New Ideas — Imperian's Forums

Behaviour Suggestions

Verexa — Fri, 07 Nov 2014 20:10:02 +0000

Hello! I figured I would make a new thread to share suggestions to changes in the newly released behaviours. I have only worked on Summoner's behaviours as it is the only class I play, but all are welcome to submit their ideas or comment on others'.
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Invoke Combustion
The problem I find with most of the behaviours is that they don’t reference the fact that Combustion is essentially a fire skill. Despite the behaviours being “forestal” or “frosty”, they should still be true to their original design. Here are some of the behaviours I have worked on so far. I'd be glad to work on some more if these are well-received. I invite you to offer some constructive criticism.

Gory
First person message:
You curl a finger at $(name$) who begins to shriek in agony as $(his$) internal organs are set ablaze, the fiery ruptures causing blood to trickle from $(his$) eyes and mouth.

Second person message:
$(name$) curls a finger at you and you begin to shriek in agony while your internal organs are set ablaze, the fiery ruptures causing blood to trickle from your eyes and mouth.

Third person message:
$(caster$) curls a finger at $(target$) who begins to shriek in agony as blood trickles from their eyes and mouth.

Forestal
First person message:
As you point at $(name$), fire-touched vines rise from the ground to snake around $(his) body only to quickly burst into scorching hot flames leaving $(his) flesh horribly charred.

Second person message:
As $(name$) points at you, fire-touched vines snake around your body and quickly burst into scorching hot flames, leaving your flesh horribly charred.

Third person message:
As $(caster$) points at $(target$), fire-touched vines snake around $(his$) body and quickly burst into scorching hot flames, leaving $(his$) flesh horribly charred.

Volcanic
First person message:
Your piercing gaze falls upon $(name$) and $(he) claws at $(his$) throat, choking on the blistering volcanic lava filling $(his$) lungs and throat.

Second person message:
You begin to claw helplessly at your throat as blistering volcanic lava flows from your lungs and throat, $(name$)’s piercing gaze trained upon you.

Third person message:
$(caster$)’s piercing gaze falls upon $(target$) and steam begins to escape from $(his$) nostrils as $(he) helplessly claws at $(his$) throat.

Brutal
First person message:
You narrow your eyes at $(name$), $(his$) flesh hissing in response as blistering sores suddenly begin to form and $(his$) bones splinter and snap with audible cracks.

Second person message:
$(name$) narrows $(his$) eyes at you, your flesh hissing in response as blistering sores suddenly begin to form and your bones splinter and snap with audible cracks.

Third person message:
$(caster$) narrows $(his$) eyes at $(target$) whose flesh hisses in response as blistering sores suddenly begin to form and whose bones splinter and snap with audible cracks.

Edit: I'm most definitely doing the scripting portion wrong. Can we possibly get a list of syntaxes we should be using?

Improving Imperian

Eoghan — Fri, 07 Sep 2018 04:21:33 +0000

I'm rebooting the Improving Imperian thread. The old thread hasn't been touched in a while, and much of its content is stale.

This thread exists to suggest improvements to players' general day-to-day life. It is a place to suggest quality-of-life improvements to the game.

This thread is NOT a place to discuss the finer points of class balance, or in fact anything combat related. This thread is STRICTLY for non-combat mechanical changes. If it would fall under classleads or a class revamp, it doesn't belong here. Anything else is fair game.

If you have any suggestions, want to see improved usage from a command, or have a new idea, please reply in this thread! Not all suggestions will be implemented, but all suggestions are welcome. Discussion of submitted ideas is fine, but be civil, and don't retread the same path too many times. I'll be moderating this thread as necessary to keep it on track.

Soliciting Ideas and Feedback - Membership Bonuses

Eoghan — Tue, 18 Feb 2020 10:53:09 +0000

Along with the new options for different lengths of memberships, the new system also allows us some more creativity in how your membership bonuses are used. We can now

create alternative uses for Membership Credits (other than just binding them to a character). This comes in the form of a special shop where you can spend membership credits.
create alternative passive bonuses which you can choose instead of the current stacking 5% xp bonus (up to 25%)
create alternative daily bonuses which you can choose instead of the current 5 lessons per day

I'm looking for your ideas - what would you like to see in these three categories? What items should be for sale in the membership wares shop? What passive bonuses would you like to see? What alternative daily bonuses sound good?

Note that neither of the bonus categories should impact PVP - I don't want to widen the PK gap between subscribers and non-subscribers.

Some ideas I have right now to get your mental juices flowing:
Passive bonus: Stacking 0.5% xp per level (up to 2.5%)
Passive bonus: Stacking 1% extra gold drops (up to 5%)
Daily bonus: The ability to earn an additional daily credit per day - rather than 5 lessons, you can get 6 (or keep it as a credit), but you have to put in the work to get that extra daily tick to earn it.

On the Promotions Wares list, I have fewer ideas. As mentioned, I'd prefer not to widen the gap between free and subscribed players too much. One obvious choice is cosmetics (past promotion cosmetics, collectible items from previous events or antiquity that aren't available anymore, etc). I've also considered some limited-use promotions items (like chains), but think that may be tipping the scales too far. This is the category I'm having the most trouble with, so input is welcome!

Soliciting Feedback: Promotions Currency

Eoghan — Mon, 17 Feb 2020 03:47:18 +0000

Soliciting feedback: I'm considering creating a "promotions" currency that can be earned by completing your daily credits for the day. This promotions currency can be spent on whatever the current monthly promotion is, or saved up for the future. Think of it similar to doubloons, but for promotions only.

In the past, we've allowed the purchase of promotions (specifically, giftbags and stockings) with Doubloons. This would be replacing the use of Doubloons for that purpose, introducing instead a new, separate currency with a separate cap (and earned each day by completing your daily credits tasks).

In addition, I'm considering allowing the purchase of additional Promotions currency using Iron Elite credits - this would be an optional way to spend them rather than turning them into bound credits. Purchasing Promotions currency this way would NOT allow you to go beyond the cap that can be earned by doing the dailies, but would let you squeeze a few more out if you particularly like a month's promotion.

