Chapter 1.4 Experience as Legacy with Archetypes

Legacy and Archetype Overview
As players accomplish certain actions, tasks, and quests, a player gains “legacy.” This is the player’s experience points. Legacy is divided into many categories, that division affecting a player’s interactions with NPC, monsters, and world events.

Legacy Experience Categories
Below is the overview list of the legacy types. The bold titles are the legacy categories, and within are category subsections.

• Combatants - Considers different base styles of combat

  • Tanker, Archer, Fighter, Gunner, Mechanic, Tinkerer, Defender

• Healers - Those who rescue fireflies and downed players

  • Field Medic, Base Medic, Rescuer

• Artisans - Those who craft items, tools, weapons, and furnitures

  • Butcher, Chief, Brewer, Smither, Leathermaker, Tailor, Glassblower, Potter, Banner Maker

• Builders - Building construction vs design, and what material types are used

  • Construction, Design, Masonry, Carpentry, Butchery

• Agriculturalists - Crops, domestication, animal husbandry

  • Farmer, Rancher

• Gatherers - Collectors of loot

  • Forager, Forrester, Hunter, Quarrier, Fisher, Salvager

• Economic Agents - Traders, storekeepers, transporters, and more

  • Patron, Foot Trader, Stall Trader, Cart Trader, Wagon Trader, Store Trader, Transporter, Banker

• Social Forces - Those who use riftmist to protect, or to harm

  • Law keeper, Criminal, Bounty Hunter, Wanted

• Explorers - Considers travel methods, and map makers

  • Foot Traveler, Rider, Hitcher, Driver, Map Maker, Wanderer

• Researchers - Studying, tech improvement, and changing spirit values on items

  • Scholar, Alchemist

• Wardens - Those who protect wildlife, living resources, deities, or monster entities

  • Deity Loyalist, Tamer, Creature Loyalist, Resource Loyalist, Monster Loyalist

• Devotees - Considers the in-game faithful and leaders of faiths

  • Solitary Faithful, Fellowship Faithful, Idol

• Protection Breakers - PVP

  • Slayer, War Aggressor, War Retaliator, Pirate

• Non-Combatants

  • Pacifist

Character Archetypes
Instead of having a character class, the player's legacy is totalled, and the player’s archetype will be a combination of the top most used actions, crafts and constructions made, completed tasks and quests, and interactions between wildlife and monsters.

Legacy Interactions

• Player Crafting

  • Players who have certain leading legacies will find that they can add additional stats to their crafts that match that legacy type.

• Player Skills and Traits

  • Some skills and traits are activated by having leading legacy types, ensuring that special skills and traits match a player’s archetype.

• Flavor Text

  • Occasionally, an NPC and other entities will interact with a player with specific legacy. For example, a criminal NPC will keep interactions brief with a lawkeeper, but will be more open to criminals, and act normal to any other player type.

  • These add small nods to make a player feel seen.

• Monster Threats

  • Monsters are attracted to spirit. Canonically, as a monster would put it, a player’s spirit takes on the flavor of their legacy and the combinations of items/equipment types held/worn by a player. The game can determine what kind of threats to lean into based on these factors.

  • This allows monsters to mirror the choices players make.

• Creature Avoidance

  • Creatures for taming and mounting could avoid players that don’t match the spirit they are compatible with.

  • This gives some agency to creatures, to attempt to avoid and accept players that disturb or attract them.

• Special Instances

  • When speaking to, or interacting with, a special NPC creature, spirit, deity, or monster, a player’s legacy will need to be read to proceed if they match a criteria to continue.

  • This allows branches of players that can access things that relate to their history and experience, rather than everything applying to everyone.

• Player Ends

  • Later chapters will discuss all things relating to the end of a character’s story. Legacy is used to create Spirit Relics and determine the effects of player memorials like statues, graves, and remembrance festivals.

