Shattered Kingdoms

Lots of mention of loyalty tokens in the "what would make me happy" thread. Thought I'd start a separate topic for comments on this system.

As I understand it Dulrik started these to add no "power" to characters but to inspire returning players by giving them more options for race/class.
This was then expanded with "redeem" unspecialize (25), xpboost (5-10?-15?), and resurrect (20).

Known loyalty token sources are as follows:
Make paragon (5 per month of paragon)
Earn a mentor point (5 per mentor point)
Lead a cabal/tribunal (5 per month)
Lead a religion (5 per month)
Win CRS (1 per great victory, with a time limit between possible awards)
Get enlightened (1 per enlight)

Here's my take on this system:
-race/class mixes are a fun add.
-unspecialize is a merc power boost the few players who manage to accumulate 250+ LTs. For most people it's either irrelevant, or allows them to avoid deleting a char over fixing a spec once or twice as the MUD changes.
-xpboost is something I've never used. Seems benign. Nice add for people who feel they need the help.
-resurrect is mostly obsolete with the new changes.


Overall cheers and critiques in pro/con format

Pro - Nice flavor with race/class adds
Pro - Lots of potential to build out system
Pro - Unspecialize seems like a great example of "power adds" that don't change or imbalance gameplay overall
Con - No reward for long-lived non-leaders, regardless of contributions to factions or religions - contributes to next point
Con - Incentive to hoard leadership flags

An observation that doesn't quite fit in the list above is that the LT system doesn't really meaningfully reward for PK.

Suggestions

1. Reduce LT award for leadership to 1/month for both religion and faction. Long-term Leadership is already rewarded by the hero system, and abandonment is I if I recall correctly already punished in some manner. This is also currently the only passive income in the system as it isn't indexed to faction activity, influence, etc --- just to holding the flag. Not a fan.
2. Find a way to reward long-lived characters. I'd suggest somehow indexing this to the hoarding code --- maybe 1/2/3/4 LT/month for characters who wouldn't have been dehoarded who are in their 0th/1st/2nd/3rd age bracket. Goal is to progressively award all active characters as they age. For purposes of avoiding people cheating this with tons of chars who make minimum hours, cap it at 4/acct/mo.
3. "Unlock" LTs for use at each age tick. This would let more mercs use unspecialize.
4. Find other things like unspecialize to keep other characters engaged. Maybe 50 LTs to increase the level of your pick-lock? Maybe 100 LTs could even undo oathbreaker??
5. Reward 5 LTs per 25 PKs
6. Reward 2 LTs per GGI, Somnium, and Ephialties kill

I like the idea of getting LTs for PK. We should incentive it more somehow.

Perhaps a term limit for leaders, in regards to LT's, would avoid the hoarding for LT issue.
For the first 4 months of leadership, you gain normal leadership LT's. After that, you have to not be a leader of that trib/cabal for 2 months for this "LT cool down timer" to expire. After that, you can begin gaining your LT's for another 4 months, should you get leadership back.

If you want to be leader for RP and country management purposes, you can still have a leader flag, but it simply won't generate LT's monthly.

I like your idea about LT's being given for pve and Pk.
For pve, it would make boss kills almost like a weekly quest.
For pvp, I'd think that your pk would need to be on a character within a certain level of your character. We don't need ganks in the academy for LT farming.
Perhaps you could get 1/5 of an LT for even just engaging in Pk. Try to draw people out to fight more often.

Was this a typo? You meant to say "unspecialize is NOT a merc power boost"? At any rate, I don't feel it is a power boost.


That's not quite accurate. There is a playing time requirement to earn the monthly faction bonus. You can't just gain the flag and never login. And if you fail to put in the time and lose your leadership flag, you'll also lose more LTs than you would have gained. This is to incentivize having people properly find a successor and pass on their flag instead of allowing the group to flounder for weeks without an active leader.

Despite the LT reward, I am not seeing much competition for the leadership positions and it seems to still be considered a chore that many don't want to deal with. Obviously the current LT situation is not ideal, so I am not averse to finding better solutions.


