ToME: the Tales of Maj'Eyal

Does anyone else find it odd that the gods never seem upset whether you take 1 day or 10 to bother getting around to finding that oh-so-valuable holy relic they tend to send you hunting for? It seems that over time they'd grow annoyed, and eventually even angry at you for procrastination. So, I suggest an increasing piety loss for each game day you wait to hunt the relic. The first day would be meager, 50 to 100 pt lost. Enough to remind you to get moving, but not enough for even new characters to really feel the hit. Second day would increase to around 200, and it would start getting rougher for each day afterwards. An increase to around 500 lost on the third day, and 900 on the fourth. On the fifth day the loss could go as high as 1500 piety lost, with an increase of 1000 for every day afterwards(2500, 3500, 4500, etc).

Also, it seems your god would realize if you had completely missed the relic beyond chance of recovery. If you leave the level the relic is created on without picking it up, the next gameday your god could give you a stern lecture on what not to do when finding holy relics, and a sufficient piety loss(2500, maybe?) to encourage you not to do it again. But, you could then receive more god quests, rather than having the same failed one stuck in your quests list forever. Also, the failure could lower your chance for new quests, while success might help bring about the next quest a bit quicker.

What needs to be considered here is when the quest is given at level 2. You certainly would have trouble finding the temple, let alone surviving. The penalty for missing the relic sounds good, though.

hmmm some interesting ideas Varil...
I think the idea of a definite failure of the quest might be a good idea...
It would be easy to prevent people getting quests before they reached a certain level...
I'm not sure about piety loss though, some Gods are hard enough to please as it is...
WHat are other peoples thoughts on this matter?

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My te4.org characters

maybe that could be a way to make hard gods easier to please. easy god would give hard quest early, hard gods would give quests later.

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Toome the world is Tome

I like the idea of a definite quest failure. I am a bit worried about the piety loss, though. Also, as others have said, going into overland travel very early on is extremely dangerous.

Edit: You could get past that by simply not choosing a God at character creation, and giving a guaranteed God quest at first level gain after you pick a God. However, this would be detrimental to Eru worshippers who could have gained a fair amount of piety in the interim.

The other alternative is to give quests at level 10, 20 ,30,40 and 50.

That would allow you to head out immediately, especially if restrictions were placed on the location. (within 10 squares of Bree for the first, within 20 squares for the second, and so on.)

sorry, I like the variety of quests being at random intervals. There should be a chance that you do not get all 5 quests.

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My te4.org characters

I do think the Piety loss won't be easily balanceable.

This for the followiing:
1.) Who tells you the temple will be at less that a day of distance (I don't think you'll be glad if you discover the Lost Temple lies in the SouthEastern corner of the map!)?
2.) Who tells you you'll be stronger enough to do some Wilderness travel?
3.) For how I got it, it was supposed to be done just if someone wants, so why penalize you if simply you don't want to do the quest for you're already busy with other quests?

I definately thing the piety loss would harm a bit the balancing and playability, and I also believe many more will decide not to choose any God.
You should also think that for a Vala time flows in a very different way than the player's, for Valar are from thousands of years, and 10 days are for them a blink, while the game lasts from 11 days (I thought nobody finished it in less game-time) to maybe a year (never seen over 240 days either). So why should they get angry if you delay? Dalaying is already bad for you if you want to do all five God Quests!

My suggestion is the following:
Include the possibility of failure, saying you have to complete the quest before you'll gain 10/#GodQuest Levels or before 20/#GodQuest day pass.
So you'll represent also the growing anxiousness of the God to recover all 5 relics (if you get all 5 Quests).

After more thought, I think I'm agreeing with Fearoffours.

the problem is that God quests are optional, so charging a penalty for not doing them sounds unfair...
A time-based penalty has the additional problem that the location of the temples is random and it might take a long time to find one.
Onb the other hand, a check to see if the relic was generated on exiting the level and a penalty for missing it would be fair...

Instead of a penalty for not doing the quests quickly enough, how about a bonus for doing them within a certain amount of time? The quests would still remain voluntary, and those that chose to finish them promptly would be rewarded.

Verilee

Personally I like the silent quest failures. They add some mystery to the game.

What mystery? You only get angry when you went through temple-level fifth time and you still didn't get it.

On the other hand, I've never failed a god quest (at least, never get out of the temple alive without relic ) and I think that it's the right way the failure is handled now.

Angry because you failed to find it?

One issue about time limits/etc is that if the quest entrance location happens to be way off in a corner of the map (and I've run into a few of those) you can spend an inordinate amount of time just trying to *FIND* the darn thing. (I blew about a game week one time doing just that. )

This aspect could potentially predispose you (or cause you) to fail the time limit unless it's a pretty lengthy time limit.... in which case, why bother having one in the first place?

I voted that I liked the mystery. Since I figured out the whole relic generation thing, I so far have not missed a single relic, except for once when I had to recall out (grrr.)