How I imagine ancestor worship.

[Onionfighter]

Having a dead ancestor who is stronger that the decedent, a player can build an alter and start worshiping. This will allow the player's character to (very) slowly gain the attributes of the ancestor until they are equal.

-Stopping the worship could cause the decedent to drop down to previous stats.

-The process could be linked to the tradition/change slider i.e.: the further the person is toward tradition, the faster the player gains their ancestor's attributes.

[Jfloyd]

Stone alter:
1 boulder
1 linen
2 candles
and a rug, which would FINALLY give them a use.

[Pacho]

This is a pretty neat idea. It feels like it needs a bit more than just gaining the properties of the ancestor though, I just can't put my finger on it. Maybe the effects of the worship decay over time? As in loss of skill and such until they're back to your normal levels if you don't worship with some regularity? I honestly don't think that stats should be affected by worship, wouldn't make much sense. Stats could be affected by the stats of the ancestors though, depending on where the belief sliders are (not just the tradition one, but the others too). Things like someone who is halfway through barbaric starts with a const and str bonus, but is dumber and less charismatic in return. Eh, its late and my brain isn't functioning as well as it could, but things of that nature. Maybe someone can help? =]

[theTrav]

I was thinking something in the way of long-ish term status effects from worshipping at a properly maintained ancestor shrine...
Stuff like substantial stat, skill or combat buffs depending on the type of ancestor (assess their stats to derive that)

Couple it with similar debuffs for failure to worship and/or allowing the shrine to fall into disrepair.

To make that workable you'd probably want to stop people inheriting their ancestors stats and LP directly, maybe get rid of the current change/trad effects, have everyone gain LP at the same rate and have trad/change give you different effects based on your ancestors?

Possibly figure out a way to make high tradition benefit more from having a chain of ancestors all with a similar skill set (maybe high single buf/debuff), and have change better at having a chain of ancestors with varying skill sets? (lots of small buffs/debuffs)

[theTrav]

Building on that maybe let offspring and inheritance be something of a game mechanic.

Allow characters to designate ancestry, do some fun stuff with branching & merging family trees, maybe even allow different players to share common ancestors? (warning, derailment danger)

instead of just character1 -> character2 -> character3 -> character4 have something like character1+character1's partner -> character2 (who meets a parner) -> character3 so that character3 actually has 4 ancestors.

maybe do some scaling stuff with character power to shrine construction & worship requirements, maybe make it optional to worship particular ancestors or not, maybe make it based on the ancestors belief structure as well as the current players belief structure?

Lots of room for interesting stuff there. Jorb and Loftar, get together, drink some tea and work it out!

[CG62]

I'm wondering how players with no deceased ancestors would benefit from this.

Also, to build upon everyone else's ideas, natural causes of death? I.e.: logging out outside too many times could kill you from exposure/cold, drinking too much alcohol in too short of a period of time could give you a debuff that would eventually kill you, etcetera etcetera. I'm trying to think of things other than a full-on death timer. That would suck for anyone who doesn't play non-stop.

[Pioneer]

I'm wondering how players with no deceased ancestors would benefit from this.

Why would it need to benefit players with no dead ancestors? The point of ancestor worship would be to reduce the punishment from dying.

[theTrav]

A while back jorb posted something along the lines of giving negative effects to characters over a certain age, that could be reduced/mitigated, but would become harsher as time went on and cost more to avoid.

[JustasJ]

Why not turning ancestors into deities instead?

An ancestor who was a good farmer could increase the harvests if worshipped before harvesting crops, a good warrior could increase your chances of winning a fight if you prayed to him before that. I think Ancestor worship made in such way would be more interesting than just stat regathering. In my opinion.

[Chakravanti]

Having a dead ancestor who is stronger that the decedent, a player can build an alter and start worshiping. This will allow the player's character to (very) slowly gain the attributes of the ancestor until they are equal.

-Stopping the worship could cause the decedent to drop down to previous stats.

-The process could be linked to the tradition/change slider i.e.: the further the person is toward tradition, the faster the player gains their ancestor's attributes.

Honestly before they put AW in I imagined it a lot like this but not 'slowly' maybe, say %10 per item. So initially you have to put in 10 items. Numen isn't spent but rather naturally accumulates as the AW requires sustenance. Eventually you can't sustain it and you have to make a bad sacrifice which nixes all your 'buffs' because that would essentially be what it is, buffing you stats to the previous ancestor. At a certain point in time, obviously, you may surpass your ancestor and AW no longer becomes relevant except perhaps for one or two skills you left behind in favor some something else.

Also, the current AW system just reeks of magic.

Also if they did add aging of some kind then AW would become a staple for making a well developed character. Obviously the idea would be to spend a lot of points on one skill during each life and be dependent on AW if you want to do anything outside that. And there should be no decay of the family tree. Each stat or skill is simply gleaned from the strongest ancestor.

Coupled with diminishing returns on combat stats this could be the PvP balance we're looking for.

Aging would be dependant on time spent playing. Combined with a rebalance on LP accumulated by task and perhaps affected by civ as discussed elsewhere I think we may actually have something that resembles reasonable and enjoyable game-play.

Edit- After smoking about it I realized that diminishing returns would be a must but something like %5-10 would be reasonable.