Invoking the god of deeds

[Jaros]

So I think it would be cool if we could do more with these deeds we've all been collecting.  I like the idea of using them to summon zone wide effects.  For example:

You may invoke your clan ancestors and lay down a no_recall flag on any zone you control, the duration of which is proportional to the total number of deeds your clan holds.  I think something like 30sec per deed would be fair.  If your clan holds 10 deeds you can lay down no_recall on any of those 10 zones and it will last 5mins.  If your clan holds 50 deeds you can no_recall any of those 50 and it will last 25mins, followed by a recharge period before you can lay it down again.

Other flags that could be available on the same basis:
DARK
PEACEFUL
SOUNDPROOF
!TRACK
!MAGIC
!RECALL
ARENA
GOOD [presumably this gives some kind of bonus for alignment.  I don't know for sure]
EVIL []
HP [regen]
MANA [regen]
MOVE [regen]
!TELEPORT IN [this could have an especially long duration and it would be useful for defending your deeds]
!TELEPORT OUT
!VIEW [what does this do exactly?]

You could even choose the sector type:
Mountains [higher cost of movement]
Water (No Swim) [need a boat or waterwalk to move]
Underwater [lose HP without a scuba mask]
Air [need wings or flight to move]
Desert [lose HP during the day]
Space [lose HP without a spacesuit and extreme cost of movement]

So that's a good many potential environments you could create to serve your clan's needs.

The final and perhaps most awesome facet of this would be the ability to set up some defenses for zones you control.  I was thinking that setting a zone to AGGRO against either specific clans or all outsiders would be great but that might interfere with questing and things a bit too much.  So, better idea:

You can summon dastardly aggro mobs to patrol the zone for you and attack outsiders.  Perhaps their strength would depend on your clan's total deed count and the frequency at which you can summon reinforcements would depend on your personal deed count.  A player with 1000 deeds to their name could quickly build an army to defend their zones but the mobs' strength would depend on their clan count at that particular time.

Thoughts?

[Jaros]

I realize it looks fairly intimidating but even having just a couple of those options would be cool.

[Tocharaeh]

Just a couple of questions:

1: Can we invoke this any number of times, or one zone at a time?
2: Can you invoke any number of effects, or one at a time?

Looking at the time you've offered, I was thinking that this may not promote deeding. Furthermore, I think the duration's need to be carefully looked at because this really does imbalance the system significantly.

I would propose the following stipulations:

      a) Clans must have a minimum of 25 deeds, or 1/4, of the total deeds in the system. This would suggest that the clan has gained strong influence.
      b) For every 25 deeds, your invocations get 2.30 minutes of control time, with a maximum of 10 minutes having collected 100 deeds.
          The maximum should not go above 10 minutes. This is already 1/3 of the standard zone reset time.
      c) When invoking "guardians", mobs summoned to patrol would not give out XP, or gold. I just see abuse when I see things like this.
      d) By changing zone flags from normal to suddenly space, or what have you, should deal appropriate damage to normal area mobs.
          The appropriate zone echoes should also appears such as for water, "A giant tsunami barrels through Little Italy, oh the horror!". And so on.
      c) Some kind of descriptor in the given zone could exist like say, pertaining to the tsunami, "A large body of choppy sea water covers every inch
          here." in blue, and so on.

I think this could be a potentially interesting system, but it is really my belief that it should be a one zone at a time thing because of the severe imbalance that this honestly causes.

[Once]

Finally this board is back to being used for lots of ideas. Guys don't argue over individual points yet let's focus on getting as many ideas out as possible with regards to deeds. Thanks Jaros and Toch

[Jaros]

Poisonous gasses would be a good one.

If your clan has 20 deeds you get the ability to release poison_1 in your zones.

40 deeds = poison_2

A few messages about sinister gasses and funny smells and all players in that zone are poisoned.

Or you could call a zone wide spell that does something nice for all players in it.

You could call race specific bonuses even.  For every 10 deeds your clan holds you may invoke one race-specific bonus.  Ie: Choose a race and a bonus.
Indians get +100 speed for 30mins.
Dwarves get +10% damage for 30mins.

That would be better than race bonuses chosen at creation.  Have them be temporary zone blessings.

[Jaros]

Deed invoked booby traps have been suggested, that cast things like 'weaken' or 'teleport' or 'slowness' on people entering the zone.  Maybe just the first person, maybe a percentage of everyone who enters...maybe innate on all non clannies.

