Topic: Fluff idea for artifact caches - easy to implement?

Ok, so we have the makings of a great little sandbox. We sort of have an economy, we have territory control, inter-corp rivalries and metagaming, we have industry and farming.

What we don't have is anything cosmetic or not-useful-but-desirable for us to spend money on. Right now the game is a self-perpetuating loop of get rich/industrialised so you can pvp so you can control a beta island so you can get richer.

Here is a really simple idea to create a PvE goal outside that loop:

Put fragments of information about the Nian civilisation in the artifact caches.

These can take the form of transcripts of radio conversations, reports from observers on terran activity, plans, maps, historical documents, sections of computer code, letters, instructions, images etc.

They show as an item in your inventory or cargo, perhaps similar to the transport/bounty hunting data modules, and double-clicking on the icon brings up a window on which text or a picture is displayed which gives players background lore about Nians.

You could start with, for instance, five documents, and split each into four pieces. Then distribute these randomly to the caches. That way you can advance a Nian storyline, or tell for example a back story about the reaction of the Nians to the appearance of terran controlled bots, or how the Nuimquol suceeded from the Empire, or things the Thelodica have done to interfere with the other two factions etc.

Players can piece together the information by combining each of the four fragments of the data files.

You could go on and write some of them in code, and then introduce code keys into the world that players can use to decode with (or just not provide a key at all and let people have fun cracking it themselves).

Devs, you've said before in the blog that you enjoy thinking up names for the places on Nia. Think how much more fun it would be to write something like this!

"...playing a game is the voluntary attempt to overcome unnecessary obstacles."
Bernard Suits, 1978

Re: Fluff idea for artifact caches - easy to implement?

Great idea! When i played Myst i spent a lot of time reading the lore. I even bought 3 fantasy books on it *embarrassed*. Perhaps devs could ask the community as well to participate in lore-making. We are the first wave of inhabitants and we could tell our side of the story too, of course in role-play mode. Would love to pick up an fragment telling a nice quote from an ingame player, or a battle that had happened months or years before. A nice way for us to leave our mark in this game.

Re: Fluff idea for artifact caches - easy to implement?

Alfredson wrote:

A nice way for us to leave our mark in this game.

This is a winner.

4 (edited by Kciredor Nov 2011-04-05 03:02:17)

Re: Fluff idea for artifact caches - easy to implement?

Great Idea

Need some hieroglyphics throughout Nia and the like, maybe a alphabet of some kind, would be cool to actually see some "alien civilization."

Inner Ring Excavations
Kciredor Nov --- Mining and Industry
Skao Nov --- PVP, when i get another account.

Re: Fluff idea for artifact caches - easy to implement?

Alfredson wrote:

Would love to pick up an fragment telling a nice quote from an ingame player, or a battle that had happened months or years before. A nice way for us to leave our mark in this game.

While I like the idea of quotes from players, I think this is better left to the corporate dialogues section. Automated recordings of events with only facts (e.g. such and such a corporation took over such and such an outpost) would be less open to abuse. But this is recorded in the corporation management section anyway, for those who are interested.

Some kind of in-game player record would be in keeping with the vision of the game, just not sure how you would implement it.

Kciredor Nov wrote:

Great Idea

Need some hieroglyphics throughout Nia and the like, maybe a alphabet of some kind, would be cool to actually see some "alien civilization."

Actually that would be awesome.

You could even get random scraps dropping sometimes from NPCs. Or maybe the key to it drops from NPCs and the documents are found via artifact scanning.

"...playing a game is the voluntary attempt to overcome unnecessary obstacles."
Bernard Suits, 1978