Will there be sentient weapons with their own intelligence, will, ego, etc.? What exactly encompasses an artifact-tier item? Just the attack and damage and a few bonuses? Most MMO's follow a linear algorithm handling weapon/item grade: the higher/rarer the item, the more the stat boost, attack, damage, and gear score. I would love to see Pantheon rise above this mundane feature and integrate sentient items for the highest (legendary) tiered items.
The forgotten realms had that sword Khazid'hea, also known as Cutter. Every wielder that holds this sword must be locked in a battle of wills against the sword, and failure meant death, loss of the sword, or both. Without a greater power to assist them, victory against the impetuous sword would be impossible.
If Pantheon had something like this, it would enrich the world, IMO.
This is a fun thought. It does remind me of Xal'atath the Priest artifact weapon in WoW: Legion. As it would talk to you, whispering madness into your mind. And that flavor is fun and all. But I'm thinking you're looking for something more mechanical in game, right?
Some ideas might be:
Leveling up the weapon
Hitting milestones (kill x number of Orcs)
Having a sort of "companion quest" to find its history
Passing a kind of Lore Check (perception system?) to learn its personality & likes/dislikes
NocturnalDemise said:But I'm thinking you're looking for something more mechanical in game, right?
Both mechanical and a roleplay perspective to give legendary items more life. And if there is life in these items, the world of Terminus would be greater.
From a mechanics perspective, perhaps elemental damage, higher crits, more AC, corruption, regeneration, bleed, keen edge, stat/ability bonuses, holy/unholy sword - just a set of loosely cultivated examples, instead of /just/ higher gear score/ability/damage as you climb a ladder in item rarity.
From a roleplay perspective: item background/description upon examination, and maybe when you're traveling in ruins with a party, it could talk and say something like: "We should not be here..." and the name speaking would be the name of the item instead of the character so those around you know its the item speaking.
I believe Visionary Realms is capable of this and/or something similar, instead of the crude system they have from other MMO's currently out there (I won't mention any names).
As much as I am a pet purist, where pet classes should be the ONLY wielders of pets and if there are other classes that envy such pets, they should suck it up on a one character only server. No Foxes for rangers, no familiars for wizards, sorry, you made your choice at character select and once you said "ok" you are married to it, either start over or deal with what you have and shut up and be happy.
However, with the minds of current MMO consumers being ruined and tainted with multi-skill and multi-talent strategies available in other MMO's allowing a caster to be a healer (who heard of such a thing) this idea may be a way to cater to both sides?
Per the OP's description, what if the weilder of said sword had a will that was stronger than the sword- or is able to work on getting that will stronger. Would then that sword be at the beck and call of the weilder to the point of being...a pet? or sorts? Such maintaining strength of will would come at a cost, like a glyph?- taking an old model maybe needing to go back to ones home city to train at the guildmaster- pay to train? sort of a small maintenence cost?
The Sword of LaMancha: (uber powerful stats) Special effect: if weilder has Will +100 right click has sword hold attention of target for 1min, player can equip additional weapon and engage another target. once effect is over, sword is automatically re-equiped and both targets focused on weilder. Lore: Faithful squire Sancho causes enemy to tilt at windmills.
Special weapons or other gear (there was a sentient hat encountered early in one EQ2 zone though that could be used only as part of a brief quest) always seem appealing.
Never forget the lesson of LOTRO where a system of legendary weapons that was both well reasoned and well received turned into a nightmare that became a noose around the game's throat.
Locking the player in to an item that can be improved has two negative results and they are big ones. It removes the thrill of getting upgrades since that sword (or other item) will be with you forever. It gives the developers an irresistable way to create time sinks by having endless grinding for marginal improvements to the item.
Two solutions - have the item temporary. Not temporary in time but temporary in that there are better items in the game that will eventually replace it. Have the special feature transferrable so that once you have a sword that will tell bad puns every 10 minutes you can remove the pun module and have any future weapon become a ...pundit.
