Game Development: Ancestral Worship

[niltrias]

Easiest way to die is to go for a swim.
MUCH easier than convincing someone to leave murder scents.

[kobnach]

Also, if you do not have any real ancestors you are presumed to have ancestors with 10 in all values (Starting values for a new character, that is).

Ah. Here I'd figured there was no point in getting the skill, if one lacked ancestors.

[Lightning4]

Also, if you do not have any real ancestors you are presumed to have ancestors with 10 in all values (Starting values for a new character, that is).

I bought the skill and tried to build the shrine and it said "You cannot build an ancestrial shrine with no ancestors."

Right, true dat. You need at least one.

So erm... what was the point of saying that you're presumed to have ancestors if you don't have any, if you need at least one to build an altar? The way you put it, they aren't calculated if you actually have at least one ancestor... that makes them kind of pointless?

[kobnach]

Light of the Ancestors, 3NP: Light effect on your character determined in strength by the perception + exploration of your ancestors.

How long does this last? It would be nice to finally be able to play comfortably at night, but not worth it unless it was essentially permanent.

[jorb]

Doesn't this basically give griefers yet another advantage? Incentive even. Go around killing people until you get killed, then come back, worship, and go around with near double stats doing it again? I suppose it depends on the amount of time it takes to get that much NP but still... This seems so backwards :-/

I don't think you've thought this through. At all.

could you elaborate? You've added an advantage for having died. The people who gain this advantage must have died. The easiest way to die is to get involved in PVP combat (or to die stupidly, I'm sorry but if you die from anything other than pvp combat, you're doing it wrong.) Those most likely to get involved in PvP combat are either griefers, or those defending against griefers. Thus, this update seems to favor griefers, or at least PvPers.

This update definitely aims to make PvP more viable.

First of all getting to 100% tradition now takes time. Quite a bit of time, actually, since you get fewer slider changes at higher levels of tradition. This means that you can't just go to full tradition, zerg your character and then wash, rinse and repeat. Secondly, losing a character now always hurts. You will always lose 25% of your values when you die. This means that you do not want to die until your character has reached at least the strength of your most recent ancestor, because otherwise your best ancestor will be pushed back a step in your line of predecessors, and only provide 50% of his values for stat boosts like the Einherjeraspekt (We plan to introduce more stuff like it).

Secondly, building up the Einherjeraspekt should be fairly hard to do. You need to sacrifice at least 40 items (assuming you are at tradition change +/- 0), and the ancestors can ask for pretty much anything. For example, their requests could be "Gold, Silk cloth or Soldier's sword", if you're out of luck. Also, you won't be using the Einherjeraspekt to gain LP in a hurry, since building up numen points will be extremely difficult to do if you are at full change. You can also not always play at full tradition, it's harder in a sense, because you will want to gain LP to get to at least the level of your most recent ancestor before you die again. It might still be unbalanced, the effect is extremely good, but in that case we'll just increase its cost. If we raise it to, say, 100 numen points, you'd be hard pressed to even find a lot of the requested items at appropriate Q levels. It'd be a massive expense of resources, in any event. I think 40 NP might be reasonable.

The point here is that you now, if you want to build the best character possible, you also have to be concerned about your ancestors, and about building a good ancestral line.

I hope this accomplishes the following.

1) No more ragequits on death. Your dead guy is still with you, and doing you a lot of good. Also you still retain enough stats to at least keep you out of complete newb territory.
2) No more zerg deaths. You will lose points even at tradition. You might still do this to gain an ancestor, but you won't be doing it too often.
3) It's now possible to hunt for thieves, start a war or fight other players without the stakes being as enormous as they used to be.
4) We still retain permanent death.

[jorb]

Light of the Ancestors, 3NP: Light effect on your character determined in strength by the perception + exploration of your ancestors.

How long does this last? It would be nice to finally be able to play comfortably at night, but not worth it unless it was essentially permanent.

It only costs 3 numen points. That could be branch, branch and brick of Qs 1+, 2+ and 3+ respectively. In which case its basically free. It lasts a 6 ingame hours, IIRC.

[jorb]

So erm... what was the point of saying that you're presumed to have ancestors if you don't have any, if you need at least one to build an altar? The way you put it, they aren't calculated if you actually have at least one ancestor... that makes them kind of pointless?

I didn't remember that we'd added that requirement, but it seems resonable. The point is that you only need one real ancestor to use the shrine. The other two ancestor slots will be calculated as if they held two newb chars.

[Jack]

I was thinking...

If someone had a very strong character and after he was "ready" he decided to go full tradition and once he was full tradition there would be no penalties for thiefing or murdering others.

Now, even if the griefer has full tradition he will fear losing 25% of all his stats.

So if he steals or murders someone, it can be tracked down, and killed for 25% penalty on stats.
The next time he tries to grief someone, he run the risk to get killed again and lose another 1/4.
Here is how the progression for full tradition lookts like:
Bad guy with full tradition who think he is imortal steal on my claim, I hire someone to kill him on his sleep (Im weak to do that myself )

Bad Guy LP 100%
First blood 75%
Second death 56,25%
Third death 42,1875%
Fourth death 31,640%

Before, it was like
First death 100%
Second death 100%
Third death 100%
Fourth death 100%

The only way to avoid that would be staying online 24 hours with an inventory filled with lembas and hope for the best?

But the power of the ancestors, if it could be used everyday over and over... every day with no cooldown (I can see people having all the possible/necessary items stored for pretty much 24h/7 bonuses)
Like, only once, or once every 7 in-game days.
If people can use it as long as they reach the requisites... well, then people will stockpile those stuff for perma uberness. (since we will eventually map every possible item required by the ancestors and stock those)
People making ancestors and grinding up ONLY strenght and investing all the LPs on Melee PURPOSEFULLY.

Like, I go and eat all this bear food to get only my strenght up and all the LPs I get I spend on melee. Forget about the other stats being "harder to level up". Its a bypass to that enforced mechanics and its also a big reward.

So I go and die, then I repeat the same with another character, and again with the third ancestor.

With full tradition, it will bring me down to 42% of my original LP. But, the thing is... the strenght and melee I will get will be ridiculously high once I use that power.

Thats a possibility, but off course, I dont fully understand the game mechanics of the new system yet, just throwing it up. Im certain the developers thought this through.

[jorb]

Interesting. I like that I can be full change and still keep some of my stats. But I want to double check; what do I keep? Suppose I die at full change, 100,000 LP total, and str, con, dex etc all 80. Do I come back with 25,000 LP and str,dex etc at 20 (implication - dying at 40 leaves you at starting values)?

This.

[loftar]

The other two ancestor slots will be calculated as if they held two newb chars.

Actually, that's not even true. If you don't have three ancestors, the extra "slots" won't count at all towards anything (if anything, they count as if they had zero in every stat).

Either way, if you don't have any ancestors, you couldn't sacrifice anything at the shrine, since there aren't any ancestors to desire anything.