Surely they should have a mostly pk focus, as you can only get the anomalies by going into an avengerless free-pk zone? Expecting crafters to have to pk is not a great idea. WoW forced crafters to get stuff from a free-pk zone at the beginning of Legion, and it was really sucky, which is why this worries me.
Surely they should have a mostly pk focus, as you can only get the anomalies by going into an avengerless free-pk zone? Expecting crafters to have to pk is not a great idea. WoW forced crafters to get stuff from a free-pk zone at the beginning of Legion, and it was really sucky, which is why this worries me.
I think the idea was that one set of powers could affect crafters, but the PK folk would still collect anomalies and would do so in support of the crafters (not that crafters have to PK for the powers). Anyway, it was just a thought and I welcome specific suggestions!
If there is a concern about getting confused with timequakes and Aeonic timequakes, what do people feel about changing the name of the Aeonic skill to "timerage"? Just a thought I wanted to put down while I was thinking about it--other suggestions welcome.
I think changing the name of something old because you want to use the name for something new is essentially poor form.
Re: other powers, distant adding TELEPORT destinations would be something I'd like to see - like, to the sort of places you needed to use balloon or observatory to reach if someone hasn't set up rifts.
Something to reduce charge decay on stuff like necromentate or flame of glinshari could be nice.
Surely they should have a mostly pk focus, as you can only get the anomalies by going into an avengerless free-pk zone? Expecting crafters to have to pk is not a great idea. WoW forced crafters to get stuff from a free-pk zone at the beginning of Legion, and it was really sucky, which is why this worries me.
I think the idea was that one set of powers could affect crafters, but the PK folk would still collect anomalies and would do so in support of the crafters (not that crafters have to PK for the powers). Anyway, it was just a thought and I welcome specific suggestions!
It is probably better to add one or two non-combat powers to each set rather than putting them all in one. If you put them all together, the org needs to pick between combat and non-combat, which can end in either combatants feeling like they're subsidizing the non-combatants or non-combatants feel like they're being declared less important than fighters. If you use mixed sets, every choice will have something for both groups. It also means that non-coms have to choose which powers they value just like combatants do.
If there is a concern about getting confused with timequakes and Aeonic timequakes, what do people feel about changing the name of the Aeonic skill to "timerage"? Just a thought I wanted to put down while I was thinking about it--other suggestions welcome.
Rage is not very Hallifaxian. Assuming the fluff isn't in use with another skill, I might retheme the skill to be aging people to death (since aeonics already has a non-combat aging ability) and call it "senescence" or some such thing.
Any sufficiently advanced pun is indistinguishable from comedy.
Why not make the systems a bit more Lusternia-themed, too? "Magic" and "Destruction" and "Speed" could be basically anything. We can focus on some Lusternian mechanics instead, maybe.
Possible themes:
Empowering your Shard (Essence / Domothean energies)
Power Master / Power Lord (Power!)
Honoured Envoy (Stuff dealing with villages)
Then you have a lot of flexibility within those areas. For example, the essence/domoth one could include things like (in no particular order):
A 25% orgwide exp buff.
A bit of a bump to overall demi weight.
Ability to buy / attune to a specific domoth throne (by going to it) and get access to a power there (akin to winning a Seal, stacks with the free Seal power).
Transfer essence to other people (functions like the Hand artifact, if you have the Hand the ratio gets better).
Convert essence into something physical. Could be something like being able to use essence to defray some of the goop costs on goop craftables? I'm not sold on this one specifically, so other ideas would be useful.
Power Lord:
Chance so that when power fills from your reserves to your prompt, it does not actually drain from your reserves.
Faster power recovery (maybe does not stack with Lucidian?). (Disabled when you lose masochism, maybe enabled in a Timequake).
Increase the power gained from doing org power quests.
Power burn. Spend X power (up to a max of 5) to drain the same amount of power from your target's active prompt. Note: If you spend 5 power, and they only have 3, it still burns all 5 of yours (gotta be on top of what you're trying to do).
Diplomat:
Quick transport to each village (akin to the Tarot map).
Boost to village feelings from doing the comm quests (stacks with Commercial government styles).
A 3/13 buff to village influencing, and a way to persuade those greedy villagers to hand over their ill-gotten goods.
