As a side-thought on things that a player could consume time on while LFG....
There are many of us that really enjoy the story of the gameworld we're playing in. We like to ferret out all those reasons things are the way they are, and the history that led to the current state of affairs. It might be as simple as why that little farming village is so small and issolated, to how the Grand Vizier came to his current seat of power, or why everyone has an overwhelming urge to punt gnomes. (Ok, that last one is obvious, but you get my meaning. )
What if there were an in-game skill or sort of a rank of some kind that recognized lore obtained and shared by a character?
I'm picturing something that allows for the copying of symbols, runes, scrolls or books which can than be returned to a capital city's library for retention. The act of gathering lore increases access to and the skill and accuracy of the information collected. This information can then be accessible to anyone (or just those elevated to scholar status) for review.
I dont suggest this as a path to power in terms of combat ability or anything. But perhaps it could be an entertaining side-job for those interested with the potential for mundane perks. Maybe the ability to scribe spells slightly faster, or gain audience with key NPCs for lore-related questlines.
Is this a meaningless notion or is there some merit here?
Feyshtey said:As a side-thought on things that a player could consume time on while LFG....
There are many of us that really enjoy the story of the gameworld we're playing in. We like to ferret out all those reasons things are the way they are, and the history that led to the current state of affairs. It might be as simple as why that little farming village is so small and issolated, to how the Grand Vizier came to his current seat of power, or why everyone has an overwhelming urge to punt gnomes. (Ok, that last one is obvious, but you get my meaning. )
What if there were an in-game skill or sort of a rank of some kind that recognized lore obtained and shared by a character?
I'm picturing something that allows for the copying of symbols, runes, scrolls or books which can than be returned to a capital city's library for retention. The act of gathering lore increases access to and the skill and accuracy of the information collected. This information can then be accessible to anyone (or just those elevated to scholar status) for review.
I dont suggest this as a path to power in terms of combat ability or anything. But perhaps it could be an entertaining side-job for those interested with the potential for mundane perks. Maybe the ability to scribe spells slightly faster, or gain audience with key NPCs for lore-related questlines.
Is this a meaningless notion or is there some merit here?
I love your idea
Now imagine you can purchase or craft books make maps then sell the information in the book that you added. From your own experiences and your own learning. You could create lore of the character the places you visited and if this is a skills you invested into then it would automatically fill in general information of the area and allow you to elaborate may it be on foliage or tempature or even your own experience of beast you might have encountered or identify something strange you came across but couldn't figure it out since it was not part of your perception. Or identify if someone from your group was able to do something in an area but to put it in your own words. You might even want to have fun with it and put a puzzle in the puzzle.
I definitely would love to see this happening!
While I cannot say I share your enthusiasm for lore, I love your idea of having additional skills that can be raised that have nothing to do with combat. I think this is an area that is often overlooked but can do quite a bit to set a game apart from the others. In addition to being an alternative for folks who like to solo more than others, it is also a timesink that would give folks something to do between expansions.
There are so many possibilities...perhaps a sailing skill that, when high enough, allows you to travel quicker between continents than normal boats or find better fishing spots (provided boats and fishing are in game). Another might be a cartography or exploration skill or something, that when high enough, might allow you to use portals to different areas. Maybe an equestrian skill that makes mounted travel faster the higher it is raised and you raise it by running in horse races.
I would love to see numerous "utility" type of skills that can be worked on so that there are some alternatives to just rolling alts once your main is pretty well geared up. I have no clue how difficult it would be for the devs to implement stuff like this, but I would love to see it.
Feyshtey said:As a side-thought on things that a player could consume time on while LFG....
There are many of us that really enjoy the story of the gameworld we're playing in. We like to ferret out all those reasons things are the way they are, and the history that led to the current state of affairs. It might be as simple as why that little farming village is so small and issolated, to how the Grand Vizier came to his current seat of power, or why everyone has an overwhelming urge to punt gnomes. (Ok, that last one is obvious, but you get my meaning. )
What if there were an in-game skill or sort of a rank of some kind that recognized lore obtained and shared by a character?