New IRE Helper Android App

Eoghan — Wed, 27 Nov 2019 20:27:24 +0000

Date: 11/27/2019 at 20:14

From: Eoghan

To : Everyone

Subj: IRE Helper Android App

Those of you with Android devices will be excited to know we have updated the app. It has been

completely rewritten. It now includes Starmourn and all known bugs are now eradicated. This is a

complete rewrite, with an entirely new (much more modern) interface. It's really quite slick.

You can find the app here: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.vadisystems.irehelper

If you used the app before, you will have to log back into the app again. We apologize, but there

was no way to work around this in a way that made sense.

Major thank you to David Edwards who helped get this project completed. Thank you to Vadi from

Mudlet who built the initial project and helped get this version rolled out.

If you find any bugs, please email us at irehelper@ironrealms.com and we will get all over them.

We are planning an iOS version if we can track down someone interested in the work.

Enjoy!

Daily Credit Discussion

Eoghan — Tue, 12 Nov 2019 08:43:43 +0000

Hello, all! I'm making this thread as a general discussion of Daily Credit generation.

The sort of feedback I'm looking for here includes comments on the current methods of generation (do they work? are they broken? are some too easy? some too hard?) as well as suggestions for new methods of generation. Keep in mind when suggesting new methods that the goal here is still for the full generation of all 20 credits to take somewhere between 1 and 2 hours (closer to the 2 hour side than the 1 hour side) for all players.

With that laid out, let's hear some feedback!

The current methods of gaining Daily Credits as of the time of this post (or edit) (2019-11-12 0334EST):

Killing bosses
Summoning a Plague
Controlling a Monolith
Being a Champion
Killing mobiles (bashing)
Harvesting Shards in a Shardfall (reportedly broken since release)
Winning a Fight Club match
Losing a Fight Club match
Capturing a Leyline
Plundering a Caravan
Getting 90% or better toward a Fishing Record
Participating in a Maze Game
Participating in a Memory Game
Completing certain quests
Throwing a Chargebomb (to attack an Obelisk)
Capturing an Obelisk Node
Winning certain scheduled Arena Events
Completing spawnwave areas.
Participation in certain ToA games.
Receiving any new QHONORS (that you didn't previously have).

Added 2019-11-19

Being RECOGNISEd by another player
Having a design approved (can only be earned once per day)

Updated Aspect powers and meaningful choice

Naruj — Sun, 09 Jun 2019 15:10:24 +0000

Let's talk about aspects!

Ever since aspect perks started to diminish the relevance of monoliths, aspect choice has gotten progressively less and less meaningful. Everyone of note has everything that matters, such that actually holding monoliths has no purpose now beyond slow afk generation of daily credits.

To make the system more engaging and interesting, as well as add some relevance back to Aspect choice, I would like to propose a small but highly impactful change to aspect perks.

I would like to modify the existing capstone (rank 5) powers to be significantly more powerful than they are currently, but gate them behind very long cooldowns that scale depending on attunement. To get the interesting part out of the way first, these are my proposed top level aspect powers:

Resurrection: Usable with a long cooldown that scales from 6/3/1 hours (see below). Resurrects a player from dead without the damage taken malus from dying, and without the need for a corpse. This 'soul rez' would destroy the corpse, if it still exists, and be countered if the player died while Inhumed.

Warp: Usable with a long cooldown that scales from 6/3/1 hours (see below). Teleports the player to a random room within an area of their choice, excluding player run cities. The syntax WARP would be prevented by entangles and paralysis, but bypass teleport restricting powers like monolith sigils.

Inhume: In this proposal, I would switch absorb and inhume as the addition of Aryana - Resurrection makes this skill even more useful and important. The cooldown would follow the same 6/3/1 hour (see below) system that the other skills do, and in addition to its normal effect would increase the death timer delay to resurrect by 25%.

Mechanically, the cooldown should reduce for having attunement with the aspect type. Permanent aspect perks would be able to use these powers once every six hours. Being the appropriate aspect type should reduce that cooldown to three hours, and holding a monolith of that aspect type should reduce it further to one hour. For balance, I propose the cooldowns be shared - using Resurrection as a terror aspect should place all three powers on the same six hour cooldown.

These powerful skills would be fight changing, and choosing which one fits a playstyle best would be an important choice that would make engaging as an aspect meaningful again. Cities would want access to all three powers, but no one person would have reliable access to all three. Permanent aspect perks would give situational access to the others, but there would be a greater cost to use them.

New Artifacts Wishlist

Caelya — Mon, 08 Apr 2013 16:38:52 +0000

I'm sure all of you artifact junkies out there have ideas for new artifacts you'd like to see, whether it be for the legendary artifact auctions or just an addition to the standard list. So, put your ideas in this thread, and feel free to be creative, though I imagine the more reasonable you are, the more likely the artifact is to be considered for actual implementation.

I'll start:

Crystalline Horn - Once per Imperian month, the bearer of this mighty horn may call up a large eruption of shards in a random area (shardfall). Though it would be great if this could be a standard item, I have a feeling it would probably be more of an auction item.

Achievements (New & Old)

Myrcella — Wed, 20 Feb 2019 15:42:37 +0000

@Arakis and I were talking earlier today about Achievements and how we need some news and some of the unobtainable 'old' ones should be removed or put into a different category or something (my OCD for not being able to check off those boxes is strong).

I'm curious - what are some achievements that you'd like to see in Imperian? Let's try to compile a list/reward for the admin and see if we can hopefully get them implemented!

Reducing game spam

Ohm — Mon, 19 Nov 2018 12:03:27 +0000

Over time, I believe Imperian has become extremely spammy in terms of messages (both static and active).

I am sure everyone has had experience with this - but can we please reduce the game spam.

1) Deck cards - lion dying should not be sending a message everytime it dies - not needed
2) Beacons and sentries - if sentries die to orcs/ ogres, there should not be messages on citylogs
3) Berserkers - standing around banging their heads on invisible trees
4) Mages - Elementals to be summoned every few minutes

I'm sure there are lots of other sources of spam that add nothing to the game. List them here and maybe someone in charge can do something about it

Joining a guild

Aio — Fri, 03 Aug 2018 09:20:04 +0000

Newbies should be able to join a guild on their own.

