After we've found our perfect race/class combo, added the finishing cosmetic touches, and came up with the perfect name in character creation, there is always one final and haunting question always remains: "Which Diety will you worship?"
I've always thought that such a massive, life impacting, faction bearing, zone restricting, item accessing, choice being simplified to a list of buttons with a few accompanying paragraphs was hilariously terrifying! How do they expect me to make this choice, especially if I'm new to the game!? There always the safe agnostic choice available, but what if miss out on some really cool aspect of the game that I don't know about yet because I've locked in my choice at my characters inception? With dieties being even more important in Pantheon, a game whose name means "a collection of gods", I doubt I'd ever get past the character creation step! Here's my proposal:
What if we allow characters to change their celestial alignment in a meaningful way by having epic religious quests available?
By wrapping this option in a long and arduous quest, we give characters the option to change religons without trivializing that choice. During the course of the epic quest, whatever factions need rebalancing during a chacter's realignment could take place within the events of the quest. If you were originally an agnostic warrior, but have been pursuaded to join the ranks of an "evil" deity of destruction, you could very well have to slay, or even sacrifice, a group of "good" clerics or crusaders. If you were once an agnostic monk, but have since been enlighted to follow the peaceful god of nature, an epic pilgrimage perception quest would have you travel the world of Terminus to become one with nature. Also, the effect of it being an epic quest would probably require the help of other like-minded people giving us a sense of a religion-based congregation as a social platform.
What do you guys think?
Bonus ideas:
1) What if religious alignment required upkeep? Clerics would have to occasionally worship in temples, Dire Lords would have to perform sacrificial rituals, Monks would need to introspectively meditate, etc. If you failed to perform your upkeeep, you eventually become agnostic. This could help liven up cities as well as people would be spending time worshiping. For the less inspired, a monetary or item donations could suffice which could serve as a money/item sink to help stabilize the economy.
2) What if there were religious hierarchies based on the frequency of your religious upkeep with their own set of honorific titles? For example, Nun-> Pastor -> Prior -> Bishop -> Archbishop -> Cardinal, where each tier had its own set of religion based quests available to them? It would be awesome to see a cleric with epic vestiments he/she earned by being especially devout.
Aren't deities assigned at the start of your character build and then it becomes your mission to appease or please that Deity overtime. There was also an idea quite early on ...that you would sacrifice unneeded, unwanted gear/weapons to that Deity to gain favour. Not sure if this is still something that will be, however. :)
Cana
CanadinaXegony said:Aren't deities assigned at the start of your character build and then it becomes your mission to appease or please that Deity overtime.
I think choosing your deity AFTER character creation is a great idea.
You could even have something like:
At level 5, you receive a message in your mailbox or an NPC of your race starts telling you about the gods that your people follow. You then go speak to representatives and follow a small quest line for each to learn about that particular deity.
After you learn about your racial deities, you can choose to become a follower of that deity. Now, by attending services or ceremonies, following certain rituals, and giving tributes to your chosen god, perhaps you can access certain buffs or armor patterns, for instance. The more you honor your god, the more likely it is that you might have a prayer answered (a buff/heal/dmg spell depending on class).
Now after a while, many levels later...you have not gone to worship your god for some time. Your prayers are going unanswered. Your faith is waning, and you are basically agnostic.
You go to the city one day, and decide to check out a new church/temple/ceremony that you had heard about from a friend who is not your race, and you decide to listen in and learn about their gods. You do the little questlines, and find that this other god is very much in line with your feelings, and you decide to follow them instead of your original deity.
To do so, you need to renounce your faith in the old religion, and by doing so, lose all access to the buffs/armor/answered prayers and so on. You also lose all the prior "tribute" points you may have stored up.
To me, this adds a bit of immersion to game...we don't stay the same in our lives, so why should we pick a deity at char creation and be stuck with it? This could even be tied into perception...when only followers of certain deities would get the perception, like a visitation of sorts.
We just need to be sure that none of the patterns, spells etc are overpowering or game changing, but just a nice flavor. So a buff might be to add 5-10% to food duration, or perhaps a small % to fire spells and so on. A prayer (a heal or dmg spell) might be answered as a small ward or increased dmg to a spell. A prayer can also be unanswered, (fizzled), depending on the amount of favor you have with your god. And, even then, you could only use the prayer once a day or something.
Frogz0r said:I think choosing your deity AFTER character creation is a great idea.
You could even have something like:
At level 5, you receive a message in your mailbox or an NPC of your race starts telling you about the gods that your people follow. You then go speak to representatives and follow a small quest line for each to learn about that particular deity.
After you learn about your racial deities, you can choose to become a follower of that deity. Now, by attending services or ceremonies, following certain rituals, and giving tributes to your chosen god, perhaps you can access certain buffs or armor patterns, for instance. The more you honor your god, the more likely it is that you might have a prayer answered (a buff/heal/dmg spell depending on class).
Now after a while, many levels later...you have not gone to worship your god for some time. Your prayers are going unanswered. Your faith is waning, and you are basically agnostic.
You go to the city one day, and decide to check out a new church/temple/ceremony that you had heard about from a friend who is not your race, and you decide to listen in and learn about their gods. You do the little questlines, and find that this other god is very much in line with your feelings, and you decide to follow them instead of your original deity.
To do so, you need to renounce your faith in the old religion, and by doing so, lose all access to the buffs/armor/answered prayers and so on. You also lose all the prior "tribute" points you may have stored up.