Some way of determining with more accuracy when they will revolt (if that village is the next to revolt).
Your organization gains power from you influencing villagers (or some other benefit; a credit tick if you influence 20 villages in a village or something?).
None of it's anything I'm particularly "demanding" be in but I would really just like to see things that are more focused on our own mechanics!
Other strong power options could include things like (each of these are suppressed if you lose masochism, except possibly inside a Timequake, and are activated with Archpower for a set time duration, like an hour or so):
Passive Health Recovery Tick (ala Shrine Healing).
Passive Mana Recovery Tick.
Passive Ego Recovery Tick.
Passive Shielding (ala Wyrdsong).
EQ / Balance booster.
Other stuff:
Critical hit booster (ala Merian, does not stack with Merian).
Critical hit re-roll (ala Merian, does not stack with Merian).
NPC health prober (this already exists with GMCP, so why not make it something that you can get normally without GMCP anyways)
It really seems like you could have a bunch of different stuff here, as long as you restrict it to keep it from impacting most of our PvP environment!
If there is a concern about getting confused with timequakes and Aeonic timequakes
I definitely agree that having separate names would reduce unnecessary confusion for returning players and newbies. Name suggestions: fatebreak, tesseract, riptime, timebend, timeshatter, warpquake, phasequake, phasebreak
Why not make the systems a bit more Lusternia-themed, too? "Magic" and "Destruction" and "Speed" could be basically anything. We can focus on some Lusternian mechanics instead, maybe.
Possible themes:
Empowering your Shard (Essence / Domothean energies)
Power Master / Power Lord (Power!)
Honoured Envoy (Stuff dealing with villages)
Then you have a lot of flexibility within those areas. For example, the essence/domoth one could include things like (in no particular order):
A 25% orgwide exp buff. [Only if activated with archpower, I think.]
A bit of a bump to overall demi weight. [What about non-demis?]
Ability to buy / attune to a specific domoth throne (by going to it) and get access to a power there (akin to winning a Seal, stacks with the free Seal power). [Not sure I like a power linked domoth thrones]
Transfer essence to other people (functions like the Hand artifact, if you have the Hand the ratio gets better). [Doable]
Convert essence into something physical. Could be something like being able to use essence to defray some of the goop costs on goop craftables? I'm not sold on this one specifically, so other ideas would be useful. [Not sure this would work]
Power Lord:
Chance so that when power fills from your reserves to your prompt, it does not actually drain from your reserves. [Doable]
Faster power recovery (maybe does not stack with Lucidian?). (Disabled when you lose masochism, maybe enabled in a Timequake). [Not sure]
Increase the power gained from doing org power quests. [Doable but no increase in daily credits, would need activation with archpower]
Power burn. Spend X power (up to a max of 5) to drain the same amount of power from your target's active prompt. Note: If you spend 5 power, and they only have 3, it still burns all 5 of yours (gotta be on top of what you're trying to do). [Not sure, seems a bit powerful]
Diplomat: [Really like this theme.]
Quick transport to each village (akin to the Tarot map).
Boost to village feelings from doing the comm quests (stacks with Commercial government styles). [Doable]
A 3/13 buff to village influencing, and a way to persuade those greedy villagers to hand over their ill-gotten goods. [No on the influence greedy mobs, not sure about the buff on village influencing during revolts]
Some way of determining with more accuracy when they will revolt (if that village is the next to revolt). [Doable but seems pretty minor]
Your organization gains power from you influencing villagers (or some other benefit; a credit tick if you influence 20 villages in a village or something?). [Maybe?]
None of it's anything I'm particularly "demanding" be in but I would really just like to see things that are more focused on our own mechanics!
Other strong power options could include things like (each of these are suppressed if you lose masochism, except possibly inside a Timequake, and are activated with Archpower for a set time duration, like an hour or so):
Passive Health Recovery Tick (ala Shrine Healing). [Possible]
Passive Mana Recovery Tick. [Possible]
Passive Ego Recovery Tick. [Possible]
Passive Shielding (ala Wyrdsong). [Possible]
EQ / Balance booster. [Possible]
Other stuff:
Critical hit booster (ala Merian, does not stack with Merian). [Why not stack? Don't like an ability that one race can't benefit from.]