The move to put the guild joining to primarily be just for the players has led to the demise of the guilds. Combining organizations just so that activity is centralized is a flawed logic which has contributed to the decline of the game.

As it is, guilds that are dying or dead cannot grow mechanically or from within. It only takes a couple of players to go dormant for an organization that has been built/nurtured for years to go dormant as well, and eventually be shuttered off.

Would Imperian work with some form of perma-death after it goes free?

Zoroaster — Tue, 24 Jul 2018 12:23:06 +0000

I haven't checked in on Impy in years now myself but I read on reddit that it was going 100% free. If there's a forum thread on this then I missed it. Even after it goes free, I wonder how the possibility of thousands of credits characters vs. newbie characters would work out, just saying that I personally wouldn't play that, but with some basic tweaks I suspect that Imperian might be a fun game with some form of permanent or highly consequential death. Even the heydays of IRE where dying could cost you 40% or more of a level were better IMHO than what the IRE games became over time. Anyone agree?

Would Imperian ever consider a Reboot?

Sarthan — Wed, 04 Jul 2018 03:36:37 +0000

I don't want to offend anyone. Putting that right out there. If discussion about the death/closure of Imperian upset you, it would be best to avoid this thread - if it doesn't get deleted.

I think it's pretty obvious that the game itself has shrunk to a level not seen before. I know I stopped actively playing more than a couple of years ago, after most of the population I enjoyed playing with had moved on for several reasons, though mainly being the games overall direction. It's hard to pinpoint one specific change as the cause, because it's a culmination of things. Since then, the game has continued to haemorrhage players and has dropped to an all time low. Frankly, I consider it unplayable in its current form and I'm surprised there are still a few people trying to make a go of it. When I see forum posts (this post will be the first post on the entire forums since June 25th btw) that state that PKers are in the minority in the IRE MUD that was 'the combat MUD' it just confirms that the game is past it's used by date.

On to my question: Would IRE ever consider a wipe to Imperian with a potential revert to some changes?

Yes I know there's a bunch of stuff involving people having money invested, all that stuff. But if the game closes they lose their investment anyway. But since you can retire now and retain some of your investment I feel it's pretty moot. Determining what changes to revert is another much longer and in depth discussion which this thread is not about.

While the question is directed at Jeremy and any other IRE employee and I'm not really interested in what the playerbase has to say about that, I do have a question specifically for the players: Would you play in a fresh Imperian that would be different from the one currently? Specifically, with a bunch of changes to revert it to an earlier state.

Imperian's "Tech Tree"

Dimitri — Sun, 25 Feb 2018 01:04:00 +0000

I know this is a fantasy game and all, but technology kind of has a certain "structure" to it I guess you could say? I've been mulling a lot of potential designs over in my head and while yes, I could just submit them and see what comes of it and proceed from there. Engineers kind of buck the timeframe of the late 1700s in some aspects, (gyrocopters, clockwork automatons) and this is great. I'm just wondering what else is possible now? I'm not gonna start submitting designs for high-end race cars, and whatnot, but clearly Imperian is on the cusp of some sort of Industrial Revolution. There are elements in play here that feel like they imply the existence of other 'precursor' advances or if one were to be so inclined, would lead to the discovery of something farther up the tech tree.

So what's possible?

Steam engines? (large scale)
Early rubber usage?
Early factory automation?
????

I'm looking down a list of what was possible for us during that time and wondering what else we could do, I know we had a new update on what is and isn't accepted in designs from Alend, but most of the designs engineers specifically use go through different approval channels which aren't governed by the same rules as they're treated like free artifact designs.

Could I make a design with rubber involved, like a rubber hose? Could someone make a large (and I mean large) steam engine involved in their RP somewhere? I don't know. I certainly could try but rejection would set a precedent for any subsequent designs made with an engineering flavour. I wanna RP this stuff but having some sort of statement from on high would ease my worry a bit instead of just going ahead and doing it anyway, hoping for the best. (Contrary to my usual reckless behaviour, I know, but this is something I take rather seriously)

I already had a design that flirted with anachronism, that of my tinderbox, but I regard that as a fluke as it was designed using parts of things that already existed in different ways in-world/in-universe, just assembled in an unconventional way.

In short, I'm asking "Where's the limit on this now, and can one know it without bumping into it the hard way, having gotten their hopes up only to have them dashed by it simply being too advanced for the time period?"

Making Sects and Shrines Better - Brainstorming

Zerin — Mon, 19 Feb 2018 22:23:23 +0000

So both sides seem currently less than pleased with sect/shrine functionality, so I though maybe we could hold a civil (lol) brainstorming session! Remember, brainstorming is for all ideas, not for calling people stupid. I'll go first:

Limit the amount of total shrines per area, say to 15 (or have no limit but still do the following, but I like a limit for pvp reasons). Within this, limit the number of shrines per sect to 5. So, say Flame, Conquest and Dream each have their 5 shrines, the area is now "full". More shrines from a sect = better perks, fewer shrines from other sects = better perks, so it will be beneficial to nuke other shrines. This makes it easier to focus conflict and is less bonkers than having like 80,000 shrines everywhere.

Let the games begin.

Edit: I somehow managed to include a link to a photo of a blister on my finger, so if you saw that, my bad. Rofl.

Horde Caravans

Theophilus — Wed, 09 Aug 2017 15:54:44 +0000

Horde caravans are no longer a system being put to use. Most cities have completed their research (and thus do not require quartz), and our small playerbase makes it difficult to gather a group. They can be solo-ed or duo-ed if one has WAR powers to CALL SENTRIES, but that requires 1) building beacons with quartz and 2) the rewards simple do not make the juice worth the squeeze.

I think the system should be removed entirely via an RP horde event that stops their caravaning, or the system be revamped (preferred).

