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Sect Rituals

edited November 2012 in Imperial News
Please read through the entire thread prior to commenting - some info in this post is already outdated.

While the new cult/sect system is already significantly different from old orders as far as RP/backstory goes, the mechanical differences have been rather small so far. Sect rituals are the answer, and we're now finally at the stage where I can post some more information about them.

In addition to the basic rituals that both cult and sects get (these are alredy in the game), there will be seven groups of sect rituals, each of them consisting of five rituals. Four of these groups are accessible by every sect, the remaining three are circle-specific - each sect only gets access to the group belonging to its circle.

However, there is a catch. No sect will be able to access all of the available rituals - rather, each sect will be able to pick up to three groups out of the five groups available to it, and gain rituals from those groups. Selecting each new group will come with a belief cost attached. You will be able to change your picks at the same cost, but you'll need to forgo some of your already chosen groups first.

Once the sect has picked a ritual group, the first ritual in it becomes available to all members. Further rituals are gained on an individual basis, the specifics of which are not entirely finalised yet. The idea is that to gain access the better rituals, you'll need to spend some time as a member of that sect, as well as actively contribute towards the sect belief. The primary goal here is to provide a reward for staying in the sect for a longer time (as a estimate, it's going to take about 2 months to get the highest-rank rituals).

The individual rituals are described below. The basic idea behind all of them is that they provide very powerful effects with major impact on a given situation, balanced out by their high cost to ensure that they will only be usable semi-frequently. Please note that this listing is not finalised yet and anything could change. As you'll notice, the combat-related rituals (which form the majority of what is available) are tailored towards group combat, which means that to get the full benefits, different sects within a circle will want to focus on different groups of rituals.

1. HEALING/PROTECTIVE RITUALS

* Heal - cures all health/mana and afflictions on all cult members in the room, or everyone in the room. The "all allies" option is intentionally excluded to force some strategic choice - this applies to other such rituals as well. 30% faith.
* Aura - An improved prismatic defence on all cult members in room, or everyone in room, that only drops when shield would (on aggro/move). 30% faith.
* Join - A more powerful bloodsworn. Split damage between the two, afflictions are received by both, curing an affliction cures it for both, health curing also splits between the two, lasts for 30 minutes or until cancelled. 80% faith.
* Sanctuary - Prevent all forms of travel into the room. Leaving can still be done freely. Lasts for a limited time. 55% faith.
* Grace - gives temporary grace for 30 seconds. 100% faith.

2. PILLAR RITUALS

Offers creation of pillars with various effects, can have multiple in room, pillars last about 10 minutes. This is the "jack of all trades" option. Each pillar costs 40% faith.
* Pillar of Protection - damage targetted at anyone in the room reduced by 15%
* Pillar of Travel - cult members can travel to the pillar from anywhere
* Pillar of Holding - creates a pillar in the room that prevents all forms of movement from the room except unblockable ones (tumble and similar)
* Pillar of Pestilence - everyone in the room except cult members hit by periodic afflictions
* Pillar of Destruction - damage initiated by anyone in the room increased by 15%

3. FAVOURS

- this basically splits the existing divine favours into several ones, removes some things, and adds some extras. A player can have more of these, and can bestow them upon others (high faith cost to balance it out). All of these last 2 hours of online time.
* Celerity - faster movement, 20% faith
* Stealth - enter/leave messages do not show the direction in which the affected player left, 40% faith
* Benevolence - +1 to stats. 60% faith
* Alertness - alertness with no drain, 60% faith
* Protection - 5% damage resist to all damage types, or 10% to a chosen one. 80% faith

4. OFFENSIVE RITUALS

* Summon - summon another player to the cult altar. Short delay with messages, movement, monoliths and similar block it. 15% faith (taken even if it fails).
* Breach - remove all obstacles in a direction, including the Sanctuary effect. 30% faith.
* Bull's Rush - ignore effects like gravehands/piety/block/etc, affects everyone in the room, lasts 10 minutes. 60% faith.
* Explosion - a powerful explosion that sends everyone in the room to random rooms all over the world (different room for each player). 80% faith
* Avatar - 25 to all stats, lasts 2 minutes, 100% faith

Circle-specific ritual groups provide two offensive ones, two defensive ones, and one commodity-related.