Critical hit re-roll (ala Merian, does not stack with Merian). [See above]
NPC health prober (this already exists with GMCP, so why not make it something that you can get normally without GMCP anyways) [Seems small; better as a survival skill or something]
It really seems like you could have a bunch of different stuff here, as long as you restrict it to keep it from impacting most of our PvP environment!
Some specific comments (in bold). More ideas to choose from, the better!
My reason for the Merian unstackable thing is that you gave Merians a 5% buff which is super high (more than a 600 credit L2 crit hit artifact!). If you gave this a similarly high thing, that would be 10%. Just way too much.
Similarly I was thinking that a second crit re-roller might bump things up too much but I haven't run any numbers on that, so it may not be as much of an issue.
At some point I think there needs to be a review on the critical buffs because some of them are really high in comparison to other similar (or even more limited) things, but this is certainly not the place for that. That is what was behind my stackable comment though.
If there is a concern about getting confused with timequakes and Aeonic timequakes, what do people feel about changing the name of the Aeonic skill to "timerage"? Just a thought I wanted to put down while I was thinking about it--other suggestions welcome.
Everiine said: The reason population is low isn't because there are too many orgs. It's because so many facets of the game are outright broken and protected by those who benefit from it being that way. An overabundance of gimmicks (including game-breaking ones), artifacts that destroy any concept of balance, blatant pay-to-win features, and an obsession with convenience that makes few things actually worthwhile all contribute to the game's sad decline.
Personally I think it's fine that they share the name. Aeonics users being able to cast a timequake on a small but deadly scale and then juxtaposing it to the new in-game timequakes will make Aeonics users feel powerful, and I think that's a positive thing.
Still waiting to hear about artifacts imbalance stifling new and old PvP mechs alike but I wanted to throw that out there
Don't think the the village influencing buff is a good idea, kinda undercuts the point of non-pk revolts (giving an advantage to the better pk orgs). The rest looks good though.
Personally I think it's fine that they share the name. Aeonics users being able to cast a timequake on a small but deadly scale and then juxtaposing it to the new in-game timequakes will make Aeonics users feel powerful, and I think that's a positive thing.
Still waiting to hear about artifacts imbalance stifling new and old PvP mechs alike but I wanted to throw that out there
That was my original thought re the same name.
Feel free to start an artifacts imbalance thread. I do know we are scheduled to look at wonder items in the second quarter but I wasn't aware there were conerns beyond that.
Surely they should have a mostly pk focus, as you can only get the anomalies by going into an avengerless free-pk zone? Expecting crafters to have to pk is not a great idea. WoW forced crafters to get stuff from a free-pk zone at the beginning of Legion, and it was really sucky, which is why this worries me.
For me it's the other way around, non-PVPers want to be able to contribute meaningfully.
There's already a lot of systems where non-PVPers are pretty reliant on PVPers (Domoths, nodes, conflict villages) but from experience not being a PVPer can make you feel like a burden.
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With regards to the timequakes seems like another conflict mechanic that's disconnected from the other conflict mechanics where a research mechanic could have consolidated the disparate systems and provided opportunities for engaging different parts of the player base.
Just popping in to say I really like the lore aspect of the timequakes. I think the closer the themes can be tied into Lusternian lore the better. As an older player, I like seeing some of the previous threads from prior world-ending events and game history being drawn back together like this.
Hi I just wanted to clarify how the buffs will work to some extent.
As I understand it each guild will pick each project. Will the buffs be org wide once the project is completed or are we talking about the buffs being for each guild only?
With regards to the timequakes seems like another conflict mechanic that's disconnected from the other conflict mechanics where a research mechanic could have consolidated the disparate systems and provided opportunities for engaging different parts of the player base.
Ok so I am knowingly going to contradict my earlier statement about not having this linked to other stuff like villages because I actually like Saran's idea.
Could have stuff like damage buffs in the domoths to help with getting those faster, influence bonuses to help with revolts, and so on.
So looking back over this thread, the original posting, Xenthos' ideas, the general conversation, etc I wanted to toss my own into the ring. Very little is my own creative work, mostly reorganizing things that were in different trees to fit a theme, though I am struggling with the last one. I'm not sold on there being 4 themes to choose from, but none-the-less I wanted to make these four: Conquest, Empowerment, Devotion, and Creation. I feel like those themes sum up what Lusternia has always been about. That being conflict, power generation, massive creative culture, and RP to/with the Divine. So here's what I got so far, I'm still trying to brainstorm meaningful perks for Creation to be -worth- taking over any of these three so that we don't end up with just useless category, that being said, here we go!