It would be cool if they acted similarly to shardfalls. Random caravans with three-four average guards appear throughout Aetherius with a chance for larger convoys to appear every few hours or so (this would require a team of two or three). The small caravans might net 5 plunders or so with rewards such as gold or commodities to be sold for gold or shards. The larger caravans might net temporary arties or stat soulstones (just something a little more worthwhile since it will be more difficult and require more gold). We might even add a quest for caravaning (i.e. kill the leader of a convoy of caravans and return his corpse for substantial gold, kill small caravans [receive gold after plundering so many].

Either way, the system is outdated and needs to be removed or changed considering current rewards and the resources needed to accomplish them.

I know there are other things in the works, but this is worth looking at as well. No sense in CT being spammed that caravans are crossing through when nobody uses them.

Champions/Boneyards

Septus — Wed, 10 Feb 2016 05:53:43 +0000

So now that we've had the system for a while and the big issue about being able to guard boneyards with siege is resolved, I figured I'd post some feedback. I think there are a few big issues, but nothing too problematic with the underlying mechanics.

Firstly, could we make bones decay outside of a boneyard? Currently people are just stashing their bones in shops and stuff (presumably until they can amass enough for building/pushing to 100 all at once). This seems pretty counter to the intent of the system. I assume this is to allow people to work towards a boneyard over time, and not have half their bones decay on them when they're just getting near. Maybe a better thing to do here would be to drop the bones to build a boneyard to 5, and set the decay time to 15 rl days or something. Bones in a boneyard could just not decay. A lower buy in is probably a good thing in general, which leads me onto my second concern.

A hundred bones is a pretty crazy amount. I get that its meant to be very difficult, but given that these are contestable pk objectives, we're probably talking months before we see one come to fruition, best case. There just aren't enough champions for a hundred bones to be a reallistic target. You could cut this down to 50 and it'd still be very, very hard if someone had a mind to stop you reaching that goal. I get the impression from most people that they don't really like making a push to finish a boneyard, because its kind of unreallistic even if you're absolutely dead set on it currently.

The only way this is actually reallistically doable is actually one of my biggest issues with the system. You can just farm allied champions back and forth endlessly to produce 90% of your bones. This is kind of lame and is probably going to become the go to long term; could we make it so a single person's corpse can only produce a bone every hour? (Or barring that, make it so you can't remove bones from people in your circle, which might help mitigate slightly.)

Finally, I assume this is a design decision, but I'm just wondering if this could get revisited: could we have some way to locate all boneyards? Even if it is something that burns like 100 shards/a champion bone from our boneyard/whatever, searching threw every room in the game to find the most obscure location someone can find to build their boneyard in is kind of bleh.

But overall, I really like the system and think it should be awesome once people start getting more invested in it.

Improving Imperian

Iziae — Fri, 04 Jan 2013 08:54:05 +0000

As my work hours begin to reduce once more after Christmas period, I'll again have time to start playing with Imperian's code.

Similar to other threads in the past, I'm looking for improvements to the player's general day-to-day life. This thread is not the means to propose skill revamps or classlead categorized changes, but simple ideas that will make Imperian more fun.

If you have any suggestions, want to see improved usage from a command or have a new idea, please reply in the thread and over the upcoming weeks I'll implement those I can.

Upcoming Combat Changes

Jeremy Saunders — Sat, 14 Oct 2017 00:02:12 +0000

This is a repost from the in-game announce post. Please discuss any major concerns you may have here.

Thanks.

The Combat Council has been meeting for several weeks. The goal of Combat Council meetings is to identify major, overarching problems with combat in Imperian and devise solutions. The group has identified the following issues they feel need to be addressed.

Here is the current list we are working with:

1. Death and resurrection mechanics.

2. Improve accessibility to some professions.

3. Address problems with ranged skills. (Monks, Druids, Summoner)

4. Deal with holding and chasing issues.

5. Deal with speed artifacts that break balancing. (diadem, dirk, dartsheath, pipe filter)

6. Afflictions.

7. Statpack balancing.

The group has a strategy to address statpack balancing and death/rez mechanics. The remaining items are more complicated and will take more time to create solid solutions.

Over the next few days we will be making the following changes:

Proposed Statpack Changes

-------------------------

- Remove +1 balance from the Dexterous statpack.

- Create an Agile Statpack with 12 str, 14 dex, 12 con, 10 int, and +1 balance.

- Increase Ritualism damage by 10%. This is a band aid fix for Diabolist damage due to changes to the Dexterous statpack.

- Remove 1 Int and add 1 Con to the Clever statpack.

- Increase the XP bonus in the Normal and Astute statpacks to make them more appealing.

- Remove the sip malus from the Wise statpack.

- Remove Powerful statpack as it is not a good option.

- Create a less powerful, less expensive Gem of Transmutation with a longer cooldown (Once per game year).

Proposed Death and Resurrection Changes

---------------------------------------

- Characters can only be resurrected once every 10 minutes.

- This resurrection cooldown will exclude starburst. Starburst will remain on its own cooldown.

- The resurrection cooldown will be cleared if you visit Charon and use the ferry to return to life.

- Damnation will no longer destroy your corpse on death.

- These changes effectively mean you have 3 lives per fight.

If you have any major comments or concerns, please let me know.

New Profession: Engineer

Jeremy Saunders — Fri, 24 Feb 2017 22:07:10 +0000

Please keep in mind that Engineer is the current working name for this class. All of the skillset names and mechanics are a work in progress and may completely change tomorrow. I am posting this basic idea to get some feedback, and because I still have not finished my Obelisk/Shardtree design doc, which is what I really want to get cooking on.

I'm avoiding posting the abilities right now, as they are still a bigger work in progress.

Engineer (Working Name)

Summary

The engineer is a profession based on basic science and has nothing to do with magick. The practitioner may not ignore the magickal skills in the world of Imperian, but prefers the more reliable answers found for life's problems with the application of science.

The skills of the engineer revolve around guns, chemicals, gyrocopters, clockworks, and similar technologies. This is a damage based class and will have limited line-of-site abilities.

Combat Summary

Resource Mechanic:
When targeting and attacking a single player, the character will build up Focus. This resource can be used in several different skills and can increase the chance for a "crit" of burst damage.