5. DEMONIC RITUALS

* Transmute - Convert some amount of commodities into random other commodities, faith cost depends on amount
* Sukhder's Freedom - for 20 minutes, everyone in the room gains the Shadowbinding Waterwalking and Projection abilities (jump over walls), as well as improved celerity, 60% faith
* Decompose - A 25% damage malus to everyone in the room, lasts 10 minutes, 60% faith
* Searing Aura - user becomes immune to all entanglements, lasts 10 minutes, 100% faith
* Aeonic Flux - strip all defences on everyone in the room and afflict everyone with aeon, 100% faith

6. MAGICK RITUALS

* Duplicate - duplicate a stack of riftable items, faith costs depends on type/amount, some (moonwort) are excluded
* Burrowing - everyone in the room gets the ability to burrow, lasts 20 minutes, 35% faith
* Airlift - everyone in the room gets the ability to fly, lasts 20 minutes, 60% faith
* Icestorm - invoke a storm of ice that blocks all locating skills targetted at people in the room and causes significant damage to anyone who tries to enter or leave (no periodic damage to people inside), lasts several minutes. 80% faith
* Meteor - a large ball of fire hits the current outdoors room after 6 seconds, killing everyone who remains there, 100% faith

7. ANTI-MAGICK RITUALS

* Purify - convert a magickal item into commodities, faith costs depends on type
* Holy Curse - transfer the afflictions on user to all other players in the room, 60% faith
* Angelic Grace - Periodic shield defence on either all cult members in the room, or everyone in the room, ticks every 10s, lasts 5 minutes. 80% faith
* Boost of Life - Player drains 15% health from every other individual in the room and adds that to his own health, lasts three minutes, ticks every 6 seconds, 80% faith
* Avalanche - For 5 minutes, the room becomes completely impassable and unable to be entered by any means. Everyone inside gets pushed out. Can still be bypassed with long-range travel. 100% faith


As always, all comments, suggestions, and any other feedback that you may have, are very much welcome and encouraged.

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Comments

  • edited November 2012
    I like what I'm seeing so far. I can see this tying in very neatly with the Architects.

    Let me digest it more tonight, but from a read-through (and an RP perspective) I'd have fun with it.
    Someone powerful says, "Its broken. No more pulling the guillotine."
  • * Purify - convert a magickal item into commodities, faith costs depends on type

    What would this entail? Magickally smithed items? How would this be different from adding them to the forge?
    Someone powerful says, "Its broken. No more pulling the guillotine."
  • Jorachim said:
    * Purify - convert a magickal item into commodities, faith costs depends on type

    What would this entail? Magickally smithed items? How would this be different from adding them to the forge?
    Well, sigils, enchanted items, things like that. I'm not entirely sure on the specifics yet.
  • Demonic certainly has the best circle specific options, all of theirs are absurdly strong.
  • Overall I'm impressed with the system, it looks very intricate but the limitations on faith mean that they'll also be very short lived. 80% faith for one ability? Better feed yourself with bashing corpses before you can do another.

    That said, I think it might be -too- limited and as a result -too- powerful. A meteor that kills everyone in the room for 100% faith? Strip all defs and apply aeon to an entire room? These things are being balanced by rarity, which is often not a good way to find balance at all.
  • And all of this has to be done in the room with my altar or not?
    ‘Least I won’t have to carry it no more. You see how bloody heavy it is?’

    ‘Every sword’s a weight to carry. Men don’t see that when they pick ’em up. But they get heavier with time.”
  • Some of these may require the altar, most would not.
  • I'm torn. I think it's neat that we have to pick out which we want. That's great. I think some of the effect are just absurd though, as Juran said, on a rarity balance system. Like, in crucial battles can I just expect to have six Cult of the Demon Tree people drop aeon/def strip in succession? I don't know. Like I said, a lot of the ideas are cool, I just wonder how the implementation would go.
    ‘Least I won’t have to carry it no more. You see how bloody heavy it is?’

    ‘Every sword’s a weight to carry. Men don’t see that when they pick ’em up. But they get heavier with time.”
  • Juran said:
    Overall I'm impressed with the system, it looks very intricate but the limitations on faith mean that they'll also be very short lived. 80% faith for one ability? Better feed yourself with bashing corpses before you can do another.

    That said, I think it might be -too- limited and as a result -too- powerful. A meteor that kills everyone in the room for 100% faith? Strip all defs and apply aeon to an entire room? These things are being balanced by rarity, which is often not a good way to find balance at all.
    Indeed, getting this right is the tricky part. Where possible, I much prefer to lean towards "powerful and rare" over "mediocre and common". I am likely going to add a short channeled activation time to some of the more powerful ones (with the actual faith drain only occuring upon the completion of the channeled part).

