Halloween themed beepbeeps like a pumpkin or a ghost.
A cauldron that turns your appearance in the room a random colour for an hour. Think leprechaun curio pot, but for room appearances.
A higher priced item that allows you to configure tells to other people, either pre made or generally configurable. Instead of
Estarra tells you, "Spoon!"
You could have
Ghostly murmurs fill your mind as Estarra tells you, "Spoon!"
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.
To echo Llandros, I'm pretty sure people would buy whimsical mounts even if they didn't have any inherents. GINGERBREAD GIRAFFE AHOY
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.
A pumpkin treat bag that works just like the stocking!
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.
If we are going to go with seasonal decorations, how about seasonally themed curios that you can place in manses, maybe with an ambient effect you can toggle? Like a carved pumpkin curio which does a flickering candle casting shadows line. Miniature christmas tree curio with lights. ect.
You have received a new honour! Congratulations! On this day, you have shown your willingness to ensure a bug-free Lusternia for everyone to enjoy. The face of Iosai the Anomaly unfolds before you, and within you grows the knowledge that you have earned the elusive and rare honour of membership in Her Order. Curio Exchange - A website to help with the trading of curio pieces in Lusternia.
To echo Llandros, I'm pretty sure people would buy whimsical mounts even if they didn't have any inherents. GINGERBREAD GIRAFFE AHOY
Inorite? After I typed it I couldn't stop thinking how awesome it would be to ride a peep around the basin. It would make a mess and after the first mile or so it would be positively disgusting as you start to sink inside the poor creature but it would be totally worth it.
Alternatively a saddle that you can put on various critters to ride them. Beastmaster training would be specific to the saddle so you can swap out the beast without losing the utility. It would need to be restricted as far as which ones you can mount though.
(Whimsical gnomes playable race that is more suited for bards! They taught tinkering to bards so surely some of them are artistic.)
About this idea, I also was looking at the two purchasable races and realized how both arent suitable for Cha-focused classes. I wonder if a third could be introduced, though not sure what it could be. A concept could be the Sileni race, which, logically, since they descended from Rhesileni, a Keeper of Song, they would have rather high charisma....however, technically they are a now extinct race...so im not sure if or how Estarra would reintroduce them. It could be interesting event though...a reintroduction of an extinct race.
Beast Bridles--You know how hair curios add a little passage to the end of your description? Make artifacts that do that for beasts. You could do them as curios or as something more like the prayer beads where you touch it to get a description that goes with your org/order/guild/whatever.
Gnomish Figurines-Activate to give yourself a temporary follower (like the ones from poteen pots) that doesn't do anything besides look pretty. You could do a themed set of them. Aetherbubble denizens, maybe.
Limited edition ikons-Sell them for a few credits each, make their stats clones of existing ikons. You could even set them as legendary so people could buy them to consume for the XP buff if they wanted. Price accordingly so the people selling legendaries from other sources don't get pushed out of the market.
Pieces of Fate-So, the golden lips are a great idea for an artifact. The problem is that they're a terrible deal since you're likely going to waste a lot of the time from each set of lips, so much so that you're normally going to be better off by just selling a few credits and buying goldentonic instead. Use these as a better way of having a credit-XP boost artifact. Each piece of fate a person owns gives them a +10% XP boost as long as they're equipping it. Let people buy more than one, and let them stack up to 10 times for a max of +100% to XP gains. This is equivalent to a permanent goldentonic. If someone has ten, let them COMBINE PIECES to turn them into a single 'Amulet of Fate' to keep the equipment list from getting bloated. Make them stack with lips if you want to let people pay obscene amounts of credits for obscene XP boosts, or not if you want to cap grinding speed.
Selling it in pieces lets newish players buy a piece or two cheaply and increase it as the bashing time per level increases. Making it an item lets people loan them out to people if they're holding an aetherhunt to try to get someone to demi or something similar. I'd personally price it at something like 50 credits per piece, so that it's only a clear winner over the lips in the long term, and to leave lips a niche as a boost for things like great hunts that tend to produce bashing binges.
