Upcoming System: Timequakes!
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Comments
If the suggested use case for the power is so people can go strip harvest entire zones and then "fix it" that encourages a type of behaviour that ignores the negative reinforcement current mechanisms provide.
Similarly, it's a capstone that has an impact on one trade? How useful would it really be to an org with few herbalists or even just to the non-herbalists in an org who could have gotten a different power instead?
The first time any guild achieves a capstone it enables them to submit a guild request to have a thematically appropriate effect available whenever they have that capstone active.
For example, maybe the Listeners research the desolate anomaly type and have a ritual they can perform that consumes archpower to pull Seren's dead from that timeline into ours temporarily which could provide the forest with some "free", tough, guards while it's maintained.
But again, dependent on the variables, cause you could also do bigger things if it's harder. Like a Past Anomaly project for the Listeners providing a method for wiping the alabaster road out and restoring the forest that was there.
To take that power people are sacrificing one of faster teleports and milestones access, the death effects, or a second trade skill with the majority only gaining an abstract benefit. Maybe death isn't the most widely useful capstone, maybe what it needs is a visit back to the drawing board to devise interactions with effects like lichseed. But that's a lot closer to being universally useful.
The theme is nature, you could give people the ability to use their orgs terrain and put in an interaction with censers and melder terraining. The drums of kiakoda artefact might also provide inspiration.
The grove of isolation from other games also provides something nature themed, drop in something that gives you a "nature"bix that connects to some naturey areas around prime.
I mean, you could potentially make all of the capstones *bix's that connect to zones that "resonate deeply with the domoths"
Bolded just in case. Things were asked to be kept in theme, THAT'S WHY.
Knowledge could also get the Catacombs teleports, sure, but that then makes it a must have and kind of encroaches on what Death does. What I don't understand is what is people's obsession with the capstones having to being super good? None of these projects are requirements, you're not forced to take any of these. You can permanently keep all three projects at level 1 if you insisted on it. You should be picking a project for ALL the powers, not just number 5.
Further, the capstone must be good because the capstone is the incentive for guilds to push to get the resources necessary to maintain the highest level of their project.
Again, it's dependent on aspects @Estarra and @Orael haven't confirmed yet, but if it follows the expectation that it's hard to maintain a full project then you need to make it worth the effort.
Also, to be blunt, I don't imagine any guild that chooses to not take a project at all would be looked on favourably by their org.
Creating a system where people need to work and can then just rest on their laurels as long as they get a bare minimum for maintenance is one where eventually everyone would reach the cap.
Meanwhile, a system with significantly scaling maintenance costs with each additional stage means that players have to regularly engage with Timequakes to make sure they upkeep their projects. Likely to the point where not everyone can have capstones because the maintenance requirements consume enough that there aren't enough anomalies to go around.
My expectations are:
- given the context around why this is being implemented, it's going to be an actual effort to research and maintain the projects.
- in line with the previous, each project level ramps up in terms of research and maintenance cost.
- there will not be enough anomalies going around for every org to maintain maxed out projects.
If these expectations hold true, then every level of a research project would require more and more work from the guild maintaining it. This would in turn mean that level 5 powers would be rare, potentially to the point that not every org might even have one.If this is accurate, then the level 5 powers need to be worth the amount of effort they would require, otherwise people just won't participate in the system to hit that point. Let's say that org is Ackleberry.
Which in turn would free up resources so the other orgs (Jojobo) can get higher. but likely not to the point that anyone would actually hit the cap.
But depending on where that balances out, Ackleberry and Jojobo along with their allies could maintain a point which renders fighting over the resources meaningless because no one cares enough to get more anomalies.
So let's just plonk numbers into excel here.
If we get 2 of each rift type every weave, those last for an hour and harvest time is 5 minutes.
That would mean a weekly maximum of 84 anomalies for each type without the harvest bonus from beauty (112 with it which is a pretty significant step up in numbers and can really make beauty important).
That's four different assumptions there:
A ) that anomaly spawns are tied to the weave not the month cycle in game
B ) that the maintenance cycle is weekly
C ) that the length a rift is active for is an hour
D ) that harvesting is a 5 minutes uninterrupted channel
That's also maximums, so you are liable to see less than that.
Then we need to look at research and maintenance costs.
Let's say research for level 1 is 10 anomalies and each level doubles after that with maintenance being half the research cost.
This would mean moving from level 4 to 5 would cost just under two full weeks worth of anomalies and the maintenance cost would be a couple points under every anomaly for a week. Which then shuts out anyone else from using that project at all.
Something like a 1.5 multiplication would bring it down but you're still looking at around a quarter of the anomalies each we meaning maybe 4, more likely 3, orgs would be able to have the same project maxed out.
Change the cycle to follow the day and year cycle in game, two orgs at a stretch could maintain the level 5 while the other orgs can fight over the lower levels with costs doubling. Leave it at a 1.5 and all orgs can maintain all level 5s as long as a couple have beauty.
You could even have some form of exponential growth to costs which again changes what things would look like.
All those small variations put different weight on how powerful each level needs to be.
Again, numbers in a spreadsheet, if you drop the channel time you need to up the research and maintenance costs.
I'd also note, the basis for your suggestions is your speculation on how this is going to work. This is the problem with the current amount of public knowledge about the system, if things are harder than you are assuming then at least some of your suggestions are not worth the effort and, in turn, will require more dev time to replace later on to get people engaging with the system.
If it's trivial, then bonuses need to be considered within the scope that at some point everyone in the game will reasonably have access to a combination of any three. But this also seems counter to the goal because it means the heightened engagement that is a goal of this has a somewhat limited lifetime.
edit: Realistically, it seems pretty clear that there are varying expectations of how difficult this is. Which, in turn, is why there are significantly different expectations of the power level of the bonuses. Until @Estarra provides more context there's no realistic way to get closer to an agreement because you'll always be suggesting things that are less powerful than I'd expect.