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Shard Update

This is a tentative list of changes that will be made to the shard and shardfall system as soon as the ToC is over. It is about 90% coded. We have a few other ideas we are batting around currently, specifically things that orgs can spend generators on.

One of the main problems is the massive surplus of shards players have. There is little need to get new shards, which is the purpose of the system. Originally shards were groupable and riftable for convenience. This has added to the problem of thousands of unused shards in the game.

We are also adding several new features to the shard system. This includes two new rare shard types and six new shard fall items. All of these items will come with some effects.

Feel free to post comments, questions, and suggestions.


Shard Surplus
----------------------
- Shards will no longer be riftable.

- Shards will decay over a 7 days period.

- Harvested shards will be unstable for 15 minutes and will fall from your inventory if killed in that time.

- Existing shards in rifts will start to decay.

- Creation of some shard pouches that will allow players to maintain a few (5-20) shards that will not decay.

- All shard skills will have a shard cost activate. This includes passive ones that have been automatically active in the past.

- Players will be able to put shards into generators before they decay, so they cannot be completely useless if they go unused.

- At a generator shard cost cities will have access to a instanced bashing area for one game year.

- Cities can do an org request to create a custom version of this instance.

- Unlike other instances, this one will allow up to 5 people to enter it via a player created portal.


New Shards
----------------------
- Two new shard types will be created, Green and Yellow.

- Both types are very rare and a max amount can exist in the game at a time.

- They cannot be stored in shard pouches.

- The yellow shard can be used to cause massive faith damage to a shrine.

- Green shards can be used on a player to take them into a 1v1, instanced combat arena.

- Players are still required to have a RP reason to be killing the character.

- The instance arena is not a normal arena, so you will still have starburst and other revive mechanisms in place while fighting in it.

- Once one player has been sent to Charon, will the arena close out. There is a 15 minute time limit.


New Shardfall Items
----------------------
- Six new unique items can be discovered in shardfalls. See the list below.

- Only one of each item can exist.

- The items will be harvested in the same ways shards are.

- Each item is tied to an obelisk theme and has a themeatic power.

- Item is always dropped on death and logout.

- The item will decay if not held by a player for 20 minutes.

- Each item has a unique power for the player holding it.


Shardfall Items
----------------------
An emerald cluster (nature):
- Gain the protection of nature with a +20% to all resists in non-urban environments.

A prismatic geode (true sight):
- Ability to see the locations and owners of all the special shardfall items.

A slab of copper (efficiency):
- 10% faster balance and equilibrium regain.

A piece of enigmatic shale (aryana):
- TBA

A fractured macadam (moradeim):
- Set your health and mana to a random percentage value (1-100). This can either help you or hurt you.

A bloody-red cabochon (sukhder):
- Ability to destroy all walls at no balance cost.



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Comments

  • edited August 2016
    At first I read a bloody-red cabochon as a bloody red chicken and now I am very disappointed that it is not actually a chicken. Please consider making it into a chicken.

    "On the battlefield I am a god. I love war. The steel, the smell, the corpses. I wish there were more. On the first day I drove the Northmen back alone at the ford. Alone! On the second I carried the bridge! Me! Yesterday I climbed the Heroes! I love war! I… I wish it wasn’t over."

  • Khizan said:

    At first I read a bloody-red chabochon as a bloody red chicken and now I am very disappointed that it is not actually a chicken. Please consider making it into a chicken.

    Ha. And the message should be something about smacking the chicken against the wall with a bloody splatter.

  • edited August 2016
    Shard fall items seem modeled after Achaea relic things - which seem to be held by the same few people at all times, and which even those few people admit can be kind of meh, because you end up non-trivially buffing the players who already always win, so that they can uh, win ever harder? I mean, whatever, I guess, it probably won't break the game, but I feel like that is what is going to happen there.

    Also, for the regular shards, that feels like quite a pendulum swing, but I am sure it is probably open to adjustment if it comes to it. It is definitely worth a try, and we need the shards to be more relevant than they are right now. That said, if we are going to go down that road, a note about the shard pouches. You might want to make sure each player can only own one of them. That seems like it should be obvious, and maybe it is, but I've learned the hard way that I'd rather be told "oh yeah, we know".
  • Yes. There will be a limit of one working per character.

  • I'm not sure about shard items dropping on logout. Seems an unlucky disconnect can really mess with you and it punishes people who want to leave the game.
  • Seriously though, this all sounds pretty fantastic right now. Better with a chicken, but still fantastic asis.

