Replace tax gems with gems at the altar

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Kugar
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Replace tax gems with gems at the altar

Post by Kugar »

What - Change magical gemstone distribution from town tax gems to gifts to devoted followers of the younger gods.

Why - The fact that the leaders of the three realms have a never ending supply of tax gems to give out is silly/ doesn't make any sense. I'm sure we can all agree that the lore in this game requires some hefty TLC and I think this is a good start. Make it that the elder gods created the gems of power and distrubuted them equally among the eleven younger gods to create a balance in the Illa-verse. This can expand the lore and give an actual reason for the turmoil - jealousy, betrayal and envy are the ever present scourges in the constant struggle for power BETWEEN THE YOUNGER GODS AND THEIR DEVOTED. That's a lot tastier than the cardboard cut out reason printed on the homepage, can we agree?

How - Something like this will need phased in so it doesn't feel awkward, I know. So make it that the leaders of the realms ran out of their stockpile of gemstones and now it is up to everyone to show their devotion to the gods to earn them. This means everyone who plays this game can compete with each other if they put the work in, without tedious obstacles in the way.

What about my tax money? - The tax money of citizens pays for the work tools and their use, town construction etc. Foreigners and outlaws will now have to pay a fee for the luxury that a citizen has - unless the government decides otherwise - in which case they need to ask themselves where the money comes from to furnish the tools and town after townsfolk rebel and stop paying taxes.

Also - I am aware gods will have their use much later in development - but at the moment they mean nothing, basically. The gods of Illarion should mean everything to the people living there. Its the whole reason they exist/ are who they are. The gods need many uses and this is one.
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GolfLima
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Re: Replace tax gems with gems at the altar

Post by GolfLima »

Kugar wrote:Make it that the elder gods created the gems of power and distrubuted them equally among the eleven younger gods to create a balance in the Illa-verse.
:arrow: What about Followers of the Five and not the younger ones?
:arrow: there are 7 different magical gems but 11 "younger gods" and the Five
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Q-wert
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Re: Replace tax gems with gems at the altar

Post by Q-wert »

...to devoted followers of the younger gods...
According to lore there are are several races/cultures that do not follow the young Gods, but the Old Ones. Not following the description given on them on the website is against the game rules.
So... no more elves, lizards (and flame orcs) for those wanting to partake in the game of gems? Lizards that can't do shit with Tanora, system-wise? Well, thank you.

That aside this proposal breaks up the main motivator for the factions (Cado, Gal, Runewick) into 11 mini-factions. While the settlement-factions allow for diverse characters banding together for a common goal, the mini-factions seem rather restricted to me. The new meta would be that if you wanted to advance your group of people with gold, your group has to be very uniform in style. That works for some type of guilds (dwarfs, underground cultists, thiefs guilds), but as soon as you have a diverse group of only similar and not equal beliefs (take any of the currently active Guilds as example), you are screwed as a group. Basically your people can convert to a central deity, not care about gems, or leave.

In my position and with that system (assuming the gem distribution works similar with as we have now), you could find the least used deity and pump your 2K+ gold into it when all other devoted were inactive in the previous month to get your gold worth in gems without spreading them over to characters of other players. Which I find to be a carrot hanging in the wholly wrong direction.
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Kugar
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Re: Replace tax gems with gems at the altar

Post by Kugar »

All valid points, aye.

I'd imagine it looking something like this:
Nargùn - God of Chaos (random - that's Nargun for ya) [blank description]

Elara - Goddess of Wisdom and Knowledge (emerald & ruby) [blank description]

Adron - God of Festivities and Wine (topaz & amethyst) [coins and wine]

Oldra - Goddess of Life and Fertility (emerald & topaz) [grass & sunshine]

Cherga - Goddess of Spirits and the Underworld (sapphire & obsidian) [blank description]

Malachín - God of Battle and Hunting (sapphire & ruby) [honor and blood]

Irmorom - God of Trade and Craftsmanship (obsidian & emerald) [rags to riches]

Sirani - Goddess of Love and Pleasure (ruby & amethyst) [love and pleasure]

Zhambra - God of Friendship and Loyalty (amethyst & topaz) [blank description]

Ronagan - God of Thieves and Shadows (sapphire) [nightfall and wealth] (malus - A master thief keeps stealing the rest or something shady. ultra-rare chance of emerald)

Moshran - God of Blood and Bones (obsidian) [darkness and blood] (malus - Moshran only gives out one gemstone because he retains most power for himself. ultra-rare chance of Ruby)

I wrote that up quite quickly, but I suppose you can see this and assume that its influenced on the current system. Some Malus in there for being a shady person, don't know if that's a popular idea or not.

