So, in short, the reason for this thread is to put in place a well thought out religion system to replace the one that is awaiting to be put and configured on a test shard by Blckfire, if this does not occur by tomorrow night I will work on it tomorrow night and get something going so I can spend sometime next week rallying a few players over to test things out. But in the meantime I wanted to share with you what I have spent the last week working on.
I feel the original thought behind a new religion system was both lacking, lost and not well thought out, this is due to many factors I shan't go into.
There will be a lot of technical things in this write-up and I warn you it is long because the main goal of this is to set in place a complete write-up on how a religion will operate, how individual rites might change and how other aspects of a religion might change. Most of these ideas are my own I would say and keep in mind I come from staffing a shard with a similar religion system to Journey's Ends and Pangaea's AND as a former player to Journey's End in a religion there and again in a religion on Pangaea so I have a relative idea on the major shortcomings and have given this a ton of thought on how things should work to help make player's lives a little less annoying.
Finally I mention Piety and Foci but read the entire document and you will see my ultimate aim, I think most of you will agree that both these two aspects of the religion system are both outdated and stupidly time consuming. The proposed changes would not be something that would be too extreme in my opinion and only seeks to keep religions a little more balanced with each other and internally as well as giving players a clear expectation of something they should already be familiar with not needing to be tied to someone else for their character's full potential to be reached or being held back by some wacky timer.
If you have criticisms give me a proper reason why, I spent last weekend pretty much on this and the last couple week nights and lunch hours on this over the last few days so I expect similar respect. If you want to complain or bitch about one aspect for the sake of doing it, your opinion will be considered null and void.
The one key issue which you will not sway me on is the "stones" rites, no one has ever come up with a well balanced system for them, they are abusive to say the least, a griefers delight and with respect to Imprisonment, the ability to remove another player from the game for any length of time was a mistake Sigismund made, in a perfect world it might be alright but as no one threw the first stone, we do not live in a perfect world.
Note: This is merely here so you as players can see my thoughts on a religion system which I feel would work better for Pangaea and to give your thoughts and hopefully I can win you over if I need to, I know some would like to think I want to wreck Pangaea but I do not want to wreck it, I want to fundamentally change major gaping issues Pangaea has been plagued with in the past so that we can have a more up to date shard. This will in no way be part of the reimplementation of the old religion system which I am hoping will be sooner rather than later, this will be a future update but we need a write up of such a system so that we as staff know where we are going and not thinking as we write it.
Oh and please, snide remarks about religions not being out, keep em to yourself, I am not interested in hearing it, you have no idea how much crap I have done to get a new religion system done, how close I was to walking away because of things, your frustrations I share and I guarantee you, I have more of a reason to be pissed, I have done work that I found out later would need to be scrapped. I want to ensure all my ducks are in a row before I start over on a new religion system for the masses.
Here We Go Again, Religions Revisited.
Here we go again religions revisited...
Moderator: Game Masters
Here we go again religions revisited...
Criticism may not be agreeable, but it is necessary. It fulfils the same function as pain in the human body. It calls attention to an unhealthy state of things. - Winston Churchill
Re: Here we go again religions revisited...
So to be clear player marriages will remain the same with the difference being they'd be handled by player's and any fees incurred are set AND collected by the player for the player or his religion, however that is governed by the individual player or religion he belongs to.
Neutral religion I leave no provision for as I believe that should be up to the player base to setup and run, I can expand more as to why I didn't outline such a religion but it's late here so I'll do that later if I need to.
Neutral religion I leave no provision for as I believe that should be up to the player base to setup and run, I can expand more as to why I didn't outline such a religion but it's late here so I'll do that later if I need to.
Criticism may not be agreeable, but it is necessary. It fulfils the same function as pain in the human body. It calls attention to an unhealthy state of things. - Winston Churchill
Re: Here we go again religions revisited...
So the blaring omission of neutral religion.
My reasons for not even outlining one is an odd one maybe to some of you since I'm sure some of you are thinking that it was promised yada yada.