Character Check Points - Reflection Points
Due to the need for the game to calculate a player’s archetype between many different legacy points, the game will track these as points are updated, and they will be visible when the player takes time to reflect during rest periods. This shows an updated page in the player’s core journal as a reflection point. The reflection point is a point in time in the past for a player to reference their progress. When the game needs to consider a player’s archetype for special quests and interactions, the entity checking the player’s criteria will be able to read or sense the player’s legacy accumulated so far at that very moment of consideration to enter a threshold or be given a special task, regardless of what reflection points looked like in the past.

Visuals of Reflection Point Journal Entries
When players create a reflection point, the first page will show the strongest legacy categories and legacy sub categories. Focus areas will appear with larger icons and flavor text that represents the character’s current passions or lack thereof. The visuals will be split differently based on the type of spread below.

• Unwavering Archetype

  • The leading legacy types have a large % jump compared to other legacy types

• Focused Archetype

  • The leading legacy types have a medium % jump compared to other legacy types

• Steady Archetype

  • The leading legacy types have a small % jump compared to other legacy types

• Generalist Archetype

  • There isn’t a significant legacy % jump between the all the legacy types

Leading Legacies - Larger Icons

• Sole Icon

  • One large icon, there is only one leading legacy type.

  • Players seeing this are likely players who have resources and passions that allow them to focus on a single focus, such as a combatant, smith, or cook, for example.

• Dual Icons

  • Two large icons, there are two leading legacy types.

  • Players seeing this are likely players who have a focus, but who need to travel or gather their resources themselves often, such as a miner and smith, a hunter and leathermaker, for example.

• Tri Icons

  • Three large icons, there are three leading legacy types.

  • Players seeing this are likely players who often do connected or adjacent legacies, such as a farmer, rancher, transporter, or a tanker, solitary faithful, wanderer.

These combinations allow for more flexibility for class identity, while keeping close to classic themes in MMORPGs, but also changes as the players change. Players' reflection points can change depending on their new legacy totals.

Challenger Check
Not all players are interested in competition, but some are. Players can optionally expand their reflection point by communicating with the global deity, who manages the values in the world. Doing so will show the player’s number value in each of the leading categories. It will then also show their ranking, the next 3 players higher and 3 players lower, as well as total legacy count, with the 3 higher and lower values for that too. Names will only appear if the player knows the alias of the player through association in-game. (Same guild, outpost, party, friendlist, etc.) Players can only do a competitive check once a day. If a player is a top 1% player, their name will appear in gold, if a player is in the top 5% it will appear silver, and the top 10% will show in copper. A player with a crown next to their names will be the top in that bracket.

Deleting Reflection Point Pages
Since reflection points and challenger checks are merely a view in a moment in time, players are free to delete pages.

Copying Reflection Point Pages
Players can create in-game papercrafts (pages, tablets, books, etc.) that are a copy of their reflection points, and/or challenger checks. For bureaucratic/political entities that cannot check a player’s spirit, they may ask for paperwork to prove your worth. For example, an NPC outpost leader may only want a certain type of role. You can show your core journal reflection point instead of crafting one though. If there is a mismatch between past and present, they may give you different responses.

Losing Experience
At no point in the game will players lose legacy or experience. MMORPGs often punish players for failing in battle by losing experience points. However, that is not the goal in Spirit Relics. Upon falling in battle, players have opportunities to resurrect in many ways as discussed in later chapters, with no hit to your legacy. But permanent death can occur if precautions are not taken.

Logged Off Friend Support
As mentioned in the chapter before, when players log off, they turn into a firefly. If the logged off player allows it, they can follow an online player in their firefly form. The offline player's archetype will give off passive buffs to the player they are following. Sole archetypes have stronger buffs, while dual and tri archetypes aren't as strong, but allow for more buff variance. Optionally, an offline player can allow a partial buff, where a player takes half the buff value for a time, but their firefly will remain in place. In either case, an online player can only link a support buff with one offline player at a time.

Afterlife Legacy Examples - Brief Overview
In later chapters, I talk about character death or retirement. The character’s legacy may affect NPC behavior, animal encounters, and the items they leave behind may be used for future small scale quests to world events.

Will you build in this world, as well as traverse it? It's up to you.