Mastery System - WARNING: EXTREME FUN

[Zentetsuken]

Okay so I touched on this in this IoB thread but I thought I would expand it a bit here -


The basic concept is that many menial tasks would reward, at the very least, a written achievement.
In some instances achievements can also come with rewards, from actual unlockable content to simple aesthetic bonuses (hats, emotes).



Some achievements can be character bound, some can be account bound.

Account bound achievements would add longevity to playtime within each world and potentially keep people coming back for future worlds.

Examples of achievements and how they might work -

This would be like a 2-part achievement where you would need to effectively fill 2 separate experience bars.

kill 1000 foxes (character bound) – Maybe this number could be lower/higher? Something that would definitely require a fair amount of time and effort in to this very specific focus.
butcher 1000 foxes (character bound) – Same deal.

These would be meant to be achieved within a single world on a single character and would perhaps provide the character with several bonuses.
A new ingame menu area, similar to the credo section could organize completed and in-progress achievements.
When these 2 example achievement bars are completed you would be awarded a title “vulpes vastator” for example, not sure where this would show up exactly, perhaps you could “equip” a title so that it shows up on your character screen and people you are friends with would be able to see it.

Since these are a tougher, more time consuming achievement that imply your character has truly accomplished something, it could even unlock new content.
After killing and butchering 1000 foxes you could be thought of as having a “mastery” in fox knowledge.

Here are some ideas for what a “mastery” like this could unlock.

A small chance (1 in 100?) of a rare item when butchering a fox such as “perfect foxtail,”
Perfect Foxtail could be like an actually decent curio, and maybe if a person who has “Vulpes Vastator” achievement has a fox tail in their belt while agroing a fox, it has a small chance (1 in 100) to sort of create an event where the fox tail becomes “spent” and disappears, and the fox you are fighting turns in to a now a stronger, more aggressive “alpha fox.”

An alpha fox base quality could be like 200, and drop “alpha variants” of fox meat with better FEPS, a few alpha fox skins that can perhaps be used in some sort of decent gild recipe upon discovery, and a fair chance at an alpha fox tail, which is simply just a very good curio.

Ultimately there would be some accompaniment to characterbound achievements like this in the accountbound achievements.
Perhaps a much heftier task, such as killing 10000 foxes would award the account with a permanent aesthetic reward, such as a fox-related emote or hat.

The goal here is to make accounts something that you can build up a permanent sense of accomplishment onto, it would give the average joe player a massive set of sidegoals to passively work on as well.

The character-bound achievements could work the same way. If there was passive content-unlocking rewards for mastering any number of different crops, foragables, animals, or even industrial crafts and studies, it could give players something to do ALL world long. A real way to create a unique player that has something very unique to offer in trades. Ultimately the content unlocks would all be actually, legitimately GOOD, and due to the work and menial repetition involved in completing a lot of them, some of them could certainly be botted, but if they are arduous enough tasks, I think it would be unrealistic to assume that any character could complete a good amount of them within a world. The trade off being that they are simple enough tasks that require such a long period of focus that it might not be worth it to bot, and even if it was still worth it, it would be easily achievable by hermits, and newer players, effectively allowing them to become a potential unique and rewarding asset for any realm they might live under. It would be, by design, a way to add a sense of replayability to each world, whether you come back the next world to see what content is unlocked behind other characterbound achievements, or you come back to continue grinding your numbers for those bragworthy accountbound ones.

[DDDsDD999]

This what credos should've been tbh. Rewards that aren't good enough to go out of your way for, but if you just like doing something specific enough you get a small booster curio and some cosmetic flair.

[Zentetsuken]

This what credos should've been tbh. Rewards that aren't good enough to go out of your way for, but if you just like doing something specific enough you get a small booster curio and some cosmetic flair.

I would argue that the rewards for the characterbound achievements should actually be quite good, like potentially top-mid tier curio, or rare and interesting FEP combos, rare and interesting crafting gild stats, etc.

My idea is that the amount of effort it takes to achieve these rewards is arduous enough that nobody is going to set up bots just to get achievements, and that even if they you DO bot the achievements, it only unlocks the ability for you to have a chance to get these nice rewards if you continue farming for them AFTER getting the achievement.

Ultimately there would be so many different "masteries" from all the different forageables, animals, menial tasks that one does, that you actually MIGHT be motivated to go out of your way just to be the 1 guy in your realm who nolifes the Squirrel mastery, or the Ruby Bolete or Snapdragon mastery, so you can offer whatever unique and interesting byproducts that result from the bonuses. If they were actually decent and remained rare even after the opportunity to get them was unlocked, it wouldn't matter if many people were farming for them as they would likely still remain a tradeable commodity.

The bonuses would all have to be pretty equally good and interesting among equal effort tasks like foraging and killing animals.

The ACCOUNT bound bonuses, on the other hand, would definitely be something you wouldn't go out of your way for, but also a pretty fun sidequest. I'm sure people will spend some bored days farming numbers to get these achievement numbers up, but that is just a fun additional thing to do during a world that you will eventually get a fun cosmetic bragging right for.

[Lalaxx]

FUN?

[Massa]

cool idea but i promise you i would find a way to bitch about it in due time

jorb, add it

[Zentetsuken]

Another thing I would like to add, is that this sort of implementation could also make for some very silly and very hardcore accountbound achievements that amount to some serious bragging rights.

examples -

a Vegan achievement for reaching, say, 8000+-?? combined stats during a single world without eating any animal products

milestone achievements for LP gained, stat numbers achieved, damage from specific wounds achieved

high tier achievements for completing many lower tier achievements such as 10000 kills of 10 different animals, 1000 catches of 10 different fish, 10000 foraged of 5 different berries, etc.

cumulative goals, like an achievement for completing certain character-bound achievements numerous times

presumably some of these high tier, major milestone and memeish type of achievements could offer very fun cosmetic rewards, like cosmetics for slots that aren't head? (like Devs Suck sign)? New haircuts, colours, a literal "glow" around your character? Was even imagining something silly like a character reskin, like after 10000 squirrel kills you can "turn on" the ability to have squirrel-esque character model traits, such as a permanent tail? After 10000 blueberries eaten you can "turn on" blue skin? This could be a fun way to implement the often-asked for humanoid animal races.

[dafels]

In order to truly master something they say that it requires atleast 10 000 hours of work if we want to be realistic here, realism is fun!
I don't know how many foxes per hour you can hunt these days, I guess it could be around 10-15. So after the advanced calculations I made in order to master fox hunting one should kill atleast 100 000 foxes.

[Zentetsuken]

In order to truly master something they say that it requires atleast 10 000 hours of work if we want to be realistic here, realism is fun!
I don't know how many foxes per hour you can hunt these days, I guess it could be around 10-15. So after the advanced calculations I made in order to master fox hunting one should kill atleast 100 000 foxes.

My numbers are definitely just random placeholders, I didn't honestly put too much thought in to how quickly they could be farmed, I can see them needing to be higher

[WowGain]

sounds pretty epic to me

[Thaydi]

Thats actually a pretty good idea!