I did not outline one as I feel the neutral religion being anything of the sort should be created by player's for players. Some of us talk of the quality of RP, some of us talk about flexibility and ultimately the entire rewrite of a religion system was to allow players to forge out their own religions. I do not believe it should be the staff's job to govern or support a neutral shard sanctioned religion, I want players to have a more active roll in making their own religions.
There's additional reasons as well, which I'll just try to briefly explain.
Having a shard sanctioned neutral religion would essentially mean having a secondary mini religion system within a religion system and in an effort to save me that hassle I felt it ought to be scrapped especially when one considers the following additional points which I'll paraphrase but these are straight from the original ideas given to me for having a neutral religion.
The neutral religion was intended to be a gold sink. The idea for a neutral religion as I saw it was to have an introduction to the religion system hence I'd consider to be early game and you do not ever put early game gold sinks in unless it is an optional vendor or something that players do not need to be involved in and an early game system to learn the ropes of a wider system is something that some players will feel they need to be involved in.
The neutral religion was not what I expect many of you thought it would be. It was not going to be a free for all with the flexibility of a player just having a canon so that they could RP this or that god, there was a deity already named for this religion and it's intent was to be a as far as I could tell, old style religion mashed into the new religion system.
Finally, the major purpose of this neutral religion was to be crappy enough to ensure no player would stick around in it and it's major purpose was to try to funnel people into the player made religions anyway. So in short I'd be writing a quasi secondary religion system with one of its major missions was to funnel people into one of the player religions anyway. Seems like a waste of my time all around to be honest.
I don't think we need another Adventurers Guild type system on our hands, one that the only reason people participate in is to get stuff you can't get anywhere else. It's a pointless waste of my time, players time and shard resources to run such a thing.
I want players to be responsible for as much as possible, you all squabble but so do the staff and I'm the biggest spanner in the works most of the time, but compromise and discussion does still tend to get a result.
My reasons for not even outlining one is an odd one maybe to some of you since I'm sure some of you are thinking that it was promised yada yada.
I did not outline one as I feel the neutral religion being anything of the sort should be created by player's for players. Some of us talk of the quality of RP, some of us talk about flexibility and ultimately the entire rewrite of a religion system was to allow players to forge out their own religions. I do not believe it should be the staff's job to govern or support a neutral shard sanctioned religion, I want players to have a more active roll in making their own religions.
There's additional reasons as well, which I'll just try to briefly explain.
Having a shard sanctioned neutral religion would essentially mean having a secondary mini religion system within a religion system and in an effort to save me that hassle I felt it ought to be scrapped especially when one considers the following additional points which I'll paraphrase but these are straight from the original ideas given to me for having a neutral religion.
The neutral religion was intended to be a gold sink. The idea for a neutral religion as I saw it was to have an introduction to the religion system hence I'd consider to be early game and you do not ever put early game gold sinks in unless it is an optional vendor or something that players do not need to be involved in and an early game system to learn the ropes of a wider system is something that some players will feel they need to be involved in.
The neutral religion was not what I expect many of you thought it would be. It was not going to be a free for all with the flexibility of a player just having a canon so that they could RP this or that god, there was a deity already named for this religion and it's intent was to be a as far as I could tell, old style religion mashed into the new religion system.
Finally, the major purpose of this neutral religion was to be crappy enough to ensure no player would stick around in it and it's major purpose was to try to funnel people into the player made religions anyway. So in short I'd be writing a quasi secondary religion system with one of its major missions was to funnel people into one of the player religions anyway. Seems like a waste of my time all around to be honest.
I don't think we need another Adventurers Guild type system on our hands, one that the only reason people participate in is to get stuff you can't get anywhere else. It's a pointless waste of my time, players time and shard resources to run such a thing.
I want players to be responsible for as much as possible, you all squabble but so do the staff and I'm the biggest spanner in the works most of the time, but compromise and discussion does still tend to get a result.
Criticism may not be agreeable, but it is necessary. It fulfils the same function as pain in the human body. It calls attention to an unhealthy state of things. - Winston Churchill
Re: Here we go again religions revisited...