As itgmkay said in the priest magic proposal:
The main issue for me is that we would need to build in too many exceptions to fit the reality of Illarion: Lizards need Tanora, Orcs need Bragon, Elves need all of the Five. I won't divulge too many details on what this will look like, but the intention is that it will make there be fewer Elder god followers "naturally" by making it harder to follow them, but certain races will get buffs to follow certain gods. I don't like it when we say "this is the wrong way to RP, you can't do it" instead of saying "this is the atypical way to RP, not many people should choose it."
Seems pretty fair what he is saying and it could be applied across the board.

For example, followers of the elder gods could instead submit a certain tribute to get whatever gemstones they want (because these gemstones are newly created and have not been distributed to the young gods*) - but it should be more of a trial task? As a buff to these characters who work harder than everyone else should, perhaps they could have a very rare and small percentage chance of receiving a magical diamond?

EDIT: - *Or they are pulled away from the younger gods. For not disturbing the balance too much, maybe you couldn't have the same gems consecutively or something like that?
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Djironnyma
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Re: Replace tax gems with gems at the altar

Post by Djironnyma »

I would avoid that any god give random gems, long term that means you get any gem and that means you arend forced to trade.
Drugar Stonesmasher
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Re: Replace tax gems with gems at the altar

Post by Drugar Stonesmasher »

Appart from that i am not yet sure what to think of the proposal as a whole.

Thinking of Nargun as a gambler would mean for me:
he might give more gems than other gods, but on occasion he not gives but takes a gem or two.. and he might be realy angry if there are none free (all gems applied to an item)..
and he might not be as generous if there are none in the posession of the one, considering the person not to be a gambler at all.
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Charlotte-ate-wilbur
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Re: Replace tax gems with gems at the altar

Post by Charlotte-ate-wilbur »

@Q-Wert
Wait so the motivation on the factions isnt to progress your chars story or position? It isn't to role play with other like chars in the setting? Or to create a guild or be a town guard or a politician?

What happened to these motivations and why were they replaced with engine handouts every week?

I like the idea of God's giving gems, but I want to also question why can't you devote yourself to an elder God too? The idea that they were 'not here' was squashed because I heard in-game that Gobaith collapsed because of the 'return of the elder gods'

Just one more thing, government leaders dont tend to just give weapons of power to untrained non military civilians.
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Q-wert
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Re: Replace tax gems with gems at the altar

Post by Q-wert »

Charlotte-ate-wilbur wrote:@Q-Wert
Wait so the motivation on the factions isnt to progress your chars story or position? It isn't to role play with other like chars in the setting? Or to create a guild or be a town guard or a politician?

What happened to these motivations and why were they replaced with engine handouts every week?
Assuming we speak of improvements on the 'engine'-side of the game, the main 'engine'-motivator for the factions are gems. Other than gems there are no 'engine'-rewards for progress of a characters position. Progress of a characters story, creating a guild or being in a town guard doesn't yield any reward, from a purely engine-wise point. Politicians, once in power, only have relatively small things they can do engine-wise: Ban characters for 24 hours and create keys.
So if the gems are taken from the factions, the main 'engine'-motivator for the factions (and progression therein) is taken as well and moved to devotion to the Gods.

The ability to become a follower of the Old Gods is strongly opposed by those in charge of the develmpent and most likely won't become a thing due to the Ars Magica (ask Estralis if you like). And I don't think excluding lore-friendly lizards and elves would be a sutiable option.

Edit: In response to the following post:
Charlotte-ate-wilbur wrote:In my experience in roleplaying games, there should not need to be 'engine advantages' to motivate a player to role play their stories.
Q-wert wrote:Progress of a characters story, creating a guild or being in a town guard doesn't yield any reward, from a purely engine-wise point.
Edit no. 2:
Charlotte-ate-wilbur wrote:Edit: I still question why the leaders are giving fantasy nukes to untrained non military civilians.
Because these "nukes" rather are tiny pieces for kevlar shirts that in some point in the near future will recieve the ability to also make civillian tools more effective. That is a pretty reasonable thing to hand out to ones population, I suppose.