Momentum Mechanics:
Focus serves as the primary momentum mechanic, builds up over time as the character hits a single target. The more a character focusses on a single enemy, the more his or her focus will increase. The character will slowly do more damage and recover balance faster.

There is a secondary mechanic as well: Chemicals. These ‘chemical’ effects are added to shot ammo with abilities in the Invention skillset. Curing these new effects requires a single new curative created by engineers that shares balance with toadstool. The more stacks a character is afflicted with, the faster the cure will works. This gives an afflicted character the choice between curing immediately (and having a long cure balance) or suffering through the lower stacks, using toadstool, then fast-curing the higher stack numbers.

Skill Sets

Note: Skill set names are a work in progress as well.

Ballistics
The Engineer’s primary weapon is the flintlock. One also uses the blunderbuss and an assortment of explosives as secondary weapons. This skillset holds all of the abilities required for using the Engineer's main and secondary weapon attacks to their maximum ability.

Focus
The Engineer is very intelligent. As they engage with another in combat, they will focus on the enemy, learning their weak points and how to better attack. Using focus, an Engineer will be able to do a variety of targeted shots, attacks, or defences. It also has skills related to the use of they gyrocopter and other clockwork contraptions.

Inventing
Inventing is used by the Engineer to construct their various ammo types, mines, traps, bombs, gyrocopter, and clockwork contraptions.

Discussion: Commodity Production, Replacements for Duplicate/Transmute/Devastate

Eoghan — Wed, 09 Aug 2017 16:16:36 +0000

As I mentioned in a comment in the Horde Caravans thread, I'm opening this thread for discussion of commodity production generally, and replacements for the commodity-related rituals specifically.

Commodity production is intended to be balanced to require the towne figurine quest to be run and some outside influence beyond towne production (in the form of caravans and/or inter-city bartering if caravans aren't being run). This is not the case. The largest issue that I see is the ease of producing commodities via the commodity-based rituals, so as a first step toward fixing the issue and bringing it back in line with original intentions, we'll be removing these rituals. Unfortunately, we can't do that until we come up with some new ones!

This thread exists for two major purposes

PRIMARILY To suggest and discuss replacements for Aryana Duplicate, Moradeim Transmute and Sukhder Devastate. You can discuss why you think they should remain, but it will have to be an incredibly compelling reason, because at this point I'm pretty certain I'll remove them
BECAUSE IT'S RELATED Discussion of commodity production

What this thread is NOT for

Discussion of the Trade ministry in general. I know that it isn't most people's favorite thing, but that's a discussion for another time and place
Discussion about other rituals that exist (except as reference for balance when replacing the three mentioned above)
Discussion of Caravans (see the other thread for that)

Achievements and Rewards

Theophilus — Tue, 08 Aug 2017 15:35:49 +0000

After reaching 1,000 achievement points (and receiving 250 bound credits), I feel like there is no reason to pursue achievements now because there is no tangible reward. 90% of the achievements award experience bonuses, and I have hours and hours of those stocked up already, and I will never use them. I think that the reward aspect of achievements could undergo revision.

Going through each one and thinking of an appropriate award would be incredibly time-consuming. What if, however, we could trade in experience bonus hours for other rewards. For example:

12 hour experience bonus = one stat soulstone

Handling the conversion would probably be messy this way, though, so it might be a better idea to let the achievement points be currency. So.. if I complete an achievement worth 10 points, that 10 points goes toward both my achievement points in honours as well as my currency. It'd be like trading in yeti pelts at icecloak mountain.

So.. 1 achievement point = 5 lessons
10 achievement point = 1 stat soulstone
100 achievement points = 50 credits.
etc. etc.

And you can redeem them anytime you want, saving up for better rewards if you'd prefer.

Just a thought.

Leylines, surges, and conflict

Sarrius — Wed, 02 Aug 2017 19:33:39 +0000

Today's outrageous idea: leyline surges!

Reason for posting and my question to each of you
@Jeremy Saunders invited us to provide our feedback and ideas for the conflict systems of our choosing. In lieu of muddying up the leylines thread specifically, I figured I'd condense my current pet idea in one post. I've run this by a few different types of players and I cannot help but notice that each of them saw something in it, but I could not for the life of me get them to admit to what they thought was a proper reward for victory. I'd like to turn it over to each of you and see what you do with it.

Leylines
I think leylines are a blast, conceptually. They're more popular than it might have been originally assumed to be, and I think we should do something with them now. We have the makings of many different possible territory control systems and there's a lot of potential moving pieces that could turn this in to the next 'big thing' for Imperian. What I'd like to do is introduce a leyline conflict system in one of two models:

1. A large network of leylines, mapped out with connections via already existing 'adjacent areas' data. Because Lore, these areas sometimes have outpourings of energy that threaten to surge more wildly than normal, sending that energy elsewhere.. like an adjacent leyline. If this energy meets similar wild surges from elsewhere, Event happens. Resolution of this Event results in that area retaining a natural inclination towards the circle it was influenced to until the next time it wildly surges. An area that has had its leyline manipulated enough in a certain time period will automatically trigger an event of this nature as well or possibly just automatically trigger this surge.

2. A list of 'significant leylines' that are more powerful than normal ones. Because Lore, each of these areas are super important and have unique energies entwined in their leylines. A circle can turn this energy to use in some fashion after fighting to capture it in an Event. In this model, certain areas could be PvE challenges instead of PvP challenges. These Events occur at a rate that they can be held for a varying amount of time by the victor (so they can enjoy their spoils) and they become up for grabs again. These could be spaced out appropriate so we don't reach total fatigue with the system, and I'd ideally want to disjoint the timers on the windows so that each objective slides from timezone to timezone over the course of a few weeks, keeping it generally in flux.

The Event
The event would be a battle to capture control of the area. During this event, rules are introduced from a list of possible results - these rules influence how the engagement or even how the event will go. This is something I have not refined entirely, but the intention is to keep each encounter fresh, require some tactical approach that differs from event to event, etc. I think these should be rules that effect the 'landscape' of how combat will go in that area for duration of the event. Some rules would change the event to a PvE encounter instead of a PvP hotspot.