I'm picturing something that allows for the copying of symbols, runes, scrolls or books which can than be returned to a capital city's library for retention. The act of gathering lore increases access to and the skill and accuracy of the information collected. This information can then be accessible to anyone (or just those elevated to scholar status) for review.
I dont suggest this as a path to power in terms of combat ability or anything. But perhaps it could be an entertaining side-job for those interested with the potential for mundane perks. Maybe the ability to scribe spells slightly faster, or gain audience with key NPCs for lore-related questlines.
Is this a meaningless notion or is there some merit here?
Oh man, this a good idea. I know there are some that won’t like it but it adds to the ability to learn more from the world of Terminus. There are a bunch of skills, spells, recipes and possibly quests gained from this. With the perception system I can see this fitting in nicely for epic quests and long duration quest lines.
Just some thoughts there.
Great Post!!
Ox
Excellent post! I love ideas like these. There was a post a month ago talking about skill decay and "forgetting". I posted something in there that might be relevant to this discussion.
"It would be cool if this forget mechanic had a statistic associate with it. For example, a character with high wisdom could retain information longer than others. This could potential create a novel information market in Pantheon where the "gurus" of the world broker their acquired knowledge for some coin. Imagine there is a quest which requires the knowledge of a location or NPC name. You could buy this information to enable or progress the quest. There could also be a new "study" skill akin to meditation where characters could reinforce information to avoid forgetting and a "teaching" skill to facilitate the rate at which information is shared. There could also be an interactive journal, similar to a spell book, where limited amounts of information could be transcribed rather than spells such that if there is something you want to ensure doesn't become forgotten, that information could occupy a slot in the journal. Note that transcription could also serve as the vehicle of the distribution of information as the written word. You could transcribe an entry from your own journal, write it on some parchment, and give or sell that to other players. This would also make learning languages really important. Another trade skill could be translating!"
The skill you are talking about could just be the acquisition of the information that I was refering to in my previous post. Regardless of the forget mechanism, it would be awesome to be able to buy and share user generated lore-based snipits. I could really see this as an avenue for quests as I mentioned above. Love it!
Don't leave our old pal The Keeper (the consummate loremaster, and quite possibly a bard) out of this. If you are seeking / gaining / training your lore skill, surely you will occasionally be hunting for vague clues and hints left by TK or his keeperlings. Perhaps when your skill is high enough, an epic lore quest involves tracking down and interacting with Mr. K in person. That excites me. To record the tales of The Keeper via personal interview. Sign me up. And then we can go kill dragons for dessert.
I think this is a great idea. I’d even take it a step farther and tie it into a few of the other game systems -- language skills, the progeny system and the perception system.
Sorry for the incoming wall of text (too much free time this evening)!
The Language System:
Instead of just having people be able to learn languages by spamming them to each other, have their skill caps be tied to the Lore they’ve uncovered (after all, we don't learn languages in a vacuum, they require context). For example, a new character might be able to only raise a foreign language skill to 10 (out of 100 possible) when they first roll a new toon. Then have lore elements out in the world that, once studied, raise the character’s potential skill cap.
-- A ‘lore element’ might be some book or scroll they examined in a library.
-- A note found on an NPC they killed.
-- An artifact they encountered.
-- Some scripture they found on a wall or statue, etc.
If each lore element raised the skill cap by 1 point, they’d then have to find and examine 90 lore elements throughout the world of Terminus before they could max out the foreign language. Now the home cities would be rife with potential lore elements. Say that each home city had 60ish lore elements contained in them for the respective race. Going to the library alone would allow you to study 20-30 books, the rest could be scattered throughout the city on random bookshelves, statues, tombs, etc. A human visiting Wild’s End for the first time would then have to spend time searching throughout the city for interactive lore elements to gradually raise their knowledge of halfling culture and language-learning potential. The remainder of the lore items they would need to study would then be spread out throughout the world of Terminus.
There would be far more elements available than actually needed to master a language, so it wouldn’t be designed such that you had to travel the whole world over to master any one language. In fact, just adventuring in the proximity of a given race, along with studying what’s available in their home town, should yield enough lore elements to master their language.
