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"Choose your faction" blurbs

CubeyCubey Member Posts: 333 ✭✭✭
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Inspired by the hijacked thread where we talked about CA and its appeal to new players - more on that specifically later, for now I'll focus on first impressions players get when they get to pick a faction while creating a new character. In addition to gorgeous artwork that is amazing and doesn't require any changes at all, they get these descriptions to work with:

Scatterhome

Initially formed as a place for Humankind to live, Scatterhome now has significant Elgan, Krona, and Jin populations. It's a series of huge asteroids that have been turned into living space, and is a rallying point in Starmourn for anarchists, criminals on the run, and ultra-wealthy people who appreciate a place light on regulation.

Song

Initially formed as an alliance of Decheerans, Nusriza, Amaians, and Ry'nari to oppose the forces of the Ishvana during the Bushraki War, its capital is a floating paradise above a world devastated by war.

Celestine

Formed as an alliance to oppose the Song Dominion, the Celestine Ascendancy's founding races were the Shen, the Nath-el, the Tukkav, and the W'hoorn. Their capital, Litharge, is a megapolis of over 120 million individuals.

Scatterhome's description is great, it tells you what kind of place it is - but the other two are a bit lacking. In addition to history and races, what we learn is that Song is a floating paradise, but nothing about its militaristic society, while for CA we get... that it has a big capital, I guess.

I suggest we expand these two descriptions. Something like this:

Song

Initially formed as an alliance of Decheerans, Nusriza, Amaians, and Ry'nari to oppose the forces of the Ishvana during the Bushraki War, its capital is a floating paradise above a world devastated by war. Heavily militaristic, it is governed by the authoritarian rule of its Lord Commander.

Celestine

Formed as an alliance to oppose the Song Dominion, the Celestine Ascendancy's founding races were the Shen, the Nath-el, the Tukkav, and the W'hoorn. Their capital, Litharge, is a megapolis of over 120 million individuals. Formerly controlled by corporations, after a revolution it's ruled by a trio of democratically elected Guardians.

These additions tell the new player a bit more about Song and CA's governments and what kind of place they can expect if they choose it as their starting faction. They also put the faction descriptions more in line with each other length-wise, while Scatterhome's was significantly longer than the two others before.

Comments

  • OrrinOrrin Member Posts: 39 ✭✭
    I think these are great! And would have really helped me when I first started. My initial character was Song, and I thought it was gonna be all lovely and naturey based on what I'd read. I mean it does have that aspect but its military rule is more important for new players to know I think. 

    Same with Celestine. Just adding that little bit makes a huge positive difference. I think Celestine fuelled Orrin's whole anti-capitalist thing.

    The way it's written now, I can see why most new starters join scatterhome (aside from it autodumping new humans there) - it's the only one that currently sounds like it has definition.

    Orrin still doesn't wanna be in any of them. 😂 But yeah, this would be really good I think. 

    And I think this was mentioned in the voice chat thingy, but it'd be great if these brief but informative summaries were given when you start a new character, or even AFTER the tutorial... like newbies get to read about/see the factions and decide where they want to go based on something in-game. (Forgive me if it does already... it's been a while!) 
  • gravithiccgravithicc Member Posts: 26 ✭

    Song

    I like the extra sentence for Song. I also think the full name of "Song Dominion" should appear somewhere in the faction blurb, preferably in the title.


    Celestine

    I don't like how most of CA's description and identity revolves around being anti-Song. I think CA should instead emphasize its cyberpunk roots, how you can get lost in the megacity, and that no one knows how deep the undercity actually goes. Use something like this as the image:

    Other potential image inspirations:

    While looking for those images, I came across this very relevant article on essential cyberpunk elements:
    In summary, these elements are: Rain, Aerial Traffic, Multicultural Architecture, Advertising Everywhere, Police and Corporate Security, Stretching to the Sky, and Pedestrian Walkways.

    This got me thinking that rain could be added as either a random room/area message OR as an actually coded weather system (it could show up in purple beneath the room name). Advertising is already baked into the help system, but you could also add it to the mob description of immortals or even random room messages.

    As for the existing Celestine faction artwork, it is a very accurate interpretation of Litharge, but it lacks the wonder of the other two faction images. TBH, it reminds me of a slightly futuristic Brazilian favela (which are not cyberpunk, just regular punk).
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