Ideally, I'd like for events triggering to only partially be in the hands of players. As an olive branch to those that find this distasteful, I would offer the addition of some way to artificially make these events happen sooner. You could use the number of rules or perhaps the generation of said rules as a trade off for this opportunity. In the significant areas model, areas could always possess X rule, but artificially starting an event would add another random rule on top, or maybe have no rules at all.

I probably didn't learn my lesson about examples..
In the best interest of illustrating my idea with some examples, I'd like to provide you some starting points if you'd like to tack on in other ways or maybe just need some ideas:

'Significant leylines' location examples :
Caanae - notable in history, etc
Any god temple/all god temples - interesting idea in that access to their temples publicly could be a minor additional prize.
Any location of a significant battle or modern event

'Rules' examples :
'Three man enter, one man leave' - Only 1 player from each circle allowed in the area for now (pls no flame)
'Moradeim's Ray' - some whacky change thing
'canopy of diachaim' - entire area is indoors
'copper-tinged wisps of diachaim' - everybody holds the effects of the copper slab in area, copper slab holder still gets their bonus? (kill me)
'intersected with a foreign realm' - chooses realm from a list, perhaps influenced by affinity at time of event.. swarms area w/ a bunch of mobs for a mini-plague event.
'chill of the grave' - all players that die in this area behave as if inhumed
'scorched by the Seven Suns' - area acts as if Mage Flamepillar is active (wild example)

I think there's a lot of fluff and room for replay in this kind of model. I honestly just can't dial in a good reward system. Input?

Aspects and conflict

Galt — Thu, 03 Aug 2017 15:18:55 +0000

The topic of Aspects came up in the bug day questions, and I've always found the system interesting - But as a conflict driver, it's largely dead because of the permanent monoliths. Whilst it's important to allow some bonuses for hitting 100 for those who don't fight, I feel like the system has swung too far in favour of grinding up gold and xp to grab more monos/powers.

So what are peoples thoughts on Aspect? Should permanent monoliths be removed entirely, and what other changes would be good for Imperian's level 100 system?

Affliction Hindering and the Death of Momentum Classes

Naruj — Mon, 31 Jul 2017 22:47:04 +0000

Have you ever sat back and wondered why no one in the game is quite tanky enough anymore? Why only a select number of classes are viable without artifacts? Why you either need burst damage, a non-toxin class with spammable lethargy/clumsiness, or 10k credits in defensive artifacts to compete? Well pull up a chair, because I'm about to explain and then give a solution to fix it.

In the tug of war that is combat, each side should be pushing for their own window of greatest potential while trying to dodge the same window from their opponent. What you have instead is two people jousting in semi-trucks and the one with the biggest engine gets to stay on the road. We've de-emphasized control and over-emphasized tanking, making combat balance very polar. The only surviving exception are the afflictions that increase balance and equilibrium time, because they still work. Unfortunately, access to these afflictions are limited and need to remain so due to the team fight implications.

But all is not lost! The problems of hindering and momentum control can be solved without removing the ability of people to fight back! Attached is my 'King for the day' proposal for adding dynamic decision making back to combat.

Ciguatoxin needs to be made hindering again. I like the direction of Numbness, but it went too far. I would reduce the delay to upgrade from Numbness to Paralysis from 6s to 3 seconds (which by itself puts an ICD on paralysis in team fights), and make sure I've fixed all the edge cases that let someone re-afflict with Numbness while Paralysis is active.
Now that I have a toxin that can be used to control momentum, I would need to make it easier to cure. This is critical to prevent the 'you don't get to attack me' stack that caused Ciguatoxin to be nerfed initially.

Delete Metrazol as an affliction. It only exists to get in the way of curing Ciguatoxin, and we don't want that to happen anymore.
Move Slickness to Nightshade, leaving only Numbness and Sensitivity as stackable Maidenhair cures. Given that Sensitivity has its own internal spam blocker, anyone will be able to prioritize mobility at the expense of healing other afflictions because there is no stack.
Move Nausea to Kelp alongside Clumsiness, and move Hemotoxin to Galingale. With the lack of any other toxins on Galingale, and the nerfs to Peace and Rage, you'd make Hemo a guaranteed cure on demand at the expense of curing something else. Both Nightshade and Kelp stacks keep the same number of afflictions.

Unshackle Transfix from the 'everything is cured at once' writhe system. With Wardancer dead and gone, there is less potential for a quick and comboable writhe stack, but some writhe synergy is beneficial for team fights to reduce DPS. I would place writhes in three catagories: Hindering (ropes, entangles), mental (transfix), and physical (bladeimpale, boltimpale, daeggerimpale).The point of all of this is that, in good combat systems, you sometimes need to be able to stall without leaving the room. We have gotten to the point with Imperian that no one can do this anymore, so the winner of combat is decided by whoever has the largest DPS number. Hard locks are still possible, but they come all at once and don't slow your opponent down along the way. There is a way to do this better.

Nexus Update Coming

Jeremy Saunders — Fri, 28 Jul 2017 20:30:59 +0000

We are working on a major Nexus update. If you have any features you would like to see or bugs that are driving you crazy. Please post them here.

Artifact Dirks and the Death of Percentage Affliction Scaling

Naruj — Sun, 30 Jul 2017 19:42:08 +0000

One of the larger challenges when balancing Imperian over the years has been scaling affliction rates against healing. We have had hours of discussion in various beta tests and classlead channels looking at the impact of healing rates on offenses and great successes as a result.

This has lead to several noteworthy combat advancements, like the decoupling of weapon speed on affliction rates and has impacted the attack speeds of Outrider, Shaman, Berserker, and Hunter. There are math formulas behind ideal curing rates, and actual numbers that can be fixed on how fast someone has to afflict to get ahead of them.

But the one place that we fell short of complete balance was Assassin, because the artifact dirk scales player affliction speed in a way that can still be purchased for credits. The Assassin beta was first, so changing the artifact was not yet in the cards, meaning the Assassin balance efforts were somewhat clunky. We instead balanced Dstab speed against Spatium speed, disadvantaging the higher level dirks not by cost or effect but by their ability to combo with the better secondaries. This 'worked' to diminish the value of the artifact at the high end, but it never truly fixed the problem of buy in.