Related artifacts are the golden lips for giving a big XP boost, and the commandant item for giving a permanent XP boost.
Any sufficiently advanced pun is indistinguishable from comedy.
I think 500cr for a permanent 100% XP boost would be a bit small, considering you get a 24h boost for 30 credits. It'd probably end up closer to 1000cr.
I'd prefer for golden lips to work like almost all of the other IRE games and not count down when you're offline. Same for favours
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.
I think 500cr for a permanent 100% XP boost would be a bit small, considering you get a 24h boost for 30 credits. It'd probably end up closer to 1000cr.
I'd probably still buy it at 1000cr. Probably not for much more, though. Here's my price math, for the curious.
Assuming that a person gets 8 hours of use from a pair of lips (I think this is reasonable. It's on the high end of what I could conceivably get out of them, anyway) lips cost 3.75cr per hour. Six hours comes to 5cr per hours, and is probably the lowest time for which a person would buy lips. For scale, if you sell credits and buy goldentonics at the current aetherplex rates the tonics come to about 3 credits per hour.
I picked 120 hours as a semi-arbitrary breakeven point between buying tons of lips and buying the equivalent permanent boost. 120 hours of lips comes to 468.75cr, which got rounded to 500 to make it into a pretty number and add a small premium for the ability to lend it out during astral bashes and whatnot. ---- Also agree very strongly on making the lips be 24 hour uses. Or even changing lips to 12 hour duration and 15cr cost. I think they're a fundamentally great artifact, but they're just so hard to justify buying when I know I'm going to waste most of the time. Which isn't to say that they're unjustifiable, since I do have one running right now. ------- On the trend of cheapish consumable artifacts, how about this:
Ur'fetch-Single use. Next time you die, this this artifact is destroyed and you do not lose experience. This includes the immediate loss from death as well as the cost of praying/congluting/phoenixing/whatevering.
Make it a cheap artifact so new people who are experimenting with bashing areas can buy a couple with their free leveling credits so they don't lose progress while they learn where they can bash. There's a (probably slim) chance that making it a cheap artifact could encourage people to do culture, too, if writing a book can cover three or four deaths worth of XP for them. Might encourage the culturey noncoms to do a little more fighting too, for the same reason. For that reason I'd keep the cost in the 1-3 credit range. Maybe two credits per fetch and a 3 for 5 credit deal.
For scale on suggested pricing, Hallifax gives 5 credits for a 1k word (And 1k is the lowest bracket for which we pay credits, so the minimum thing a culture newbie is likely to do) book. That'd put a basic book as covering three deaths, which strikes me as an appropriate number (and totally satisfies me on the whole culture should give XP front, because at that point it basically does at a reasonable rate for any org that gives out culture credits.)
Any sufficiently advanced pun is indistinguishable from comedy.
So, since 'Movember' is coming up, how about a line of beard and moustache 'hair' curios? They could be added to the description just like the current Wig curios. Could add a custom emote of moustachetwirl/beardtwirl if they possess one.
I don't think there should be a 'purchaseable CHA race.' If you want that, just go faeling.
Gnome Tinker would just be the tinkering version of Dwarf brewmeister. The stats would need adjusting, decent Cha and stupid high Int isn't a good combo, but I think the flavour would be great.
I don't think there should be a 'purchaseable CHA race.' If you want that, just go faeling.
Gnome Tinker would just be the tinkering version of Dwarf brewmeister. The stats would need adjusting, decent Cha and stupid high Int isn't a combo, but I think the flavour would be great.
The problem with faelings is that Ebonguard who take totems don't get good charisma out of it.
Merians who go Paladin don't get a high intelligence or charisma either. What's your point :P
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.
I don't think there should be a 'purchaseable CHA race.' If you want that, just go faeling.
Gnome Tinker would just be the tinkering version of Dwarf brewmeister. The stats would need adjusting, decent Cha and stupid high Int isn't a combo, but I think the flavour would be great.