(3! more edits for grammar and typos. I should't write stuff this late.)
Last edited by Q-wert on Thu May 11, 2017 12:18 am, edited 5 times in total.
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Charlotte-ate-wilbur
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Re: Replace tax gems with gems at the altar

Post by Charlotte-ate-wilbur »

In my experience in roleplaying games, there should not need to be 'engine advantages' to motivate a player to role play their stories. In fact in shards that has heavy engine advantages I began to find rp sorely lacking in it's place.

What's the problem with leader chars (the npcs) giving out gold for the positions they hold, the lack of realism here is a little shocking. (magistrate, hangman, guards, builder etc)

Imo the town's should offer a safer place with tools, jobs and a social structure. What I find now is a rather bland structure with no jobs or immersion for that matter. I feel like I'm in a failing mmo (failing because it's certainly not 'massively multiplayer') rather than a genuine rpg style game like d&d or Uo

Edit: I still question why the leaders are giving fantasy nukes to untrained non military civilians.
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Charlotte-ate-wilbur
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Re: Replace tax gems with gems at the altar

Post by Charlotte-ate-wilbur »

However these gems have not been used by crafters have they? And in the future won't gems be placable in wands as well?

The point is from a faction leader standpoint I find very little reason for them to just be handed out for paying taxes. God's on the other hand are incredibly powerful, and still unassailable. For them it'd be entertaining if one of their groups of followers decided to go mess up a group of followers of a different God whom they didnt like much. It'd be like movie night. :p

Gems are no danger to them, so why wouldn't they give them freely to their followers?
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Dantagon Marescot
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Re: Replace tax gems with gems at the altar

Post by Dantagon Marescot »

@Qwerty: There is some discussion about renegging leaving the old gods out of priest magic. But I won't derail the topic for it especially when nothing is set in stone.

@Charlotte: Please send me a PM with your observations. Obviously, you have played other games, shards, and probably D20 based rpgs. What do you see that has issues and how would you correct it? Once again, please PM me as to not allow my questions to derail the topic.
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Kugar
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Re: Replace tax gems with gems at the altar

Post by Kugar »

The current gem system doesn't encourage roleplay and the reason for their distribution is incredibly flimsy. We're just playing farmville in that respect at this point. I guess you could argue that "It totally encourages roleplay cuz the chars are getting all the monies and making all the gems and then we all trade" but in reality this is only working for (and probably will always only work for) a clique of people. Not sure how new players are going to dig the whole thing.
...this proposal breaks up the main motivator for the factions (Cado, Gal, Runewick) into 11 mini-factions. While the settlement-factions allow for diverse characters banding together for a common goal, the mini-factions seem rather restricted to me. The new meta would be that if you wanted to advance your group of people with gold, your group has to be very uniform in style. That works for some type of guilds (dwarfs, underground cultists, thiefs guilds), but as soon as you have a diverse group of only similar and not equal beliefs (take any of the currently active Guilds as example), you are screwed as a group. Basically your people can convert to a central deity, not care about gems, or leave.
I don't see why this proposal would change where or how a character chooses to live. I doubt most people would choose which town their character lives in for engine reasons - if they do, we have a problem. This proposal is intended to give the gems a reason to exist and perhaps flesh out characters more. When people come and they see Illarion for the first time its probably better if there is a diverse world to roleplay in with several directions in which they can take their characters. There is no reason why people who worship Elara can't coexist and trade gems with characters who worship Cherga. Common goals aren't always so materialistic and skin deep. People don't just hand out gems to each other in the current system, either.

I assume you're saying this based on the idea that all the followers are treated equally like the tax payer system and everyone at a certain rank gets the gemstones from the pool. Why not instead have everyone given what they deserve based on how they -themselves- showed their loyallty that month? This way people actually log in and do something instead of just log in once an ig month for gemstones.
In my position and with that system (assuming the gem distribution works similar with as we have now), you could find the least used deity and pump your 2K+ gold into it when all other devoted were inactive in the previous month to get your gold worth in gems without spreading them over to characters of other players. Which I find to be a carrot hanging in the wholly wrong direction.
Why would the gods want gold? There should probably be a different requirement to show your loyalty. If its a gathering quest then, off the top of my head, entrails/ sheep corpses and weapons for Moshran and herbs etc for Oldra - except it is always different ingredients - akin to the logic used to feed the slime in Runewick. The current system can be abused to high heaven and it is on a regular basis. Anyway, the game play style you describe should be frowned upon if anything else. Maybe even (should be) rule breaking. Playing in such a way that you take advantage of the engine to such a point where it becomes farmville is not really great roleplay.
Thinking of Nargun as a gambler would mean for me:
he might give more gems than other gods, but on occasion he not gives but takes a gem or two.. and he might be realy angry if there are none free (all gems applied to an item)..
and he might not be as generous if there are none in the posession of the one, considering the person not to be a gambler at all.
Thats the spirit! Sounds cool.
In my experience in roleplaying games, there should not need to be 'engine advantages' to motivate a player to role play their stories. In fact in shards that has heavy engine advantages I began to find rp sorely lacking in it's place.

