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Astrology things I can't stop thinking about

Discussion in 'Wishlist Requests' started by Time Lord, Apr 16, 2022.

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  1. Time Lord

    Time Lord Avatar

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    I'm going to discuss things from a role play, world building, immersion point of view here, so... I apologize ahead of time to all the technolians that can't understand what I'm talking about or why I'm talking so much about it.

    It's very obvious that the Cabalists want something when they come to lay their siege engines around the shrines. It's deeper to why they are so interested in astrology that this subject needs deeper roots in what power they have proof of that first lead them to believe so deeply in it.

    It is due to the above that I insist there be more to astrology in our game. Because if the Cabalists were so convinced, then there should be effects that convince ourselves there's some real power to it.

    To a more technical description of what ways I think we have to express this in our game:

    • 1) Is through effecting our skills directly, as if only slight is enough if all four of these ways are enacted. I think each skill tree having a ruling planet as the Sun and Moon both have their magics attached to them.
    • 2) Is through effecting the blessing boost of whatever shrine the Cabalists have come for when they do come. When the Cabalists lay siege, then that corisponding shrine should have it's blessing amounts increased.
    • 3) Skill cooldown times. Each individual skill could have an associated constalation in the sky, some could even share the same constalations with other unrelated skills. Then, when that constalation is in the sky, then the cool-down time of that skill could become shorter.
    • 4) Special weapons and armor could also be enchanted to be more astrological, or Cabalist, having special qualities within the armor or weapon which would change it's stats, depending on when a constalation or planet were in the sky.

    Increased Monitization Revenue Due to these astrological effects:

    • 1) The astrlogical direct effect on skills from planets would increase the usage of unlearning scrolls and Osidian learning potions, due to an increase in player desire to have the skill sets needed to take best advantage of the seasons within the planetary skill effects.
    • 2) Increase the desires for having all the shrines as well as switching them out from time to time to take advantage when Cabalists laid their sieges.
    • 3) Would have the same effects on monitization as #1
    • 4) Increased mannequin sales due to players wanted to wear and display their best "seasonal" armor and weapons.
    • 1,2,3 and 4, all of which encourages land lot sales & upgrades to have a place for all the mannequins, POT upgrades to hold more shines and increased moondial sales as they would then become game relevent.
    When taken as a whole, this would create quite a number of wave functions for the player to consider, which then deepens the interest needed when playing our game.

    This also causes our game to become less digitally predictable from a player stat and skill standpoint

    This is all I mean when I speak of immersion and world building, drawing the player's attention away from the digits and onto what is actually happening in "the world", caused by the world.

    There are many ways the astrology of our sky could enhance our play and I've just mentioned a few. If any or all of these would only each slightly change our magic through increase and decreasing power effectiveness, then combined, they can create the chaos needed to more realistically depict a live and breathing world, which has many heart beats driving it through actual seasons, just as a real world does...

    (All this also increasing our "consumable" coto shop sales and upgrades, because we need to.)
    There must be a reason, a power that lead the Cabalists to believe in astrology and not just by religion.
    ~Time Lord~
     
    Last edited: Apr 16, 2022
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  2. Proteus Tempest

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    Perfectly stated and I agree.

    This was one of those ideas of Richard's that got me fired up.

    Astrology affecting everything you said and would be related to magic, prophesy, the potential in astrology for the game is huge. Just huge.

    LOL what kind of cookies can we sell to generate revenue LOL!

    Gosh, we ran our mouths too long and hard and kept the devs from getting to so much. We were all excited in the beginning...... Gosh... LOL.

    If we use magical abilities in the game it's a tragedy that its not fleshed out to the max. Really, if there IS magic in a game astrology just has to be there.

    And I agree that if the alignment of the planets and such affect the outcome of magic in all those ways then it turns the magical system into something that is so complex that it will be hard to interpret it as something numerically static. Thus even though there is a recipe for a single magic item if 1000 players make it over the course of even a week the stats will likely not be the same.

