Larian Studios Forums Beyond Divinity (English) Suggestions Rules of a Rift World

Rules of a Rift World

By definition, a rift in space-time is fundamentally a fiction-bull.
But fantasy RPGs welcome such fiction because, precisely, they are not real.
Therefore the game designer may forge the rules at leisure.

Now imagine a crack in a wall or a crevice in a rock; that is a sort of rift.
Nevertheless, a rift-world is supposedly a world between worlds, in the sense of being lost, unfound or simply a trap. This reminds me for some unfathomable reason of the Bermuda Triangle and the lost ships that are said to be all trapped in a rift world.
They never came back to tell.

Now let us imagine the arrival of all those ships in a sort of shipwreck ashore of somewhere. Naturally the survivors would accumulate and try to find a way to accommodate with the new environment. The impact of such an environment and the status of the survivors dictate the nature of those inhabitants of that rift.

In other words, the game designer has the responsibility of finding a special characteristic of what may be called the natives of the rift.

Any other species different from those natives are aliens and are met with hostility.
In that world any reputation score must be among those natives and for that to happen the hero must have a non preceded chance to defend the natives in a conflict event that distinguishes the hero as a friendly alien rather than a hostile alien.

Being a friend of the natives is essential to allow a system of reputation to grow, because the more the hero kills other aliens who are hostile to the natives the more such a reputation makes sense among those natives who become aware of the heroic quests of the hero.

This is good as a plot to allow the natives to pay back at a critical moment of need.
When the hero is cornered by desperate foes who find that they must form an alliance to get rid of him /her and they almost succeed, it would be a great surprise and prize to find the natives popping from nowhere to aid the hero at such a critical moment.

Another fantastic irony is that the natives of the rift might like the hero so much that they do not wish him/ her to escape from the rift, and even if they help the hero occasionally against foes they are secretly the ones who are opposing the hero’s escape as a matter of need.

Now THAT may be implemented in <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/riftrunner.gif" alt="" /> and it is not too late.

<img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/mage.gif" alt="" /> <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/devil.gif" alt="" /> <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/mage.gif" alt="" />

true, since there are no such thing as rift in reality so Larian very much has all the freedom to define what that word means to them.

the premise is nice. natives of the rift may not be all hostile & yet still hide something which makes them mysterious, at least to the character. the extent of help rendered to the character is only for their (rift natives) own ends & conveniences. hence the subtle trap which the character may not see until shown by the so-called enemy. then what happens? who is now the enemy? so-called enemy will try to forge an alliance(doesn't have to be permanent) & cuts(or at least try) a deal with the character whereby the so-called enemy will help the character out of the rift if he/she helps in conquering the rift natives.

a lot of ideas can spring up from this premise.

now this is puzzling: is the reputation system a closed one? is it a conservation of reputation where it is like conservation of energy? energy is never lost, just converted to another form. likewise for reputation, a loss of it in a particular NPC/party causes a gain in another? let's say if one plots with a common rift baddie, does that automatically mean his/her rep is lowered in the goodies' eyes? how can that happen when one plots secretly? so system of conservation cannot be practical here, the way i see it. so is reputation when treated globally. hence reputation of different levels is needed for secret plots/actions to be viable/convincing in the game.

what do u think?

A reputation system depends on the system of values upon which that reputation is built. For a merchant it is honesty and quality control and sometimes it involves keeping up with delivery time or merciful attitudes towards those who may not comply by the rules.

For a hero, it must be the heroic acts in which the hero is an energy processor.
The hero is such an entity that can consume and store energy then at wilful events discharges that energy to save someone or devastate evil as it is defined by the system of values that measures the reputation of that hero.

Technically speaking, we noticed that solving quests in Divinity was the mechanism with which reputation was appended. Not necessarily increasing though and that was an inconsistency in the game rules, because you are forced to join the thieves’ guild to solve many quests and consequently you lost reputation. Now a consistent system must set the rules by which reputation increases and if such was synonymous to that of the real world then all the negative quests must be avoidable by having a parallel yet more difficult root to solve them. For example, I did not need to join the T. G. but to be allowed to open the back door from the sewers by telekinesis or lock picks.

Then I could walk right to the book and get the holy dagger ready for any thief who wishes to confront me. If none did, then I shall not harass them either.