  • It'd force people to do stuff (read bashing) in between shard falls and obelisk battles though! :P
  • - Who in the sect chooses these? The entity? Highest-ranked person in the sect? Majority by referendum?

    - Boost of Life sounds like something demonic would use. How are anti-magick cults draining someone's health - and why? These are people who fight against demons and the undead.

    - For anything that says "everyone in the room": Which room? Only at the cult altar? Only the first room the sect-member uses the ability in? Any room they wander around through?

    - The circle-based commodity rituals are pretty meh. 

    Are you envisioning a cult/sect conflict system of some kind? Altars are largely in pretty random areas at this point.


  • I was thinking about Juran's post about the rarity balance. What if you made the 100% rituals require more than one person, say two or three, to perform? Due to the small population of the game, I think that most orders only had anywhere from 5-10 members active at any given time -- so having multiple people do a single 100% ritual, draining all of those people of that cost, would help balance it. Just a thought.
  • edited November 2012
    I'd rather have rituals that give decent benefits but not something I'm required to use in order to win a big battle. Stuff like that +1 stats and faster movement. Minor buffs or utility that's nice to have but not game changing.

    Some of these are good and interesting, but some are a bit absurd, like the meteor as mentioned.
  • Lalitana said:
    - Who in the sect chooses these? The entity? Highest-ranked person in the sect? Majority by referendum?

    - Boost of Life sounds like something demonic would use. How are anti-magick cults draining someone's health - and why? These are people who fight against demons and the undead.

    - For anything that says "everyone in the room": Which room? Only at the cult altar? Only the first room the sect-member uses the ability in? Any room they wander around through?

    - The circle-based commodity rituals are pretty meh. 

    Are you envisioning a cult/sect conflict system of some kind? Altars are largely in pretty random areas at this point.
    The ability to choose ritual groups will be an assignable privilege, the sect leader will have it by default.

    "everyone in the room" refers to the room where the ritual is being used.

    Not sure yet on a cult/sect conflict system, depends on how the whole system plays out.
  • Meteor could just be changed to being a summonable holo globe tbh.
    ‘Least I won’t have to carry it no more. You see how bloody heavy it is?’

    ‘Every sword’s a weight to carry. Men don’t see that when they pick ’em up. But they get heavier with time.”
  • Please do not misunderstand, I want them to be strong. I am extremely excited about the prospect of new abilities that reshape the field - but it will require a careful hand to keep strong from becoming game breaking.

    In many ways, I find some of the stronger ones to be okay or only slightly in need of tweaking. Avatar has a counter, because all balance requiring attacks have a counter. 30 second grace is also likely fine, it stops you from dying once at the cost of all of your faith and ability to participate in the combat - but some of the super moves need rethinking, because no amount of rarity will make them balanced.

    My other criticism is going to be the synergy effects between them. How does one stop a Diavlous that gets bloodsworn, offers to max, gets engulfing aura to be immune to entangles, offers to max, and then pops avatar as they land? You're not going to kill them or slow them down - you are probably just going to die.
  • My main complaints and suggestions to fix them:

    Meteor - Just too huge. All that Magick cults can have it. Make it a summonable holo globe.
    Avatar - It's a neat concept, but as has been pointed out the counters are very much limited in scope. I'd just go for something like person has double HP/Mana, does double damage. That's still a huuuuge advantage, but people can try and turtle it out and no one besides Ju$tu$ will be instakilling people.
    Aeonic Flux - Have an in-room cooldown on how often it can be done?
    ‘Least I won’t have to carry it no more. You see how bloody heavy it is?’

    ‘Every sword’s a weight to carry. Men don’t see that when they pick ’em up. But they get heavier with time.”
  • I don't like this at all. Not only does this dig us deeper in to the "we only fight in teams" hole (I thought @Jeremy said we were going to balance out in this regard), it turns a previously entire roleplay tool in to another pile of powergaming tools. As much as I love more powerplay tools, we are rapidly approaching a Lusternia-esque critical mass.

    I don't like that this provides more abilities to waste time on balancing in classleads. I don't like how bold the lines between each circle are, for special powers. I don't like how it emphasizes the Mob instead of the Individual. I thought using our cult altar would make for a foreshadowed mechanic involving champions. Instead, we got.. what? A stockpile of new things to make team combat even more of a mess. We need less of that, not more.