    It's an exciting notion for sure @Time Lord.

    Thanks for posting.
     
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  3. Bowen Bloodgood

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    All very cool but.. some challenges. One of the first things Devs would be asking is what benefits are there to overall gameplay. I actually like the line of thinking you've got going here but the first thing that came to my mind in terms of implementation is the actual affect it would have on players. If the changes aren't noticeable, they're ultimately meaningless. If they are noticeable, is it anything players can to their benefit.

    With that in mind, you've got a significant issue with the inner planets in that their orbital duration is short. Like one them completes an orbit in 3 hours. That's hard to plan around is so frequent that players would tune it out. Then you have the outer planets, 23 and 27 hours. Also hard to plan around. If those benefits are significant you end up with people not playing unless those benefits are available. Planets are gone? Log out.

    Story time. Different scenario but similar in terms of motivation to play. I used to help run a Neverwinter Nights server that had a cap w/ cooldown on XP. The idea was that if people hit their cap, they'd go into town to RP while they waiting on their cooldown. I stress here that this was NOT by any means my idea. I was mostly just an events DM at the time. Did it work? No. People would hit their cap and then log off to do something else. When you want to RP you do it when and where you can. Period. The end result was there were fewer people online to RP with. When all I the old DMs left and I basically became the Defacto lead, I turned that bloody cap off and more people stuck around to play. :)

    Point is, if the perception becomes that it's less advantageous to play at certain times then people are going to leave until the 'prime' playing times.

    I say perception because players only see what's in front of them. Case in point, we also had poor group XP system (also not my idea). The theory was that because groups kill stuff faster they get more XP over time. Which is true. So XP for groups PER kill was lowered. Among other things there was an issue of people maxing their level too quickly, power leveling lower level players etc. The result? Everyone went solo because all they saw were the number of XP per kill. Not how fast their total XP was going up. Instead of groups bringing people together, an erroneous perception of XP gained in a group kept people apart. That was another thing I turned off and lo and behold if people didn't start grouping again.

    I suppose what I'm getting at here is, average player attitudes and perception would play a huge part of figuring out what the affects of astrology should actually be and whether or not the devs would feel it's worth the effort. If it affects the players directly then it's more than just an issue of immersion. You can bring people together or drive them apart if you're not careful.

    I think the most interesting effects would be to do with 3+ planet alignments. Infrequent enough to affect how players play, but frequent enough to keep things interesting and also allowing for more significant affects. How long those alignments last is also a factor in how meaningful (or potentially disruptive) they would be.
     
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  4. Time Lord

    Time Lord Avatar

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    The fastest planet would be a great planet for subterfuge, as that's where all dex comes from and also, it's a tree that needs the most consistant help, yet even in real life, we see that our dex is not always at it's best, but try a few more times and then, yes it is.

    We need to engage astrology into our game in major ways now more than ever, to help prove we're alive and that New Britannia is a living place to come play in, instead of the stagnate numbers game it's become.


    As far as player interest goes and how it would interest our players, the avalanche of posts I think says much in that regard, but in direct questioning, our developers have let slip certain words from their lips;
    https://www.shroudoftheavatar.com/f...t-star-and-planets-effecting-crafting.162935/


    The amounts are truly up to Chris and our team to decide, as we do have a technolian cult that thrive on minute fractions in balance issues they think are very important.
    :rolleyes: The amounts of boosts, bonuses or effects just determine how much chaos is needed to have the most fun with. If it were up to me, "there would be allot of fluctuating chaos in the world".

    If all the planets are effecting things, then when alignments happened, there would then be a sugnificant wave in the abilities of many skills, thus adding to any "party's ability" to draw stregth through diversity.

    You mention that some players may go play another game because their favorite planets may not be in the sky, yet we now have Castle Atos, where any player can rappidly change their skill sets, which has now become a very popular thing to have fun in doing.

    I will also say that instead of players tuning out, astrology has a SOTA history of being something that brings many togather to predict what will happen in our future skies.