The Perception System (and Lore Groups):
The Lore elements could be split up into Lore Groups based on the subject that they refer to. These Lore Groups need not be restricted to a given races’ lore elements. In fact, important Lore Groups would contain lore elements from multiple races. As an example, the “Ogre Club of Elf-bashy-ness” Lore Group might contain the following:
-- 2 Elvish lore elements:
-- A book in Faerthale about an ogre brute who defeated a number of elves.
-- Rune’s on the tombstone of an ancient elf warrior.
-- And 2 Ogre lore elements:
-- A painting and associated scripture in an Ogre’s home that depicts an ogre warrior wielding a massive club.
-- A note dropped off of a named ogre that discusses the location where an ancestor of his fell in battle a long, long time ago.
Now for where this ties into the perception system. Some perception triggers could be locked behind the possession of certain Lore Elements. Like in the example above, all of the lore elements might lead you to a tombstone in the area specified by the note dropped off of the named ogre. The tombstone could have an image of the club seen on the ogre painting, and a number of runes inscribed into the tombstone. Only if you possessed the ogre painting and elven warrior’s tombstone lore elements would you be capable of getting a perception trigger at the ogre’s tombstone and activating the runes on it. This might spawn an undead ogre that drops a massive club, and thus grant you the ability to terrorize all of elven kind.
Lore Masters and The Progeny System:
Collected Lore Elements could all be represented as pages in a Lore Journal for your character. The pages would contain the relevant info about the lore element, and maybe some brief discription about where it was obtained. Some of these elements might be transcribable, so if you were looking for info about a particular Lore Group and someone else had it, given the right materials, they might be able to make a copy of it for you (I think this should only apply to a small percentage of Lore Elements). At the very least, the lore master could tell you where to go to acquire the lore elements for yourself.
-- Progeny toons, however, could have the lore journal passed down to them directly, so they wouldn’t need to go re-acquire all the lore elements again. They would thus, also have whatever language skill-caps that their parents had, although they would still need to raise the skills for themselves.
Elrandir said:I think this is a great idea. I’d even take it a step farther and tie it into a few of the other game systems -- language skills, the progeny system and the perception system.
Sorry for the incoming wall of text (too much free time this evening)!
The Language System:
Instead of just having people be able to learn languages by spamming them to each other, have their skill caps be tied to the Lore they’ve uncovered (after all, we don't learn languages in a vacuum, they require context). For example, a new character might be able to only raise a foreign language skill to 10 (out of 100 possible) when they first roll a new toon. Then have lore elements out in the world that, once studied, raise the character’s potential skill cap.
-- A ‘lore element’ might be some book or scroll they examined in a library.
-- A note found on an NPC they killed.
-- An artifact they encountered.
-- Some scripture they found on a wall or statue, etc.
If each lore element raised the skill cap by 1 point, they’d then have to find and examine 90 lore elements throughout the world of Terminus before they could max out the foreign language. Now the home cities would be rife with potential lore elements. Say that each home city had 60ish lore elements contained in them for the respective race. Going to the library alone would allow you to study 20-30 books, the rest could be scattered throughout the city on random bookshelves, statues, tombs, etc. A human visiting Wild’s End for the first time would then have to spend time searching throughout the city for interactive lore elements to gradually raise their knowledge of halfling culture and language-learning potential. The remainder of the lore items they would need to study would then be spread out throughout the world of Terminus.
There would be far more elements available than actually needed to master a language, so it wouldn’t be designed such that you had to travel the whole world over to master any one language. In fact, just adventuring in the proximity of a given race, along with studying what’s available in their home town, should yield enough lore elements to master their language.
The Perception System (and Lore Groups):
The Lore elements could be split up into Lore Groups based on the subject that they refer to. These Lore Groups need not be restricted to a given races’ lore elements. In fact, important Lore Groups would contain lore elements from multiple races. As an example, the “Ogre Club of Elf-bashy-ness” Lore Group might contain the following:
-- 2 Elvish lore elements:
-- A book in Faerthale about an ogre brute who defeated a number of elves.