    In general, I am thoroughly unimpressed with this step. The one thing I do like is that we select 'ritual groups', which is a neat roleplay idea.. until you attach tangible benefits to it that may outweigh other groups.
    <div>Message #2062&nbsp; Sent By: (imperian)&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; Received On: 1/20/2018/2:59</div><div>"Antioch has filed a bounty against you. Reason: Raiding Antioch and stealing Bina, being a right</div><div>ass, and not belonging anywhere near Antioch till he grows up."</div>
  • The uber moves definitely need tweaking, but I like the idea behind them.

    One thing I'd like considered is raising the amount of faith each person can have. Maybe by two or three times what it is now. As it is, I can refill my faith a dozen times a day without much effort at all. 

    Then you could tweak the lower abilities to require a smaller percentage, and have a much higher bar for the uber moves.
  • I can see why you'd suggest this. Orders and Order miracles took a back seat to everything and it would be nice to see sects taking a slightly more active role in the world. The problem is that as this is set up here, sects suddenly replace everything and become the single most important determinant in who wins various fights. I don't mind seeing sects playing more of a role in combat, but this is, I think, too much.

    I have three main problems here.

    1. I think the intent here was to have some incredibly powerful things balanced by incredibly high costs, but some of these effects here are too powerful to be balanced by any cost at all. Meteor, Aeonic Flux are prime candidates here. These things are roughly equivalent to "Burn 100% Faith to win fight"
    2. (Unintended?) Synergy granted by ritual;sacrifice;ritual;sacrifice. Get somebody to join me, pop Searing Aura, offer to 100%, move in and pop Avatar. Pillar of Holding/sacrifice/Meteor.
    3. Looking at this, the clearly optimal thing to do is pile everybody into one sect. This means that 30% faith can fullheal my entire team,prismatic my entire team, shield my entire team. This has all kinds of downsides, from forcing people to join unwanted sects to get combat benefits, to drastically limiting the roles open for your volunteers. I hope you only have 3 entities who want sects, because the optimal setup is the Cult of Demonic, the Cult of Magick, and the Cult of Anti-Magick.

    "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."

  • With some very basic differences (like Duplicate) seems to me a lot of these rituals are things that you could gain access to simply by being a mage or a bard or something similar. (Burrowing, Icestorm, Meteor) Or else that are simply variated versions of things that already exist in the game. (Join?) Seems like a lot of work for limited payoff. And not all cults are going to find much of this useful, either, as many of them have taken on a mindset different than combat or provision orientation, seeing as how cities/councils and guilds pretty much have that market cornered between Obelisks, Shards, territory and personal disputes...

    These things seem helpful if you're following a combat-based cult, but there are others out there who don't really have the motivation to add ANOTHER form of conflict to the already-overwhelming amount they have to contend with every day just to get a minute amount of other projects to inch forward. I'm not saying abolish the system in any way, I'm just terribly disappointed at the lack of anything useful if you're not already planning to spiral headfirst into even MORE combat. The repetition of which is getting really boring.
  • I should say "Stilted payoff" not limited. In either case, it's just forcing everyone into more combat than we're all already forced into, and I had been under the impression that this would somehow be as much about the purpose behind them than blind combat. I know a lot of cults who are going to find these advances entirely useless and unwanted, seeing as how there's nothing in it for them. Just more annoyance and balls-out, testosterone-fueled, logicless conflict. Personally, I agree with Sarrius. At least give the rest of us something to do while the inevitable 10-15 super-combat-whores duke it out for no real gain and keep the rest of us limited to "support" or "Go do something to waste three hours then see if there's anything left to accomplish". Can't keep shoving us to the back and expect us to want to keep coming around.
  • edited November 2012
    What if the more powerful rituals were all changed into channeled effects?

    Change Meteor to...
    Inferno - Channel a raging inferno, causing X damage every second to everyone in the room, or half that to everyone in an adjacent room. Goes through shield. Channel up to twenty seconds. 100% faith cost.

    Change Aeonic Flux to....
    Aeonic Assault - Channel a portal to the demonic realm. Causes a retardation effect in the room for thirty seconds. Can be channeled for up to thirty seconds, and once per second a minor demon is summoned that is aggressive to non-Demonic Circle members. 100% faith cost.