With our current outlook on balance, and the general fact that there is only one active player using the class to begin with, I think we can finally take the step to rebalance the dirk into something that makes Assassin work without a mandatory additional credit investment. I would like to argue for the following changes:

1. Decouble the Dirk from dstab speed, setting Dstab speed to roughly between the L1 and L2 speed before any bonuses.

2. Change the dirk to scale Trioxin damage by a percent, increasing significantly when relapsing. My base numbers are 5.0/7.5/10 and 10/15/20 respectively. This stops it from being yet another scaling artifact on top of Trioxin's already very potent scaling with Dexterity, but lets it dramatically increase the damage of the Assassin closer.

3. Reduce the cost to match that of the spear, or 250/600/1200 rather than 300/700/1500. This is not necessary, but it could be argued that the new role puts it closer in utility to a spear than a longsword.

I want to do this in a way that doesn't cause Trioxin to be too dramatic in teamfights without preconditions, because I do not want Trioxin's base damage to be scaled back to account for it.

Diabolist Statpack

Jeremy Saunders — Tue, 25 Jul 2017 18:31:10 +0000

Someone suggested this to us. Is there a general consensus on this?

The starter statpack for diabolists seems to be intelligent, it should be dexterous though given they use balance and ritualism damage scales based on dexterity.

Achievements

Jeremy Saunders — Wed, 12 Jul 2017 21:08:59 +0000

I have seen several ideas for new achievements, but I cannot remember what all of them were and they are spread out across a few threads.

Lists your ideas for new achievements below please.

Housing Discussion

Anette — Thu, 29 Sep 2016 01:06:39 +0000

I was going to post this as a response to @Eoghan in @Druu 's thread about stuff we'd like to see and realized that it was probably derailing the thread a bit, so I felt it best to snip it and make it a new thread instead - --- Now that I got the post in I Hate out of my system, this is the thread I was actually linked that I wanted to comment on, since I ain't going to lie, tricking out Anette's house is like 85% ish of what I do on Imperian or the end goal towards which I do things.

These have been historically deliberately restricted because we don't want groves etc to be placed in houses. Now that groves aren't as combat relevant as they once were, we may reapproach this.

There are several terrain types similar to the ones already existing in the system that are worth considering. My shortlist: Village, Docks, Pond, Valley, Path, River, Road, Forest, Temple, Church, Farmland Maybe Sewer for those of us with too many House Tokens and not enough sense but I'm unsure if this plays into the Survival skill ability in any way.

Allow for doors to close automatically like having a key sigil without needing a key sigil.
Not against this as an addon, other than that it devalues key sigils overall. Will add it to the list of things to consider.

Perhaps this could be added to Butlers to give them a functional use? As is, I believe they are just fluff NPCs with a few stock reactions.

1) A bank is something we've discussed in the past, but haven't added. A few issues with it that make us go back and forth on the idea.

I don't see a problem with having a bank in a house as long as the price point is such that it doesn't mean everyone and their dog has one. Perhaps they could have an upkeep cost associated with them - this is what Aetolia does for libraries (or at least did, when I played it, that may have changed).

Allowing house guards of any kind is a huge balancing concern and would need to be part of a much larger discussion. We've talked about a few different ideas for house guards, but haven't really come up with anything we're happy with.

I think this would be a very good idea if we had a house bank as well, because then you could charge similarly to town guards and have them charge an upkeep on the player just as city guards do. Here is how I would design it, personally. I'd piggyback it on the design of the NPC reactions system, with a few ideas lifted from elsewhere. 1] Players can unlock the ability to have guards for their house. They can unlock one guard slot per [token, credit purchase, or whatever]. This guard slot would use a generic guard NPC description like house mobs. 2] For description customizations, I would probably use a system like deathsight messages: you create a description for the guard, it gets approved, you can save it and use it on future guard slots. Saving descriptions is probably a good idea as it would make the burden on @Elokia and others manning the customization approval queue easier. 2a] Caveat to customization: While I would like attack messages to be something you could customize, I understand there are technical limitations that would probably make this more trouble than it's worth to attempt this. Though if I'm wrong, by all means, add those as customizable fields. I would structure the customization as thus: appearance dropped examined leave enter dead gender < it would be nice to be able to have descriptions work for either gender but there are probably technical limitations regarding this For "enemy spotted" bits we could just use the reactions system. Perhaps we could have a default reaction builtin that people can unlock to change, or perhaps they can just buy reaction tokens/slots and add it themselves. 3] For a fee, existing guard slots can be "unlocked" to move them to a new room or change their description to a saved, approved description. Making them otherwise locked to a room would prevent players from abusing them and herding them into a clot, if coupled with an upper limit on "guards per room". 4] When you set up a guard slot, you set the description to use, out of the saved ones or the generic description, and the room the guard is in. If you do find a way to make gender-agnostic descriptions, you would also set the gender. 5] The guard would then appear in the room and guard that spot. They would function the same as city sentries. 5a] They probably shouldn't be able to man siege. 6] Guards that are slain would have a nominal gold fee to enlist a new guard. This would give real costs to a player using a house as a fortification or safe haven. I'm not going to suggest specific amounts as that would depend upon the strength of the guards but it should be enough that endgame players "feel a burn". It shouldn't be so much that you can grief people financially by sniping guards, however. 7] I would probably allow reaction slots to be placed on them so people could, for example, have a guard TELL them if an enemy enters the room. This would be the means for people to add extra functionality like that to guards if they so wish. 8] If we have the bank account addon as above, we could also charge an upkeep for guards that draws on the house bank account. 8a] If you don't have enough gold for all the guards, they would leave and you would have to pay the reinstatement costs as if they were slain, and also the upkeep due for that month that was missed. This would probably be best done as an overarching "due fee" rather than doing it individually per guard as I imagine tracking it individually per guard would introduce an onerous amount of necessary tracking to the monthly turnovers. Just make it so that you can't revive guards or hire new ones until past due fees are paid, I'd say. As to attacks and NPC strength, that is best left to the musings of people more familiar with the balance of guards than I am, but in general I'd say you want to avoid casual attacks and guard sniping, but not targetted attacks on a player. How I envision commands: HOUSE GUARD [id] - general information about the guard of that ID (maybe: room, hire date, next payment due, guard type, maybe the dropped desc)