-- Rune’s on the tombstone of an ancient elf warrior.
-- And 2 Ogre lore elements:
-- A painting and associated scripture in an Ogre’s home that depicts an ogre warrior wielding a massive club.
-- A note dropped off of a named ogre that discusses the location where an ancestor of his fell in battle a long, long time ago.
Now for where this ties into the perception system. Some perception triggers could be locked behind the possession of certain Lore Elements. Like in the example above, all of the lore elements might lead you to a tombstone in the area specified by the note dropped off of the named ogre. The tombstone could have an image of the club seen on the ogre painting, and a number of runes inscribed into the tombstone. Only if you possessed the ogre painting and elven warrior’s tombstone lore elements would you be capable of getting a perception trigger at the ogre’s tombstone and activating the runes on it. This might spawn an undead ogre that drops a massive club, and thus grant you the ability to terrorize all of elven kind.
Lore Masters and The Progeny System:
Collected Lore Elements could all be represented as pages in a Lore Journal for your character. The pages would contain the relevant info about the lore element, and maybe some brief discription about where it was obtained. Some of these elements might be transcribable, so if you were looking for info about a particular Lore Group and someone else had it, given the right materials, they might be able to make a copy of it for you (I think this should only apply to a small percentage of Lore Elements). At the very least, the lore master could tell you where to go to acquire the lore elements for yourself.
-- Progeny toons, however, could have the lore journal passed down to them directly, so they wouldn’t need to go re-acquire all the lore elements again. They would thus, also have whatever language skill-caps that their parents had, although they would still need to raise the skills for themselves.
My comment would be find more free time because not only you but everyone that posted so far have written amazing ideas I love reading this thread.
I really like this Idea and the Ideas put forward by the responders in this Thread abd can see this heading somewhere.
Having Players being able to Engage in the Lore and bring back runes, tomes, scrolls, etc to their home city. Imagine a Museum that can be visited inside the City`s with the Lore that is collected by Players. Or see the Scolars Advance with knowledge that they can eventually understand and offer Quests or Wisdom.
I would also like to see this advance to Personal Lore to if decided to go this way. Not a must but an option for players to create their own unique Lore Story Background based off their Character and Adventures.
As many have already pointed out the obvious Perception and this Lore System could be very intresting and would widen the possabilitys by alot. Remeber Heritage Quests? So i could see some kind of system in place, for the Lore Seekers connected to the Language System suggested that would unlock so called "Heritage Quests within the Perception System. This would require you becoming a specialist for the that perticular Lore and it`s Language to have that unlocked.
This also helps with the dilemma of the Progeny System and how to keep high level players engaged in the Lower Tier Areas. There are some many things one can do with a system like this and the Ideas are just great. I think we might have to Cover this on one of our Shows and see what else we all can come up with. Makes for a great Topic!
Great Post and Idea Feyshtey
Yarnila
I'd love to see some lore that is hidden and really really hard to find. Maybe a hidden book on the floor in the depths of a dungeon that takes a full group hours to reach. Or perhaps scrolls carried by high level raid mobs. Anything to make finding out the lore of the world really hard and rewarding. Something that requires the co-operation of multiple people to unearth the story of the place you are in.
It was quite fun to figure out the different outposts in the EverQuest and to talk to the NPCs to see why they had set up shop in that area. Anything that encourages players to explore all the different areas of the game. I have to say I love the idea of having hidden books that contain important lore being spread out throughout the world that only the most dedicated people will actually find.
Elrandir said:I think this is a great idea. I’d even take it a step farther and tie it into a few of the other game systems -- language skills, the progeny system and the perception system.
Sorry for the incoming wall of text (too much free time this evening)!
The Language System:
Instead of just having people be able to learn languages by spamming them to each other, have their skill caps be tied to the Lore they’ve uncovered (after all, we don't learn languages in a vacuum, they require context). For example, a new character might be able to only raise a foreign language skill to 10 (out of 100 possible) when they first roll a new toon. Then have lore elements out in the world that, once studied, raise the character’s potential skill cap.
