If you have seen any recent announcements, you are aware of the project that I am now working on, the evo shop. This is where you will be able to spend your evolution points, which you can collect for various activities. The shop has been designed with the intention of bringing about a massive change to the lives of those in MD.
Several of the items you were familiar with as an ancient player will change in some way. Some of the super rare items that were only ever accessible to the most dedicated players will become available to all players.
The essence of valuable stuff has shifted more towards the personal items you hold, and in the way the Forge is now capable to judge your direction in the realm. Getting heat slots was difficult and rare, not to mention spells that turn heat gathering obsolete, such as heat and heatboost spells, but now these things will become slowly more common.
The Forge was tweaked to not give single use items, so that will also be a direction of constant value inflation. However, as we had to change the value accumulation in the area, we did something about it.
The area provides an advantage to those who are supposed to have one. I was surprised to learn how much of MD is inaccessible to those who do not have certain custom roles or who have to perform certain chores that are difficult to accomplish. The evolution points system provides a change to this disadvantageous area.
Choice, limits, and role building
The evo shop will contain a lot of MD but you will have no choice with regards to using these grindable points.
You will not be able to buy everything in the evo shop. Every stage of the shop will have choices that you will have to deal with for the rest of your character's progress.
That is why, even if you can spend your evo points on stuff like the summon spell, or super rare creatures, or on spells designed for particular roles, it is a choice you have to make, and when you pick one, you give up another. This will work hand in hand with two other systems: the Forge, which you already know, and the tag dispatchers, which will be revived because the system is there, just not used much.
Why the paradigm shift
MD was designed to have the human factor as the final decision layer. This is a good plan still, but the number of people in MD does not allow it to function properly.
There must be ways for everyone to convert effort into achievements, and most important, ways to reach the highest "levels" in MD through these ways. The way things were designed so far was this:
- Players do whatever they can, human in charge judges and grants abilities, and the chain continues with people having more altering the lives of those that have less.
- Many worthy players never ever got what they deserved, and the leaders where impossible to contradict and overthrown.
- Society never self balanced, it always needed a leader.
- Anomalies truly changed the realm, but limited to how much the leader, or leaders, believed in that direction.
- A central decision factor shaped the world and kept it true to a set of core concepts.
The way things will be now is different. The points earned during the game can now be spent to turn effort into benefits for players. This points system will now count as a component of their active days in the game.
The actions of the members of the group are analyzed by the Forge to create usable items for the individual, which are important for determining their personal direction and role within the group. Evo shop turns their raw activity into tools and forge turns those tools into roles.
Tag dispatchers allows for the unlocking of specific roles that the whole area believes in. The Forge is based upon the assumption of absolute truth in all tagged concepts, similar to how leaders were supposed to embody those characteristics.
Societies are self balancing and do not need the top leadership to function. Anomalies will emerge in the society but they will have a positive impact upon it.
While the core concepts of the game may get ruined in the process, the central decision factor will ensure that those who design the tools for the game will ensure that they are appropriately created to compensate for any changes to the characters. The central decision factor refers to myself, as well as all of the other people who have been given full power over the game to make decisions about how it should operate.
Despite my efforts to delegate such power, I have been unsuccessful in establishing a system where people can contribute to the community without having to manage the platform directly. With more freedom for users to engage with the platform without any restrictions, perhaps things will begin to develop in more interesting ways for the full community.
The new rarity measure
Now that all of the available options are on the table for the player to consider, the question becomes: what defines rarity in this game? Prior to the addition of the other options, rarity was defined by the items that only I could build for myself, the custom creations that I made available to the player and the rarity that each item had as per the deep shop's branches.
In the new system, rarity will be more defined by the role items you create using the Forge, since the Forge always creates unique stuff, always tailored to your character. Even when you dont like it, and thing its not matching your character, the issue is not the Forge.
Also, the depth of the pool is also the rarest aspect of the evo shop. The deeper you get in this pool, the more awesome stuff you will get. However, anyone else who gets there will also have access to the same awesome stuff, making it more about how you can create a unique role for yourself in the pool using those awesome items that the Forge can make for you.
Humans might diregard player tags and medals but the Forge and other tools in the AI team will consider these the absolute truth. If your tag and description say you can shut down the server, AI will do its best to give you tools to do so or do it itself for you.
Premeditated chaos and risk, I always loved it.
Enjoy,
Mur
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