I dont mind certain weapons having unique abilities that make them special, but i really hope each class doesnt get its own Best in Slot weapon that they just use forever until new content comes out, i hope theyre many weapons for each class that could be considred BIS, so that not everyone looks the same.
Also the problem with legendary weapons, especially if you get them early on is that you never replace them, look at lotro for example you get your legendary weapon and thats it, you dont care aabout future weapon drops because you know nothing will be better.
Getting upgrades is a dopamine hit so it seems wise for the devs to have us upgrading often and not having 1 weapon that we are going to keep for 20+ levels because its so strong.
Just my thought anyway.
Grimseethe said:I dont mind certain weapons having unique abilities that make them special, but i really hope each class doesnt get its own Best in Slot weapon that they just use forever until new content comes out, i hope theyre many weapons for each class that could be considred BIS, so that not everyone looks the same.
Also the problem with legendary weapons, especially if you get them early on is that you never replace them, look at lotro for example you get your legendary weapon and thats it, you dont care aabout future weapon drops because you know nothing will be better.
Getting upgrades is a dopamine hit so it seems wise for the devs to have us upgrading often and not having 1 weapon that we are going to keep for 20+ levels because its so strong.
Just my thought anyway.
I agree with you on this point, and will chime in that *if* worse comes to worse there is always crafting to save the day.
Sentient weapons sounds interesting, though I think it would be hard to do well. One possibility would be to allow the player to control what it says (like how many fames allow players to control what pets say). The players could then create some dialogue scripts. Ideally, there would be the ability to create a few dozen dialogue scripts that can be triggered like a proc. Every 1% of hits will trigger a script. Keep the chances very low so it doesn't get annoying (and allow others to block weapon chat).
Obviously, this would only be interesting to players who want to use it for RP. It would really need the weapon to be nameable to work well. I could equip the Shield of Sarcasm and occasionally mock my enemies (or myself) with it.
I had a lot of fun with Berik, Sword of Thunder in EQ2 which was a sentient weapon. It was involved in a couple heritage quests. It didn't have any special game mechanics associated with it though. I would love to see that explored further. Seems like maybe a good post-launch addition.
I love the idea of a sentient item (they always made for great fun in table top games - along with cursed items). Perhaps a way around binding players to a particular item for too long could be to have a way to "decurse" the sentient being from the item. Maybe have the sentience act as a random "stat" on an item if the character isn't already flagged as having that "stat" in their possession. And for additional flavor give the sentience traits like "hates gnome wizards" or "affraid of combat" and have a list of different phrases based on that character trait. Have the "stat" be written in something illegible, but it identifies the specific sentience... like Xbrtp could be a pyrophobic sentience that whispers something funny to you when around fire... or becomes really annoying and makes you want to decurse the item.
dorotea said:Special weapons or other gear (there was a sentient hat encountered early in one EQ2 zone though that could be used only as part of a brief quest) always seem appealing.
Never forget the lesson of LOTRO where a system of legendary weapons that was both well reasoned and well received turned into a nightmare that became a noose around the game's throat.
Locking the player in to an item that can be improved has two negative results and they are big ones. It removes the thrill of getting upgrades since that sword (or other item) will be with you forever. It gives the developers an irresistable way to create time sinks by having endless grinding for marginal improvements to the item.
Two solutions - have the item temporary. Not temporary in time but temporary in that there are better items in the game that will eventually replace it. Have the special feature transferrable so that once you have a sword that will tell bad puns every 10 minutes you can remove the pun module and have any future weapon become a ...pundit.
This I think is the best post I've seen here.
You could have a sword with an evil personality that gets worse as you do good things, and better as you do bad things. Then you could take out it's personality jewel, or what have you, and insert it in something else. This process could even involve tradeskills.
The new sword would get the stat bonuses and the personality trait.
Naturally if you want a more neutral character you might have a neutral personality jewel that tells puns, or a good and evil personality jewel weapon for every situation.
Finally, we can spice it up more with diverse personalities; That prefer different climates, gnome slaughter, pvp, number of unique mounts owned, number of miles walked without a mount, etc.