Unless 1.3 is to work like intended, it shouldn't be up to the council to vote one of theirs out. This makes it even more likely for a religion to keep continuing with the same group of people on power, because those 4 will support eachother and then no one can even get them out of there. If you ask me, there should be loyal and disloyal like before, for each of the 4 council spots. I'm not sure if this is going to be a problem, however, our numbers are so low I doubt we'll have the drama that we used to have years ago.
I would also be careful about the gump thing in concentration, if it happens in pvp it can be a bit of a nuisance.
I fail to see the difference between Glyph of Warding and Symbol of Pain..maybe I misread?
I don't see the logic of removing imprisonment/corruption/etc because those are annoying but then bringing back malediction?If the point is to make the pvp'ers/griefers happy, then I'd have them all, because that's what they like, but there's also an option to remove them all. I don't see why we should have malediction.
Absolution shouldn't remove druid curse imo, I think one of the major complaints of people back then was that religions were just better than everything else, and that was that. Let them fight against eachother but don't give them even more power against non-religious classes.
Restoration - I wouldn't touch it, unless you think that this new "Sacred Work" rite wouldn't take too much time to script. Still, I don't see anything wrong with the way it works now.
I stopped at page 18, gotta go for the moment, but I'll read and comment later.
I would also be careful about the gump thing in concentration, if it happens in pvp it can be a bit of a nuisance.
I fail to see the difference between Glyph of Warding and Symbol of Pain..maybe I misread?
I don't see the logic of removing imprisonment/corruption/etc because those are annoying but then bringing back malediction?If the point is to make the pvp'ers/griefers happy, then I'd have them all, because that's what they like, but there's also an option to remove them all. I don't see why we should have malediction.
Absolution shouldn't remove druid curse imo, I think one of the major complaints of people back then was that religions were just better than everything else, and that was that. Let them fight against eachother but don't give them even more power against non-religious classes.
Restoration - I wouldn't touch it, unless you think that this new "Sacred Work" rite wouldn't take too much time to script. Still, I don't see anything wrong with the way it works now.
I stopped at page 18, gotta go for the moment, but I'll read and comment later.
Re: Here we go again religions revisited...
+1Absolution shouldn't remove druid curse imo, I think one of the major complaints of people back then was that religions were just better than everything else, and that was that. Let them fight against eachother but don't give them even more power against non-religious classes.
Re: Here we go again religions revisited...
So let's start with Malediction, I think I stated clearly I'd like to bring it back but probably with different functionality.
As for restoration, I'd rather see it split and time is literally a moot point with changing rites as they are all going to be worked on anyway and even if they weren't it take no time whatsoever to write a new rite script and with me redoing all the rites to comply with a rite starter script is that each individual rite script is purely the effect of the rite as opposed to how it works now and thus made even simpler to add or change rites.
Concentration, I guess this is misunderstood, I want to rip out of most things the need to have focusing priests. It's an annoyance I feel could be removed from most of not all rites or tasks. If you get down to the bottom and we decide to drop piety and foci then there's literally no rite or task I'd keep concentrating priest functionality in.
As for the council, I'd have to reread it but the idea is this, no council position is appointed, they are voted for independently so if you have people with differing views and someone steps over the line, or the rest of the council wants him out then it's put to a vote, it's political intrigue or checks and balances. Then even then, that spot is not appointed a vote occurs religion wide. It's up to the body politic of the religion to either ensure they get players of differing opinions or to goose step behind their cabal. Either way it puts the power in the hands of the players themselves and religions should thrive or fall on its choices and not be bolstered by staff or scripted what if scenarios. It's as close to a democracy as you could get and if you view players and groups within a religion as political parties as I do, it gives the ability to by the players to ensure they have the power to vote for whom they want good or bad. The council decision was so that there would hopefully be a player run system of checks and balances specifically with the highlighted issues I mention that would be forced scripted votes because I've seen too many times some, I'll be blunt here, fucktard, decided he wanted to be a complete ass hole and excommunicate someone for no RP reason for instance and since I want to have staff more removed from religion decisions I want players to in this case, elected representatives of the religion body politic have to to some degree agree on such harsh decisions.