What's the problem with leader chars (the npcs) giving out gold for the positions they hold, the lack of realism here is a little shocking. (magistrate, hangman, guards, builder etc)

Imo the town's should offer a safer place with tools, jobs and a social structure. What I find now is a rather bland structure with no jobs or immersion for that matter. I feel like I'm in a failing mmo (failing because it's certainly not 'massively multiplayer') rather than a genuine rpg style game like d&d or Uo
This is refreshing to read. Although I don't see Illarion as a 'failing mmo' but one that is still finding its feet in certain areas. After the VBU things changed drastically for several reasons and now we have new developers with new ideas etc. Lets all try and help.



@everyone

I'll admit this proposal needs fleshed out a lot more. I wrote it that way intentionally because something like this should be discussed within the community because that is how, in my opinion, the best ideas are crafted. As for the older gods - I already wrote a bit about that in my previous post.


EDIT ADDITION:
Politicians, once in power, only have relatively small things they can do engine-wise: Ban characters for 24 hours and create keys.
So if the gems are taken from the factions, the main 'engine'-motivator for the factions (and progression therein) is taken as well and moved to devotion to the Gods.
The 'higher ups' or politicians can plan buildings, decorate an area for an official event or use GMs (who implement the bans and create the keys) for pretty much anything you put your imagination to.

Maybe we need a new motivator for the towns then? Like the money they pay being used to repair (rotting) workshops and merchants? Not enough tax money paid = random or all merchant/ workplace unavailable. People will be able to build in this game soon like a sandbox so, I assume, a lot will change anyway.
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Morbius
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Re: Replace tax gems with gems at the altar

Post by Morbius »

Kugar wrote:The fact that the leaders of the three realms have a never ending supply of tax gems to give out is silly/ doesn't make any sense.
I feel like this single line of text really summarizes the issue at hand here, and it's one I keep hearing come up with no agreed upon solution as of yet. Although I love Kugar's idea, it's probably a bit complicated to be implemented any time soon. Personally I think the simplest and possibly most "elegant" solution is to just make the "gem level cap" smaller. I'm certain I don't have as much knowledge on gems as other players, but I feel like level 6 would be a suitable place to cap them at. I understand the devs are very busy, and we love you for making the game better all the time, but I'm hoping this is a fairly straight forward fix that could and perhaps should be addressed sooner rather than later.

Less active players and outlaws understand the strain of trying to collect enough gems to feel as if they are "mechanically on par" with faction leaders, or even just players who are more active than themselves who have simply been logging in and collecting gems for a year or two longer than your have. Over time this has established a seemingly un-close-able distance between older players and newer or less active players that needs to be amended.
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GolfLima
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Re: Replace tax gems with gems at the altar

Post by GolfLima »

I´m not sure if i am a so called "older player"
BUT
at the moment I dont use the gems i have collected
((via taxes, buying, gathering))
:arrow:
the difference to "new players" is only the advanced knowledge in some ((most)) of the crafts
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Azure Lynch
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Re: Replace tax gems with gems at the altar

Post by Azure Lynch »

I like the idea of finding different way for the gems to be distributed. It would even help those that want to play outlaws not be forced into a town to keep up with gems cause no one wants to trade with an outlaw. But being it distributed by the gods is hard for me cause my character doesn't worship the gods. So yet again it becomes hey if you want gems then you most devote to a god. I'm not for that. Maybe the gems finally run cause it was a lie they were not given by the gods but manufactured. And the ones we have quite working. Cause s'rrt tournaments have proven that fighting can be so much fun with out gems.
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Re: Replace tax gems with gems at the altar

Post by S'rrt »

Azure Lynch wrote:Cause s'rrt tournaments have proven that fighting can be so much fun with out gems.
Honestly, I think it just proves my impression that the magic gem system is unnecessary altogether and that the game would be practically the same if not better without it.

Not a popular opinion nor one that offers a lot of insight but at least it's been heard :mrgreen:
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