Conquest - Conflict Level 1: Universal damage buff and resistance, passive 3/10, no archpower (stacks with truefavour and/or fruitpizzazz) Level 2: X/13 village influence buff, passive, x = floor(CR/2) minimum 1 Level 3: Faster cure recovery, 5 archpower/month Level 4: 5% Crit boost for 1 hour, 5 archpower/month, uses 1 (normal) power to activate Level 5: Prevent teleport out of local area except for members of your org, 10 archpower for 5 minutes (Another activation will cancel this power)
Empowerment - Power Gen Level 1: Org power quests generate 50% more power Level 2: ~10% chance on power regen tick it does not drain reserves Level 3: Elemental/Ethereal essence value is doubled, 5 archpower/month Level 4: Double power regeneration, 5 archpower/month to setup, uses 1 (normal) power to activate, lasts 30 seconds, once per IG day Level 5: Halt power regeneration in local area except for members of your org, 10 archpower for 30 seconds (Another activation will cancel this power)
Devotion - Demi/Divine Level 1: PRAYers increase Divine Offerings by 5% (example) Level 2: Divine Offerings of 50k+ grant a mini-boon* Level 3: 25% exp/essence buff, 5 archpower/month Level 4: Activate a Divine Shrine power at no essence, 5 archpower/month, uses 3 (normal) power to activate Level 5: Transfer Demigod essence to another at 25% efficiency (Stacks with Hand to make 100%). No upkeep or activation cost. Limited to 1x IG month
*MINI BOON - A 1/10 vitals and regeneration blessing for 1 hour, sleep and food do not lower. Read StrongFavour but vitals/regen instead of resistances
The numbers I list and suggest aren't fixed numbers, there are placeholders for what I personally think is acceptable and can be worked with via conversation.
With regards to the timequakes seems like another conflict mechanic that's disconnected from the other conflict mechanics where a research mechanic could have consolidated the disparate systems and provided opportunities for engaging different parts of the player base.
Ok so I am knowingly going to contradict my earlier statement about not having this linked to other stuff like villages because I actually like Saran's idea.
Could have stuff like damage buffs in the domoths to help with getting those faster, influence bonuses to help with revolts, and so on.
Just to make sure we're on the same page, I was thinking you could make it so all the existing conflict mechanics could generate resources that you could use for the research trees, then you could open up alternate avenues to get them. (Like village resources could be earned through the honours and comm quests)
You could even disconnect the current rewards and move them into the tech trees. (Like, the death crown doesn't immediately give you the death map but gives you death domoth essence that enables you to research and maintain it)
So looking back over this thread, the original posting, Xenthos' ideas, the general conversation, etc I wanted to toss my own into the ring. Very little is my own creative work, mostly reorganizing things that were in different trees to fit a theme, though I am struggling with the last one. I'm not sold on there being 4 themes to choose from, but none-the-less I wanted to make these four: Conquest, Empowerment, Devotion, and Creation. I feel like those themes sum up what Lusternia has always been about. That being conflict, power generation, massive creative culture, and RP to/with the Divine. So here's what I got so far, I'm still trying to brainstorm meaningful perks for Creation to be -worth- taking over any of these three so that we don't end up with just useless category, that being said, here we go!
