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Maiev

Soul Stone

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Soul stone is an item which at its default state is like a new character with starting low skills.

 

While in the inventory of a character it overwrites your skills replaces it with its own skills so you basically become the character that the soul stone contains and every skill you gain while you hold the stone is added to the soul stone while your own skills remains unchanged. So basically your char becomes temprorarily disabled and you play as the soul stone. 

 

For balance you only gain %20 of skill you would normally get doing the same actions while holding the stone. 

 

Once the stone leaves your inventory, your skills turn to normal but the stone retains whatever changes were made to it while was in your inventory. 

 

It can only be traded through a trading window and can't be mailed, can't be dropped by death. 

 

The stone can't be used by priests because the soul stone is an abomination in the eyes of all deities. 

 

The stone only gains skills while sleep bonus is active on the char it is held by. (on a second thought probably too extreme of a restriction and a bad idea) 

 

Each time the stone is transferred to another character, it requires a resurrection stone to be activated. (on a second though probably a too extreme of a restriction and a bad idea) 

 

The character has to be premium for the soul stone to work. Once premium runs out, stone will become disabled and in order to activate it again, being premium and a resurrection stone will be required. 

Edited by Maiev
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Just thought it would be interesting, different and possibly useful :)

 

Maybe the sleep bonus requirement is balance overkill. 

Edited by Maiev

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Is this the idea of soul stone form UO?

 

Quote

A Soulstone is a special item in Ultima Online that allows you to temporarily remove a skill from your character and store the skill for later use. You can also use them to move a skill from one character to another on the same account.

 

I have suggested that years ago in GL-Freedom chat and was bashed to oblivion. Not one argument being more logical than "you suck".

 

If someone has the time to grind the skill for sale, let me buy it!

 

Sell them on the website for additional revenue or something.

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I haven't played UO. I had no idea that a game already had a similar concept. 

 

And yes, the default item could be sold at the wurm website or  given as gift for premming on the website for a lot of months, sold at trader for a lot of silvers, its pieces found and connected through archeology etc.. Whatever may be more suitable. 

 

I think such an item can bring many possibilities and as long as it is restricted enough , it shouldnt make the people's effort on their chars worth any less. 

 

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Pay to play is basically what you're proposing. No different than account sales, but I can see this exploited from getting old accounts active + merging skills on said stones and transferring them to another account = people won't care to be banned. 

 

-1 from me. 

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The soul stone is not effected by the skills which their holder has. When you activate the soul stone your skills no long matter and don't do anything until the soul stone is deactivated again. It doesn't copy your skills, it has its own skills and craft success chance and skill gain etc. are all based on its own skill not the holder's. Holder's skill basically become disabled till soul stone is deactivated or removed.

 

Also, using it won't give your char any skills. So basically, soul stone will come with its own skills, gain to its own skills from your actions (which is only %20 of normal gains) and leave with its increased skills and not leave you any skill gains and not take any skills from your char. There is no connection between your skills and the soul stone in anyway. 

Edited by Maiev

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I'm a bit confused as to what it's supposed to accomplish, you turn your account into a fresh spawn, and you generate skill thats put into a stone at 20% rate? why wouldn't you just make a new account and grind that?

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This is a terrible idea as it defeats one of the main purposes of the game, the *accomplishment* of raising your own skills to obtain the benefits that they provide. Usually players get a sense of satisfaction from doing this and it provides an additional motivation to log into the game. Player account sales already bypass this and it is why in the sense of the phrase "pay to win" it is the definition of that precisely. A bad idea to further debase the game by motivating some to play just to sell their skills on an individual basis and affording players to pick and choose their skills individually that they would wish to purchase.

 

As the game currently stands there is no telling how many players "play" the game just to build characters to sell. There were a few in the past that even boldly advertised that they would build characters to order but this advertising went underground soon after as perhaps being too much to be stated so plainly. Your idea only encourages this concept further and I think it is bad to perpetuate this trend to such a *pay for the skills you want!*, play Wurm Online.

 

=Ayes=

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What it accomplishes is letting you buy a stoulstone in which there is high or decent skill you temprorarily need and easily resell after you used it and increased the skill a bit by using it. 

 

Building characters to sell would still be more profitable because this only  has %20 skillgain. Soul Stone only has the advantage of being easier to resell after you bought and used. 

