Topic

Better Shrines

It may be too late in the development cycle for this, but I thought I'd put it out there.

Background:

Shrines are (currently) boring to me. I've kind of realized why now. The problem is that I can donate anything at any time and so when I want favor I just kind of aimlessly acquire things of relatively high value and donate them until I have enough favor to get an emblem or learn faster etc.

Contrast this with street projects where you need specific items to advance. Here you have a goal: Make 20 Cold Tacos. And since my action feels more directed, it is more interesting.

Proposal:

In place of (or in addition to) donating specific goods to shrines, have each shrine make the player a random offer. Bring me X specific goods and I'll give you Y favor.

Details:

The favor given would of course be based on the existing favor given for those goods. The goods can be specifically selected based on what the player can make. The randomization method can be weighted towards asking for higher-favor items.

One nice thing is that you could have the seed be based on a hash of a counter (number of fulfilled requests to this giant), the location, and the player name. This would mean that a player would see different requests at different shrines for the same giant. And when they fulfilled one request, all the shrine requests for that giant would be re-randomized.

Learning new skills would not change the existing offers, but would cause the new items they can make to potentially appear when the offers were reset.

This would only require a constant amount of storage per player: one counter per giant and a bitset per giant showing what skills were available to that player when the last request was made.

Additional Note:

A similar system could be added to street spirits which would make them pay bonus currants if you bring them X specific goods. This might make earning money more interesting and goal-directed as well.

Posted 17 months ago by Beak Subscriber! | Permalink

Replies

  • I like this! I would say it could be incorporated into the current system (or, more accurately, included next to/on top of).

    Have the "shine" occasionally give the option. In a similar way of Rube occasionally giving you the option to trade. "Hey, I need 20 purple flowers! Stat! I'll reward you greatly!" Make it worth more favor points than the current system (which treats shines a bit like trash cans that pay you back... a bit like depositing empty bottles and cans). But the current system could stay also.

    Also would add a level of "quests" that aren't tied to the skill tree or a quest tree and are "repeatable," solving a bit of the current problem of running out of quests.
    Posted 17 months ago by Lord Bacon-o Subscriber! | Permalink
  • One thing I never really understood is why Favor for donated items is exactly the same for every shrine, every giant.

    It's kind of odd that such contrasting personalities and specialties in the giants would be satiated by the exact same things.  Wouldn't it make more sense for Zille to prefer mined items and Til would prefer compounds or something?
    Posted 17 months ago by Fabulon Subscriber! | Permalink
  • I like this idea. At one point, my fruit tree was telling me how much a giant (Pot?) liked lemons, and I immediately went and donated a bunch of lemons.. to no effect. I was disappointed! If not random offers, I'd definitely like to see the giants favor certain items over others, like Fabulon suggests.
    Posted 17 months ago by Sheepy Subscriber! | Permalink
  • @Sheepy: Pot is the one that theoretically likes lemons, yes. I remember trying the same thing myself. Nnnno dice.
    Posted 17 months ago by Caesura Subscriber! | Permalink
  • +1
    Posted 17 months ago by Momo McGlitch Subscriber! | Permalink
  • I assumed that the message about Pot liking lemons was meant to be a clue that different Giants liked different things and I should figure that out. But then when I gave lemons to Pot he/it didn't seem to appreciate it any more than anything else.

    I would definitely like for different shrines to like different items. I don't need for it to be an assigned quest or told who likes what. It could be a fun project to wander around figuring it out. (Though it then has to turn up in the encyclopedia, because I'll promptly forget...)
    Posted 17 months ago by Colette Subscriber! | Permalink
  • When I first started, and saw that each skill tree had a giant associated with it, I assumed that things you could make with that skill tree would get more favor from that giant. 
    Posted 17 months ago by WindBorn Subscriber! | Permalink
  • I love this idea! It's a great (easy) new way to incorporate more "quests" into the game, and boy do we need more busy work! (Really... give me more busy work... but the more variety the better--I'm sick of doing the same things over and over... well, not really sick yet, but I'm sure I will be eventually...) Also, we could have an image of the actual giant appear in front of us to give us those quests, which would make the giants feel more real and meaningful, and show off the beautiful artwork the developers have worked on for them.

    Also, donating to giants would take a lot more thought (creating more challenge and thus more fun) if different giants gave different favor for different items. However, It would have to make some sort of logical sense, so the players could figure it out by reading up about the giant rather than through trial-and-error.
    Posted 17 months ago by Shepherdmoon Subscriber! | Permalink
  • +1 to each of the ideas here :)
    Posted 17 months ago by Millie Subscriber! | Permalink
  • +1 for Beak's original idea, Fabulon's suggestion for Giant's to have preferences and Shepherdmoon's request for more busy work.
    Posted 17 months ago by martian-b Subscriber! | Permalink
  • totally agree.
    Posted 17 months ago by Sita Subscriber! | Permalink
  • +1 to having the shrines ask for random offerings.

    That makes me think of slot machines, but in reverse. When we want to gain favor we pull the handle on the side of the shrine, the gears get busy (like the fruit changing machine) and then we see what objects the Shine wants from us.

    I also realllllly like the idea of actualizing the hinted at correlation between specific objects gaining more/less favor from specific giants.
    Posted 17 months ago by The Cat Face Subscriber! | Permalink
  • I think lemons and lemonade should do something special on Lemadan.
    Because when Lem gives you lemons...
    Posted 17 months ago by Lelu Subscriber! | Permalink
  • ....he is giving you lemon aid...
    Posted 17 months ago by The Cat Face Subscriber! | Permalink
  • I think there are many great suggestions here. I was a bit disappointed when I figured out that favor points were exactly correlated with the value of an item. It just doesn't seem to reflect the complexity of the world and the (supposed) heterogeneity of the giants.
    Posted 16 months ago by Bobby Chuckles Subscriber! | Permalink
  • Love all these ideas...I think this might explain why I so dislike leveling up via shrine donations. 
    I especially like that wanted items would not be fixed, because if they were individualized but didn't change, that would make for a pretty short term mystery--once the spreadsheet got done, knowing what to donate where wouldn't be any more interesting than it is now.

    Another thing that might be cool is if the shrines never told you what they wanted, but you had to practice a divination ritual to find out.  Say you have a stack of musicblocks and you want to know which shrine is all about musicblocks today.  You do the divination ritual and are given some semi-cryptic advice, maybe pointed towards 3 shrines, but with a varying percentage of reward among the three and it's your choice which one to go for.  

    I swear I read something in another thread that said shrines and donations were on the list for some major tweakage...just can't remember which thread it was.  I really do think it's coming, I just don't have evidence.
    Posted 16 months ago by Nanookie Subscriber! | Permalink