The serious sig-loot discussion

[greatdane]

So, we had signatures on SZ. You'd get a signature from anyone you killed within your level range. Mostly people just collected them, but the intention was that they could be spent on summon corpse potions. It never really took off, but it could be made into an awesome system here that doesn't have to feel artificial or conflict with general gameplay.

On SZ, there was a signature for each deity. Kill someone whose religion was Mithaniel Marr and you'd loot a Signature of Mithaniel Marr, or whatever. There were lesser and greater iirc, to prevent low-level characters from getting the same rewards as high-levels. The deity part isn't necessary here, there could just be lesser/plain/greater signatures for levels 1-24, 25-45 and 46+.

That would be great for this server. Instead of just summon corpse potions, signatures could be used as currency for any number of balanced conveniences such as:

Summon corpse potions, of course
Quality arrows
Crystallized pumice
Food with +5/10 all resists
Potions of Traveler Boots buff
Whatever you can come up with that fits the pattern of "useful but not gamebreaking in any way".

People can spend sigs on these minor benefits or keep them as trophies to tally their kills.

Who doesn't miss calling "sigged"?

Work on this system could start after the server launches. It wouldn't have to be in right at launch and nobody wants to wait an extra two weeks, but that doesn't mean it wouldn't add another fun aspect to PvP.

[Galanteer]

the corpse summon potions were very important for us on the good team.

Yea sigs were a real treasure on SZ. My goodie enchanter got very few kill shots, but certainly liked my small collection of sigs. Even without any reward they were worth their "weight" in smack talk.....

edit in: there was quite a trade in those potions with people going to Stormhammer and diverting them into the regular servers. And I believe there was an exploit where bards could use them without expending them.

[Humerox]

I've mentioned this in other threads, and I think it would be a viable PvP reward system...providing incentive. The main thing is making it so no one can farm alts for rewards, possibly limiting it to one sig per player over a specified period of time. I'm not a coder, so I dunno how hard it would be to implement, but for every great idea, there's an abuse for it.

The great thing is that it helps to circumvent corpse-camping if summon corpse pots are a reward. They would need to be non-tradeable also...again, abuse...even tho for a time I think pots were worth mad cash. Am I misremembering that sigs had names attached? Maybe I'm fantasizing, but those would make great screenshots. Better than yellow text!

[Knuckle]

again, any sort of reward system that results in physical items is going to require a nanny system as well, only takes 2 ppl to abuse the system.

[Lasher]

neat concept. I wouldnt mind seeing something like that as long as it cant be exploited. Be really neat if some how the head looted had the name of the player so like i could link Soandso's Head

[Knuckle]

neat concept. I wouldnt mind seeing something like that as long as it cant be exploited. Be really neat if some how the head looted had the name of the player so like i could link Soandso's Head

that would be neat.

[greatdane]

Am I misremembering that sigs had names attached? Maybe I'm fantasizing, but those would make great screenshots. Better than yellow text!

They just had the deity of the victim, and you couldn't be agnostic on SZ. Having a sig for each name would be impossible, you'd never have room for them. Just the ten or so stacks of religion sigs took up quite a lot of space.

There would be no point making them deity-based here since it isn't gonna be deity-based team PvP. Just Greater Signature of Discord or whatever.

Or you could maybe have them for each class. That'd make for interesting recordkeeping, too.

[Amuk]

Yeah as long as it's bragging rights and not actual rewards I like it.

[Lasher]

If the heads could have the victims name on it i would probably delete all the heads of scrubs and keep the heads with high profile names so i can link for pleasure

[greatdane]

Sigs and heads for everyone! Maybe we should make a serious poll instead.

[pojab]

to make it so you cant explot this, make it so the signatures/items are purchasable with plat, and these items are lootable, rather than created out of thin air.

additionally you could make it so only players currently carrying sigs / sig items can loot sig / sig items. this makes it so you essentially have an opt in, much lower stakes version of item loot that also works as a plat sink and gives some value to plat.

i think everyone gets from the original posts that any items purchasable with sigs are expendable, non game changing items.

[Lasher]

to make it so you cant explot this, make it so the signatures/items are purchasable with plat, and these items are lootable, rather than created out of thin air.

additionally you could make it so only players currently carrying sigs / sig items can loot sig / sig items. this makes it so you essentially have an opt in, much lower stakes version of item loot that also works as a plat sink and gives some value to plat.

i think everyone gets from the original posts that any items purchasable with sigs are expendable, non game changing items.

I like that idea

[JayDee]

a lot of thought going into this idea that will never happen

[Ogre]

so like diablo 2 ears?

[greatdane]

to make it so you cant explot this, make it so the signatures/items are purchasable with plat, and these items are lootable, rather than created out of thin air.

additionally you could make it so only players currently carrying sigs / sig items can loot sig / sig items. this makes it so you essentially have an opt in, much lower stakes version of item loot that also works as a plat sink and gives some value to plat.

i think everyone gets from the original posts that any items purchasable with sigs are expendable, non game changing items.

If you can get the same reward for plat, it kinda removes the emphasis on sigs and the need to PvP a lot if you want to keep these consumable benefits going. If you can only sig someone once a day, it's barely exploitable. Maybe two friends will trade kills once a day and shit like that, but if it's against the rules, that alone will deter most, and the benefits from doing it are minimal if you could just get 20+ sigs a day the normal way. I mean, if a traveler boots potion costs 10 sigs, you'd have to kill-trade a hell of a lot of buddies to get any real reward out of it.

There doesn't need to be a plat sink. Everquest doesn't suffer very much from inflation, and with a small playerbase that's busy PvPing instead of sitting in Sebilis 16 hours a day, the inflation will be that much slower. Plus a lot of cash will go into pumice, crimson potions, jewelry mats for resist gear etc. that doesn't really happen on a PvE server.

[pojab]

on the contrary it gives more incentive to pvp since you actually get a reward, and it makes it more intense because your plat might mean a little more.

something like this would make plat worth something, supporting a currency based economy rather than a gem/item one like vztz has always had.

[greatdane]

Maybe. I meant for the sig rewards to be minor conveniences, though. Not something hugely crucial to everyone. I wouldn't want to see a heavy custom element on the server. Some of my examples can be bought with cash anyway - pumice, high-end arrows, trav boots.

[pojab]

now im completely fine with just coin loot like always, but since its a thread on a sig concept, i thought i would throw in an idea ive had on this since item loot left vztz 1.0

[greatdane]

It should be so that you can make the choice between collecting sigs as trophies and spending them on small benefits, without gimping yourself by keeping them. Part of the idea is that people might want something to boast about now that yellow text is gone. But I guess heads can serve as trophies while sigs are the reward. I don't know if the server can generate a unique head object for every name you kill, that might be an obstacle.

[Bardalicious]

Lol at this thread. :o

[Gnar]

Looting the heads of individuals would be fun in itself. Especially if there is no yellow text, this would give some sort of gratification. As to whether or not these items can be used for "beneficial" turn ins or not, i don't care. I will have bags and bags of tink and xavior heads.

[Nirgon]

Get Ned Stark'd son.