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Artifacts (only once per server)
Adamantine
Member RarePosts: 5,085
Fascinating idea: https://www.pantheonmmo.com/content/forums/topic/2417/artifacts-one-drop-per-server
I'm fine with the core idea, BUT there should be background and restrictions to such items. Something like:
- Artifacts have their own, unique graphics.
- Artifacts are (at least slightly) any more powerful than any item for the same slot.
- All artifacts have a special ability. The moment the item drops, a timer goes off. After a week or so, the special ability can then be used. Using this special ability will also unsummon the artifact. The special ability can be used even if the item cannot be worn by the player character. All artifact abilities are slow cast; if the casting is disrupted, neither the effect nor the unsummoning happends. Effects could include for example a permanent buff on all guild members for a month.
- Any player can carry only one artifact at a time, not multiple ones.
- All artifacts require a flag. The flag is gainable through a questline. The questline doesnt need to be hard or highlevel, but it needs to explain the background of the artifact. Even if you cannot equip the item, the questline is still necessary to use the special ability of the item. The flag is however not necessary to pick the artifact up.
- All artifacts are racial, i.e. belong to a specific race. For using an artifact, one might have to be of the race in question, or in a certain set of races (Like: All races can use all their own artifacts. Additionally: Humans can use halfling artifacts. Elves can use human, dwarven and darkmyrish artifacts. Halflings can use human and dwarven artifacts. Dwarves can use human and halfling artifacts. Gnomes can use any artifact except elven, archai and darkmyrish. Archai can use any artifact thats elemental themed and not elven, gnomish or darkmyrish. Dark Myr can use elven artifacts. Ogres are limited to their own artifacts, exclusively, and cannot use the special ability of other artifacts, either. Skar can use ogrish artifacts and cannot touch, let alone use archai artifacts).
- Class restrictions apply; you cannot wear an artifact thats forbidden for your class. You still can use the special ability.
- Artifacts are only available through raid bosses, with a 10% drop chance or something like that; the drop chances is better the more player characters of that race are in the raid force; races from the same continent give half the bonus. Raid bosses take some time to come back (like 2-8 hours) and players take a certain time before they can kill them again (like 3 days).
- Any raid boss has at most one artifact. If the artifact has already been dropped is learnable through visual clues on the raid boss in question.
- There is a chance that every time a server had the drop, the artifact might vanish from other servers that didnt had the drop as well. When the unsummoning of the item happends on any server, any server that currently has no item has a chance of regaining it. If a server didnt have the item for two months, he is protected from this effect for one month and will have the artifact for sure during this time. This restriction doesnt apply to at least one artifact per race (the most signature one for that race).
- Artifacts are tradeable, but only between player characters that have been present in the raid force when the artifact dropped
- Artifact can be dropped to the ground, but only the set of player characters destribed have the ability to pick it up again. Dropped artifacts vanish after 8 hours.
- Logging off for longer than a certain time will unsummon the artifact. That time could for example be 32 hours.
- After a certain time, like a month, the artifact will unsummon no matter what. The special ability will be autocast.
- Server reboots will unsummon the artifact as well, and make sure the item is available after reboot. Effects from the special ability will be gone, too.
When I discuss the game I discuss the core game thats available all the time, not special events.
About the rest of the discussion: I oppose permanent ownership of the artifact. You dont log in - you better give it to a friend. After a fixed amount of time, its gone either way. Its also gone once you've used the special ability.
I'm fine with the core idea, BUT there should be background and restrictions to such items. Something like:
- Artifacts have their own, unique graphics.
- Artifacts are (at least slightly) any more powerful than any item for the same slot.
- All artifacts have a special ability. The moment the item drops, a timer goes off. After a week or so, the special ability can then be used. Using this special ability will also unsummon the artifact. The special ability can be used even if the item cannot be worn by the player character. All artifact abilities are slow cast; if the casting is disrupted, neither the effect nor the unsummoning happends. Effects could include for example a permanent buff on all guild members for a month.
- Any player can carry only one artifact at a time, not multiple ones.
- All artifacts require a flag. The flag is gainable through a questline. The questline doesnt need to be hard or highlevel, but it needs to explain the background of the artifact. Even if you cannot equip the item, the questline is still necessary to use the special ability of the item. The flag is however not necessary to pick the artifact up.
