Forum Links 

Click to return to main page
 FAQFAQ   SearchSearch   MemberlistMemberlist   UsergroupsUsergroups   RegisterRegister 
 ProfileProfile  Log in to check your private messagesLog in to check your private messages    Log inLog in 
 Current Top Rated Killers 
 Next Event   Voting Links 


The event "The Assault on Taekir" is beginning in 1 day, 12 hours.

Quests and Alignment

 
Post new topic   Reply to topic    Abandoned Realms Forum Index -> Ideas and Suggestions
View previous topic :: View next topic  
Author Message
Ergorion



Joined: 16 Mar 2007
Posts: 2156

PostPosted: Mon Dec 12, 2016 8:54 pm    Post subject: Quests and Alignment

What if there was a little more gray area to alignment. This idea stems from the fact that we have evil only and good only quests and that I think some of the quests have options where it's like choose your own adventure a.k.a the player can either kill the elf or help the elf.

What if depending on how players interact with some of the choose your own adventure quests they could skew their character more towards one alignment or another. So each alignment could have a value 1-10 where 10 is most evil or most good. And maybe 5 would be most neutral. And depending on the choice to kill the elf or help the elf a neutral player could push his/her alignment score closer to the good side or the evil side.

Some initial thoughts on the benefits of having super good/evil scores. Maybe how good or evil you are has an impact on the amount of experience you get from killing opposite align mobs. So the most dastardly evil bastard would gain more experience per nymph than a dude who is just moderately evil. And a more evil leaning neutral would gain a bit more experience from a nymph than a more good leaning neutral.

Other thoughts on how align scores could factor in:
(1) the most good of the goods could have shorter request durations or be able to request higher level items earlier
(2) the most evil of the evils could have a more effective haggle a la the legion extortion thing


And besides quests, maybe decisions made in game could impact alignment scores. i.e. the more equipment you give away to peeps, the more you shift towards good. or the more pks you get the more you shift towards evil
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message
 
0 0 0
Ergorion



Joined: 16 Mar 2007
Posts: 2156

PostPosted: Mon Dec 12, 2016 9:00 pm    Post subject:

And maybe if someone has a perfect alignment score there could be periodic messages like when the balance of power shifts.

Something like:
Rigwarl walks into the room. A chilling breeze blusters past causing everyone to shiver.
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message
 
0 0 0
ottif



Joined: 08 Jan 2015
Posts: 310

PostPosted: Tue Dec 13, 2016 2:25 am    Post subject:

I don't like that last example but I really like the idea. And max alignment could do more than just that, it could show up in description, prevent you from buying certain places, etc. An evil would still be evil even if he had no points towards evil alignment, but an evil with max points could reap the benefits. Maybe faster looting etc. idk a new meta
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message
 
0 0 0
Olyn
Immortal


Joined: 23 Jul 2008
Posts: 3244
Location: Pennsylvania

PostPosted: Tue Dec 13, 2016 8:57 pm    Post subject:

Vanisse has been setting this up with reputation counters for a little while now. It's been worked into a ton of areas so far. The next logical step will be to incorporate the results into gameplay. Good suggestion.
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message
 
0 0 0
Vanisse
Immortal


Joined: 06 Jan 2006
Posts: 2793
Location: inside a tree

PostPosted: Tue Dec 13, 2016 9:19 pm    Post subject:

I think it needs some readjustment and maybe different planning. I initially set it on a bunch of city-related mobs (so you could be renowned in Seringale but reviled in Sylvan Vale for slaughtering elves all the time) .. but at one point I had 34 areas on a list, plus 18 religions... looking at reputation list got extremely complicated/ugly. So I thought about paring it down to religion reputation only for simplicity purposes, but that changes the implications of reputation entirely.

Not to mention that the current way of adding reputation means manually adding a stat to every mob/mobprog that you want to influence the reputation meter(s) which makes testing and undoing these changes pretty time-consuming.

Right now there is an individual meter for each reputation category (e.g. Seringale +50, Sylvan Vale -100, Vevier +1000) but they do not combine into a single overall reputation meter. The latter might be preferable and better to read, but would lose sensitivity. An optimal combination (e.g. Mass Effect) would be to track all the disparate events, so the mobs and folks could respond in a nuanced way, but you would only perceive the general reputation. But customizing all of that is a ton of work.

All of that precedes even considering what reputation would ultimately influence. such as discount buying from shops for well-known folks, maybe extorting gear from lower ranked mobs if you're notorious enough.