 

It will also allow communities like pvp kingdoms to move the soulstone around based on who can put the skill in it to use at that time. 

Edited by Maiev

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1 hour ago, Ayes said:

This is a terrible idea as it defeats one of the main purposes of the game, the *accomplishment* of raising your own skills to obtain the benefits that they provide. Usually players get a sense of satisfaction from doing this and it provides an additional motivation to log into the game. Player account sales already bypass this and it is why in the sense of the phrase "pay to win" it is the definition of that precisely.

 

As an Epic player who has ground a toon from newbiehood to effective 90+ in most crafting skills, I can see that Wurm is two games: the game you play to grind the capabilities, and the real game.

 

As such, Wurm is badly designed, at a fundamental level. Buying accounts bypasses that bad design, and I am completely in favor of account sales. it isn't pay to win: it's pay to play.

 

For that matter, I wouldn't be opposed to Wurm selling vanilla accounts at 20/30/40/50 skill/stat levels. Would get the developers in the account-selling money, and maybe draw more people to Freedom.

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Yes this could easily  replace account sells. Why grind your own account  and just sell it when you can grind a soul stone and sell it. 

 

What makes this game is great is that  there are many ways to enjoy it.  People play for different reasons. Some people  hate the skill gain and just  want to build play and dont want to waste time failing at low skills.  

 

If someone is willing to pay so  that  they  can get to  the point where they can enjoy the game more why not let them.

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39 minutes ago, Harriman said:

Yes this could easily  replace account sells. Why grind your own account  and just sell it when you can grind a soul stone and sell it. 

Uhm maybe because grinding character is more efficient... 20% is so serious reduction that I doubt someone will ever use this. You think grinding ws is hard, try it 5 times slower.

Also disabling your all skills just to use one high skill for 4.5s every time, you would have to be pretty desperate to use or having very strong nerves to balance and switch. Idea is tempting, I understand that some people hate grinding and wanna skip that by buying account or skills but on another hand it's creating very unhealthy ecosystem for new players who like grinding or don't want to invest more money into game than just for subscription, not to mention that it ruins their chance with the market.

Idea might be interesting on paper but I don't see this working in practice or that most people would be motivated to use it. 

On another hand if we wanna dwell on convinient account sales what of we could perma suicide characters and get their soul stone, others can use (so higher skills would override theirs but lower will not, simmilar to epic transfer). Once again I can't imagine fine balance in the penalty so it can be usefull but still not overpowered, or should there be any penalty? This could (ab)used for name and gender change without it... Idk just a thought on subject not advocating idea really :)

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It is not a drop on death item. Soul stone shouldn't change your name or gender.

 

I think there should be a balance between useless and overpowered. Instead of a strong competitor with character grind and sell, this item would be a vessel for precipitated effort by many players who used it over a long period of time. The only difficult part with it is the beginning. Who will actually get some skills to high lvl on it or one skill to high lvl on it? That would likely be the communities in pve and pvp who didn't consider selling it initially and just grinded it as a large group effort. It is not very efficient to grind but could be fun knowing you are all working to feed this soul stone with effort which could end up becoming useful for everyone as a whole.

 

The sleep bonus and resurrection stone restrictions are probably too extreme as restrictions and make the stone's initial skillgain very unlikely and make it an unused content in the game.

 

-1 if the restrictions remain extreme. They are okay at 90 skill for example but in the beginning nobody is going to bother with that as it is.

Edited by Lucyein

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Ok, I have pondered about this more since I find idea really interesting. If author of OP doesn't mind I would offer somewhat different solution.

What if a character using soul stone could store just one of the skills upon using it but it gets perma killed after it? Soul stone could be purchased from the shop or maybe from trader. When another player uses filled soul stone he gets his skill replaced with the one from stone. This could open new market of trading skills instead of trading characters but would still be very restrictive. In order to create super character from fresh player one would have to invest a lot of time looking for players willing to sell and money... And will also get rid of bunch of alts and remove their other skills from characters circulation

What do you guys think would this be more balanced? More overpowered than OP?

P.S. Not sure about price in that case... 100s ?

Edited by kochinac

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This sounds like a completely different concept which looks very OP and encourages making a new char to grind a skill, turn into stone to sell for money and would make gaining skill and making an OP character by just buying easily made stones very easy. 

