Anomalies

[Zan]

I was thinking about this, mostly inspired by Morrowind, but I do think it could be interesting to put a few temporary abnormal ingame character changes into PS.

In morrowind they have two, namely vampire and werewolf but some originality would be appreciated in this game so I don\'t think we should use those directly. The werewolf one can be easily adapted to work with PS though I think.

Lets assume we create a wererat phenomenon, this means that if a character is succesfully hit by a rat it has a very small chance of becoming a wererat. This character would then turn into a rat at night, hereby losing all capability to speak or understand others (they can\'t use the chat interface). They also can\'t equip anything and can be attacked by PC\'s or NPC\'s like guards without warning. In return they can also attack those characters without having to challenge them.
Of course this whole scenario shouldn\'t have rats as a trigger but instead some stronger and much rarer creature, I just used rats because everybody knows them

Another anomaly could have a different trigger, instead of being attacked by a creature you could for example have been too close to \'the big crystal in the sky\' that plays the role of sun in the Yliakum. Touching that crystal might trigger your body to transform into an energetic entity. I \'m imagining something in the form of a floating crystal core (vaguely resembling a humanoid form) surrounded by smokelike energy.  This creature would then again loose the ability to communicate and equip/use items. It would still be able to use magic though and be nearly invunerable to weapons, though very vunerable to other magic. It can also float/fly freely throughout the world but can\'t go under water and live to tell.

Any anomalies should however be very limited in existance and power. The limitation in power is easily created by making the chat interface disappear whenever they are in their anomaly state, thus giving those characters no means of communication with others. And they will be seen as monsters by the rest of the gamers. Another drawback would be the characters can\'t level up anymore during their anomaly state.
A limitation in existance is created by making the triggers for them very rare and/or hard to find and also make the whole change not permanent. The first thing that comes to mind here is the moment you die, you go to the death realm and then reincarnate back into Yliakum like nothing ever happened. Seeing that any player can attack you this will make sure there won\'t be an overdose of anomalies.

P.S. I know there are threads like this one already but the ones I saw were turned into discussions about RPing.  I don\'t have anything against RPing, in the contrary, but what I \'m proposing is an RP scenario built in the game. This makes sure you have no choice but to go with it and also gives you something to RP with. Because RPing that I \'m a werewolf is all good and well but if I never change into a wolf it kinda spoils the fun after a while.
If this idea gets enough positive feedback I can think up several more anomalies and work them out into much greater detail.

[Jakob]

It\'s an interesting idea.  I think a nice edition would be a limit to the number of any type of anomaly.  There could be both good and bad ones with differant effects on power, possibly exp, and movement.  There could be a way of healing yourself so that it doesn\'t happen anymore as well, freeing up one allowed anomaly of that type, if y\'all can make sense of that...  neway, this type of thing would also take care of the PvP thing, as a \"monster\"/anomaly is outside the rules of PvP, and therefore able to attack w/o a challenge.  It be nice if nights were longer though.  Maybe a better trigger, like certain days or somesuch thing.  Maybe a good ratio would be 1anomaly per every 100 PCs.

[Zan]

You can also build them into special events yeah .. I think that \'s what you \'re suggesting anyways.

For example let a plague hit a town which makes a certain number of random players mutate into zombies .. yes clich? I know but you get the picture

Or they could implement legends which speak of a single anomaly, one that would probably last a bit longer though. Well known example would be the arthurian legends. Say the programmers create  a big shiny sword imbued in a rock just outside of the city.  Now we all know the legends .. the man that can pull the sword out of the stone becomes king. So all players get to try to pull the sword out (click on it) but a code  allows for example only the players with that specific history or date of birth to pull it out. Nobody should know what the code says of course .. and yes there will be several people that meet the requirements because only one could be a problem if that one character is inactive by any chance. Just the first char that meets the requirements and clicks on the sword wins and becomes an anomaly.

Of course these are just typical unoriginal examples but they can be altered easily .. it \'s just to get the idea across.

[Darakus]

I\'m literally drooling at the idea of a were-ulbernaut )

Of course you would have to cut his arms before he would even try and bite you but then again he is a bit wolfish in appearance

That said don\'t inflict on us the curse of the were-trepor

[Einhander]

Great idea, but shouldn\'t happend consistently due to PS\'s quick changes from day to night.
Maybe you could say a player can change into some were-something every 3 or 4 weeks. or possibly only 1 month. Besides, some players want to keep their normal formn just how it is. I think that if you wanted to be a were-something, you might want to make it a spell, thus elimating the fear of cathing the \"were-something\" disease from that enemy.