The problem with faelings is that Ebonguard who take totems don't get good charisma out of it.
skillflex out if you want to influence, problem solved, much cheaper than an artifact.
This is a game of choices and consequences, you shouldn't be able to have your cake and eat it too.
Otherwise I want a High Int, High Con High Cha, +bal +eq race purchaseable for 2k credits.
Glamrock would be enough if we had an easy/less spammy way of swapping around the order of items that are worn, like WORN SWAP <thing> AND <thing2>, instead of having to remove absolutely everything, then drop it, then pick it up in precisely the right order.
Depending on the code base there might even be something like item x move up|down
I don't think there should be a 'purchaseable CHA race.' If you want that, just go faeling.
Gnome Tinker would just be the tinkering version of Dwarf brewmeister. The stats would need adjusting, decent Cha and stupid high Int isn't a combo, but I think the flavour would be great.
The problem with faelings is that Ebonguard who take totems don't get good charisma out of it.
skillflex out if you want to influence, problem solved, much cheaper than an artifact.
This is a game of choices and consequences, you shouldn't be able to have your cake and eat it too.
Otherwise I want a High Int, High Con High Cha, +bal +eq race purchaseable for 2k credits.
The suggestion was simply for a cha-focused race for bards and those preferring charisma.
Let's look at some facts.
Gnomes currently dominate as the highest intelligent race, with a wooping 19 int.
Finks currently dominate as the highest dexterity race (and perhaps best choice for warriors), with a wooping 19 dex as well.
Both these races have these highest of stats because they can only be accessed by a special purchase. Each of them represent the 'best' for their fighting type, Gnomes for Casters and Finks for Physical. All that's needed is 1 more race for the Charisma focused classes.
While using Tinkering to create a spec gnome-bard would be great, it still does leave the issue that a bard would have to be a tinker in order to gain that boost. I'd prefer a third option. That isnt to say that Tinker gnomes is a bad idea, it can be manageable as well.
The way it needs to be thought of is that these are 'purchaseable' races, meaning the customers should have the opportunity to select the pack that best suits them. Im not saying for amazing stats in a pack that will outclass the entire game, simply stats in accordance with the previous 2. If someone prefers to play the game by influencing for example, why should they not have the option to 'purchase' a special race with the same "higher advantage" for that talent, like the other 2?
Both SL Faeling and aslaran are superior to Fink by the simple +balance bonus they receive. That's far more important than having a race that hits diminishing returns (which starts at 18 if I'm remembering correctly) at its base value. In other words, you're getting a much better deal with 'free' non purchasable races, than you are with a 'purchasable' race.
Gnomes on the other hand, still hit diminishing returns and Intelligence really only benefits damage. @Feyda rolled around as a gnome and she switched back to faeling because high damage only kills midbies easily, and doesn't even matter in groups (when so much damage is happening already). Sure you can two shot some people, but you'll get more benefit overall by remaining another race.
In addition, bards aren't entirely CHA based, they are 50% CHA and 50% INT, so having a high CHA doesn't really benefit a bard unless they have the INT there as well. Yeah, sure you'll benefit influencers, but I'm not sure adding another bonus for influencers is the way to go. They already have enough bonuses that it doesn't really matter much once you hit a certain CHA threshold. Maybe in an influence challenge you'll have a slight edge, but in the grand scheme of things, it's going to mean diddily.
I feel like gnomes and finks in general are more for flavour than anything else, as overall, you get more bang for your buck with 'free' races.
If the customers get to buy the 'pack that best suits them' then I still want my high CON, high INT, high CHA +bal +eq race. It's only fair because I'm paying 1500 more credits.
But I want to be a gnome and a bard and not be gimped in combat ( I was the first tinkerer for goodness sakes! (I mean I was probably one of like 4 people who participated and won because I was able to successfully rhyme a few words together but I'm milking that sucker for all it's worth.)