I like this (but not #2). There would need to be protections. In addition to the required hours for that month to not be dehoarded, I think they would need to be at least Mentor to show that this is a serious character.


If "increase pick-lock" means just raise it some percentage points to a maximum of master, then I could agree with that, as it is not an absolute increase in power level. In fact, I could agree with that for almost any skill. (Final strike is an example of a possible exception.) I disagree about undoing oathbreaker for any LT price. Only RP over a considerable amount of time can overcome this.


For the most part, LTs are currently awarded for performing activities that are both beneficial to the game as a whole and which require a signficant investment of time. 'Win CRS' is an exception to this, but it wasn't my original idea and it's more clear now that the addition didn't fit the mission statement. (But it's also irrelevant at the moment because CRS has been turned off.) 'Get enlightened' is a reward for high quality RP behavior that isn't really rewarded in any other way.

In contrast, PKing and killing high level NPCs has its own innate rewards (getting access to loot). I also don't want to incentivize PK for PKs sake. PK should only be performed in the context of RP (which this would be unable to measure).


To put some new potential additions on the table, let me offer these:
redeem skillBoost - As mentioned above, also works for spells. Similar to 'redeem XPboost' in helping vets complete new characters without requiring as much of a time sink. Does not increase overall power.
redeem retrainStat - Reallocate a limited number of stat trains. New allocation must still follow existing limits. Similar to 'redeem unspecialize' in helping long-lived characters stay relevant in the face of game changes.

What if the victim has the option to reward the victor with an LT? This could promote fair play attitudes amoung the player base. A person's record of pk is tracked, I believe, and that can be compared to how often they reward someone after getting pk'd. This would be an indication of how good of a sport they are. Additionally, we could see if they get killed by the same group of people and immediately reward for the sake of farming LTs and therefore be a way to identify cheaters.

I didn't quite understand how you were defining powerboost. It sounds like you want to avoid awarding anything via LTs that a new char couldn't get, so increasing pick lock level to 55 or 60 is out. Makes sense in context of that.

I like retrainStat and skillBoost a lot.

What about, for some absurd sum, allowing principled/dogmatic/aberrant alignment to choose sprite/minotaur in the next room? May be NWIH, just throwing it out there.


Last, you said my assessment of the monthly faction bonus was inaccurate due to my omission of hours required, but I'm pretty sure I said it's passive income so long as you hold the flag - aka, put in minimum hours. Overall, I'm not sure what competition for leadership positions looks like, but I still believe that holding the flag/putting in minimum hours is already rewarded in the form of progress towards Hero.

I saw a note that you agree the system could be better. I don't think you addressed my suggestion to de-index the "monthly activity" awards from minimum activity as a leader char, and instead attach them to minimum activity as a long-lived char. I like this because it spreads the "passive income" incentive out to encourage ALL players to log on every month, and I think that's a better way to promote and reward for minimum activity. Any thoughts on that?

Unfortunately, this system to me seems to abusable. If you have some Yim buddies and are like hey, you make this lighty and I'll make this darky and we'll just pk the dirt out of eachother and rack up some obscene number of LT's and it will all technically be legit because you're both following all the RP/PK rules of SK.

Also, LT's are supposed to be time investment into the game, PK is great and fun and really it's own reward, but for vets it doesn't really take a whole lot of time or effort put into RP or anything else other than loot gathering/enchanting to go gank some people.

Also the Redeem skillboost and restat allocation sound like great LT ideas, These I think would have a huge benefit for people trying new classes, new builds or just being new at SK.

There are already major rewards in place for completing the Endgame Boss Trifecta, beyond all the loot and XP you get from getting to and beating each one individually. To my knowledge, nobody has yet claimed said rewards.

I included in my post a description of how to thwart the abusable aspect of this. It's a a actually pretty simple. Also, PK does require time in the to accomplish well.

PK should absolutely grant LTs. Elves/deep-rooted should get rewarded for carrying out their memory. Paladins/hellions should be rewarded for dueling one another.

PK absolutely should not grant LTs.