Imprisonment and corruption and stones in general, I don't care if corruption remains but different functionality and stones are just a no go, non starter. And imprisonment isn't even an issue of griefing, imprisonment is purely fixing an ability that players should never have had. You can try to argue this with me but players should not have the ability to pull someone out of the game for hours or days.
Absolution, I don't care if it does or doesn't remove druid curse I think I said something like "it could be added to Absolution" keep in mind this was originally intended to be an intrastaff write up but felt you as players would like to see my thoughts.
As for restoration, I'd rather see it split and time is literally a moot point with changing rites as they are all going to be worked on anyway and even if they weren't it take no time whatsoever to write a new rite script and with me redoing all the rites to comply with a rite starter script is that each individual rite script is purely the effect of the rite as opposed to how it works now and thus made even simpler to add or change rites.
Concentration, I guess this is misunderstood, I want to rip out of most things the need to have focusing priests. It's an annoyance I feel could be removed from most of not all rites or tasks. If you get down to the bottom and we decide to drop piety and foci then there's literally no rite or task I'd keep concentrating priest functionality in.
As for the council, I'd have to reread it but the idea is this, no council position is appointed, they are voted for independently so if you have people with differing views and someone steps over the line, or the rest of the council wants him out then it's put to a vote, it's political intrigue or checks and balances. Then even then, that spot is not appointed a vote occurs religion wide. It's up to the body politic of the religion to either ensure they get players of differing opinions or to goose step behind their cabal. Either way it puts the power in the hands of the players themselves and religions should thrive or fall on its choices and not be bolstered by staff or scripted what if scenarios. It's as close to a democracy as you could get and if you view players and groups within a religion as political parties as I do, it gives the ability to by the players to ensure they have the power to vote for whom they want good or bad. The council decision was so that there would hopefully be a player run system of checks and balances specifically with the highlighted issues I mention that would be forced scripted votes because I've seen too many times some, I'll be blunt here, fucktard, decided he wanted to be a complete ass hole and excommunicate someone for no RP reason for instance and since I want to have staff more removed from religion decisions I want players to in this case, elected representatives of the religion body politic have to to some degree agree on such harsh decisions.
Imprisonment and corruption and stones in general, I don't care if corruption remains but different functionality and stones are just a no go, non starter. And imprisonment isn't even an issue of griefing, imprisonment is purely fixing an ability that players should never have had. You can try to argue this with me but players should not have the ability to pull someone out of the game for hours or days.
Absolution, I don't care if it does or doesn't remove druid curse I think I said something like "it could be added to Absolution" keep in mind this was originally intended to be an intrastaff write up but felt you as players would like to see my thoughts.
Criticism may not be agreeable, but it is necessary. It fulfils the same function as pain in the human body. It calls attention to an unhealthy state of things. - Winston Churchill
Re: Here we go again religions revisited...
I think somehow concentration should be kept. Would people (in pvp) cast 3 rites or 1 strong rite? But of course, you decide what's best, and it's not like if concentration is to be removed then things will be shitty. Not at all, it's just a different approach. I'm just giving my thoughts on some of the rites/rituals/whatever
Even though it's annoying, I would still keep corruption. But I agree with you on imprisonment, it should just be gone.
About rituals.. make sure there's a set list of "good"/"bad"/"whatever" rituals that you can select, aswell as some rituals that auto-exclude eachother, etc etc
If you make the criminal system work like you said in salvation ritual, and mayor system and stuff becomes real, you will have my eternal gratitude xD
Astral projection seems quite cool. I would remove the dispel/mass dispel from it, though, since anyone could fuck up with the npc copy, but perhaps a rite that could be used for the same purpose, in which case enemy religions could invade and destroy the projection. I'm thinking, why not add a few places in the world (dungeons/places with special things/etc) that you can only access through astral projection?). Astral projection would also have some sort of stat/skill boost/curse. If there are religions, let's say one could access a few "holy dungeons" in mount olympus haha, but at a possible cost. Also, whenever a religion does astral projection, every other religion would be notified of it, and none of those religions could enter that dungeon, but they could perhaps invade and wreck the astral projection.. Now that I'm thinking about it, these places where you can only access through astral projection could be where you actually get religious power (there could be a tithing altar at the end or something), by defeating certain mob you get x power for your religion.. Allows for competition between religions which is not through direct PvP
Rally the fallen and Argent benevolence also seem interesting.
