Inspiration

From Seed

Originally posted by Haller (Lead Programmer, Runestone) at The Seed Forum

What are Inspirations - what do they represent in the world of Seed?

Inspirations are the random insights and sudden flashes of genius that strike the brilliant DaVincians as they perform their daily work or toil on their great project.

What is the gameplay purpose of Inspirations?

Basically Inspirations in Seed serve the same purpose as random dropping items do in most other MMORPGs. They are a randomised reward that you can get when performing various task in Seed.

What happens when your character gets hit by Inspiration?

Quite simple really. If your character gets hit by sudden insight a new Inspiration will be put into their Inspiration Inventory, much like getting items in other games. There they will stay until you use them, but before we get to that I'd better explain a bit about what they can do.

What can Inspirations do in terms of gameplay?

Some of the simplest Inspirations in the game are just flat skill training bonusses. Using a skill may give you a new idea that supplements you daily training, and this translates into a raw training bonus allowing you to learn that skill just a little bit faster.

But Inspirations can do more that this. Some may be able to provide training bonusses to several skills. Some may make it possible to learn certain skills. Some may allow you to fake having a higher skill as ao one-off thing. Some may make it possible to complete a difficult Design. Some may give you a completely new Blueprint. Some may allow you to start a new Project, or be required to further an existing one. And so on. Basically we hope to eventually tie Inspirations into all our other gameplay.

Since Inpirations can be so diverse, you may not be able to make use of all your good ideas, but happily you will be able to tell other people about most of them, thereby trading them (Yes, it could be argued that you shouldn't loose an idea just by telling someone else about them, but we need to keep things under control, so there has to be concessions). Ideed some Inspirations may not even be used by the character that finds them, but only by another character that is told the idea (Given the Inspiration).

So how do we actually use these Inpirations?

Great, we now have an idea about what Inspirations can do, but how do we make them work?

If you know what kind of Inspiration you are dealing with, it is rather simple. You grab the Inspiration you want to use from your Inspiration inventory and drop it on the gameplay element where you want to apply it. So if it gives a skill training bonus, you open you Skill Window and drop it on the skill you want to train. If you need it to complete a design, you drop it into the Item Design Window. And so on.

However some Inspiration drops will not immediately tell you how they can be used. You may have to examine them (Pondering the vague idea further) or try to drop it on random game elements to see if it will fire. This gives you a bit of mystery and trial and error to play with - In some way similar to the Horadric Cube in Diablo II, where you could test out various recipies and see what worked. This will in particular be the way new Projects can be started - You get an 'Unknown Inspiration', try to drop in on a nearby Factory Machine, and the Inspiration turns into a 'Improved Machine Design Project Inspiration'. You can now either start this Project yourself or tell someone else about your brilliant idea.

So what is so cool about Inspirations?

Well, not so much perhaps. It is just a new skinning of Phat Lewt, and we wont try to pretend otherwise. However we feel that using ideas rather than items makes better sense in the world of Seed, because we are basically dealing with brilliant people, who would usually share their items, but perhaps not their ideas. It would also be straining credibility a little if random items dropped out of the wall every time you repaired it, but Inspiration can come from the strangest sources. Gameplaywise we feel that it may be an advantage that the random loot is destict from the produced loot (The items you will be crafting on you own), as it will hopefully avert some of the problems regarding getting the perfect balance between stuff you can farm and stuff you can make. We also hope that the ideas regarding Inspirations you have to give away, and Inspirations you have to play around with to figure out how to use, will help promote the right mood for Seed.