Brands and Marks

[BlueOctoberFan]

I think that they should include brands/marks which would give an indication of what kind of character you are. They could be like re-doable quests, or something that you could make permanent on a character.

Ex. Traitors Brand:
quest - kill all level bosses in a full game without partying.
effect: additional damage, some other beneficial mods (they won't do it, so I don't care to spend all of my time making it)
make perm - pk a character
effect: enhance the above effect, automatically declare hostility when you enter a game


Ex. Arbitrator Mark:
quest - stand outside during a duel, with hostility declared, and sustain no damage
effect: bonus to life and defense, penalty to damage
make perm - loot a pked character from an acct not on your friends list, and return the items
effect: enhance the above, you cannot declare hostility, nore can it be declared on you.


The general idea is to have something your character can do anywhere in the game that will have a lasting effect, and could possible be displayed on the party screen so that other players can get an idea of what kind of player you are.

[Orphan]

The problem I see here is that both your examples could be accomplished by someone who isn't even doing what you intended, simply by being in a game with a friend.

For example:

Ex. Traitors Brand:
quest - kill all level bosses in a full game without partying.
effect: additional damage, some other beneficial mods (they won't do it, so I don't care to spend all of my time making it)
make perm - pk a character
effect: enhance the above effect, automatically declare hostility when you enter a game

Although I'm not quite sure what a traitor has to do with going solo, but if someone wanted to get this mark, they could instead simply join a game with a few friends, and stay unallied while they kill the act bosses, while the friends do something else (or nothing at all).


Ex. Arbitrator Mark:
quest - stand outside during a duel, with hostility declared, and sustain no damage
effect: bonus to life and defense, penalty to damage
make perm - loot a pked character from an acct not on your friends list, and return the items
effect: enhance the above, you cannot declare hostility, nore can it be declared on you.

Similiar to the above, two or three friends could join a private game, hostile each other, and then stand around doing nothing outside, to simply gain this mark.

Likewise, someone could remove a friend from their list, kill them, loot the corpse and return the items, without actually doing what the mark was meant to intend (ie, their real gaming style might be to not help anyone).

[BlueOctoberFan]

It's kind of given that you can accomplish most anything in this game without actually doing anything. Probably the only exception would be the ancients quest, which people found a way around anyway. If you can get three people into a game, you can always do anything. Perhaps the effects could be based on the level at which they were accomplished. I don't know, I'm just trying to come up with new ideas that would liven up the game.

[Orphan]

For the record, I'm not saying the idea is bad, it's just that it shouldn't be as easy to abuse. Ideally, the tasks would need to either involve a person doing something in a game with no other players, or a person being in a party and accomplishing something that might take a decent amount of time. In both of these scenarios, it would be more difficult to abuse the idea.

For example, maybe an idea could involve clearing every monster in a single game (either in the same party of people, or solo). Another idea could be to clear the 3 "hell" areas in Act 5 (Abaddon, Pit of Acheron and the Infernal Pit).

Other examples that might be able to be abused, by with more difficulty could include collecting xx amount of unique character ears, who's levels exceed say 90 (eg 25 ears of level 90+ characters).