    [​IMG]

    All the players seen in all our old forums threads who are no longer with us I think is proof enough that our astrology/astronomy had a very large player draw to it, but since our astronomy/astrology didn't REALLY have the impact we had hoped for, in the marginalized way we did get it, "they left".

    I think we need it now in a much more exagerated way than it currently is, or we don't look as interesting as we should, with all this "Richard Garriott's new project" thing hanging in the air everywhere. The time to be unique is now more than it ever was.

    We need chaos to save us from a stagnate static game play.
    ~Time Lord~
     
  5. Proteus Tempest

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    It may be too late to continue to implement the astrology mechanic.

    Something like this should be planned out as a main feature interwoven into quests, magic and crafting and perhaps more.

    Awesome idea by Richard but perhaps too late in the game to do it without overhauling too much.

    Still awesome though.
     
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  6. Bowen Bloodgood

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    The frequency of that one is too unreliable. Nobody will want to have to keep track of it. It'd be like background noise you stop hearing.

    No I just suggested people will stop playing when they can't get the most benefit. Never said anything about playing another game.

    No you need good game design and implementation. "Unique" can mean many things and does not automatically mean "good".

    If I were doing it, single planets may apply small fluxuations but alignments would combine properties for greatly enhanced effects when there is 3 or more. I go with at least 3 since 2 planet alignments are too frequent. But then more planets adds exponentially so people will want to know when you have those really big alignments that might last for an hour or two. Anything less than that? Will grow old really fast.
     
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  7. Bowen Bloodgood

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    Realistically it should've been done from the start. Now? Let's just say I'm skeptical and leave it at that. :) Still, fun ideas are still fun to talk about.
     
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  8. Time Lord

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    That link is from 2020, which in sota time , means recently I guess :D , but it has some direct quotes from Richard that there is something more planned than what we currently have.

    There's been nay sayers forever around this subject, yet it's something that's going to come eventually, or we'll shutter sota's doors before Ep5... Ep5 meaning in about 30 years in sota time I guess :D

    To limit effects to alignments would be narrowing any meaningful play option there could be for the player to take advantage of, yet also a huge head ache to program for such a chaotic schedule.
    SOTA already greatly suffers from over complication of what should be common game play.

    But that's just my views. I don't want to kill our game more than it has been killed through adding even more that's complicated. Our playing community doesn't need to get any smaller.

    There's a fork in the Ultima road right now and it's a new game, in the spirit of our game type of game being developed, and if we do not pronounce our difference, then we are just "that other game".

    Ep5 in about 20 to 30 years from now may be completed... which means I need to live well past my 80's and 90s to ever see it, unless we find more funding, which "this suggestion" has within it, which limiting the effects to only alignments would never do.

    We need all our suggestions to have additional monitization built into them, ot they become parasites sucking the life out of us, as many adopted suggestions have.
    The proof of which is in our declining monitization track record.

    I'm sure Chris has a plan, but he's allot younger than me :D:thumbs up:
    ~Time Lord~
     
    Last edited: Apr 17, 2022
  9. Bowen Bloodgood

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    Alignments happen a lot more often than you might think. ;)
     
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  10. Time Lord

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    They don't lest long, unless you're in the POT named Midnight ;)~TL~
     
  11. craftymethod

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    Might have better luck posting to the 'effigy' suggestions forum if one ever exists.
     
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  12. Time Lord

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    I think this is one of those suggestions that I very much doubt will be relevant to the development of our game in my lifetime. There are many who are blind to see it, or remember it's importance to those that have seemingly left our game to seek a more immersive world "feeling" elsewhere.

    Many may not be able to see it, but then I'm not able to see many of their gaming issues, because I can't see their immersion in seeing what Neo sees when immersed in the matrix...

    [​IMG]

    I'm a blue pill guy I guess, because I don't want to see all the digits anymore.

    Indeed, "Effigy" is a great description of what it has relevance to :)~TL~:thumbs up:
     
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