GUARD#52
-----------------------------------------------------
a generic guard - in The Hall of Heroes (v1234)
archer guard using description "a generic guard"
Hired 13 Halitus, 166AM
Wages of 1234 gold next due 13 Halitus, 167AM 
-----------------------------------------------------

HOUSE GUARD LIST - list all the guards in the house presently, maybe order them by type

GUARD ROSTER FOR ANETTE_HOUSE_1
-----------------------------------------------------
standard guards
   house_guard#121 - anette_house_1 (v123)
archers
   house_guard#122 - anette_house_1 (v123)
telepaths
   house_guard#123 - anette_house_1 (v123)
-----------------------------------------------------
Total upkeep: 1234 gold
You are using 3/3 available guard roster slots.

HOUSE GUARD ADD - pay credits/gold/tokens/red M&Ms to add a slot to the guard roster

> house guard add
You are attempting to add a slot to the house guard roster for 10 red M&Ms.  User HOUSE GUARD ROSTER ADD CONFIRM to confirm.
> house guard confirm
You have added one guard slot to your house guard roster, with id #124

HOUSE GUARD DESCRIPTION NEW - create a new guard description, probably with the standard customization fee or similar

> house guard description new
You are adding a new guard description for 50 credits.  Type HOUSE GUARD DESCRIPTION NEW CONFIRM to confirm.
> house guard description new confirm
You have added a new guard description with the ID #2

HOUSE GUARD DESCRIPTION [id] - put alone will display the current description (Thought: you could perhaps have the generic descriptions just be descriptions under the same system, just ones available to everyone.)

Description #2
----------------------------------------------
status: system

appearance: a generic guard
dropped: A generic guard patrols here.
examined: This generic guard isn't anything special to look at.
enter: A generic guard enters from the $(dir$)
exit: A generic guard leaves to the $(dir$)
dead: A generic guard lies here dead.
type: standard
gender: female
----------------------------------------------

HOUSE GUARD DESCRIPTION LIST - list all the available descriptions and statuses

Available house guard descriptions
----------------------------------------------
id      appearance                                 status
1      a generic archer                           system
2      a generic guard                            system
3      another generic guard                  system
56    Anette's special guard                  unapproved
57    Anette's special archer                 pending
58    Anette's special telepath               approved
-----------------------------------------------

HOUSE GUARD DESCRIPTION [id] SET [dropped/appearance/etc] - set attributes of the created guard description HOUSE GUARD DESCRIPTION [id] SUBMIT - Submit a description you've put together for approval by the administration. HOUSE GUARD [id] UNLOCK - allow a player to move or change the description or type of a guard for 24h (like reactions). The guard has to be locked again to work as a guard. To prevent panic moves and other abusive plays, we could have a minimum unlock time of say a few minutes. HOUSE GUARD [id] ASSIGN TO [room shortname or vnum] - allow an unlocked guard to be moved to another room

> house guard 123 move to anette_house_2
You have assigned a generic guard (a telepath) to Anette's Second Room (v1234).

HOUSE GUARD [id] DESCRIBE AS [description ID] - change the description of an unlocked guard.

> house guard 123 describe as 3
A generic guard is now Another generic guard.

HOUSE GUARD [id] HIRE - hire a guard that is in the roster and locked. This places them in the room. Necessary if they're new or got slain.

> house guard 123 hire
You have hired a generic guard (a telepath) for 1234 gold and they are now standing guard in Anette's Second Room (v1234).

HOUSE GUARD [id] FIRE - fire a guard that is active in the world. Useful if you're going to be away for a while or don't want to pay upkeep or whatever. This would remove them from the room, but they'd still be on the roster. It would not unlock or remove that roster slot. ... Feel free to use all, any, or none, of the above, I'm just thinking aloud here. ---- Some other ideas of my own: Fluff NPCs I've asked @Elokia about this and it's something I like to be able to do in the future is have "fluff" NPCs outside of the three kind of hard roles we already have with servants. One example pertinent for my own house would be a forge worker for instance, since one of the rooms is a forge. I'm not expecting something that has any added functions or sells anything, just things to add to the "flavour" of various parts of the house. It's these kinds of vanity purchases that are many MMOs primary endgame money sink, virtual currency and real money alike. I know I'd spend money on it. I would approach this like I would the free item tokens personally (and maybe for a price point considered comparable?) - a tabula rasa that won't have progs or a functional use (except attaching all kinds of nifty Reactions to!) but you could use to have flavour NPCs of your choice. A formalized system to submit them via the customization system or some variant thereof might make @Elokia happier though! Moving addons (idea 61621) Right now, the only way to 'move' an addon is to REMOVE it from one room and then re-purchase it on the other. This disincentivises people like myself from expanding houses because if I want to, for instance, move my stable out of the garden Anette has now into a separate room, I'm not only looking at the minimum 750k gold to add on a separate stable room, but also the expense of re-puchasing the addon as well. This is not a nominal expense. I'm not asking it be free, but if it was doable at some sort of premium that's less than repurchasing the addon that would be nice. Map fixing stuff As Jeremy well knows, the mapping stuff when you're trying to construct houses the maps can be a bit derpy, since he had to help sort mine once. Having some way to rectify mapping problems in our own house would probably be a good idea since then we wouldn't have to bother you guys if the automap derps, but I'm not sure if this has been enough of a problem to warrant this. Cook Improvements Allow us to specify specific recipes a cook uses from the given pantry shelf so we don't need separate pantries for separate cooks. Ability to suppress servant reactions The cook and butler and maid servant types all have built in fluff reactions. These are neat to have as generic things, but it would be nice for those of us that have added our own reactions to be able to suppress the existing ones.