Rework and reinstate "demi-gods"

[Drayka 485]

Something needs to be provided, for players (as opposed to accounts) that get too-good at the game to not become a person no-one can challenge anymore in their area of expertise.

 

In a culture of respawn, this HAS to be ascension to some form of semi-deity status, because the natural balance of mortal lifespan and loss of faculty through aging is not in play.

 

This does not have to include any of the previous mechanics, except the concept of ascension to a new level of being.

 

It must require radical adaptation to a different playstyle to address completely new challenges, and be an inevitable, unavoidable outcome of rising too high above the average-player success-rate of any server.

 

Personally I envision this happening as a result of being 'struck by lightning' (not normal lightning) with near-strikes happening as each requirement is met, forewarning of the impending blessing/curse if this trend continues.

 

Edit:

For random example, one requirement might be player votes.

Edited July 26, 2021 by Drayka

[Finnn 3,301]

great idea, rules.. get 30,000,000 stp on niarja with actual backing skills not mockup text file edit skills... do same challenge and ascend.. become demigod for a year, new faith etc... and get banned while you're a god.. - you'll have more important things to do as 'god', playing as 'human' wont be of any interested to you - that's where the ban comes in.. 

 

after a year.. demigod is gone.. you're unbanned and you can try again... next time.. rng spell list as usual.. 

 

good?

 

if you get really good at the game - earn a ban, maybe earn a good spell book for other players, if not.. rip dead faith that nobody wants.. retry next year / you also can do this with your gazillion alts.. easy, just earn the points to claim that you're a 'god'

🤣

Edited July 26, 2021 by Finnn

[elentari 2,660]

Maybe make it a semi-journal goal mechanic (not a journal goal in itself), with a lot of conditions to be met? 

 

Off the top of my head this can go in 2 directions. 

 

The path of the crafter : 

 

1. Get a lot of karma, maybe 500 000? Lots of missions on freedom so it's not impossible. 

2. Get 1 body stat to 50 perhaps.

3. Convert some players to a god, you don't have to be a priest for that. 

4. Build a huge cathedral, it will have to be of a decent size to meet certain requirements of floors and tiles. 

5. Perform a sacrifice of a drakeset or a scale set at an altar, as proof you're willing to transcend materialistic values. 

6. Aquire the heart of a dragon, the heart of a sea serpent and the heart of the troll king. 

7. Acquire 20 kg of source salt.

8. Acquire dragon blood.

9. Acquire a metallic liquid (you need to do some rifts or buy one)

10. Acquire the skull of a huge creature (any unique will do)

11. Use natural substances or someone else can do that for you to craft a "Potion of invocation" using all the mats acquired. 

12. The potion spawns an avatar of your god that will "test your mettle". 

13. The avatar will spawn a creature that is a mirror image of you, clad in the drakeset or scale set you sacced, but at 90 ql armor and buffed up stats.

14. A ring will be created around you and said mirror creature.

15. The avatar commands you to defeat it in order to ascend. Buffs on player are allowed prebattle but if anyone lends aid to the player, be it a tamed creature or another player, the fight is reset.

16. Ideally a gm should witness the battle in case anyone attempts to "grief" the fight. 

17. Should be player defeat his mirror image, he will get an orb he can use but at a terrible sacrifice. 

18. The orb can only be activated if you're willing to give a sacrifice of knowledge, aka getting 1 skill too 100 and having it reset back to 1. Only after that point you can ascend as a demigod. 

 

The path of the priest 

 

I don't want to delve too much into this one, but it will have similar requirements just that they're priest oriented, not crafter oriented. 

Edited July 26, 2021 by elentari

[Madnath 3,113]

I have absolutely 0 idea how this would improve anything, it sounds more like you're trying to awkwardly hamfist more ideas and concepts into a game that doesn't and hasn't ever fitted the things envisioned here.

I don't really get what's up with suggestions lately. It feels like we're all playing a different game and we're trying to compete over a vision of something totally different.

 

Anyway I see no reason to reinstate them when people already get upset over people having higher skills than them. It sounds sounds an additional way to increase wurm epeen

[Drayka 485]

10 hours ago, Finnn said:

great idea, rules.. get 30,000,000 stp on niarja with actual backing skills not mockup text file edit skills... do same challenge and ascend.. become demigod for a year, new faith etc... and get banned while you're a god.. - you'll have more important things to do as 'god', playing as 'human' wont be of any interested to you - that's where the ban comes in.. 

