Why rework Ritualism?
Currently ritualism works very similar to taming with some slight variations.
This is fine, but when we consider the subject matter of a necromancer casting
spells/rituals that are so evil that guards will attack them on sight, the game play
that supports the lore has a thematic disconnect, for lack of a better term, in the "epicness"
of the game play.
Goals
Extreme Asymmetric Balancing:
Imagine if in game axes were under performing compared to hammers, and so a decision has been
made internally to buff axes. The swing speed of axes is changed to be identical to hammers
and the damage is buffed until they do identical damage. This would be an example symmetrical
balancing, the weapons would be balanced, but functionally the same and a bit boring.
Extreme asymmetrical balancing would be changes made that cause the two subjects to not even
resemble each other, for this axes and hammers can no longer be used as an analogy but rather
the difference between a hammer user and a mage. Completely different types of game play
that demand the user to change their play style, and demand whoever they are facing to change
their tactics of engagement. This creates dynamic game play and engaging unique interactions
between players which I believe will improve the enjoyment players get from the game.
Game play Loop (Regular):
Currently every class in the game has a game play loop with the same "skeleton". While the
specific details may vary every class will go out and do their preferred method of farming
before either selling the resources, crafting with them, or leveling them (tamers), before then
storing the products of this farming in a bank or stable, and doing it over and over again until
they are satisfied with the amount of equipment they have. We could call this game play loop
"Pre-Loaded Game play". There is nothing wrong with this style of game play but it is the only game play loop,
and in a sandbox game I believe a wide variety of approaches to the game will aid player enjoyment
and the longevity of the game. So I would like to propose a second game play loop, not superior
to the existing loop, but just different as to allow a variety of approaches to the game.
Game play Loop (Snowball):
This loop would consist of starting with nothing, venturing out into the wilderness and slowly
growing in power, with no ability to save your progress by banking or stabling pets/equipment.
This would be a high risk high reward game play style where eventually you will become far more
powerful than a pre-loaded player, but with the restrictions that if you are intercepted while
leveling you are at a disadvantage, and once you are powerful you have no ability to store your
progress and begin building up a second gear set, making you a high value target as if killed you
may be out of the fight not for a few minutes until you can re gear, but a few days/weeks as you
begin the process of snowballing again.
THE RITUALISM CHANGES.
-NEW NECROMANCY SPELLS:
-I believe a few new utility necromancy spells (nothing on the scale of elementalism)
would better tie the two skills together and benefit the game play loop of ritualism
by making it more immersive and interactive. Also if you really wanted you could add
a ritualism spell school specifically for these spells, or make it a subclass in within
the necromancy (using the tech developed for the elementalism spell book page)
(1) Soul Bind - A debuff/linking buff (similar to ahk bond) that when cast on enemies will
will cause them to give a small amount of spirits (far less than can be farmed with spiritism)
when killed. This will allow necromancers to be self-sufficient (although slower than with a
spiritualist friend) and allow them to live out in the wild without ever returning to a town
(which they will be banned from, I will talk about this later)
(2) Trap Wounded - A spell that if cast on a mercied creature will replace its mercy timer
with a much longer trapped timer (maybe 15 minutes, the length of magic reflect),
holding it in place near death to allow for future rituals to be performed on it.
(3) Resurrect Creature - This spell would be the bread and butter of ritualism, no more tables,
This spell can only be cast on the bag/corpse of a creature, no more farming up corpses and
storing them in a
strong hold, you must snowball from the start of your ritualist journey.
(4) Profane Ritual - (or just ritual of you want to keep it simple) While a risen pet
is under your control, casting this on a (1) Soul Bound and (2) Trap Wounded creature
would cause your pet to run over to the creature, and you to start a ritual which after
a cast time (maybe 30 seconds) would cause this creature to be consumed by the ritual
and make your pet more powerful.
(4.b) The way I envision this working is a menu would pop up (like scribing) that would prompt
the player for a gem and an artifact. The artifact would affect the chance of the ritual being a success
and the gem would affect how much of the buff they got, requiring a pet to consume multiple creatures
to gain the full benefit of a buff. (e.g. tagmatons give 10% defense max when consumed, with no gem
you only get 2% each time you consume, requiring 5 successful rituals. Or if the player used an
adamant with an artifact that gave 100% chance of success, they only need to kill 1 tagmaton to max out this buff)
-I believe these spells combined with the changes to ritualism which I will talk about will add a new dimension
to the game and a new massive game play loop that could add hundreds of hours of playtime for anyone who plays this
build.
-A huge advantage of these spells is they rely on tech which has already been developed for the game and will need
very little development to implement. spell (1) using the linking effect from ahk bond, spell (2) is just a status
that prevents targets in mercy from getting out of mercy, spell (3) would combine the current functionality of ritual
tables with the tech from crawling hands that allows spells to target loot bags, spell (4) would require a little more
Dev time to change the leveling from time based to ritual based, but this isn't a huge change. By far the biggest
task in this would be creating buffs and abilities similar to beast mastery for the creatures you can consume.
