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Shard Update
Jeremy Saunders
Administrator Posts: 1,251 admin
This is a tentative list of changes that will be made to the shard and shardfall system as soon as the ToC is over. It is about 90% coded. We have a few other ideas we are batting around currently, specifically things that orgs can spend generators on.
One of the main problems is the massive surplus of shards players have. There is little need to get new shards, which is the purpose of the system. Originally shards were groupable and riftable for convenience. This has added to the problem of thousands of unused shards in the game.
We are also adding several new features to the shard system. This includes two new rare shard types and six new shard fall items. All of these items will come with some effects.
Feel free to post comments, questions, and suggestions.
Shard Surplus
----------------------
- Shards will no longer be riftable.
- Shards will decay over a 7 days period.
- Harvested shards will be unstable for 15 minutes and will fall from your inventory if killed in that time.
- Existing shards in rifts will start to decay.
- Creation of some shard pouches that will allow players to maintain a few (5-20) shards that will not decay.
- All shard skills will have a shard cost activate. This includes passive ones that have been automatically active in the past.
- Players will be able to put shards into generators before they decay, so they cannot be completely useless if they go unused.
- At a generator shard cost cities will have access to a instanced bashing area for one game year.
- Cities can do an org request to create a custom version of this instance.
- Unlike other instances, this one will allow up to 5 people to enter it via a player created portal.
New Shards
----------------------
- Two new shard types will be created, Green and Yellow.
- Both types are very rare and a max amount can exist in the game at a time.
- They cannot be stored in shard pouches.
- The yellow shard can be used to cause massive faith damage to a shrine.
- Green shards can be used on a player to take them into a 1v1, instanced combat arena.
- Players are still required to have a RP reason to be killing the character.
- The instance arena is not a normal arena, so you will still have starburst and other revive mechanisms in place while fighting in it.
- Once one player has been sent to Charon, will the arena close out. There is a 15 minute time limit.
New Shardfall Items
----------------------
- Six new unique items can be discovered in shardfalls. See the list below.
- Only one of each item can exist.
- The items will be harvested in the same ways shards are.
- Each item is tied to an obelisk theme and has a themeatic power.
- Item is always dropped on death and logout.
- The item will decay if not held by a player for 20 minutes.
- Each item has a unique power for the player holding it.
Shardfall Items
----------------------
An emerald cluster (nature):
- Gain the protection of nature with a +20% to all resists in non-urban environments.
A prismatic geode (true sight):
- Ability to see the locations and owners of all the special shardfall items.
A slab of copper (efficiency):
- 10% faster balance and equilibrium regain.
A piece of enigmatic shale (aryana):
- TBA
A fractured macadam (moradeim):
- Set your health and mana to a random percentage value (1-100). This can either help you or hurt you.
A bloody-red cabochon (sukhder):
- Ability to destroy all walls at no balance cost.
One of the main problems is the massive surplus of shards players have. There is little need to get new shards, which is the purpose of the system. Originally shards were groupable and riftable for convenience. This has added to the problem of thousands of unused shards in the game.
We are also adding several new features to the shard system. This includes two new rare shard types and six new shard fall items. All of these items will come with some effects.
Feel free to post comments, questions, and suggestions.
Shard Surplus
----------------------
- Shards will no longer be riftable.
- Shards will decay over a 7 days period.
- Harvested shards will be unstable for 15 minutes and will fall from your inventory if killed in that time.
- Existing shards in rifts will start to decay.
- Creation of some shard pouches that will allow players to maintain a few (5-20) shards that will not decay.
- All shard skills will have a shard cost activate. This includes passive ones that have been automatically active in the past.
- Players will be able to put shards into generators before they decay, so they cannot be completely useless if they go unused.
- At a generator shard cost cities will have access to a instanced bashing area for one game year.
- Cities can do an org request to create a custom version of this instance.
- Unlike other instances, this one will allow up to 5 people to enter it via a player created portal.
New Shards
----------------------
- Two new shard types will be created, Green and Yellow.
- Both types are very rare and a max amount can exist in the game at a time.