 

after a year.. demigod is gone.. you're unbanned and you can try again... next time.. rng spell list as usual.. 

 

good?

 

if you get really good at the game - earn a ban, maybe earn a good spell book for other players, if not.. rip dead faith that nobody wants.. retry next year / you also can do this with your gazillion alts.. easy, just earn the points to claim that you're a 'god'

🤣

To be honest I cannot find any still-existing reference to what demi-gods were before. They weren't relevant to my gameplay back when I first read about them, and my recollection is extremely fuzzy because I didn't understand what the wiki was trying to explain. Thus, if your post has anything to do with that, it would explain why it reads like utter gibberish to me. All I want at this point is to reclaim the "demi-god" phrase for a Wurm mechanic, not how it worked before, however it worked.

 

9 hours ago, Madnath said:

I have absolutely 0 idea how this would improve anything, it sounds more like you're trying to awkwardly hamfist more ideas and concepts into a game that doesn't and hasn't ever fitted the things envisioned here.

I don't really get what's up with suggestions lately. It feels like we're all playing a different game and we're trying to compete over a vision of something totally different.

 

Anyway I see no reason to reinstate them when people already get upset over people having higher skills than them. It sounds sounds an additional way to increase wurm epeen

I agree this OP was more emotional and rushed than usual. Not quite sure what was going through my head other than feeling that I am thoroughly unequal to rising to the challenge facing me/us without community assistance. I'm not sure that what I feel is needed can even BE coded, but I'll try to expand a little on what the thinking behind the suggestion is/was.

• There are players who are to all intents and purposes, equivalent to demi-gods in Wurm - in the RL mythological meaning of the word.
• The game mechanics can be used in such a way that IF there were psychopaths and sociopaths in the playerbase, they could become extremely successful.
• Most people have met psychopaths and sociopaths - the clinical definition, not the horror movie version - IRL, and misunderstood what and why they are.
• Perfectly normal players can and do use tactics utilised by such individuals IRL, to gain in-game success, but for different reasons than those with these clinical conditions employ them.
• These tactics tend to trigger players into reacting as if meeting such a personality, which can and does cause a lot of people to quit at least the server, if not the game.
• These players who have fairly earnt their status as successful, not only risk earning a negative reputation with the community for reasons that are not their fault, but they run out of obvious challenges and are themselves at increased risk of being lost from the community, to the long-term detriment of the entire WO community.
• Thus, I wish there were a way to raise such individual into an earned elitist class, regardless of whether such earnings are viewed in a positive or negative light by the community.
• A class which would challenge them to broaden their gameplay, and rise to completely new challenges in the community.

And I agree that I shouldn't technically be suggesting anything yet, as I haven't thought of a solution that would work to everyone's mutual benefit. Posting was merely a reaction to feeling that I couldn't work out how this could be done, all on my lonesome.

[Drayka 485]

More thoughts, (making this up as I go along) based on what I know of Wurm religion now, community mechanics, and what I think I would be willing to sacrifice, if I were in their position - which I am not and likely will never be.

 

A 'demi-god' could be a priest, follower of a Valrei deity, or of 'Jackal'.

They are NOT banned from the game - I don't want them gone or bouncing between accounts to avoid a nerf.

 

As a demi-god, they act as a middle-man, boosting, not replacing, the existing deity mechanics/rifts.

Those who become their subscribers - avoiding the word follower, as you can only simplistically follow an NPC - enter into a skill/stat-gain relationship with the account that has become a demi-god.

Their influence is limited by cluster - you cannot subscribe to a Southern demi-god from Northern, or an Epic demi-god from Chaos, for example.

With one exception: accounts owned by the same player can be cross-cluster associated - meaning you can subscribe to your demi-god account with your own alts, boosting both accounts.

Any player can subscribe to a cross-server subscriber, but the boost is much less.

If your cross-cluster subscriber also becomes a demi-god, you can choose to evolve them into an independent demi-god for that cluster, or form a pantheon.

A pantheon gets their own Valrei-like board and their oversized avatars may appear on any cluster except the one on which the demi-god account exists - finding and approaching one of these NPC avatars allows you to subscribe to them directly on your cluster.

A pantheon player must set missions for their subscribers, and provide the rewards for completing them. Obviously with some decent administrative tools to facilitate such trades.

 

Okay, that's a bit raw and ready, but it's a start.