What I am saying here is that if it is solving quests that increase reputation, it is an error to design quests that lower that reputation forcedly, but it could be a penalty for choosing the easy root rather than the heroic root.

The most important question here is: A reputation among whom?
I apologise for verbosity but it is a must.
We should be aware that among thieves there is a system of reputation that increases when the master thief conquers a hard to open safe or rob a very well guarded castle.
The secret is in the word ADMIRATION.
Reputation increases when the hero succeeds in expanding the base of admirers.
Saving, helping and defending others, conquering, wining and all sorts of challenged success are means of building reputation.

That is why I recommended that the rift’s natives must act as a substrate for the hero’s reputation system.

Cheers.
<img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/mage.gif" alt="" /> <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/devil.gif" alt="" /> <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/mage.gif" alt="" />

Well we already know there is a new race we will encounter, a race capable of riftrunning. In the meaning of a rift between worlds, that could mean they are able to 'run' from one world to the other, where others (among which your avatar) is unable to do that.
Also we are supposed to 'save' these riftrunners from something as part of the storyline.
I can only assume that during the course of the game we will learn 'riftrunning' also.

Anyway as they are a new race, they will have to live somewhere and will have their own economical system, which probably includes shops and such and a reputation is relevant then. Also you might not be the only one who is send to this world (either before you or after you), which might account for you meeting NPC's from <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/div.gif" alt="" />.

There might be 'evil' characters where a low rep makes them not attack you, but consider you as one of them and give you decent prices in their black markets. That same low rep creates hostility amongst the good guys and drives up the prices in their shops.

I have no technical objection on playing an evil role and increasing my negative reputation as a goal among my evil peers. The objection is that we have a preset storyline with a servant of the divine being our avatar, and accordingly, we are forced to work on a positive reputation system not a negative one. That is why there should be no forced quests that has only negative reputation outcome and there must be an alternative root for a positive reputation gain.

If we had the full choice of choosing party as good or evil from the beginning, we should have completely different sets of proportional evil quests and good quests to accompany our choice and thence what you said in your post comes true where we have two competitive systems of evaluation.

Cheers.

<img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/mage.gif" alt="" /> <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/devil.gif" alt="" /> <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/mage.gif" alt="" />

Speaking of reputation.

What is a positive and what is a negative reputation?
if we are in another dimension?

the player knows what possitive & negative is , by his education (our education in the real world)
But how do we know if we are doing "good" in a strange dimension?

like helping out a demon who was stuck somewere, could make the demon very angry, as a matter of fact, you did something negative instead of something positive.

1) or the demon you released comes into our world after a while and kills a lot of people
2) or in this strange world "helping" others is like blastemely (spelling)

now this makes this world alot challeging.
finding out the (ethical)rules of these world,

Reputation is ever increasing in the Divine Divinity world. Everything you do gets around. Every quest you complete gets talked about by the townsfolk whether there's a Rputation reward or not.

Divine Divinity sees a positive reputation as helping the forces of the good and holy and a negative reputation being a criminal or murderer and generally bad in society's eyes. It is like the D&D allignments Lawful and Chaotic. But you are always Good. You start as a Good Neutral character, one who respects the law without feeling any obligation to anyone but themself. Every quest you complete, and every crime you commit increases your reputation. Sometimes it increases it in the Lawful direction, sometimes in the Chaotic direction. Society reflects upon Lawfulness/Chaoticness and acts accordingly. The majority of Rivellon's inhabitants respect one who will uphold the law without obligation, but frown upon one who has only their self interests at heart.

But you are always Good because you are the Divine One and you fight against the forces of Evil. Good and Evil are sides. It's a stupidly black-and-white concept, but that's what it represents. While you kill people for pleasure, which is a very evil concept, there is no capacity for being evil in Divine Divinity. You were designed to be good and that is what you shall be.

RiftRunner will address this. You will still have reputation as saviour or selfish, but with the addition of the soulforge, you can shape your destiny as a Good or an Evil character. There's every chance you will be required to balance your good-and-evilness to survive the journey, but it does open the gates to good and evil characters.