    Iluv said:

    I'm not sure about shard items dropping on logout. Seems an unlucky disconnect can really mess with you and it punishes people who want to leave the game.

    They're supposed to be relatively short term advantages, not things you keep for any length of time. Getting to keep a flat +20% resists would be ludicrous.

    "On the battlefield I am a god. I love war. The steel, the smell, the corpses. I wish there were more. On the first day I drove the Northmen back alone at the ford. Alone! On the second I carried the bridge! Me! Yesterday I climbed the Heroes! I love war! I… I wish it wasn’t over."

  • edited August 2016
    They will probably be effectively held by the same few people nearly all of the time. The logout thing is an attempt to mitigate that, and it hasn't worked that well in Achaea (going by ongoing, persistent threads about them).
  • Which would be better if they had short decay times instead of log out.
  • We will probably keep the logout drop. We want them to stay in game for fighting over.

  • I assume anyone holding one of the items are OPEN PK.
  • I may have missed this part, but are the shardfall items supposed to "reset" every shardfall, such that the longest someone could hold an item (without having to go back out to find/fight for it again) is approximately 5 hours?

    Otherwise, dropping on logout without a master "reset" is sort of pointless because people can just logout in locked rooms and pick up the item again when they next login.
  • Iluv said:

    I assume anyone holding one of the items are OPEN PK.

    Ah right. Yes. Having one makes you open to getting PKed.

  • Ultrix said:

    I may have missed this part, but are the shardfall items supposed to "reset" every shardfall, such that the longest someone could hold an item (without having to go back out to find/fight for it again) is approximately 5 hours?

    Otherwise, dropping on logout without a master "reset" is sort of pointless because people can just logout in locked rooms and pick up the item again when they next login.

    Ah, they will not have a hard reset like that. As for the locked door thing, they will reset after 20 minutes of not being in a player's inventory. However, we may want to check for items placed into locked areas.

  • So is someone open PK for up to 15 minutes after a shardfall is over if they harvested because they can possibly drop shards?
  • Jeremy said:

    Ultrix said:

    I may have missed this part, but are the shardfall items supposed to "reset" every shardfall, such that the longest someone could hold an item (without having to go back out to find/fight for it again) is approximately 5 hours?

    Otherwise, dropping on logout without a master "reset" is sort of pointless because people can just logout in locked rooms and pick up the item again when they next login.

    Ah, they will not have a hard reset like that. As for the locked door thing, they will reset after 20 minutes of not being in a player's inventory. However, we may want to check for items placed into locked areas.
    A few more follow up questions:

    1. Is there going to be a new skill (shard skill, perception skill, whatever skill) that will allow players to see who is holding a shortfall item? If not, how are players supposed to determine who is open PK and who is not?

    2. Without a hard master reset, what is stopping people from doing things like giving an item to someone who just camps on guards in the city (and perhaps, in their house in a room with the protection add-on), and just rotating through so the item is never not in a player's inventory but never really part of the game as intended?
  • If target 1 uses a green shard on target 2 and target 3 uses a green shard on target 4 within 15 minutes, do target 3 and 4 go to the same instanced arena or a separate one?
  • Iluv said:

    If target 1 uses a green shard on target 2 and target 3 uses a green shard on target 4 within 15 minutes, do target 3 and 4 go to the same instanced arena or a separate one?

    Separate ones.

  • Iluv said:

    So is someone open PK for up to 15 minutes after a shardfall is over if they harvested because they can possibly drop shards?

    No. That's so you can kill people who are still in the shardfall area and snag anything they may have harvested.

  • edited August 2016
    Ultrix said:


    1. Is there going to be a new skill (shard skill, perception skill, whatever skill) that will allow players to see who is holding a shortfall item? If not, how are players supposed to determine who is open PK and who is not?

    2. Without a hard master reset, what is stopping people from doing things like giving an item to someone who just camps on guards in the city (and perhaps, in their house in a room with the protection add-on), and just rotating through so the item is never not in a player's inventory but never really part of the game as intended?


    1. No for now. The rule will remain the same, they have to be in the shardfall area to kill them.

    2. They could do that. I doubt it will happen, but if it does we will do something about it. I think the people who want those items are not the types to just hide out behind locked doors though. We will see.