My life is a nightmare!!! /ShakesFist /TableFlip /ChairThrow #LusterniaHatesMe. I guess I can just RP out some kind of quarter gnome heritage /MockRageSubsiding
Viravain, Lady of the Thorns shouts, "And You would seize Me? Fool! I am the Glomdoring! I am the Wyrd, and beneath the cloak of Night, the shadows of the Silent stir!"
Purchaseable races should not affect combat in such outlier ways. Yes, I'm aware that there needs to be incentive to purchase them, since they are being, officially, sold for real money, blah blah and all those arguments that were brought up about curios as well. It's not reasonable to expect the admin to put out a promotion that obviously won't get them sales. Nor is it a good business practice to do so either.
But the problem with using real money to buy combat advantages is that there HAS to be a hard limit somewhere on how much that bought advantage reaches. And premium races which become the "best" possible races for a class because of their stats? That no one else has access to unless they cough up the moolah? And which actually does cost a significant amount of money? (30cents per credit brings these races to a little over $150) It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out it's a bad idea for game balance.
Luckily, neither the gnomes nor the finks are actually the "best" possible races for any archetype. The aslaran master race hasn't relaxed it's monopoly on the racial market yet, and the faeling aren't trailing too far behind, waiting with the dagger in their hands to stabbity stab stab the master race when they falter in their iron grip. Other niche race specializations are also ahead of gnome/finks in certain specific combinations (brewmeister dwarf, seasinger merians) as well, and all is still well with the world.
Comments
A cauldron that turns your appearance in the room a random colour for an hour. Think leprechaun curio pot, but for room appearances.
A higher priced item that allows you to configure tells to other people, either pre made or generally configurable. Instead of
Estarra tells you, "Spoon!"
You could have
Ghostly murmurs fill your mind as Estarra tells you, "Spoon!"
You have received a new honour! Congratulations! On this day, you have shown your willingness to ensure a bug-free Lusternia for everyone to enjoy. The face of Iosai the Anomaly unfolds before you, and within you grows the knowledge that you have earned the elusive and rare honour of membership in Her Order.
Curio Exchange - A website to help with the trading of curio pieces in Lusternia.
Gnomish Figurines-Activate to give yourself a temporary follower (like the ones from poteen pots) that doesn't do anything besides look pretty. You could do a themed set of them. Aetherbubble denizens, maybe.
Limited edition ikons-Sell them for a few credits each, make their stats clones of existing ikons. You could even set them as legendary so people could buy them to consume for the XP buff if they wanted. Price accordingly so the people selling legendaries from other sources don't get pushed out of the market.
Pieces of Fate-So, the golden lips are a great idea for an artifact. The problem is that they're a terrible deal since you're likely going to waste a lot of the time from each set of lips, so much so that you're normally going to be better off by just selling a few credits and buying goldentonic instead. Use these as a better way of having a credit-XP boost artifact. Each piece of fate a person owns gives them a +10% XP boost as long as they're equipping it. Let people buy more than one, and let them stack up to 10 times for a max of +100% to XP gains. This is equivalent to a permanent goldentonic. If someone has ten, let them COMBINE PIECES to turn them into a single 'Amulet of Fate' to keep the equipment list from getting bloated. Make them stack with lips if you want to let people pay obscene amounts of credits for obscene XP boosts, or not if you want to cap grinding speed.
Selling it in pieces lets newish players buy a piece or two cheaply and increase it as the bashing time per level increases. Making it an item lets people loan them out to people if they're holding an aetherhunt to try to get someone to demi or something similar. I'd personally price it at something like 50 credits per piece, so that it's only a clear winner over the lips in the long term, and to leave lips a niche as a boost for things like great hunts that tend to produce bashing binges.
Related artifacts are the golden lips for giving a big XP boost, and the commandant item for giving a permanent XP boost.
Estarra the Eternal says, "Give Shevat the floor please."