Why are we forced to ? Don't you remember the DeathKnight, a demonic creature ? I guess he is evil ...

but will the deadknight having a mind of his own too? or will it be fully controllable by ous?

this is an interesting thought

imagion that the deadknight refuses to to some quests until you can convince him otherwise? <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/think.gif" alt="" />

We were so focused on the "Good Man" , that we even didn't notice the DeathKnight ... <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/delight.gif" alt="" />

referring to the fact that the character is already in the 'other' dimension or side of the rift, demon knight can be perceived as a 'regular joe' while the council member of the divine one is the'freak'. it's all perspective. likewise reputation works the same way in that whether your actions are approved & admired or abhored & incites hate towards your character.

as how DAD puts it, "reputation among whom?"

D&D is very established when it comes to reps though i feel RRR should have its own system & not that of D&D. regarding the part 'among whom', natives of the rift & other races can be divided into different groups which certain actions will shift alignments that will steer the character to certain faction/group.

in RRR where 2 opposites are soul-forged into one being, i think we can choose to be good or bad. the one thing both opposites agree upon will be separation into their own selves. so the means to do this can be either via goodness or plain evil or maybe even both. if the rule of the game is "the end will justify the means", there will be at least 2 ways to solve a quest & the action/inaction will determine not only alignment but also stats/type/skills of the character. it should work almost like the game 'black & white'. you pay for the consequences of your actions/inactions. that i feel will induce more thoughts for RPG than just bumping stats of character & items & skills.

DAD, if u would refer to my first post on this thread: my question on system of reputation, i was referring to the numerical factor & how one factor would affect the others. for example, the soul-forged being defends him/her self by killing a rift native, his/her rep is directly lowered among the natives, partially lowered among neutral NPCs, partially increased among thugs & no-gooders & directly increased among the enemies of the natives. this means there are four sets of reputations. or should reputation be tied individually to the NPCs & factions?

i know nobody(except Larian) has any authority on how reputation should work or will work in RRR but it doesn't hurt to wonder & brood about it. we never know when we might hit a great idea which can help in creating one of the best game ever.

It sounds like there's some confusion regarding RiftRunner here. RiftRunner is party based meaning you have full control over all characters. You may not get to control some NPCs, but they will support your team. By this, you have at least one Good character and one Evil one, and you will essentially have the option of selecting one to be the spokesperson of the party, or treating them as peers.

<img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/confused.gif" alt="" /> handefood? are u referring to me? i think i have at least rudimentary grasp of the subject at hand. i do agree that RRR is party-based as we have two characters to manage. but my question is on reputation.

Mostly Alrik and The Bean.

Hehe, they sound like a crime-fighting duo.

{Yelling from basement to deck}, yoo-hoo, unfortunately the hero and the D. K. are soul-forged too, not just enchained.
That means that our avatar is totally responsible for the actions of the party, which is quite logical because one game player gives the order to both party characters.
The reputation is YOURS, the role player, not the individual party characters.
So, it is one reputation no more, but among whom?

________
........____........

<img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/eek.gif" alt="" /> boy, even from the basement u sure sound loud, DAD.

"The reputation is YOURS, the role player, not the individual party characters.
So, it is one reputation no more, but among whom?" DAD

i'm pretty confused. are those two sentences for me? my question on reputation isn't on whether the reputation of the two characters should be treated separately, rather it was on how reputation of both opposites is to be treated among NPCs & factions in RRR. hope i'm not transmitting wrong signals again.

As to having full control of the party, I did ask Lar that for my interview, but he didn't want to comment on that yet. He didn't know yet if it would be full control or that the party members have minds of their own and agendas of their own. Neither did he wanted to comment on the size of the party.
So unless I've missed something somewhere you are only speculating here.

your friends may tell you, "no man, forget it. she will never go out with a loser like you." still, that doesn't stop you from dreaming about her... .

likewise handefood can keep on dreaming about party-based till larian fulfills or crushes it.

if there is any party, be sure to invite me. <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/party.gif" alt="" />

D'oh! I must have misread it. I though they said there was full party control in RiftRunner. And by the way, I'm against party based RPGs of this type.

The Riftrunner FAQ mentions "Total control over party members". That at least implies direct control, <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/up.gif" alt="" /> but could mean access to the parameters defining the AI. <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/down.gif" alt="" /> (usually not done that great)