Add a Ritual skill tree to all classes to power rituals and impact a Citywide beneficial focal point

Silvarien

No idea how this will be received...

I would like to propose a rather huge and involved addition which would allow the citizens of any City (or in the case of Eleusis, Village) to power their City in a cross between Icons and the Pillar of the Moon / Scimitar of Yen Sorte.

The needed skill tree would be available to each class but would be dormant except to members of Cities/ Village. Rogues could have it, but it would not be doing anything.

The skill tree would be completely different depending on the City/Village and it would be filled with abilities that affect rituals -- in that City/Village's philosophy. These would add to rooms within the City but only if a skill from the tree is used in a RP ritual. So, Eleusians would do a ritual, and trees or hanging ivy, etc., would be popping up in Village rooms as a result. Targossians would be causing the rooms to shine with wholesome and intense Devotional light of various types, Mhaldorians would be corrupting the rooms in Mhaldor with aspects of Evil, etc. The tree would have skills which would allow variants on these things to be erected, it would add a totally customized player-caused feel to each City room affected, and there would be an indestructible pillar/pylon/tree/whatever focal point structure that these ritual-linked skills would be custom-modifying. The terminal effect should be on par with the Pillar of the Moon/Scimitar of Yen Sorte, but much more customizable by the rituals, and it would be in a visible place and gain its power from what the players set the rooms to be.

The enemies raiding that City should have the ability to undo the ritual skills' impact on that item. So, in addition to killing guards and blowing up rooms with raid tanks, the raiders could also be able to weaken the enemy City/Village's focal point by breaking up the moss/ivy/trees/light/Evil saturation, etc in a given room, and require more rituals and resultant uses of the skill tree to fix the bonus provided by the City/Village's focal item. Since the effect is not set and is fluid and customizable, the future rituals could tailor the City/Village's needs in another way. The citizens should also be able to withdraw and replace the effect peacefully.

All classes would have the skill tree; it would be set by the City/Village allegiance, not class. It would have the double function of adding to the power of the City/Village and also to provide a cosmetic function, because there wouldn't be a single way to impact a given room, and the overall impact on the focal item would be completely up to the City/Village. So, if Eleusis wants its affectable rooms to be only with ivy, then they'll be affected with ivy. If they also want trees to grow in the room, or special moss, etc., they can do that. The overall impact on the focal item would be subtle, and determined by what is in each room and how the citizens ritual-impacted them. Each City/village must have the same number of rooms that can be affected like this, or it'll be unbalanced between Cities.

I think this would add both to strategy and to RP. Having rituals with illusions is great and great RP -- but having rituals that actually impact and visibly benefit the City/Village is something else.

I am not proposing 24/7 ritualing which will become a giant root canal. It should be about as hard to undo all this as killing all the guards and blowing up all the rooms with tanks. But the damage will be fixed with RP, not just a few commands to fix the room.

If this was accepted, each of the Cities and their associated Divine would need to do a ton of brainstorming how to make the skill tree for that City/Village. A lot of coding would need to be done, and balance issues would arise, but this is an awesome RP game, so I imagine adding to the RP would be good.

I am probably missing a ton of things I should have thought of, so I can't quite imagine throwing this in in-game IDEA rather than the Dais.

Hope you like it. Please don't kill me. X_x

Kakotas

Sounds like a city based version of the old landmarking system. Maybe make it on a timetable. (I'm neutral here just tossing in an idea for sake of idea development).

Achimrst

Reclamation is similar already and I don't see many people using that. You would definitely have to make it more interesting in my opinion so it doesn't just turn into something top tier combatants use to gank you with and ignored by everyone else for that reason. 

A ritual skillset does sound like something that could be extremely fun though since most rituals are done through illusion. But then you take out the personalisation of rituals themselves if you make them all generic. Then again, generic is preferable to the submitting of rituals as events to admin/god leaders who already probably have enough to do... so I'm mostly on the fence about this one.

Shirszae

This would be interesting if there was some way to have the ability message so to speak be freeform, like an emote, but with the coded reward nonetheless. That way the personal touch could still be there, while providing some manner of palpable reward for people who really need one. 

But I am mostly on the fence about something like this as well. 

Greys

Targossas has access to several rooms allowing us room aesthetic effects for rituals. Do the other cities not have it?

Aegoth

Greys said:

Targossas has access to several rooms allowing us room aesthetic effects for rituals. Do the other cities not have it?

No, but we make up for the difference by having a navy

Klendathu

There's a room like that in the Temple of the Sky, but Ashtan doesn't have one... yet

Shirszae

Remember there was one in the Spiritwalker's fortress. Was pretty neat

Tahquil

Mhaldor i think has the pulpit in the cathedral? That may have been Ivory Temple.

Ahmet

Klendathu said:

There's a room like that in the Temple of the Sky, but Ashtan doesn't have one... yet

Discovering this mid-ritual was fun

Reiloch

Klendathu said:

There's a room like that in the Temple of the Sky, but Ashtan doesn't have one... yet

Maybe not a public one, but there's certainly one of those in the Savants estate.

Greys

@Aegoth I'm trying to figure out if you are taunting me about the fact Targossas shot itself in the foot on that front when they removed me or simply alluding to it. 

Aegoth

Both, and it's lighthearted. No offense meant!