  • But when the people who are holding those items log out, they will just give it to someone who will sits on guards all day and tries to threaten new MKO refugees with issues whenever they try to hostage them.
  • JuranJuran Ohio
    edited August 2016
    Jeremy said:

    2. They could do that. I doubt it will happen, but if it does we will do something about it. I think the people who want those items are not the types to just hide out behind locked doors though. We will see.

    I remember people afking in news for days/weeks at a time because finding someone to Earthshield was too inconvenient sometimes when only Priests had access. I can only imagine what people will do to keep a 20% eq/bal artifact.
  • Jeremy said:

    Ultrix said:


    1. Is there going to be a new skill (shard skill, perception skill, whatever skill) that will allow players to see who is holding a shortfall item? If not, how are players supposed to determine who is open PK and who is not?

    2. Without a hard master reset, what is stopping people from doing things like giving an item to someone who just camps on guards in the city (and perhaps, in their house in a room with the protection add-on), and just rotating through so the item is never not in a player's inventory but never really part of the game as intended?


    1. No for now. The rule will remain the same, they have to be in the shardfall area to kill them.

    2. They could do that. I doubt it will happen, but if it does we will do something about it. I think the people who want those items are not the types to just hide out behind locked doors though. We will see.
    With respect to your response to question 1, the answer of "they have to be in the shardfall area to kill them" seems to be in conflict with the answer to Iluv's question of "are they open PK if they have the special item?". Which is it?
  • There should definitely be an ability much like boneyards that displays the names of all those holding shard items and which ones they are holding.
  • Could just make there be a command to show all who has them, then the true sight special item just removes the bal/eq and adds location data. That'd totally make it worth having still.
  • Ah, the special items. Sorry, I misunderstood. Yeah. We may want to put in a skill for that. I'll think about how to do that.

  • IniarIniar Australia
    edited August 2016
    A fractured macadam (moradeim):
    - Set your health and mana to a random percentage value (1-100). This can either help you or hurt you.


    Please don't do this. Moradeim almost always has the unenviable position of having a +ve and -ve, whereas the other thematic powers almost never do.. Just because it is thematically Change doesn't mean it has to be bidirectional-unimetric, or between a good choice and crap choice.




    Edit: Alternatively,

    Shardfall Items
    ----------------------
    An emerald cluster (nature):
    - Gain the protection of nature with a +20% to all resists in non-urban environments, but gain a -20% malus in all urban and/or indoor environments.

    A prismatic geode (true sight):
    - Ability to see the locations and owners of all the special shardfall items, but loss of access to deathsight.

    A slab of copper (efficiency):
    - 10% faster balance recovery, 10% slower equilibrium recovery.

    A piece of enigmatic shale (aryana):
    - 10% faster equilibrium recovery, 10% slower balance recovery.

    A fractured macadam (moradeim):
    - Set your health and mana to a random percentage value (1-100). This can either help you or hurt you.

    A bloody-red cabochon (sukhder):
    - Ability to destroy all walls at no balance cost. Inability to construct Shard Walls.
    wit beyond measure is a Sidhe's greatest treasure
  • Jeremy said:

    - All shard skills will have a shard cost activate. This includes passive ones that have been automatically active in the past.

    Is it possible to be a little more specific about this? I looked through the list of skills and I figure Anatomy/Adrenaline/Wildlife would be the most prominent passive skills, so how is that going to work? Would you pay once a day for the skill to work? Once an hour?
    image
  • edited August 2016
    I will be honest, I am just assuming I might not have access to shard skills for long stretches. And then, I might have access to certain things sporadically at some point (like if I go to a shard fall and my side does well).

    I mean, it is a pretty hard reset, and it's also the kind of reset that we talked about not being a particularly great idea at some point - the kind that hits the individual directly rather than the org, so that you end up with Septus, Iluv having shards, and everyone else having shards at best "sometimes". And no one wants to fight those guys already. Still, we have to do something, so let's try it.
  • Shou said:

    Jeremy said:

    - All shard skills will have a shard cost activate. This includes passive ones that have been automatically active in the past.

    Is it possible to be a little more specific about this? I looked through the list of skills and I figure Anatomy/Adrenaline/Wildlife would be the most prominent passive skills, so how is that going to work? Would you pay once a day for the skill to work? Once an hour?
    Garryn is coding up the specifics on that. I will get a list and post it when I get a chance. We originally talked something simple, like one shard for a 4 hour cooldown.

  • We will probably fire this all up as soon as the ToC completes.

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