Conquest - Conflict Level 1: Universal damage buff and resistance, passive 3/10, no archpower (stacks with truefavour and/or fruitpizzazz) Level 2: X/13 village influence buff, passive, x = floor(CR/2) minimum 1 Level 3: Faster cure recovery, 5 archpower/month Level 4: 5% Crit boost for 1 hour, 5 archpower/month, uses 1 (normal) power to activate Level 5: Prevent teleport out of local area except for members of your org, 10 archpower for 5 minutes (Another activation will cancel this power)
Empowerment - Power Gen Level 1: Org power quests generate 50% more power Level 2: ~10% chance on power regen tick it does not drain reserves Level 3: Elemental/Ethereal essence value is doubled, 5 archpower/month Level 4: Double power regeneration, 5 archpower/month to setup, uses 1 (normal) power to activate, lasts 30 seconds, once per IG day Level 5: Halt power regeneration in local area except for members of your org, 10 archpower for 30 seconds (Another activation will cancel this power)
Devotion - Demi/Divine Level 1: PRAYers increase Divine Offerings by 5% (example) Level 2: Divine Offerings of 50k+ grant a mini-boon* Level 3: 25% exp/essence buff, 5 archpower/month Level 4: Activate a Divine Shrine power at no essence, 5 archpower/month, uses 3 (normal) power to activate Level 5: Transfer Demigod essence to another at 25% efficiency (Stacks with Hand to make 100%). No upkeep or activation cost. Limited to 1x IG month
*MINI BOON - A 1/10 vitals and regeneration blessing for 1 hour, sleep and food do not lower. Read StrongFavour but vitals/regen instead of resistances
The numbers I list and suggest aren't fixed numbers, there are placeholders for what I personally think is acceptable and can be worked with via conversation.
Thank you! This is the exact sort of feedback we are looking for!
What about something dealing with aetherspace/aetherbubbles?
Powers along the lines of:
BubbleBond: Attune to a bubble, can teleport back and forth ala a bubblix. Need to be on the bubble to bond (so need to get there the first time with a button, bix, or ship). Can work on any bubble (even ones without an existing bix).
BendReality: Can do custom illusions ala the Wand of Illusions. Maybe 100% chance of seeing it as an illusion? Not intended for combat, but gives flexible rp stuff. If you have freefloating illusions, adding this power to it makes your illusions undetectable as long as you still have masochism? (Not wedded to that last part, having the illusions skill would have to not be set to 100% detect with this however).
BubblePower: Hanging out on your attuned bubble regenerates power like Lucidians during daytime.
Orgwide power: Allow creation of a second permanent construct on your nexus world.
Homeward Bound: Personal effect for all org members, can teleport nexus from a bubble to go back home.
BubbleTalk: You can speak freely from your attuned bubble (people can hear you or talk to you while you are on it).
IkonsGalore: Ability to generate a random ikon. Spend a bit more archpower to choose a group (even more for an Eternal group). 1x per rl day.
Ikonoclast: Nominate an ikon that will attack with you for an extra source of PvE damage, damage based on quality (with a cooldown of 2.5s or so).
IkonValuation: Generating an ikon (via questing, etc) gives you the same influence bonus that eating it would have.
IkonRanks: Playing an ikon tournament battle gives you 1cr towards your daily credits (only 1 possible per rl day). Note that this might be better as a general thing though..?
IkonGestalt: Increase the effect of a powerful gestalt. It will now give an influencing buff, or protect against debate damage, or some other thing that would be considered useful.
IkonTravel: Use ikon groups to get to specific places. The village one would work functionally like the Death domoth map, Eternal takes you to Avechna's statue, Soulless to Astral maybe? Org ones to right outside the org.
Note: I am just poking at stuff for general Lusternia specific attractions. If you have other power ideas for these feel free to suggest them as additions / replacements.
Diversity: There needs to be a spread of methods to gain anomalies. Including but not limited a PvP/PvE spread. Within the realm of PvP events they should not all be of a "King of the Hill" variety. This is already by far and away the dominate mode of PvP conflict.
To that end, I suggest scrapping the link between specific flavors of timequake and the tree they power. Instead, have each flavor be a different kind of conflict event. This also helps alleviate the guild problem:
Guilds: I frankly don't understand why the different trees are being tied directly to guilds. I can't see this going anywhere good, and it completely misses the point of guilds being boring, having no impact, and therefore being empty. Either the dividends for a guild progressing their research accrue to the org, to the guild itself, or some combination.
Powers that go to the former might as well not be guild-locked. There's no reason besides a pat on the head to the guild for assigning them to a guild based tree, and that does nothing to address the issue of guilds having no impact. Powers that go specifically only to members of that guild run straight into another huge issue.
Basically, it means that in practice powers will be ranked on their usefulness to the org overall: can't pursue all four trees equally with limited time and energy. Then, guilds will be ranked based on their number of members, because you want the tree you've decided is most useful to apply to the largest proportion of your org. This leads to a feedback loop where there's lower incentive for players to join low population guilds, and lower incentive for low population guild anomaly timequakes to have participation from your org. So those guilds stay low population.