- All artifacts are racial, i.e. belong to a specific race. For using an artifact, one might have to be of the race in question, or in a certain set of races (Like: All races can use all their own artifacts. Additionally: Humans can use halfling artifacts. Elves can use human, dwarven and darkmyrish artifacts. Halflings can use human and dwarven artifacts. Dwarves can use human and halfling artifacts. Gnomes can use any artifact except elven, archai and darkmyrish. Archai can use any artifact thats elemental themed and not elven, gnomish or darkmyrish. Dark Myr can use elven artifacts. Ogres are limited to their own artifacts, exclusively, and cannot use the special ability of other artifacts, either. Skar can use ogrish artifacts and cannot touch, let alone use archai artifacts).
- Class restrictions apply; you cannot wear an artifact thats forbidden for your class. You still can use the special ability.
- Artifacts are only available through raid bosses, with a 10% drop chance or something like that; the drop chances is better the more player characters of that race are in the raid force; races from the same continent give half the bonus. Raid bosses take some time to come back (like 2-8 hours) and players take a certain time before they can kill them again (like 3 days).
- Any raid boss has at most one artifact. If the artifact has already been dropped is learnable through visual clues on the raid boss in question.
- There is a chance that every time a server had the drop, the artifact might vanish from other servers that didnt had the drop as well. When the unsummoning of the item happends on any server, any server that currently has no item has a chance of regaining it. If a server didnt have the item for two months, he is protected from this effect for one month and will have the artifact for sure during this time. This restriction doesnt apply to at least one artifact per race (the most signature one for that race).
- Artifacts are tradeable, but only between player characters that have been present in the raid force when the artifact dropped
- Artifact can be dropped to the ground, but only the set of player characters destribed have the ability to pick it up again. Dropped artifacts vanish after 8 hours.
- Logging off for longer than a certain time will unsummon the artifact. That time could for example be 32 hours.
- After a certain time, like a month, the artifact will unsummon no matter what. The special ability will be autocast.
- Server reboots will unsummon the artifact as well, and make sure the item is available after reboot. Effects from the special ability will be gone, too.
Definitely a very bad idea. Having an artifact should be something rare, exciting, special. There should be no guaranteed access to artifacts. If there is a guaranteed way to get them, elite guilds will have exclusive access.[email protected] said:1.What are your thoughts on items that only drop once per server for the first guild or group of people that kills a "special" mob?
The devs might do whatever on special server events. Heck, they can give everyone their signature race artifact (as I described it above) with the special ability disabled, for the next 24 hours, for all I care.[email protected] said:2.How frequent should these items show up in the world? Only on special server events or more frequent?
When I discuss the game I discuss the core game thats available all the time, not special events.
About the rest of the discussion: I oppose permanent ownership of the artifact. You dont log in - you better give it to a friend. After a fixed amount of time, its gone either way. Its also gone once you've used the special ability.
Comments
- Pretty good item, but not nearly as good as the best gear
- No special ability (can have abilities but they are neither necessarily slowcast nor cause they unsummoning of the item)
- Not necessarily unique graphics
- Small chance to drop from any mob
- Not unique per server
- Not race restricted (class restrictions still apply)
- No quest flag required; the lore for the item might be available somewhere in the game
- Freely tradeable
- Doesnt unsummon if the player isnt online
- Unsummons after 8 hours on the ground
- Like the big artifacts, they unsummon after a month
I also think there should be a a server wide announcement in chat when something this major occurs, that gives credit to the participants.
EQ1, EQ2, SWG, SWTOR, GW, GW2 CoH, CoV, FFXI, WoW, CO, War,TSW and a slew of free trials and beta tests
If the item is not a significant increase, then it really is just a side gimmick and to be honest, not worth the effort because of it requiring a raid to obtain and having a short despawn time.
If it is made significantly powerful, it becomes a tool for abuse and ends up being a gimmick for the top guilds to use as leverage over the server. This will be a contested content game, there will be conflict and attempts to control spawns in both group/raid environments. So obviously as a powerful item of temporary nature, it has issues.