[Zan]

I don\'t think people allowing to choose it is the best idea .. then you \'ll have a bunch of weres or whatever running around. The point of an anomaly is that it is a rather rare thing and it just happens, whether you like it or not, you \'ll have to play with it.  Nobody will stay a were though, it \'s a temporary change and if you want to get rid of it there should be options.
I actually think that fear of catching it can make the game interesting.

The day-night thing is a bit of a problem though yeah, the rhythm is too fast to make it really work in this scenario.

[Jakob]

Like I posted earlier, there should be a somewhat absurdley expensive cure to whatever anomaly thou hast obtained. (wow, did I just say that?  I really don\'t like Shakespeare sometimes...)...  Neway, this would permit people who really don\'t want to be an anomaly.  i think I also mentioned that a system where a \"were-(insert beast here)\" could attack freely could fix the disallowment of Pking.  The only thing I disagree with is the thought that in an anomalized (is that a word?) character can\'t gain exp outside of the \"normal\" form.  They would make people obtain the cure as quickly as they could instead of RPing the character.  Also, if an anomaly dies in his/her abnormal state, they should lose that power, unless they inniciated the attack.

[Zan]

I thought the gaining no experience was a good idea to encourage some more roleplaying and discourage levelers actually. This is also needed to keep the balance I think. If a werewhatever can gain exp and still grow stronger maybe they \'ll have too much of an advantage and grow too strong so I \'d rather have them be pretty strong from the start but no way of getting stronger .. or perhaps at a highly decreased rate.

And as for the whole cure thing well I basically said that when they die they \'ll return to normal in the beginning. So there is no need for an expensive cure .. some of the extremely rare cases can be an exception on this.
Also just being able to die poses on problem with the gaining no experience .. you don\'t want to have some bloody fun as an anomaly attacking innocent bystanders .. easy, just hop off a cliff and you \'re back to normal so you can start leveling again.

This whole anomaly thing is actually something to give people another option than just growing stronger and training skills mindlessly.

There can also be groups of people that try to exterminate the anomalies and I can see people trying to get a record time in staying in their anomaly state without being killed .. this gives a much bigger field of interractions between players.

[Jakob]

ok, then maybe, if instead of losing their power when they die, they lose it only when they die in a battle that they provoked, and they get a seperate stat in maybe melee or magic or whatever for that anomaly power.

[Zan]

That sounds good .. or perhaps they can only lose their anomaly state when killed by certain weapons or magic. Like for example a werecreature would only lose it when it got killed by a silver falchion. Or an elemental would be destroyed when killed by magic of its opposing element.

Of course they would have special stats according to their type.

[Jakob]

Yeah, that sounds really good, except then they would easily be able to avoid it in some cases, and that would kinda take away from it.  If as a were something I saw a Silver Falchion I\'d run away as fast as my were-legs would carry me.

[Zan]

Well that \'s where silver arrows come in

Would give more roleplaying material though .. wereslayers and people trying their hardest to stay a were for as long as possible. They could give certain bonusses for surviving a certain period of time.

And just because only a silver weapon can take away a were\'s power doesn\'t mean a plain weapon can\'t just kill him.

[Jakob]

maybe when they die, they aren\'t allowed out of deathrealm until they return to their natural state.  That way there is some control over people just running about at random, dying then running about again some more...  I really love this idea, and i think it would be really fun to play as one of these, but where would they be given free reign?  If they are allowed in the cities attacking things, then it would make transformation times dangerous for merchants too.  On the other hand, in a city there are more reasons not to be allowed to attack freeley(sp?)...

[Tarachnul]

As cool as this would be i dont think is really a very good idea as a whole because while it would add a lot of roleplay to the game... having an anomali wouldnt allow you to go into town right?

so what happens when mister uber werewolf of doom(level 22) meets mr werewolf hunter of doom (lvl 20) that has a rich freind?

[Zan]

Anomalies would be allowed to go into cities to attack players but when this is implemented I am expecting all cities to have their NPC guards so for an anomaly to get in a city they \'ll have to bypass those first. They can attack city guards but shouldn\'t be able to kill any other NPC\'s.

And as I have stressed in the beginning these things need to be really limited in numbers so we won\'t encounter an anomaly every hour .. or even every day.