 

What I am suggesting is something that is %20 only skillgain, wont let you use your actual character and wont add anything to your character, wont take anything from your character. Only temprorary benefit from an item that is very hard to build to the point of actually being useful. It is not really overpowered. If such an item were to exist, it would take years for a decent one to be for sale since it is really stupid to grind skill for the item other than certain circumtances that dont involve selling the item as an initial goal. 

 

What you are suggesting, which you can of course suggest and probably much better with your own topic, is something extremely overpowered. People who already make chars to sell can now sell them easier and for more money because they would be made more useful by being made into a consumable that adds skills permanently to the buyer's char. 

 

Leaving trading aside, you can run 4 chars for example with 3 of them just making skills to add to your main char. It is game breaking. 

 

My suggestion not only has only %20 skillgain, but also the fact that it will not add any skills to your char so from skillgain standpoint you will actually waste time with your char by giving skill gains (which are nerfed by -%80) to the stone with the actions you are doing and gaining zero skills yourself. Using the stone is not good for your char's skillgain, it is very bad for your char's skillgains because you are not gaining any skill whatsoever while using the stone for some purpose, like using a stone that has high LW for making some saddles and armors. It is only good if you just use it to benefit from the skill temprorarily, otherwise you dont want the item in your inventory. The real question is if anyone will actually use the item, grind the item to a useful degree because it is far inferior to just making chars and sell them and buying these said chars for temprorary purpose. 

 

I know I am saying the same things over and over but there are so many replies made in a way as if I didn't say them. 

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18 hours ago, Maiev said:

The real question is if anyone will actually use the item, grind the item to a useful degree because it is far inferior to just making chars and sell them and buying these said chars for temprorary purpose. 

Like I said before I can't seriously belive someone would use it, invest in it and find it usefull with such restrictions.

Heck, grind character 5 times faster for certain skills. Use 5s you would spend on ressurection stone to prem that character for 15 days if something needs to be done without crippling your main. Simmilar effect for same price just 5 times faster and more convinient... So what's the point of wasting time in implementing this?

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I don't understand how this is better than selling or buying a toon?  The fact that you're buying a soul stone at all means you're not prepared to grind it on your own toon, so you're already ok with the skill being temporary.  So why wouldn't you just buy another toon with the skill you need, then sell that toon when you're done?  The only difference appears to be that you don't need to log in another toon?  This doesn't introduce any new markets (the same people who buy and sell toons now will be the ones buying and selling stones), it doesn't change how the pvp folks work (bicycle / shared crafting kingdom accounts), it just adds a less-efficient way to sell buy a capability instead of grinding it yourself.  I guess you get to keep your toon name, but none of your other skills while in use.  But anyone paying 4.5s every time they want to switch skill sets will just buy another accound.  Or, hell, create a brand new account and permanantly install the soul stone there, then just share the account.

 

Basically, what you've described is a complicated and limited way of changing a character name.  And the dev team have always said that ain't gonna happen.

 

Essentially, I can't see a way for this to work without some serious development effort, and something this complex would introduce a mahoosive pile of new and exciting bugs ('cos wurm), and for all that, I don't see what this gives us that we don't already have.

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I haven't mentioned anywhere that soul stone should have a name or should change your name temprorary or otherwise. Why is there opposition to something that doesn't exist within the suggestion? 

 

Your name remains the same whether you use the soulstone or not. If soulstone would be implemented with a namechange included, I would also be against such a thing. However, this suggestion has nothing to do with a name change. 

 

The res stone activation and sleep bonus requirement are both bad ideas and extreme restrictions, I agree with that. The item would be useless and gather dust with these in place. 

 

The fact that it is a non-competitor to character grind and sales is the proof it is balanced and won't make the effort of character grind worth any less. It is an item which you can't be sure if it is useless or useful and that makes it balanced as a completely new and radical addition to the game. The item's goal is not for one person to grind it and sell it and another person to make use of it. The goal is precipitated effort on one or several useful skills. That kind of effort would not be likely born from the desire to sell or use by a single person, it would likely be born from other circumstances such as community effort  or a solo char player premming a 2s 1month free 2nd toon to grind the stone for later personal use or sale. That is likely the only ''exploit'' that would be born from such an item provided its extreme restrictions are not implemented. If you can call that exploit that is. Actually with it being %20 only skillgain and that prem being only %20 cost, it is quite a fitting way to feed the stone. I am surprised nobody mentioned that possibility and complained about it. 

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