In all honesty, it really seems as if the idea is cross between EQ epics and some of the legend drops from other games. Maybe it is just me, but anytime I see something with a timer to despawn, I just think waste of time gimmick in design. Either it is very hard to get, a lot of effort required and lot of skill for a solid permanent reward, or it is just a waste of time to me.
I would rather see more time spent on elaborate epic quests with continued progression over expansions to it, implementing personalities to the weapon (ala Black Razor) and maybe even side progression, choices in the process to the end result of the style and type of weapon, etc...
This seems more like a end game feature common in a game like WoW.
Nobody can plan on having any of their items being a specific artifact because there is too much random involved. You cant keep it permanently, you have to keep your original item for that slot.
And the raidbosses that drop the artifact in question would have different loot, of course. The item would only be an additional drop on top of that.
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I'd prefer to have no artifact items myself. They are "neat" in the moment, but I'd rather not have gear scaled in future expansions around them.
If anything, I would want them "extremely" rare, and be a part of some time-sensitive epic GM sponsored quest/event versus any raid/epic quest drop - that way it would promote interaction within the world. And, I would want the starting quest hidden and random so there was no known source on "GM event is occurring" - everyone run to Kelethin! Something simple like, A Shady Swashbuckler whispers, "You there.. come here.. I have something to share.." Where, most likely, 90% of the people would ignore it, but it may get people to start paying more attention to the world after it was known that there could be random artifact quests.
It still revolves around the hurt feelings of "there can be only one" though, and I'd rather have something be so ridiculously rare that there was 1-3 on the server, than only have a one-time chance /loot who*e drama.
______________________________
There was later discussion of artifact items being recycled, so, perhaps after X number of days (Maybe 180 or so?) without a login to account, the item is removed from your inventory and reintroduced as a quest.
Originally, EQ1 had some server-unique artifacts, available only through some GM-events. This was instantly a problem. The artifacts didn't have any special appearance, or attributes (few items in 1999 EQ1 had stats or abilities). The abilities on the artifacts were inconsequential at best. And very few of them were ever awarded, and apparently only on select servers.
After the developers realized that new artifacts would require new graphics, the rewards changed to special titles and the like -- things that wouldn't require extensive programming, artwork or other developer time.
Eventually, these were mostly dropped. Artifacts were never popular, nor a valuable component of most player's playing experience.
Logic, my dear, merely enables one to be wrong with great authority.
If you want to have deep lore about a race in the game, put in a extremely long quest that has its own unique rewards at different stages that are either individual or culmination (epic like) and make them deep and branching like a tree taking you to different parts of the world where you can find clues, follow logs, etc... learning about events in different areas.
These things are better as a group level progression and not ending up with some major raid requirement to dangle loot that really is a pointless gesture. It would be better to progress on a story as this as you describe and have it just be random clues throughout the world that a player deciphers in through searching, thinking, listening to npcs, reading random notes/books in a ruin or city library, etc...
To be honest, no need for items at all, just have this as a historic bread crumb quest line. If you want to have items, make them only useful in the searching and discovering more clues about the history of the race (ie continuing the quest line). If you want an artifact, fine... make it a quest item that causes some event at the end that is interesting or heck, opens up a secret zone? Kind of like the staff in Indiana Jones showing the location of where the Arc was hidden? Or, you could require this item to be assembled into a weapon that is required to be able to access and fight a ancient mob related to the history of your race and that mob would have its own loot table specific with gear that benefits only that race. No need to make it some combat gimmick where people farm the drops of them over and over because they disappear,
I love reasoned game play, but I hate gimmicks and no offense, but this sounds more like a gimmick to me. It just I don't know, sits wrong with me. /shrug
I personally have no problem with a unique item from some of the bigger events or especially, the first killing of an important boss in the games storyline. Its best for the item to not be too much better than its contemporaries, but good enough that its special. It will likely go to one of the leaders of the strongest guild on a server, and I'm OK with that because they usually commit a ridiculous amount of time to the game.
As to all those other long list of prerequisites in the OP, I really don't think it has to be that complicated. It should simply be an ultra rare item, perhaps even one of a kind (like an artifact, you know).
I'd rather just have raid mobs have a stupidly rare item in their loot table that is better than anything else they drop, but I do mean stupidly rare.