Tracking inter-player interactions and applying reputation to that would be tough I think. (handing a piece of equipment back and forth to score tons of goodie points? haha - and pk is not always an "evil" act either)
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message
 
0 0 0
Nycticora



Joined: 09 Feb 2013
Posts: 2277

PostPosted: Wed Dec 14, 2016 2:49 am    Post subject:

What was wrong with the initial plan of doing it only for a few factions? I see it got cumbersome to add content quickly, but how did it do with a manageable amount of content? Was it unsatisfying because it wasn't on enough mobs in enough places?
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message
 
0 0 0
ottif



Joined: 08 Jan 2015
Posts: 310

PostPosted: Wed Dec 14, 2016 3:46 am    Post subject:

You're confusing me with the term reputation because there is already the system of reputations isn't there via repute? As far as alignment as you said couldn't you just add up all the areas to determine max aligntment? If you need it to be more specific for some things you can. An example being a dark elf wants to do a certain quest in the underworld so his score from valour, isle of illusion and sylvan vale are counted. Which is actually a cool way of doing it imo vs just questing or killing aligned mobs.
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message
 
0 0 0
Vanisse
Immortal


Joined: 06 Jan 2006
Posts: 2793
Location: inside a tree

PostPosted: Wed Dec 14, 2016 8:46 pm    Post subject:

Nyc - as I was building it in, I kept thinking - why does this city get to get ruffled about me killing its citizens and not the colony of elves down the road? Shouldn't there be factions for opponents on a battlefield such as in Battlezone? If I am earning points for hunting an enemy of this town, shouldn't I get points for doing quests for the townsfolk? How about finding secrets in this town? And it just snowballed from there. While it felt really organic to put addreputation in these places as I went, it also started getting very numbers-heavy as I saw myself wracking up +5 here and +10 there (arbitrarily assigned values, also, which were loosely based on difficulty/target level)... After a few areas had been installed, I wound up with a giant headache. I can see why a lot of games that use a sliding reputation scale hide the actual numbers under the hood.
I didn't want to make it cabal-based factions because cabal dominates most RP already and I wanted to give players an option to flesh out their characters in other directions.

ottif - yes, the use of the word "reputation" was probably not the best choice, alas. We transitioned the old-style repute to the honor function sometime in the last few years (can't recall exact date), but all of us old farts still think of it as reputation.
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message
 
0 0 0
Davairus
Implementor


Joined: 16 Jan 2004
Posts: 10344
Location: 0x0000

PostPosted: Wed Dec 14, 2016 9:34 pm    Post subject:

Vanisse I dont think what youve made is too bad. I wiil agree that it sounds tedious to make changes to. In terms of designing a game system to be easier to adapt to changes we call that "maintainability". You built something which you are saying isnt maintanable but there is bound to be a way to adapt the design to fix it. e.g. uou can just have some umbrella reputations that are relatable and have table lookups for this to save having to change mobprogs. I think that IS the indirect connection you are looking for. e.g. if I were slaying shadowspawns in shaldun dalghul for the ardent crusader camp nearby, some reputation with "knights of valour" could also be expected, and equally if I killed hellhounds in the mansion of malevolent for the "white crusaders" they are also going to improve my reputationw ith the knights of valour. or the town Valour. You can choose. That sounded a bit racist but I think makes my point. I'm sure you can come up with better names than me doing it off the top of my head. a few consequences for harming these new umbrella reps and you are set
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message Send e-mail
 
0 0 0
Vanisse
Immortal


Joined: 06 Jan 2006
Posts: 2793
Location: inside a tree

PostPosted: Wed Dec 14, 2016 9:45 pm    Post subject:

You know what, if we could make different spheres of influence that would be neat actually. For example killing elves could strongly upset the head elf that lives in the tree trunk, and have a big impact on the local sphere of influence, while also having a smaller negative ripple effect in other areas with a large elvish population (including Valour). Codewise, we could set a primary influence to local area, optional secondary influence to a major city, or a religion.

If we move all that stuff to the code side of things it would certainly make life a lot easier. Then we'd just need to optionally customize quests and secrets.
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message
 
0 0 0
Davairus
Implementor


Joined: 16 Jan 2004
Posts: 10344
Location: 0x0000

PostPosted: Wed Dec 14, 2016 9:52 pm    Post subject:

Go for it..let me know if you need input with making it easier coding . i think you just need to modify table structure
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message Send e-mail
 
0 0 0
Display posts from previous:   
Post new topic   Reply to topic    Abandoned Realms Forum Index -> Ideas and Suggestions All times are GMT
Page 1 of 1

 
Jump to:  
You cannot post new topics in this forum
You cannot reply to topics in this forum
You cannot edit your posts in this forum
You cannot delete your posts in this forum
You cannot vote in polls in this forum


Powered by phpBB © phpBB Group