Oubliette - too similar to banishment?
Either way, thanks for the time invested
Even though it's annoying, I would still keep corruption. But I agree with you on imprisonment, it should just be gone.
About rituals.. make sure there's a set list of "good"/"bad"/"whatever" rituals that you can select, aswell as some rituals that auto-exclude eachother, etc etc
If you make the criminal system work like you said in salvation ritual, and mayor system and stuff becomes real, you will have my eternal gratitude xD
Astral projection seems quite cool. I would remove the dispel/mass dispel from it, though, since anyone could fuck up with the npc copy, but perhaps a rite that could be used for the same purpose, in which case enemy religions could invade and destroy the projection. I'm thinking, why not add a few places in the world (dungeons/places with special things/etc) that you can only access through astral projection?). Astral projection would also have some sort of stat/skill boost/curse. If there are religions, let's say one could access a few "holy dungeons" in mount olympus haha, but at a possible cost. Also, whenever a religion does astral projection, every other religion would be notified of it, and none of those religions could enter that dungeon, but they could perhaps invade and wreck the astral projection.. Now that I'm thinking about it, these places where you can only access through astral projection could be where you actually get religious power (there could be a tithing altar at the end or something), by defeating certain mob you get x power for your religion.. Allows for competition between religions which is not through direct PvP
Rally the fallen and Argent benevolence also seem interesting.
Oubliette - too similar to banishment?
Either way, thanks for the time invested
Re: Here we go again religions revisited...
I had a pm from a player who is currently MIA due to government duties and the such. He asked me about corruption and why I would like to see it removed. He made the point it is used to corrupt a religious altar and that ultimately hurts the religion who's altar is corrupted and his question to me was as follows:
"Do you want a scripted mechanism to damage an enemy religion or purely player based actions/rp?"
I think this is the crux of the problem and why there might be a misunderstanding as to my ultimate intentions on removing corruption, my fault as I probably was not clear and chalked it up to pure annoyance factor.
I would rather see when it comes to religions and potentially damaging opposing religions be done based on non specific scripted mechanics. While sure, bombarding another religions temple would be using in some aspects scripted mechanics, they would not be specific to the act of actually hurting the religion, then of course there is the RP factors that can be undertaken as well, this would be what I would like to see because to be blunt, I can not actually do what I would rather do with Corruption because it would require a hell of a lot more thought and work put into the religion system but I will share it with you now.
What would be ideal with Corruption would be to turn it into a temple take over. Script side this is not what it does currently, scripting side Corruption is purely let's corrupt people's foci, tomes, empyrean sigils, altar, symbols, etc... It would be intra-religion based so that religions would essentially not be in the business of capturing towns but in the business of trying to take over each other's temples. In short, when Corruption was cast on an altar of another religion, that altar would become a source of power for that religion and the temple itself becomes that religion's temple along with their other temple(s). But I can only imagine how this will cause people to complain. I am actually quite surprised to be honest on the "let's keep corruption petition", I always viewed this as such a minor rite that it was only used to grief players/religions.
The other thing is, if I can get all my wants in and I think I make a pretty good case for the two big changes, there will literally be one or two items that could be corrupted at that point. But I will mull it over and see if maybe I was too hasty in just changing it to something different.
As for rite selection, the preferred method for me would be categorized rite selection, each category has pairings (mind you the categories I setup are probably not going to be the actual set of 8 categories cause two of the categories for sure were after thoughts.) and you the player can select 1 ritual from each category to fill your tome. This allows individual players the customization I think Blckfire and Co were wanting and gives players customization options as well while still giving staff relative control on how rites are selected and where they fit in to exclude others.