- They cannot be stored in shard pouches.
- The yellow shard can be used to cause massive faith damage to a shrine.
- Green shards can be used on a player to take them into a 1v1, instanced combat arena.
- Players are still required to have a RP reason to be killing the character.
- The instance arena is not a normal arena, so you will still have starburst and other revive mechanisms in place while fighting in it.
- Once one player has been sent to Charon, will the arena close out. There is a 15 minute time limit.
New Shardfall Items
----------------------
- Six new unique items can be discovered in shardfalls. See the list below.
- Only one of each item can exist.
- The items will be harvested in the same ways shards are.
- Each item is tied to an obelisk theme and has a themeatic power.
- Item is always dropped on death and logout.
- The item will decay if not held by a player for 20 minutes.
- Each item has a unique power for the player holding it.
Shardfall Items
----------------------
An emerald cluster (nature):
- Gain the protection of nature with a +20% to all resists in non-urban environments.
A prismatic geode (true sight):
- Ability to see the locations and owners of all the special shardfall items.
A slab of copper (efficiency):
- 10% faster balance and equilibrium regain.
A piece of enigmatic shale (aryana):
- TBA
A fractured macadam (moradeim):
- Set your health and mana to a random percentage value (1-100). This can either help you or hurt you.
A bloody-red cabochon (sukhder):
- Ability to destroy all walls at no balance cost.
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Comments
"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."
Also, for the regular shards, that feels like quite a pendulum swing, but I am sure it is probably open to adjustment if it comes to it. It is definitely worth a try, and we need the shards to be more relevant than they are right now. That said, if we are going to go down that road, a note about the shard pouches. You might want to make sure each player can only own one of them. That seems like it should be obvious, and maybe it is, but I've learned the hard way that I'd rather be told "oh yeah, we know".
They're supposed to be relatively short term advantages, not things you keep for any length of time. Getting to keep a flat +20% resists would be ludicrous.
"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."
Otherwise, dropping on logout without a master "reset" is sort of pointless because people can just logout in locked rooms and pick up the item again when they next login.
1. Is there going to be a new skill (shard skill, perception skill, whatever skill) that will allow players to see who is holding a shortfall item? If not, how are players supposed to determine who is open PK and who is not?
2. Without a hard master reset, what is stopping people from doing things like giving an item to someone who just camps on guards in the city (and perhaps, in their house in a room with the protection add-on), and just rotating through so the item is never not in a player's inventory but never really part of the game as intended?
1. No for now. The rule will remain the same, they have to be in the shardfall area to kill them.
2. They could do that. I doubt it will happen, but if it does we will do something about it. I think the people who want those items are not the types to just hide out behind locked doors though. We will see.
- Set your health and mana to a random percentage value (1-100). This can either help you or hurt you.
Please don't do this. Moradeim almost always has the unenviable position of having a +ve and -ve, whereas the other thematic powers almost never do.. Just because it is thematically Change doesn't mean it has to be bidirectional-unimetric, or between a good choice and crap choice.
Edit: Alternatively,
Shardfall Items
----------------------
An emerald cluster (nature):
- Gain the protection of nature with a +20% to all resists in non-urban environments, but gain a -20% malus in all urban and/or indoor environments.
A prismatic geode (true sight):
- Ability to see the locations and owners of all the special shardfall items, but loss of access to deathsight.
A slab of copper (efficiency):
- 10% faster balance recovery, 10% slower equilibrium recovery.
A piece of enigmatic shale (aryana):
- 10% faster equilibrium recovery, 10% slower balance recovery.
A fractured macadam (moradeim):
- Set your health and mana to a random percentage value (1-100). This can either help you or hurt you.
A bloody-red cabochon (sukhder):
- Ability to destroy all walls at no balance cost. Inability to construct Shard Walls.
I mean, it is a pretty hard reset, and it's also the kind of reset that we talked about not being a particularly great idea at some point - the kind that hits the individual directly rather than the org, so that you end up with Septus, Iluv having shards, and everyone else having shards at best "sometimes". And no one wants to fight those guys already. Still, we have to do something, so let's try it.