Make Lunar Rifts Great Again

Discussion in 'Quests & Lore' started by Beaumaris, Jan 12, 2019.

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  1. Beaumaris

    Beaumaris Avatar

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    The Lunar Rifts are a cool concept that should be central to the game lore.

    But if community interest is a measure, they are boring. Rifts are not discussed on the boards or in game chat much at all as points of interest. And more recently easy teleporting has devaluated them even more.

    One of the things that made Asheron's Call's exploration game so cool, back in the day, was the ability to discover rifts that went to different places in the game world, chart them, and then use that knowledge to one's benefit.

    In SOTA, this concept has been made …. too simple … to the point of being … dull.

    The team might consider jazzing up the lunar rifts and use them as lore tool to create more intrigue and interest in the game world. And as a practical tool to encourage exploration of the scenes in game.

    One idea is to add an 'I feel lucky' (thinking of Google's exploration trick) destination to the existing rifts. Give bored players the opportunity to step into a rift to an unknown destination and possibly get sent somewhere that might be new to them or that they haven't seen in a long while.

    Another idea is to make some key scenes ONLY accessible by lunar rift. Adjust the core game story so that the lunar rift network has to be used to get to get key locations, just like was done to get off the Isle of Storms.

    A last idea is to consider placing rifts in may more scenes as wilderness discovery points, so that these are as prevalent of a transportation system in game as teleporting scrolls are. It doesnt have to be all one rift network. Like a subway system, there would be multiple rift 'loops' in game.

    Oh one more. Consider placing rifts in dungeons. What a cool feature to find in the bottom level of a dungeon or something! And what a better way to be able to enter a dungeon than just by clicking on a teleporting scroll.

    Cheers!
     
    Last edited: Jan 12, 2019
  2. Bowen Bloodgood

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    One of the major obstacles.. if we're talking lore.. is that there is only 8 corresponding to the 8 phases of the moon. I always said it was a mistake to place all 8 in the first EP. There are at least 4 more major land masses to go!

    What they should do for starters.. (IMO that is).. is remove the 5 that got put in late and hold them in reserve for later episodes.

    You can't really go back on Teleport to Zone scrolls which is unfortunate, because they could've made teleport to gate instead. Though I imagine people would only complain about the extra load screens.

    There is one mechanic from the Ultima days that hasn't been explored yet though that I find to be lacking. The ability to open a temporary gate. Whether it's gate to a fixed gate.. or gate to zone. It's lore friendly and I think it would be pretty popular.

    I would also consider spell versions of recall and gate at this point with very high reagent use. Imagine moving a party around. Only 1 spell/scroll needed instead of 8 scrolls. Just make them require more resources to craft/cast to balance it out.
     
  3. Proteus Tempest

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    A rift in a dungeon would be cool and fun.
     
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  4. Bowen Bloodgood

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    Oh another thought.. since the Shardfall event we could conceivably have say.. one or two roaming rifts, whose appearance in locations may work similarly to town sieges. This would be a lore friendly way to place a rift anywhere and increase the number of possible destinations beyond 8.

    I would also allow these rifts to close.. if you had one in a dungeon it shouldn't be an easy escape route. :) but one or more roaming rifts would open up all sorts of possibilities not just for destinations but for scrolls and spells to control them.

    You could cast a spell to force open an existing rift at a particular location.. or open a rift at any location to a fixed location, a 'random' location or what have you..
     
  5. majoria70

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    I am not sure Lunar Rifts were ever great. They look cool in my opinion but the frustrations of waiting so long between switching from scene to scene has never made them a desirable mode of travel imo unless you don't care where you are going or they happen to be on an area the moment you step up to them that you do want to travel so you say yay that was exactly where I wanted to be going. What good luck I am having today ;). Plus finding and using them is not convenient. They are hidden in who remembers which scenes with little purpose to using them. Now if there was a purpose then of course that would be cool ;)
     
  6. Jefe

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    Correct. In the past, Rifts had the special purpose of being able to reach the town of Dawn. Dawn had fancy equipment you could not get anywhere else and was used to advance the quest, so there was a purpose and desire to get there.

    Closest we have to that is Lost Vale. It has its own special rift though.
     
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  7. Anpu

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    I actually like the idea of a place that is only accessible from the Lunar Rift. That could actually be interesting....
     
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  8. Proteus Tempest

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    Perhaps when visiting a lunar rift we as players would need to use a spell to activate them and choose a location to go to

    or

    there are gems/runes or such on them to push to activate which choosing a location

    but

    and I don't know why the rifts works as it does but I imagine that it plays off of the moon and in this case since the moon is shattered then would there not be a chance that the lunar rift might not work or deposit a player in a random location contrary to where they wanted to go in the first place?
     
  9. Jefe

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    It would need something(s) to make it special. Like the introduction of Order magic (as an opposite to Chaos) that could only be trained there and reagents only obtained from there. Or crafting components to make an additional tier alloy, wood, cloth, leather. Something to make it worth waiting for a good while for the rift to point to the right location.
     
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  10. Jefe

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    Yes, they play off the moon phases to determine where it points to. TTZ scrolls and TTF scrolls somewhat invalidated the original purpose of the rifts (being fast travel).
     
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  11. Bowen Bloodgood

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    Not to nit-pick but you've confusing Dawn with Devil Guard. Dawn became available with the double new moon if I recall correctly. But Devil Guard was enclosed within mountains that was only accessible via moongate.

    Beyond that, the gates were necessary to access the shrine of spirituality in later games.

    Their usefulness in fast travel were due to a couple of factors..

    1: Custom teleportation via mark/recall were limited to 8 destinations because mark required one of the 8 stones.

    2: Overland travel took long enough to make fast travel desirable.

    The easier and faster it is to travel on the overland map the less benefit there is to the rifts. You can usually get to where you're going much faster than you could waiting for the right destination to become available. A major and yet unavoidable flaw in the system. Even without teleport scrolls, this fact renders the rifts moot. All the more reason that it would be necessary to give players a means to control opening and destination to give the rifts any meaning.
     
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  12. Jefe

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    So Dawn was what I was thinking of. Yes it required double new moon and a moon gate. It also advanced the quest (u3) if memory serves correctly. It was a direct to town port as opposed to Devil Guard which had a gate near it.
     
  13. Floors

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    All they have to do is create an Ep 2 storyline where the moon gates are being disrupted by Cabalist energy, and now they take people to exclusive zones that you can ONLY get to via Moongate ahem Lunar Rift and can't teleport to.

    MOONGATES ARE GREAT AGAIN. PROBLEM SOLVED.
     
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  14. Jefe

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    Ep. 2 will have to have a pay gate separator, so works for me.
     
  15. Bowen Bloodgood

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    No, Dawn did not require a gate.. The town was in the middle of the woods and appeared with the new moons.. it was otherwise invisible but never required a gate to enter or leave. Devil Guard is the only town that required a gate to travel to.
     
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  16. Bowen Bloodgood

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    You wouldn't need a new storyline. Existing lore surrounding the shardfall / cataclysm would be enough.
     
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  17. Jefe

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    Oh yeah, you are right. Sorry, been a while.
     
  18. Floors

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    That stuff was what was so cool about the old Ultimas. Lost Vale was a good first step to that kind of thing, but I'd like to see a special kind of city along the same lines, or a cloud city like Alabastia (perhaps a time gate / silver Moongate back to before it was destroyed...)
     
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  19. shadtek

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    How about trunicating the "Teleport to zone" scrolls to only have access to the last 5 places visited? That would solve the problem of Lunar gates and the fact you never see people on the map anymore....
     
  20. Vladamir Begemot

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    Put em on the world map.
     
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