-- A ‘lore element’ might be some book or scroll they examined in a library.
-- A note found on an NPC they killed.
-- An artifact they encountered.
-- Some scripture they found on a wall or statue, etc.
If each lore element raised the skill cap by 1 point, they’d then have to find and examine 90 lore elements throughout the world of Terminus before they could max out the foreign language. Now the home cities would be rife with potential lore elements. Say that each home city had 60ish lore elements contained in them for the respective race. Going to the library alone would allow you to study 20-30 books, the rest could be scattered throughout the city on random bookshelves, statues, tombs, etc. A human visiting Wild’s End for the first time would then have to spend time searching throughout the city for interactive lore elements to gradually raise their knowledge of halfling culture and language-learning potential. The remainder of the lore items they would need to study would then be spread out throughout the world of Terminus.
There would be far more elements available than actually needed to master a language, so it wouldn’t be designed such that you had to travel the whole world over to master any one language. In fact, just adventuring in the proximity of a given race, along with studying what’s available in their home town, should yield enough lore elements to master their language.
The Perception System (and Lore Groups):
The Lore elements could be split up into Lore Groups based on the subject that they refer to. These Lore Groups need not be restricted to a given races’ lore elements. In fact, important Lore Groups would contain lore elements from multiple races. As an example, the “Ogre Club of Elf-bashy-ness” Lore Group might contain the following:
-- 2 Elvish lore elements:
-- A book in Faerthale about an ogre brute who defeated a number of elves.
-- Rune’s on the tombstone of an ancient elf warrior.
-- And 2 Ogre lore elements:
-- A painting and associated scripture in an Ogre’s home that depicts an ogre warrior wielding a massive club.
-- A note dropped off of a named ogre that discusses the location where an ancestor of his fell in battle a long, long time ago.
Now for where this ties into the perception system. Some perception triggers could be locked behind the possession of certain Lore Elements. Like in the example above, all of the lore elements might lead you to a tombstone in the area specified by the note dropped off of the named ogre. The tombstone could have an image of the club seen on the ogre painting, and a number of runes inscribed into the tombstone. Only if you possessed the ogre painting and elven warrior’s tombstone lore elements would you be capable of getting a perception trigger at the ogre’s tombstone and activating the runes on it. This might spawn an undead ogre that drops a massive club, and thus grant you the ability to terrorize all of elven kind.
Lore Masters and The Progeny System:
Collected Lore Elements could all be represented as pages in a Lore Journal for your character. The pages would contain the relevant info about the lore element, and maybe some brief discription about where it was obtained. Some of these elements might be transcribable, so if you were looking for info about a particular Lore Group and someone else had it, given the right materials, they might be able to make a copy of it for you (I think this should only apply to a small percentage of Lore Elements). At the very least, the lore master could tell you where to go to acquire the lore elements for yourself.
-- Progeny toons, however, could have the lore journal passed down to them directly, so they wouldn’t need to go re-acquire all the lore elements again. They would thus, also have whatever language skill-caps that their parents had, although they would still need to raise the skills for themselves.
If someone told me the idea of "horizontal leveling" and I didn't know what it was? I would say Feshtey's and Elrandir's posts,
was it.
You guys have so much great ideas. I really like it.
To have tools in game that provide us the possibility to search, save, exchange knowledge about the lore and the languages remind me some good moments on a mmorpg, like the dragon language quest in eq2. It was just a simple quest where you need to find runes all over the world, it created an emulation between the players at the start. The best was when they launched mythical quests because there weren't spoilers on internet, and sony let us a way to discuss about the search on specific channel that linked all the servers communities. You had to know precisely the lore in general because there weren't markers on your map, etc.. only some clues. We were like detectives.