Assuming that a person gets 8 hours of use from a pair of lips (I think this is reasonable. It's on the high end of what I could conceivably get out of them, anyway) lips cost 3.75cr per hour. Six hours comes to 5cr per hours, and is probably the lowest time for which a person would buy lips. For scale, if you sell credits and buy goldentonics at the current aetherplex rates the tonics come to about 3 credits per hour.
I picked 120 hours as a semi-arbitrary breakeven point between buying tons of lips and buying the equivalent permanent boost. 120 hours of lips comes to 468.75cr, which got rounded to 500 to make it into a pretty number and add a small premium for the ability to lend it out during astral bashes and whatnot.
----
Also agree very strongly on making the lips be 24 hour uses. Or even changing lips to 12 hour duration and 15cr cost. I think they're a fundamentally great artifact, but they're just so hard to justify buying when I know I'm going to waste most of the time. Which isn't to say that they're unjustifiable, since I do have one running right now.
-------
On the trend of cheapish consumable artifacts, how about this:
Ur'fetch-Single use. Next time you die, this this artifact is destroyed and you do not lose experience. This includes the immediate loss from death as well as the cost of praying/congluting/phoenixing/whatevering.
Make it a cheap artifact so new people who are experimenting with bashing areas can buy a couple with their free leveling credits so they don't lose progress while they learn where they can bash. There's a (probably slim) chance that making it a cheap artifact could encourage people to do culture, too, if writing a book can cover three or four deaths worth of XP for them. Might encourage the culturey noncoms to do a little more fighting too, for the same reason. For that reason I'd keep the cost in the 1-3 credit range. Maybe two credits per fetch and a 3 for 5 credit deal.
For scale on suggested pricing, Hallifax gives 5 credits for a 1k word (And 1k is the lowest bracket for which we pay credits, so the minimum thing a culture newbie is likely to do) book. That'd put a basic book as covering three deaths, which strikes me as an appropriate number (and totally satisfies me on the whole culture should give XP front, because at that point it basically does at a reasonable rate for any org that gives out culture credits.)
I mean, they're clever enough to build aetherships and fire guns on them.
Maybe any chem (not wood) spec can become a fink engineer, trading dex for int.
There's still trill.
The suggestion was simply for a cha-focused race for bards and those preferring charisma.
Let's look at some facts.
Gnomes currently dominate as the highest intelligent race, with a wooping 19 int.
Finks currently dominate as the highest dexterity race (and perhaps best choice for warriors), with a wooping 19 dex as well.
Both these races have these highest of stats because they can only be accessed by a special purchase. Each of them represent the 'best' for their fighting type, Gnomes for Casters and Finks for Physical. All that's needed is 1 more race for the Charisma focused classes.
While using Tinkering to create a spec gnome-bard would be great, it still does leave the issue that a bard would have to be a tinker in order to gain that boost. I'd prefer a third option. That isnt to say that Tinker gnomes is a bad idea, it can be manageable as well.
The way it needs to be thought of is that these are 'purchaseable' races, meaning the customers should have the opportunity to select the pack that best suits them. Im not saying for amazing stats in a pack that will outclass the entire game, simply stats in accordance with the previous 2. If someone prefers to play the game by influencing for example, why should they not have the option to 'purchase' a special race with the same "higher advantage" for that talent, like the other 2?
But the problem with using real money to buy combat advantages is that there HAS to be a hard limit somewhere on how much that bought advantage reaches. And premium races which become the "best" possible races for a class because of their stats? That no one else has access to unless they cough up the moolah? And which actually does cost a significant amount of money? (30cents per credit brings these races to a little over $150) It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out it's a bad idea for game balance.
Luckily, neither the gnomes nor the finks are actually the "best" possible races for any archetype. The aslaran master race hasn't relaxed it's monopoly on the racial market yet, and the faeling aren't trailing too far behind, waiting with the dagger in their hands to stabbity stab stab the master race when they falter in their iron grip. Other niche race specializations are also ahead of gnome/finks in certain specific combinations (brewmeister dwarf, seasinger merians) as well, and all is still well with the world.
Let's keep it that way.