Maybe an innate bonus on any fauns, dwarves, gringos, or martians who enter the zone and an identical negative on centaurs, elves, indians, and spacewolves.  And then different arrangements of races in each zone.     That would encourage racial diversity in clans without crippling anyone at creation 

[Molly]

I think having the deeds affect various things in a zone that your Clan holds a deed to has great potential. It's a creative way to utilise the deeds in a new way, and also gives the players some  individual control over the game.

It would be even cooler if the effects could show in some way on every affected room.
For instance we could have nature disasters like TSUNAMI,  SANDSTORM,  SNOW STORM and FOREST FIRE. When the spell is cast,  the normal room descs would be removed and  replaced with an appropriate  two-line message, in blue, yellow, white and red respectively.

Each of them would affect the players in the zone negatively, but there should be ways to counteract the effect, for instance waterwalk or boat for Tsunami, a face mask or space helmet for Sand storm, cold protection for Snow storm and heat protection for Forest fire. In this way a player could make precautins for himself and his group, before casting the spell.

However,  features like this probably must be restricted in several ways.

One reason for that is that we don't want the entire world to be upset. There will always be players who want to continue their usual activities of levelling, exploring or questing with as few disturbances as possible. A large number of zones getting affected at the same time, would probably be very irritating.
Another reason is balance, as someone already mentioned.

SOME RESTRICTION SUGGESTIONS:
- A player cannot invoke the Gods in more than one zone at the time. (More than one zone can however be affected at the same time if different players cast the invocation).
- You cannot affect more than one factor in the zone at the same time, but it should be possible to chose between several factors.
- The Time span for the invocation should be limited, but reasonably long, with a delay before you can cast it again. (I agree that the duration should be in some way connected to how many deeds the Clan holds in total).
- If a deed changes hand after a spell has been cast, the effect shouldn't go away immediately, but probably it should be shortened to half the time.

[Molly]

The Flags GOOD and EVIL are only used in connection with the flags HP, MANA and MOVE.
All of them affect the regen rate, GOOD speeds it up, while BAD slows it down. This is what is used in a number of rooms, most of which I think are listed in the 4D Inn, west of recall.

!VIEW I believe is a way to have a room not show up on the maps, (sort of a secret room). I've never used it in my zones, because the maps weren't utilised very much by the players, but now that we have the client maps, maybe it's time to rethink that.

[Bane]

Im not sure what I think of this yet, But this shouldn't affect new players.

[Bane]

More I think about this, the less I like the idea.

Poison 2 on a zone i think is to strong. If you wanna make a poison make a incurable posion 1 that last for so long.

!magic flag cant be used. screws magic users over.

calling on the power of the gods to !recall a zone seems silly also. I mean this idea was originally thought of to make it harder for pks to get away. And I don't think this is the best idea.(I still stand with not letting you teleport away for 10 seconds after pvp engagement.)


And honestly molly idea just more less hurts new people. Any smart player will learn what to carry with them to prevent any of the room affects on them.

With it being only able to affect one zone at a time its not going to do much good to protect our zones, when there is over 120 deeds to collect. So we might not be able to grab a few deed to easily. Well you can keep those 4 deeds u invoked the gods on while i steal the other 50 you have. And after I steal the other 50 ill come back and steal the last 4 deeds you have left cause the power of the gods has worn off that zone.


i just havent seen anything on here to really catch my eye, nor do I have any suggestions I think that would make this work better. Only cool thing I seen is making an army, but I see people complaining because they cant do quests, or explore, people always whine.

I think adding buffs or small debuffs on all zones you control or a % to be able to cast on that zone is a better idea. Then making it harder to get the deed itself. It was made to get some competition going, but its retarded easy to get the deeds. And we have no huge reward for wanting to go out and collect deeds. We need better rewards to make a better competition and exp bonuses is not enough.

[Virisin]

I actually agree with Bane, some of those flags are very powerful to let players just bestow them upon a zone for any amount of time...  Maybe rooms, but not whole zones for the big ones like !magic.

[Molly]

I actually agree too, I just got carried away by my own imagination as usual.

Features like this might LOOK cool, but could be extremely irritating, if abused.

And we all know they would be, sooner or later.

[Virisin]

I like the gist, but they need to be less powerful summons, maybe like 'zone elementals' with different powers based on how many deeds

[Pix]

And how long would it be before someone decides to invoke <whatever> in Olde Yorke?

[Once]

Guys,

We're getting a little sidetracked here. Let's not toss the baby out with the bath water. !Recall on an entire zone -- probably a horrible idea. But, the concept of zone wide deed affects has potential.

What are affects that we all think would be cool and balanced? How can we make this work?