Guilds need love. Small orgs need love. More PvP, biggest side wins - either inter OR intra org- isn't at all the way to go. If it wasn't (I assume) a core part of making the daily/org credit system really go, I'd urge the team to drop this project, or at least postpone it to work on fixing PvP before adding more PvP events. I love the idea of org based mechanical research projects, but this ain't it. Fix guilds by making them impactful to the lore, not by going back to ranking guilds on their combat usefulness and forcing people to join them so that they can participate in combat. That (thankfully) went away, why is it being brought back?
- Exchange quaketype-to-powers link with quaketype-to-conflict link Every quake can be used to progress any tree. Each quake instead showcases a different style of conflict.
- Plan for PvE participation. Through a quaketype, but also off quake events at a slow rate to gain archpower.
-Don't link guilds to this system in the way proposed. Just don't, it will be either pointless and patronizing or counter to the intent.
There was a bit of a discussion on Discord about this, where it was stated that this line may no longer be accurate:
"Research projects have 5 levels, each level granting a potential power
to every member of the city or commune that the guild represents"
It is now being discussed that there will be powers just for specific guildmembers. Please do not do this. The last thing that we need is for a system that mandates internal organization conflict as to which guild is allowed to do what, pitting guilds against each other, just to get the specific PK Powers that the people in the guild want.
We should not be dividing organizations against themselves.
In those bullet points I talk about wanting PvE, but neglect to describe why having some PvE methods to farm anomalies are good. So here it is:
For one, it would mean that orgs/guilds that aren't going to be winning many (if any) PvP timequake events aren't totally locked out of the system. They can still get at least a few smaller benefits going for themselves, so that the new system overall isn't adding "new things to do" JUST for orgs that are already dominating all of the things we currently have.
Additionally, the system as presented has not only unnecessary tension between guilds for timequake resources, it also pits the interests of the group against the interests of each individual in wanting access to the powers gained through the effort of the group. Assuming that powers go to the org so that first layer is taken away to simplify the example as much as possible: 4 Seren and I go and fight some Gloms at a timequake. We team up, I keep the Gloms off my allies as they harvest. We harvest 20 anomalies between us. I personally don't harvest any. Without me, the group would have died and harvested none. Likewise missing any member of our party. Some portion of the 20 total anomalies must go to the org to gain powers. To use powers, I need to keep some portion to myself.
Ack, this is an optimization problem! I need to have a healthy mix of donating some to the org to unlock new powers, and need to work out how to split the remainder fairly amongst my party. No matter what policy is put out at the org level, it's another internal division that's not good.
Having solo PvE methods to gather archpower erases this issue!
While the research projects are overseen by guilds, they benefit the entire city or commune. And, yes, we are thinking of alternate avenues to gain anomalies but right now we want to get timequakes down.
BTW, if anyone has any ideas for timequake powers, now is the time to present them!
Comments
There's already a lot of systems where non-PVPers are pretty reliant on PVPers (Domoths, nodes, conflict villages) but from experience not being a PVPer can make you feel like a burden.
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With regards to the timequakes seems like another conflict mechanic that's disconnected from the other conflict mechanics where a research mechanic could have consolidated the disparate systems and provided opportunities for engaging different parts of the player base.
As I understand it each guild will pick each project. Will the buffs be org wide once the project is completed or are we talking about the buffs being for each guild only?
Could have stuff like damage buffs in the domoths to help with getting those faster, influence bonuses to help with revolts, and so on.