    /random ideas
  • I agree with Aislygn. There's nothing (except maybe favours) for people who don't PK.

    For goodness' sake, sell me on this thing. Sell me on why the cult/sect system is actually a good replacement for its predecessor. 
  • edited November 2012
    Zarim - Nice. I like those suggestions. I think following that path for a few more of them would be helpful, too.

    I would just like to see things that are helpful for more than just combat, also. Lalitana has it pegged. Sell us on why this is better than all the other combat-related systems that have been thrown at us over the last two years. Why should I care about cults, now?

    Khizan has a few good points too. Part of the reason I think orders took a back seat in the world of everything except crooked politics is because of the fact that all the combat-related things were either much too powerful and burned bridges far too quickly, or else weren't of any use outside the bonuses that were already gotten elsewhere. They were excellent as a roleplay resource, but the limited interactions with the deities made it incredibly frustrating for those RPers. And since Arpee Helper is of limited use if there's no one listening in (A frustration I've had since he inception) we're back in the same boat we had before, and we're only going to make things slide in the worst possible way with things set up to move as we're going. As of this moment, not a single RP-heavy, or RP-exclusive individual is going to see merit in the combat-heavy portions of the sects and cults. (I'm still not sure the difference between the sects and cults, so I'm throwing them in as just cults from now on.)

  • I don't like the commodity rituals, esp considering magick has the best option between those three. Everything else just looks pretty damn powerful, and is going to be WORLDBURN x100 it seems between team combat. 

    Perhaps balance it by limiting all of these to the altar? Even then, it would be the 'who can hit the button quick enough'.

    @Aislygn: While I'm not sure if it's still used, you can RPT (instead of tell ARPEE) and send a message out, but I have confirmation from the last docent lead that the docent program is dead, so I don't know if the divine have an ear on that channel anymore or not.


  • I am not saying I hate conflict driven systems. Holy wars will happen. I am just stating that I find team combat tools and their proliferation very tiresome - likely because I am sick of team combat itself. It is steadily losing all appeal to me as a player, and systems designed to introduce more weapons to that system do not spice it up. They only irritate one of my displeasures: team combat is a blur. Everything happens so fast that I don't get to use 90% of my skills. All of these cult oriented spells only make that worse.

    I am also very tired of touted RP systems evolving in to more team combat tools. This happened a lot in Lusternia.. quests became necessary for combatants to get a free artifact. Orders played a huge role in sieging other planes, because their shrine powers are unbearably powerful.
    <div>Message #2062&nbsp; Sent By: (imperian)&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; Received On: 1/20/2018/2:59</div><div>"Antioch has filed a bounty against you. Reason: Raiding Antioch and stealing Bina, being a right</div><div>ass, and not belonging anywhere near Antioch till he grows up."</div>
  • Thanks, Sarc. Seems to me every time I have a chance (as in a system's put in place) for RP, something comes along and disrupts it. One of these days, I'll get a hold of someone capable of making it happen, and a proposal will actually result in actual RP! IN AN RPG, no less! Imagine the possibilities!

    I like Sarciossis's idea, too, of limiting at least the most powerful of the rituals, at least, to the altar room. Still leaves them a little out of control, but in that way significantly less.

    Personally, I like the comm rituals, but that's cause I'm magicker and that seems like a greedy harvester's wet dream! :P

    Maybe nerf that about.... oh... a lot.

    My only hope for the cults, at this point, is that at least the entities would be capable of affecting the world and helping work with cult leaders to create RP for the cults themselves, for the members within. If that LEADS to conflict with another cult (Which it should) then the rituals are great. I just fear with having so many cults, so few entities, and how the combat-cults are going to chew everything up and swallow cults whole, that there's going to be a lot of RP-based cults with nothing to do because the entities are siding with combat-based cults.
  • The rituals just provide a combat benefit, which will ultimately invalidate cult decision-making. It looks like it won't on paper, but people will reduce it down to the three best ritual categories and then the others will collect dust.

    Beyond that point, we just don't need more things that speed up or muddy team PK, or encourage team PK. I just don't get why we need these.
    <div>Message #2062&nbsp; Sent By: (imperian)&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; Received On: 1/20/2018/2:59</div><div>"Antioch has filed a bounty against you. Reason: Raiding Antioch and stealing Bina, being a right</div><div>ass, and not belonging anywhere near Antioch till he grows up."</div>
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