Or, like with the coldain ring quests in velious, stuff like that.
"The surest way to corrupt a youth is to instruct him to hold in higher esteem those who think alike than those who think differently."
- Friedrich Nietzsche
Seriously, one just copy+paste-d the answer of the official forum despite the fact that I've already LINKED to that thread at the very start of my first posting.
I was proposing that artifacts are:
(a) a randomized drop that nobody can get reliably and that might at times not be available at all
(b) a non-permanent item that will vanish if you log off too long
(c) a temporary item that will vanish after a certain period anyway
(d) a guild buff item that you have to keep a hold on for a while before you can actually activate the buff - and that will unsummon the item early
(e) a special ability item that could give you a great ability for something else
(f) an item thats limited in its useability to your raidforce only and that you thus cannot sell on eBay
(g) an item that introduces more lore and differentiation to the races. Like a Skar cant even pick up any Archai artifact (I got the idea because the Skar are the Pantheon Trolls and the Archai are kind of the Pantheon Elementals, and as we all know Trolls dont react well to Fire and Acid and in some scenarios also Sunlight)
I dont see anyone here who would object to this specific concept.
The EQ2 concept, to me, didnt sound any useful. That would be just another item for powerguilds. They will already get the top raid bosses. I dont think they need more.
In fact thinking about it such an item could make said top raid bosses easier for the non-powerguilds. Design each artifacts special ability in such a way that it will make one of the really tough raid bosses a lot more manageable, then make sure that really every guild stands a chance to get a hold of this item once in a while, so it would be an item that reduces the differences between the guilds a bit, instead of raising them.
I rather prefer smaller loot tables for each monster, where you know what you will probably get if you kill it. So you can camp a mob and if you kill it up to 5-10 times it will with high chance drop the thing you are looking for. The challange should be about killing the mob not that it's more about luck.
Which is a factor that gets overlooked. The magic in EQ can't be reduced to pure game mechanics, piece by piece. Those mechanics all added up to something, and part of what they added up to was how the game made you feel. E.g., awe, amazement, fear, frustration, anger, relief, exultation, and so on. More recent games have some of the mechanics Pantheon will have, but they less frequently evoke an emotional response because they are overly concerned with a player becoming frustrated or annoyed.
It's sort of like a good wine, which stimulates the entire palette from bitter to sweet, as opposed to soda, which only stimulates the part of the palette that enjoys sweet.
EQ1, EQ2, SWG, SWTOR, GW, GW2 CoH, CoV, FFXI, WoW, CO, War,TSW and a slew of free trials and beta tests
I do like the idea of these one of the kind items, but they should be just very rare drops, maybe even from very rare boss who spawn at random location at random time.
In addition, these artifacts should have a certain 'upkeep cost' to prevent them from destroying themselves, like paying a fee in in-game currency, farming some drops from certain mobs, visiting some shrine in remote location, etc. to ensure the player who possess the item haven't quit the game for good. Should the player not pay this upkeep, the item will vanish and can be looted once again in similar fashion as before.
Edit: Just wanted to add the reason i don't like server firsts is that RPGs are not progressing competitions. They shouldn't encourage people to play in shifts or without sleep only to be first in something you're suppose to play for months if not years.
I think that if you look closely, you will see that it is what is missing today in MMOs, the mechanics that created all those ups and downs, those massive frustrations, those major let downs, etc... are what made the game what it was. I think that is why with each game that was made over the years attempting to cater to the desire to avoid such that it was the reason why games became pointless click fests with no emotion or attachment.
Easy is never satisfying and I watched this quite often many years ago working at software store as I listened to people come in complaining about a game being boring only to explain to me they used a cheat or some form of hint guide/call service. At the same time, some of the most excited players were ones that would tell me how they pulled their hair out because they were stumped over a certain thing in a game, but praised the game as the most rewarding experience they have ever had in a game.
I think peoples wants for easy solutions are their own worst enemy and why they continue a cycle of disappointment game after game they play today.
Recycled from dnd from the 70s.
Epic Music: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vAigCvelkhQ&list=PLo9FRw1AkDuQLEz7Gvvaz3ideB2NpFtT1
https://archive.org/details/softwarelibrary_msdos?&sort=-downloads&page=1
Kyleran: "Now there's the real trick, learning to accept and enjoy a game for what it offers rather than pass on what might be a great playing experience because it lacks a few features you prefer."
