slider instead of change or swapping in/out would be too quick.

Lets discuss.

[miraclew]

So would there be two sliders that affect death consequences, or is Trad/Change just removed?

Personally I'd prefer if death held the same % loss for everyone, no way to alter it, although this sounds better than the current system.

[Jackard]

crossposting from inner party:

One could make an effort to salvage sliders but I don't see why we would want to:

• their specialization is unbalanced
• their progression is uninteresting (AFK for points)
• their specialization is meaningless or uninteresting, even making some content unavailable
• their specialization is simply a redundancy on top of attributes and skills

remove sliders. if you really want to keep some of these bonuses, change them to buffs from items or prayers

[Tlaloc]

crossposting from inner party:

One could make an effort to salvage sliders but I don't see why we would want to:

• their specialization is unbalanced
• their progression is uninteresting (AFK for points)
• their specialization is meaningless or uninteresting, even making some content unavailable
• their specialization is simply a redundancy on top of attributes and skills

remove sliders. if you really want to keep some of these bonuses, change them to buffs from items or prayers

Prayers/Items could be an interesting mechanic, but it takes a lot more effort than re-balancing sliders somewhat. Power to it if the devs want to do it that way, but I like to keep my suggestions minimal effort.

I disagree that sliders reducing content access for one character is a bad thing. Selective alting is a healthy way to help deal with the impacts of permadeath's biggest drawbacks. My opinion anyway.

[bmjclark]

I always thought sliders were extremely boring because there isn't much choice to them. World starts, you go civ and peaceful and switch to barb a bit in once you have a decent amount of strength and switch to martial once your comfortable with your UA. They aren't really choices, just an annoying speed bump you take in making a new character.

[dragonxkai]

What about a belief system that changes whilst you take action? Of course these shift quickly via 20 minute updates.

Farm lots and become more in nature.
Mine lots and become more in industry.
Hunt lots and become barbaric.
Build lots and become civilized.
Remove life and death, its very irrelevant to belief as everyone wants to survive and live.

Day and night is based on how active you are server time.
Being active from 8am to 8pm is day.
8pm to 8am is night.

Tradition and change sees the biggest change:

Lp gain between two types of activities will apply.
And new feature to traditional activities will apply.

Curiosity can be classified as tradition type or change type (technological curios like chariots and boats).
Activities can grant bonus lp to curios types as a buff.
Using ancestral worshipping not only grants numen points, it shifts you to tradition, allows you to gain a buff that boosts tradition curiosities more.
Crafting civilization based tools and structures adds to change, and buffs you similarly to worshipping, because you are being active.

For peaceful and martial, is based on combat and sparring.
Peaceful remains the same but martial also increases lp of skulls, boar tusks, bear tooth, and deer antlers by a greater degree.

[Arcanist]

I think, that there should be no resurecting, period. I support allt he changes in the OP, with one change - remove the LP and FEP gain from reincarnating. Perhaps just have it that all skills and discoveries from your ancestor are on the new toon.

This is a perma death game after all.

[Sevenless]

It's a quasi permadeath game actually due to said re-incarnation system.

Calling it anything else is a misnomer. And I'm not certain making it more permadeath would actually increase playability.

edit: I like pvp, and there's a full loot game called darkfall that kind of emphasizes the point that permadeath actually causes a lot less pvp to happen. In darkfall it's a no penalty other than equipment loss resurrection, and you can find a fight within 10-20 minutes. In haven you never see any such fighting.

[Jackard]

What about a belief system that changes whilst you take action? Of course these shift quickly via 20 minute updates.

Farm lots and become more in nature.
Mine lots and become more in industry.
Hunt lots and become barbaric.
Build lots and become civilized.

devs were against progression based on grinding specific activities

[SuperNoob]

Just spent 30 mins typing this out, and my browser crashed.

lol anytime you're making a long post always copy and paste into notepad before clicking anything just in case...since I've gotten alot of advice about the game from your guide guess I'll share some advice I have about electronics

on topic: I pretty much agree with Jackard, do away with the sliders! with no sliders to change your LA maybe the base amount of LP from curios should increase, but all the sliders really do is force the use of alts(especially the nature industry slider).