It sounds it could be perfectly integrated to the game, actually all of yours ideas make me think about the story of the keepings of the castigue in pantheon lore. Narian Castigue and Kaolyen Greyborne search for "dragon accord" information all over the world, their journey brings them to Khazas the dwarf king, and then the ice dragon at the summit of a mountain... this is so epic ! There are so mysterious part in the lore already, why the dragon faded away ? where the gnome are coming from and what they are ? why the halflings seem to be doomed ? without mentioning the gods and their descensions...
These "tools" could really make our adventures more alive than the classic lore dialog with npc we didn't read in our last mmo we played because it was such a boring way to learn it. At the end, i'm thinking about all the lore content that i skipped like that.. it's a shame and a waste of time for the devs :/
This is a brilliant idea!
As long as it can be done as a skill on its own, and not be lumped into the crafting limitations (one skill only to master), I am all for it. One mastered crafting skill, fishing, and lore keeping skill at one time would make my day.
I would certainly do this on all my alts since I am a quest and lore junkie..this would be a dream come true :)
I thought about this again. What if during your epic questlines you had to actually do this sort of thing. You might actually have to do some homework to find out where and what to do. I know some will cry foul here but it’s an epic quest or legendary one. It should not be handed to you like a hot cinnamon bun and a coffee and say here you go. I would love to dive deep into a dungeon with a library or some ancient temple to go find this stuff.
Also on this same line is the actual skills involved. Multiple languages could be involved and skill required to read them. I can see this breaking off into arcane and or combat types of information needed. I could really open up the questing in the game to some awesome adventures. Almost forgot the grouping aspect to this. What if you needed to take people with you with different skills? For example, I could not read draconic but another member of my party could. That way you are not going into places alone and asking for corpse runs… but its adventure with your friends.
Ox
Oxillion said:I thought about this again. What if during your epic questlines you had to actually do this sort of thing. You might actually have to do some homework to find out where and what to do. I know some will cry foul here but it’s an epic quest or legendary one. It should not be handed to you like a hot cinnamon bun and a coffee and say here you go. I would love to dive deep into a dungeon with a library or some ancient temple to go find this stuff.
Also on this same line is the actual skills involved. Multiple languages could be involved and skill required to read them. I can see this breaking off into arcane and or combat types of information needed. I could really open up the questing in the game to some awesome adventures. Almost forgot the grouping aspect to this. What if you needed to take people with you with different skills? For example, I could not read draconic but another member of my party could. That way you are not going into places alone and asking for corpse runs… but its adventure with your friends.
Ox
I love it Ox. Epic quests have always had some sort of faction to level before advancing, but to have to learn languages and/or use your group-mate to read them for you is an awesome idea.
Oxillion said:I thought about this again. What if during your epic questlines you had to actually do this sort of thing. You might actually have to do some homework to find out where and what to do. I know some will cry foul here but it’s an epic quest or legendary one. It should not be handed to you like a hot cinnamon bun and a coffee and say here you go. I would love to dive deep into a dungeon with a library or some ancient temple to go find this stuff.
Also on this same line is the actual skills involved. Multiple languages could be involved and skill required to read them. I can see this breaking off into arcane and or combat types of information needed. I could really open up the questing in the game to some awesome adventures. Almost forgot the grouping aspect to this. What if you needed to take people with you with different skills? For example, I could not read draconic but another member of my party could. That way you are not going into places alone and asking for corpse runs… but its adventure with your friends.
Ox
Great idea..in my mind makes it more of an epic quest that way :)
I'd like to thank Voices of Terminus for the great twitch stream session on this topic. They already have it uploaded, and here's the URL for anyone that'd like to catch up on it : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OSYQaKP11Vg
Not to discount what came before at all, but the chat on this particular topic starts at around the 12:30 mark.
I took a few notes on the great ways that the notion was expanded with. Hopefully this simple list can stir up some additional conversation here in the thread. I take no credit for these notions brought about by many people. I'm sorry that I didnt track all the sources for credit.
⦁ It could be a built-in timesink to help slow the consumption and eventual stagnation of content.
⦁ It could be a potential alternative to one of the percieved goals of Progeny, in that instead of rerolling a new character to keep lower level areas relevant, you could instead lead higher level players there in search of lore that is requred for later lore progressions.