-RITUALISM CHANGES:
-PETS NO LONGER LEVEL UP PASSIVELY, instead they must consume other creatures in rituals.
this would replace leveling for ritual pets, they would need to consume creatures for levels,
more powerful creatures giving more levels,
-CONSUMED CREATURES GIVE ABILITIES/BUFFS. This by far will be the biggest change and require the
most Dev time, risen pets may get their own beast master abilities when added, but consuming other
powerful creatures through rituals will make pets far more powerful, but require the ritualist to
travel around the world with their risen pet to achieve this, they cant just stock up on carcass
in a stronghold and make the most powerful creature in safety.
-Bosses could give powerful build defining buffs, like the necro boss giving an improvement
to ahk bond when cast on the pet, mino king could give a berserk that increases damage and defense for a short time,
spider queen could give a web attack that slows targets so that that mounted cant just kite/cheese them (this is a maybe, it could be too powerful)
-Rarer animals could give smaller buffs to the creature, defense from turtles or tagmatons, a charge
attack from molva or minotaurs, a spit attack from spiders or water lizards
-Regular animals could just give a small amount of experience, a bush pig wont be a primary target
for a ritualist.
-RITUAL PETS CANNOT BE STABLED. You don't get to stock up on powerful pets, that's the trade-off to being powerful.
sure you can get your guild together and consume every boss and rare animal to create a perfect pet that could allow
you to fight off multiple people, but if a larger group knows you're doing it, they may focus your group
and even if they lose, if they manage to kill your pet you will have lost dozens of hours and have to re-level a new one.
-RITUALISTS ARE PERMANENTLY CRIMINAL WITH A RITUAL PET. You will be banned from cities, you must do everything outside
of town (this is why it's important for them to be self sufficient) and all players can attack with no consequence.
it will be a slow difficult journey to become powerful. They will likely die many times and have their pet progress reset,
but eventually if they can become powerful enough they will no longer fear living in the wilderness, they will become the thing that is feared.
-RITUAL PETS HAVE A CHANCE TO DROP GEMS + ARTIFACTS ON DEATH. If gems or artifacts were used in rituals when leveling the pet
then on death they have a chance (not 100%, maybe low like 10-25%) to drop gems + artifacts used on them, this would make
them walking loot boxes that every guild will want to kill if seen since they may drop 100's if not 1000's of gold on death.
Currently ritualism works very similar to taming with some slight variations.
This is fine, but when we consider the subject matter of a necromancer casting
spells/rituals that are so evil that guards will attack them on sight, the game play
that supports the lore has a thematic disconnect, for lack of a better term, in the "epicness"
of the game play.
Goals
Extreme Asymmetric Balancing:
Imagine if in game axes were under performing compared to hammers, and so a decision has been
made internally to buff axes. The swing speed of axes is changed to be identical to hammers
and the damage is buffed until they do identical damage. This would be an example symmetrical
balancing, the weapons would be balanced, but functionally the same and a bit boring.
Extreme asymmetrical balancing would be changes made that cause the two subjects to not even
resemble each other, for this axes and hammers can no longer be used as an analogy but rather
the difference between a hammer user and a mage. Completely different types of game play
that demand the user to change their play style, and demand whoever they are facing to change
their tactics of engagement. This creates dynamic game play and engaging unique interactions
between players which I believe will improve the enjoyment players get from the game.
Game play Loop (Regular):
Currently every class in the game has a game play loop with the same "skeleton". While the
specific details may vary every class will go out and do their preferred method of farming
before either selling the resources, crafting with them, or leveling them (tamers), before then
storing the products of this farming in a bank or stable, and doing it over and over again until
they are satisfied with the amount of equipment they have. We could call this game play loop
"Pre-Loaded Game play". There is nothing wrong with this style of game play but it is the only game play loop,
and in a sandbox game I believe a wide variety of approaches to the game will aid player enjoyment
and the longevity of the game. So I would like to propose a second game play loop, not superior
to the existing loop, but just different as to allow a variety of approaches to the game.
Game play Loop (Snowball):
This loop would consist of starting with nothing, venturing out into the wilderness and slowly
growing in power, with no ability to save your progress by banking or stabling pets/equipment.
This would be a high risk high reward game play style where eventually you will become far more
powerful than a pre-loaded player, but with the restrictions that if you are intercepted while
leveling you are at a disadvantage, and once you are powerful you have no ability to store your
progress and begin building up a second gear set, making you a high value target as if killed you
may be out of the fight not for a few minutes until you can re gear, but a few days/weeks as you
begin the process of snowballing again.
THE RITUALISM CHANGES.