John Henry Newman: "A man would do nothing if he waited until he could do it so well that no one could find fault."
FreddyNoNose: "A good game needs no defense; a bad game has no defense." "Easily digested content is just as easily forgotten."
LacedOpium: "So the question that begs to be asked is, if you are not interested in the game mechanics that define the MMORPG genre, then why are you playing an MMORPG?"
I think GM events were put on hiatus after that. The GM's didn't seem to have the text on hotkeys so they could speed up the storytelling portion of the event. Manual typing, followed by 500 people replying, commenting, etc. Highly disorganized chaos, at best.
Logic, my dear, merely enables one to be wrong with great authority.
Im ok with there being intentionally difficult to get and prestigious items that exist in the game that require lots of hard work, friends, headaches, etc.
I didn't mind it in vanilla WOW with things like Thunderfury, though that wasnt technically an artifact.
"The surest way to corrupt a youth is to instruct him to hold in higher esteem those who think alike than those who think differently."
- Friedrich Nietzsche
For instance,
B was the same as C.
D) is basically an expendable item, which we had in EQ and were almost useless.
E) Vague, what?
The rest could be cool, or totally useless. I can't tell.
Look, we are too busy posting crap to worry about what you originally wrote! This mmorpg.com goldarn it!
Epic Music: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vAigCvelkhQ&list=PLo9FRw1AkDuQLEz7Gvvaz3ideB2NpFtT1
https://archive.org/details/softwarelibrary_msdos?&sort=-downloads&page=1
Kyleran: "Now there's the real trick, learning to accept and enjoy a game for what it offers rather than pass on what might be a great playing experience because it lacks a few features you prefer."
John Henry Newman: "A man would do nothing if he waited until he could do it so well that no one could find fault."
FreddyNoNose: "A good game needs no defense; a bad game has no defense." "Easily digested content is just as easily forgotten."
LacedOpium: "So the question that begs to be asked is, if you are not interested in the game mechanics that define the MMORPG genre, then why are you playing an MMORPG?"
What the ... ??? You want to have them exist only ONCE EVER ? Not even renewing them after server reboot ? Now that would be even worse. What would be the point of such an item ?
They would quickly be lost and forgotten on some guys account that hasnt been played in forever.
Thats not worth the developer time to introduce them in the first place. Thats a non-item, in practice.
I definitely want them to vanish and reappar for the world to see if you dont keep playing.
Well yeah, they shouldnt be completely overpowered, obviously. Just a bit better than the best item you can get otherwise.
And thats another reason why I want them to be TEMPORARY. Since items will always get better over time (on that we can rely), it would make sense we have to improve the stats of the artifact every once in a while (say every 3 years or some such) or even replace them completely if wanted.
Besides, as I understand it, Pantheon will be more like Vanguard than like WoW. Meaning better gear is slightly better, but not massively better. In PvP terms, the single guy in best preraid gear might not stand much of a chance solo against you in full raid gear, but if he has two friends you're still in big trouble.
Thats exactly what I oppose. If you get such messages, you must have had a huge archievement. That means you are in a powerguild. Powerguilds already get the best of the best raid gear - I really dont think they need SERVER UNIQUE items to make them even more priviledged.
Well, I dont think thats really that annoying if you know from the start this item will vanish. We had such items in Vanguard, too. They would vanish if you logged off for more than a quarter hour, or if there was a server reboot.
You just have a better item for a slot for a while, but you know you have to keep the old item and reequip that once the temporary item is gone.
My idea was to make it an item that
(a) provides lore (you have to have solved a quest to use it, its linked to a race, etc)
(b) provides a temporary boost (the item itself)
(c) gives a guild buff at the end (which lasts for a month), so you have a motivation to actually keep it "alife" for a week (thats why it can be freely traded among the people who did the kill, you can organize it kept up until you can cast the buff)
(d) could for example give a means to kill raid bosses which are otherwise hard to kill for non-top raid guilds (that an example for the "vague" point E. It could also be an ability to open a special gate in a dungeon or something like that. Really, point E was meant to be vague. It could be anything).
ROTFL