Your input on: Wisdom of Ceres (long term)

[Bragi]

This is a general discussion about the Wisdom of Ceres (WoC) system as a whole that might be implemented regardless of current game assets, coding restrictions or previous game lore.

Let's split this down into a few sections - Game Lore, Attaining WoC and WoC implementation.


Game Lore

What exactly is WoC?
The Wisdom of Ceres Disks were a pre-war data repository that where rediscovered allowed the post-war tribes to reach a technological level in far shorter a peroid of time than normal. Given that by the game's own history, this knowledge has been added to and indeed surpassed, what is the 'Wisdom of Ceres' a character purportedly attains?
Currently your character simply gains more 'normal' xp and then talks to a monk that 'awakens' something in them that allows them to use a few guns and armour pieces.
An odd part is the disks themselves. Why do the monks need them and why are they in the labs to begin with? In the lore, the contents were made public after the Ceres Wars and in old PA mission, the contents where housed by CA. What are these labs for and who put them there. It's a haphazard and clearly rushed bandaid.

Is WoC simply a greater degree of experience/skill refinement or something else, Eg. the original Psi monks were arguably more powerful than they are now due to population dilution, so does almost anyone have unlocked abilities? Maybe that could simply extend to physical skills - given the technology of the game world (implants, the GR system, etc.), characters can experience and practice much more than we can in our lifetimes.
Should we even be calling it WoC at all?


Attaining WoC

Following on from what WoC is, we than come to how that is then expressed as the mechanism for activating it on your character.
As mentioned above, the odd disk system only adds grind or expense on top of the existing grind.

How about an epic-style mission that explores what WoC (or whatever we call it) is and how your character goes about learning what it is and how to use it?
Keep the secret club Ceres monk side of things, make it a personal journey of discovery or a wider known degree of experience.

Then, as with the other thread, we have the debate over XP requirements.


WoC implementation

Currently WoC is a item requirement, limited to weapons and PAs. There is a lot more you can do with that system as there are more item types and as many new items as you can think of.
But if we're thinking outside of the box, what else could it do?

Many RPGs (as in, most of those I can name), on top of their base stats and skills have specific abilities; DnD has a multitude of additional skills, like Quivering Palm and Whirlwind, Fallout and Skyrim have Perks, etc.
Could WoC be something similar?
Each time a WoC level is gained, you get a point to spend on a WoC skill.
Eg.
Item Use - Each point spent allows the use of WoC items of equal or lower WoC requirement (current system).
Thunder Thighs - Half jump height, half fall dmg?
Dual Wield - Purely cosmetic or longer clip and longer reload?
Glass Cannon - Permanent -20 HLT and +20 ATH/AGL?
And so on.

Do we also have to have separate WoC levels for each main stat? Why not gain a point/level at a sum total of xp to be spent where we like (with possible class/main- and/or sub-skill reqs)?

Get thinking!

[Fremen]

Here is my input on what I'd like in the long term... Followed by a TL;DR for lazy people.

What would WoC provide:
Considering the lore of the Ceres disc providing us with long forgotten and lost knowledge of technology, I'm glad we can get access to high end top tier gear which is equel in TL power to similar TL rare weapons/PA. Tho each providing a different gameplay because this old technology didn't made itself in the same society, so their goal was different, hence different resulting weapons/PA.

To this we could add unique implants (like you mentionned kamikaze) and hybrid Psi implants/PA to give a different appraoch to PSI. I'm sure people would love it.

Tho I picture this new knowledge as blueprints which the most skilled crafters could construct. Not physical skills that would allow you to perform a double jump. The skill system should have its limits. And I'd love it if we could stick with a technological aspect and not bring in a skill/perk aspect.


How to Obtain WoC:
To be honest I think the current xp system is not fun. It go against the lore, let me elaborate:
If we consider the RP that skills represent our character development, then reaching cap (100 STR/DEX/etc) should be considered mastering its class. Therefor we shouldn't xp further than that. I'd like to see WoC as a side technology and not an improvement of skill mastery.

How about instead, we do a hard quest, where you have to seeks fragments of Ceres disc and put it together (the process would be long and tedious, just like the DoY mission to get IAR 47 and SWAT) and then you would seek the WoC scientists and gain knownledge on how to properly use this exotic gear.

Relating WoC to an attributes is imho not necessary, skill restriction will do that instead, no need to add an other restriction and more confusion to the whole concept.

Please let's move out from this horrible game design of requiring HUGE amount of xp to get woc levels. I am patient, I have been playing NC for MANY years but I'm not going to spend thousands of hours droning a PE to get woc extra level to get extra skill points to dual wield. Neocron is awesome because of its realism in this virtual world, the amount of customising and private assets, the diversity of weapons, environement, the freedom and the player driven economy but certainly not for it's xp grinding.

There is a big diffrence in between farming rare parts and farming woc xp. With rare parts, you get the human aspect of trading, you get to stock your loots and see it grow. As for WoC, you run in circle shooting a regant boss, for hundreads of time making you feel dizzy and asking yourself why you even go through such pain. That is for WoC 1 now imagine WoC 5. I'm not even mentionning droning.


TL;DR:
I would love to see in the longterm:
+Add more WoC Weapons for tank
+Add WoC Implants
+Add WoC Implants to allow hybrids monk instead of WoC Spells
+Add series of difficult quest requiring group effort to obtain Wisdom of Ceres
-Remove Xp Requirments (quest instead)
-Remove WoC attributes (the normal skill is a restriction by itself)
=WoC is a side technology offering differnt gameplay
=WoC is an adventure which you will start after getting capped that will drive you throughout the world of NC and discover all unseen places.

[bmurph101]

I grinded my ass off to get WoC as a melee GenTank. The grind was steep but it was satisfying once I got it.

But can I get a WoC power armor to buff melee stats? I know I've consistently pestered about the lack of a WoC melee weapon (which I'd like to see as well, as a larger and more powerful 2 handed version of the Devil's Grace), but I imagine implementing a PA that gives bigger buffs to melee combat would probably be easier. Take a model of the PA, swap the stats to buff melee, and voila.

I wouldn't worry about overclocking the melee stats either at this point. Zoltan's testing already proved that even the best melee has over 7 times the current TTK as any comparable ranged weapon.

That's my 2 cents. Thanks for reading.

[Faid]

White woc PPU Power Armor with blue trim. That is all I want

[Fremen]

White woc PPU Power Armor with blue trim. That is all I want

That sounds shiny ! Indeed a white WoC would be awesome What about red stripes ? so you really look like an ambulance

[Divide]

WoC was supposed to be the game changer on the level of Hacknet back in the days if NC1. It was supposed to unlock new potential your character didn't have before.


It shouldn't be required, but it should reward those who take the time to do it with new builds and gameplay styles. It should be work to obtain, but not a time sink. RL brings me enough of those, and my gaming time is precious... wasting it running in circles in a room with a gfx bug for several gaming sessions is not treating my gaming time appropriately.


What I'd really like to see out of WoC is more freedom with a character. The beauty of char setups in NC is that there is no "skill tree" which grants both true freedom, as well as the illusion of freedom. WoC could grant the player the ability to move Stat points to build a truly customized character. Want a spy with 50 con? Ok, but you're going to have to steal those 10 points from somewhere else. It should be repeatable (for more customization, or reconfiguration) with a maximum number of reallocated stats. EG: 5 per WoC level, up to WoC 3. Anything beyond WoC 3 will grant the ability to move the Stats again.

WoC levels beyond 3 should not grow in XP requirements. You shouldn't punish the people who put the most effort in.