Concentration my plan is to ultimately remove the need for it, after reviewing the thing, there would only be one rite that I think would use it anyway so I would rather just pull it out. I am sure that some of or most of these ideas are unimaginable right now and I think that is mainly because many people are still thinking of religions being the old style, that is fine but I feel if things can be streamlined and made much less tedious then what I can give to the players is a more enjoyable, better product in the long run. This is why I want to cut foci out altogether, piety likewise, concentration goes into this because instead of needing to focus on someone if I can get piety removed as a necessity and replace it with skill based rites, it would ultimately be up to the individual player to cast whatever he wants to cast if he has the skill and mana and other requirements for it.
"Do you want a scripted mechanism to damage an enemy religion or purely player based actions/rp?"
I think this is the crux of the problem and why there might be a misunderstanding as to my ultimate intentions on removing corruption, my fault as I probably was not clear and chalked it up to pure annoyance factor.
I would rather see when it comes to religions and potentially damaging opposing religions be done based on non specific scripted mechanics. While sure, bombarding another religions temple would be using in some aspects scripted mechanics, they would not be specific to the act of actually hurting the religion, then of course there is the RP factors that can be undertaken as well, this would be what I would like to see because to be blunt, I can not actually do what I would rather do with Corruption because it would require a hell of a lot more thought and work put into the religion system but I will share it with you now.
What would be ideal with Corruption would be to turn it into a temple take over. Script side this is not what it does currently, scripting side Corruption is purely let's corrupt people's foci, tomes, empyrean sigils, altar, symbols, etc... It would be intra-religion based so that religions would essentially not be in the business of capturing towns but in the business of trying to take over each other's temples. In short, when Corruption was cast on an altar of another religion, that altar would become a source of power for that religion and the temple itself becomes that religion's temple along with their other temple(s). But I can only imagine how this will cause people to complain. I am actually quite surprised to be honest on the "let's keep corruption petition", I always viewed this as such a minor rite that it was only used to grief players/religions.
The other thing is, if I can get all my wants in and I think I make a pretty good case for the two big changes, there will literally be one or two items that could be corrupted at that point. But I will mull it over and see if maybe I was too hasty in just changing it to something different.
As for rite selection, the preferred method for me would be categorized rite selection, each category has pairings (mind you the categories I setup are probably not going to be the actual set of 8 categories cause two of the categories for sure were after thoughts.) and you the player can select 1 ritual from each category to fill your tome. This allows individual players the customization I think Blckfire and Co were wanting and gives players customization options as well while still giving staff relative control on how rites are selected and where they fit in to exclude others.
Concentration my plan is to ultimately remove the need for it, after reviewing the thing, there would only be one rite that I think would use it anyway so I would rather just pull it out. I am sure that some of or most of these ideas are unimaginable right now and I think that is mainly because many people are still thinking of religions being the old style, that is fine but I feel if things can be streamlined and made much less tedious then what I can give to the players is a more enjoyable, better product in the long run. This is why I want to cut foci out altogether, piety likewise, concentration goes into this because instead of needing to focus on someone if I can get piety removed as a necessity and replace it with skill based rites, it would ultimately be up to the individual player to cast whatever he wants to cast if he has the skill and mana and other requirements for it.
Criticism may not be agreeable, but it is necessary. It fulfils the same function as pain in the human body. It calls attention to an unhealthy state of things. - Winston Churchill
Re: Here we go again religions revisited...
So in light of mostly positive feedback on my write up and what I'm assuming is approval by silence from everyone else, I'm going to move forward with this plan. It'll be awhile for this to be completely done but I will work on it while I do the 099 conversion.
A full game plan is nice to have and more than enough time has passed that "everyone" has no excuse to claim there was no time to at least skim through it.
I'll rewrite bits of this write up to reflect piety and foci changes in the next few days.
A full game plan is nice to have and more than enough time has passed that "everyone" has no excuse to claim there was no time to at least skim through it.
I'll rewrite bits of this write up to reflect piety and foci changes in the next few days.
Criticism may not be agreeable, but it is necessary. It fulfils the same function as pain in the human body. It calls attention to an unhealthy state of things. - Winston Churchill