Level 1: Universal damage buff and resistance, passive 3/10, no archpower (stacks with truefavour and/or fruitpizzazz)
Level 2: X/13 village influence buff, passive, x = floor(CR/2) minimum 1
Level 3: Faster cure recovery, 5 archpower/month
Level 4: 5% Crit boost for 1 hour, 5 archpower/month, uses 1 (normal) power to activate
Level 5: Prevent teleport out of local area except for members of your org, 10 archpower for 5 minutes (Another activation will cancel this power)
Empowerment - Power Gen
Level 1: Org power quests generate 50% more power
Level 2: ~10% chance on power regen tick it does not drain reserves
Level 3: Elemental/Ethereal essence value is doubled, 5 archpower/month
Level 4: Double power regeneration, 5 archpower/month to setup, uses 1 (normal) power to activate, lasts 30 seconds, once per IG day
Level 5: Halt power regeneration in local area except for members of your org, 10 archpower for 30 seconds (Another activation will cancel this power)
Devotion - Demi/Divine
Level 1: PRAYers increase Divine Offerings by 5% (example)
Level 2: Divine Offerings of 50k+ grant a mini-boon*
Level 3: 25% exp/essence buff, 5 archpower/month
Level 4: Activate a Divine Shrine power at no essence, 5 archpower/month, uses 3 (normal) power to activate
Level 5: Transfer Demigod essence to another at 25% efficiency (Stacks with Hand to make 100%). No upkeep or activation cost. Limited to 1x IG month
You could even disconnect the current rewards and move them into the tech trees. (Like, the death crown doesn't immediately give you the death map but gives you death domoth essence that enables you to research and maintain it)
Diversity:
There needs to be a spread of methods to gain anomalies. Including but not limited a PvP/PvE spread. Within the realm of PvP events they should not all be of a "King of the Hill" variety. This is already by far and away the dominate mode of PvP conflict.
To that end, I suggest scrapping the link between specific flavors of timequake and the tree they power. Instead, have each flavor be a different kind of conflict event. This also helps alleviate the guild problem:
Guilds:
I frankly don't understand why the different trees are being tied directly to guilds. I can't see this going anywhere good, and it completely misses the point of guilds being boring, having no impact, and therefore being empty. Either the dividends for a guild progressing their research accrue to the org, to the guild itself, or some combination.
Powers that go to the former might as well not be guild-locked. There's no reason besides a pat on the head to the guild for assigning them to a guild based tree, and that does nothing to address the issue of guilds having no impact. Powers that go specifically only to members of that guild run straight into another huge issue.
Basically, it means that in practice powers will be ranked on their usefulness to the org overall: can't pursue all four trees equally with limited time and energy. Then, guilds will be ranked based on their number of members, because you want the tree you've decided is most useful to apply to the largest proportion of your org. This leads to a feedback loop where there's lower incentive for players to join low population guilds, and lower incentive for low population guild anomaly timequakes to have participation from your org. So those guilds stay low population.
Guilds need love. Small orgs need love. More PvP, biggest side wins - either inter OR intra org- isn't at all the way to go. If it wasn't (I assume) a core part of making the daily/org credit system really go, I'd urge the team to drop this project, or at least postpone it to work on fixing PvP before adding more PvP events. I love the idea of org based mechanical research projects, but this ain't it. Fix guilds by making them impactful to the lore, not by going back to ranking guilds on their combat usefulness and forcing people to join them so that they can participate in combat. That (thankfully) went away, why is it being brought back?
- Exchange quaketype-to-powers link with quaketype-to-conflict link
Every quake can be used to progress any tree. Each quake instead showcases a different style of conflict.
- Plan for PvE participation. Through a quaketype, but also off quake events at a slow rate to gain archpower.
-Don't link guilds to this system in the way proposed. Just don't, it will be either pointless and patronizing or counter to the intent.
For one, it would mean that orgs/guilds that aren't going to be winning many (if any) PvP timequake events aren't totally locked out of the system. They can still get at least a few smaller benefits going for themselves, so that the new system overall isn't adding "new things to do" JUST for orgs that are already dominating all of the things we currently have.
Additionally, the system as presented has not only unnecessary tension between guilds for timequake resources, it also pits the interests of the group against the interests of each individual in wanting access to the powers gained through the effort of the group. Assuming that powers go to the org so that first layer is taken away to simplify the example as much as possible:
4 Seren and I go and fight some Gloms at a timequake.
We team up, I keep the Gloms off my allies as they harvest.
We harvest 20 anomalies between us.
I personally don't harvest any.
Without me, the group would have died and harvested none. Likewise missing any member of our party.
Some portion of the 20 total anomalies must go to the org to gain powers.
To use powers, I need to keep some portion to myself.
Ack, this is an optimization problem! I need to have a healthy mix of donating some to the org to unlock new powers, and need to work out how to split the remainder fairly amongst my party. No matter what policy is put out at the org level, it's another internal division that's not good.
Having solo PvE methods to gather archpower erases this issue!