⦁ It's a great addition to Perception system, perhaps thru you can percieve something that you wouldnt have otherwise taken note of.
⦁ Leksur mentioned the compulsion to find those missing pieces of lore. This could present the possibilty of player uninterested in doing lore themselves selling a book they have discovered, encouraging player interaction thru economy.
⦁ This could mixes with language skills. Lorekeeping could allow mastering a language beyond that which you might have otherwise attained because the lore grants you context.
⦁ It could allow a path to attaining cultural reputation thru the respect given in the time you've taken to understand that culture's history.
⦁ Keep it seperate from other crafting skills, remain a secondary seperate horizontal path of progression. This allows anyone to engage to the deepest level if they choose to without forgoing some other craft.
⦁ Lore elements split into lore groups: One artifact discovery might contain mutliple lore categories from racial, cultural, crafting origins, and reasons the artifact was created or what it might be best utlized for. Or perhaps even how to create like artifacts through some other crafting skill.
⦁ It could tie to diplomacy, giving the ability understand and utilize hierarchy of a culture to your advantage.
⦁ It oculd be a pathway to help the developers gain time, pre-load lore tidbit breadcrumbs to unlock upcomng expansions or new content releases. Players could be engaged in the backstory before the content is even released.
⦁ It could be used as a means to unlocking zones, zone-changes, or even server-wide events. Thru lore gathering and consolidation, a server's population could collectively discover new content.
⦁ Aids slowing content consumption by having people investigating mysteries that then lead to new content or changing content.
⦁ Potential zone changes associated with an account, so that a player must be with others that have the same lore information collected in order to share the new content.
Downside is that people are at different stages and it creates conflicts with who you can go to a place with.
⦁ Presents the possibility that server-wide changes could mean server shards are at varied levels of progression based on that shard's lorekeeper participation levels. This can encourage teamwork for the server to resolve new challenges that lore unlocked in order to clear the way to content, and drive greater social interactions.
⦁ From a developer perspective it can be used as achievement system, puzzle system, crafting tie-in, or addition to almost any other game system. None being a large amount of complexity from a dev standpoint but potentially adds so much.
⦁ With progeny, you could potentially find lore in the gameworld about your ancestral characters.
⦁ Possibly create a personal library within player housing.
⦁ Tie in to epic quests, requiring gathering information that allows the creation of the epic weapon, or increase power of it.
⦁ Potentially added as a feature of an expansion to encourage going back to original zones and not requiring development shoe-horn the idea in at release.
⦁ Potential for a minimum of population of server to hit LoreMaster, and their cooperation unlocks content. Lore gathered and compiled at the libraries or museums allows others to research it there, and make correlations. The compiled Master Lore Tome completes the progression. Potentially changing the tier of progression from one shard to the next.
⦁ Can open up new lines of quests for the server population, not specific to the discoverer(s).
⦁ Encourage higher level scholars to work with lower level characters to uncover information in lower level zones.
From the conversation I also imagined it having a literal puzzle aspect, where lore scraps can be collected and there being an in-game interface where the pieces can be put together to make completed texts visible that give clues to other paths of investigation.
Anyway, I loved hearing all the ways people took this to a whole new level, and it's exciting to consider the possibilities.
the idea a non-combat focused 'loremaster' might get increased percaption, allowing for opening areas that any others may not
or even just (like in lord of the rings) when a high level loremaster is the only one that can understand the runes and/or open the doors to a long lost dungeon, or the ability to 'percieve' that no, the dust you got from that mining node isnt trash...its a rare substance that has value...needs...NEEDS to be in the game.
adding an extreme value to a non combat focused class is something just about every mmo is lacking.
Hey Fey,
This post ROCKS! Ideas like this one are far reaching in a game like this one. I hope VR is watching this thread. This is one of those processes that can flip a game on its head.
With the AI tools far beyond what they were in the roll out for EQ so I fell this is doable. Obviously resources will be needed to do it and integration into the platform lattice will take some effort.
I have been thinking about this one for hours. Awesome post just awesome!!
Ox