I realised that influencing is a very solitary affair. You know, with all that being fixated and all. At most you get a Guardian or Bard to follow you and heal your ego. Booooooooring. So, in order to facilitate group influencing, I suggest this idea:

PeerPressure
Syntax: INFLUENCE with PEERPRESSURE
Two's company; three's a crowd? No more, when you harness the unrivalled power of peer pressure!

Basically, if the mob is in the midst of an ego battle with someone, you can PeerPressure to help reduce its ego.

Some uses that I can think of are:
Bringing novices around and go on influencing-trips. If it is fairly low in Influence, you can even be the one taking the ego damage, letting them do the PeerPressure.
Allow the creation of SuperInfluenceMobs, and then you can gang-influence them. (Ur'influencing trips?)


Only problem I foresee is village influencing. Would allowing influence-zerks be a good thing? Or would it make it more interesting then watching one person influence, while the rest just divert?

I think multiple people being able to influence the same mob is a good idea, but only if there is some kind of 'defender' response from certain influence mobs in the same room as your target. As in, when you influence attack one, all the others start asking you questions, or even just reassuring the mob you're trying to hit.

As long as the mobs can only attack singly, I don't see it working well to allow players to do otherwise.

Could make it an active effect that makes it so that the more mobs there are in a room, the harder they hit, and the more players in a room (or group if those get implemented), the harder they hit.

I know, but isn't that what group bashing is like too? Don't the mobs only attack one target unless they have a room attack? And not all mobs spring to defend either.

Also, having this option would open up Supermob-level influencing mobs. For example, Master Quettle could be upgraded to Supermob level with regards to influencing, making it so that only if you are in a group, you are able to 'take him down'. He could have a room-influence too! Something like 'Master Quettle merely meditates in peace, causing all present to sputter in embarrassment.'

I've raised the idea of influencing-afflictions before, but it looks like ego-barbs is perfect! 'Queen Maeve looks at you coldly and asks, "Who are you?". Overwhelmed, your shame begins to cause you physical harm'

Although, I do like the reassuring idea. Other mobs 'spring to defend' the targeted mob, healing its ego.

This is a fun looking idea. I must admit, however, that before I started here, I was rather renowed for hating bashing, so people raved about influencing - imagine my chagrin to discover that the difference between bashing and influencing was primarily a cosmetic/RP one. The mechanics are still pretty much the same...ie grinding best served with a side of script.

Would be nifty if there were new bits added that brought xp gain away from a parallel, non-fighting version of bashing. Off the top of my head, some zany suggestions:

- Xp given for published works? Maybe limit this to prestige works to avoid abuse
- Xp given for time spent in the recording of a theater performance (with extra boosts being given to director/xp for author)?
- Xp given for audience witnessing the premiere of said performance?
- Xp somehow associated with active mentoring of a novice? Not just the act of mentoring, but time spent teaching/training/helping/making the game fun for them

Ie, xp given for things that are social and don't force you to sit pressing the same macro for hours on end. Perhaps a pipe dream, but imagine how much more interaction and culture we'd see...

Indeed, that would be nice, but there might just be a problem quantifying the amount of exp to be given. For example, I would love gaining experience for teaching novices, its the only thing I do other than influence. However, how should I be given experience? The amount of time? A grading by the novice? The amount of words I say? The number of places I bring the novice to? And looking at previous posts about mentors, apparently, there are people who would game this system to 'farm exp'. In other words, you get people who teach novices, not to teach them, but for the sake of exp.

Just to let you know, I'd love to have other methods of gaining experience, like performing rites and such, but I know it is quite an abuse-able system, and would rather not have it.

EDIT: By the way, I think certain quests give you experience. Gathering scholar, bards and pilgrims do too.

Oh, I know it would be abused. Hence "pipe dream."

Though, theater and publishing stuff would be a lot harder to abuse and a lot easier to notice/smackdown.

Hmm those are actually really good ideas.

I agree with Thoros, but I wouldn't limit it to prestige works to avoid abuse. We don't have enough writers in Celest to abuse it. I go through all the books myself and make sure they are printable, that should be enough to prevent bad books going out. I think it would just add to the culture of the game if there were more books.

I realized that I've derailed this thread, btw, so my apologies for that.

Sometimes great ideas come from other people's ideas. Hopefully this part of the thread isn't looked over.

Perhaps if the experience is scaled to the effort then it'll be less likely to be "farmed/abused". It's a great idea worth exploring.

I'm not sure how I feel about novice mentoring, since there are clear benefits already associated with mentoring: +5% XP when grouping, etc. It could definitely be fleshed out further. Sorry to hijack your influencing thread Caerulo.

Back on topic: The idea of group-oriented influencing has a lot of promise, but the risks and rewards will need a boost. I don't know if anybody would go that route since most high-level mobs are aggressive (can't be influenced without bleeding out). We'd definitely need those s-mobs aforementioned for something like this to be tempting.

Also, influencing guards is way too rewarding for anybody to want to participate in group influencing. I am going to reach demigod in 3 months from influencing guards alone. So why would you want to group up if you can do it better solo?

Ur'fluencing.

Not all, I don't mind the thread derailing. Like I said, I liked those ideas, I only wonder how they are going to find the perfect balance where it is actually rewarding for people who partake in such activities and yet people do not abuse it. That's all.

And wow, did they bump up the experience give for influencing guards? I used to do that all the time, and I'm still at level 79. And anyway, people usually bash alone too, don't they? Barring powerful mobs like those in Astral, etc. of course. But I recall going on commune bashing trips, which were very fun, and I felt rather sad that you couldn't go on influencing trips.

Start a new thread for this stuff. Might be worthwhile.