-NEW NECROMANCY SPELLS:
-I believe a few new utility necromancy spells (nothing on the scale of elementalism)
would better tie the two skills together and benefit the game play loop of ritualism
by making it more immersive and interactive. Also if you really wanted you could add
a ritualism spell school specifically for these spells, or make it a subclass in within
the necromancy (using the tech developed for the elementalism spell book page)
(1) Soul Bind - A debuff/linking buff (similar to ahk bond) that when cast on enemies will
will cause them to give a small amount of spirits (far less than can be farmed with spiritism)
when killed. This will allow necromancers to be self-sufficient (although slower than with a
spiritualist friend) and allow them to live out in the wild without ever returning to a town
(which they will be banned from, I will talk about this later)
(2) Trap Wounded - A spell that if cast on a mercied creature will replace its mercy timer
with a much longer trapped timer (maybe 15 minutes, the length of magic reflect),
holding it in place near death to allow for future rituals to be performed on it.
(3) Resurrect Creature - This spell would be the bread and butter of ritualism, no more tables,
This spell can only be cast on the bag/corpse of a creature, no more farming up corpses and
storing them in a
strong hold, you must snowball from the start of your ritualist journey.
(4) Profane Ritual - (or just ritual of you want to keep it simple) While a risen pet
is under your control, casting this on a (1) Soul Bound and (2) Trap Wounded creature
would cause your pet to run over to the creature, and you to start a ritual which after
a cast time (maybe 30 seconds) would cause this creature to be consumed by the ritual
and make your pet more powerful.
(4.b) The way I envision this working is a menu would pop up (like scribing) that would prompt
the player for a gem and an artifact. The artifact would affect the chance of the ritual being a success
and the gem would affect how much of the buff they got, requiring a pet to consume multiple creatures
to gain the full benefit of a buff. (e.g. tagmatons give 10% defense max when consumed, with no gem
you only get 2% each time you consume, requiring 5 successful rituals. Or if the player used an
adamant with an artifact that gave 100% chance of success, they only need to kill 1 tagmaton to max out this buff)
-I believe these spells combined with the changes to ritualism which I will talk about will add a new dimension
to the game and a new massive game play loop that could add hundreds of hours of playtime for anyone who plays this
build.
-A huge advantage of these spells is they rely on tech which has already been developed for the game and will need
very little development to implement. spell (1) using the linking effect from ahk bond, spell (2) is just a status
that prevents targets in mercy from getting out of mercy, spell (3) would combine the current functionality of ritual
tables with the tech from crawling hands that allows spells to target loot bags, spell (4) would require a little more
Dev time to change the leveling from time based to ritual based, but this isn't a huge change. By far the biggest
task in this would be creating buffs and abilities similar to beast mastery for the creatures you can consume.
-RITUALISM CHANGES:
-PETS NO LONGER LEVEL UP PASSIVELY, instead they must consume other creatures in rituals.
this would replace leveling for ritual pets, they would need to consume creatures for levels,
more powerful creatures giving more levels,
-CONSUMED CREATURES GIVE ABILITIES/BUFFS. This by far will be the biggest change and require the
most Dev time, risen pets may get their own beast master abilities when added, but consuming other
powerful creatures through rituals will make pets far more powerful, but require the ritualist to
travel around the world with their risen pet to achieve this, they cant just stock up on carcass
in a stronghold and make the most powerful creature in safety.
-Bosses could give powerful build defining buffs, like the necro boss giving an improvement
to ahk bond when cast on the pet, mino king could give a berserk that increases damage and defense for a short time,
spider queen could give a web attack that slows targets so that that mounted cant just kite/cheese them (this is a maybe, it could be too powerful)
-Rarer animals could give smaller buffs to the creature, defense from turtles or tagmatons, a charge
attack from molva or minotaurs, a spit attack from spiders or water lizards
-Regular animals could just give a small amount of experience, a bush pig wont be a primary target
for a ritualist.
-RITUAL PETS CANNOT BE STABLED. You don't get to stock up on powerful pets, that's the trade-off to being powerful.
sure you can get your guild together and consume every boss and rare animal to create a perfect pet that could allow
you to fight off multiple people, but if a larger group knows you're doing it, they may focus your group
and even if they lose, if they manage to kill your pet you will have lost dozens of hours and have to re-level a new one.
-RITUALISTS ARE PERMANENTLY CRIMINAL WITH A RITUAL PET. You will be banned from cities, you must do everything outside
of town (this is why it's important for them to be self sufficient) and all players can attack with no consequence.
it will be a slow difficult journey to become powerful. They will likely die many times and have their pet progress reset,
but eventually if they can become powerful enough they will no longer fear living in the wilderness, they will become the thing that is feared.
-RITUAL PETS HAVE A CHANCE TO DROP GEMS + ARTIFACTS ON DEATH. If gems or artifacts were used in rituals when leveling the pet
then on death they have a chance (not 100%, maybe low like 10-25%) to drop gems + artifacts used on them, this would make
them walking loot boxes that every guild will want to kill if seen since they may drop 100's if not 1000's of gold on death.