The Evolution Shop

As you already know if you checked announcements lately, i am currently working on the evo shop. This will be the place where you will be able to spend evolution points that you can currently gather for all sorts of activities.

The shop is designed to bring a more massive change to MD than it first seems. In stage 17, the announced direction is one of chaos, because chaos is womb of creation.
Several of the stuff you got used to (i am talking here to the ancient players), will change, one way or an other.

Several super rare things will become more common, and other unique stuff will become more easily available. The essence of valuable stuff has shifted more towards the personal items you hold, and in the way the Forge is now capable to judge your direction in the realm.

Getting heat slots was difficult and rare, not to mention spells that turn heat gathering obsolete (heat and heatboost spells)... now these things will become slowly more common.
The forge was tweaked to not give single use items, so that will also be a direction of constant value inflation.

But lets admit it, the value accumulation in the realm was a thing that had to change. The realm has enough to offer to keep those that deserve it, hold their distinct advantage over those that don't try so much.

I was suprised to see how much of MD was not really reachable. Many things designed just for custom roles, many things requiring truly difficult to do chores... so the evolution points system changes this direction significantly. The Evo shop will unfold a lot of md, but give you a limited choice. While the points are grindable, their use is not. You will not be able to buy everything in the evo shop, every stage of the shop is a choice you will have to deal with the rest of your character evolution.

Thats why, even if you can spend your evo points on stuff like the summon spell, or super rare creatures, or on spells designed for particular roles, its a choice you have to make, and when you pick one, you give up an other.

This will work hand in hand with two other systems. The Forge, you already know it, and the tag dispatchers (will be revived, the system is there just not used much).


Why the paradigm shift

MD was designed to have the human factor as the final decision layer. This is a good plan still, but the number of people in MD does not allow it to function properly. There must be ways for everyone to convert effort into achievements, and most important, ways to reach the highest "levels" in md through these ways.

The way things were designed so far:

• players do whatever they can, human in charge judges and grants abilities, the chain continues with people having more altering the lives of those that have less. Natural, but stuck for "single player mode"

• Many worthy players never ever got what they deserved, and the leaders where impossible to contradict and overthrown

• Society never self balanced, it always needed a leader

• Anomalies truly changed the realm, but limited to how much the leader(s) (me) believed in that direction.

• A central decision factor shaped the world and kept it true to a set of core concepts.

The way things will be now:

• Players can turn effort into benefits via the evo points system. This, together with active days, count for their raw activity.

• Their actions are carefully analyzed by the forge and turned into usable items, these realizations count for their personal direction and role.

• Evo shop turns raw activity into tools, forge items plus tools create a role.

• Tag dispatchers allow unlocking of curated roles, that the entire realm "believes". The forge considers tags as an absolute truth, same as leaders were supposed to.

• Society self balances without needing the top leadership

• Anomalies will emerge, but they will shape the realm. Core concepts might be ruined in this process, but the central decision factor will shape the tools in such a way to compensate, no longer the characters directly.

By central decision factor i mean of course myself, but often others with full powers where directed to replace my decisions on countless occasions, so its a general concept, not a person.

I tried to delegate this power many many times, and define myself more as a tools architect than a community leader, but this worked only on few occasions. Hopefully with more freedom, and chaos, things will rearrange in more interesting ways for all of us.


The new rarity measure

If all the options are now there on the table, what defines rarity? Until now, rarity was defined by the items only i could build, custom creations, and the standard rarity given by the deep shop branches. In the new system, rarity will be more defined by the role items you create using the forge, since the forge always creates unique stuff, always tailored to your character (even when you dont like it, and thing its not matching your character, the issue is not the forge).

The depth remains the pool of rarity in the evo shop as well. You will get awesome stuff the deeper you get, but anyone getting there will have the chance to get the same, so its more about how you craft your role with the stuff that you get, in such a way that the forge will be able to create you the unique stuff you deserve.


Objectively the most valuable things in the realm right now
- magical forge fires
(these are forge fires that last longer usually, and do not consume your items when forging)
- a25 tools
(still a part of md power structure that i have not yet decided where it fits, these are portable admin tools of sorts. not for playing but for game masters to build the game for others to play)
- Player tags and medals
(these where always powerful, but now even more so. These are considered sources of truth by all the automated tools. Humans might diregard them, but the forge and other tools in the AI team, will consider these the absolute truth. If your tag and description say you can shut down the server, the ai will do its best to give you tools to do so, or do it itself for you. Premeditated chaos and risk, i always loved it)

Worthy mentions: `condensed` status in items, these are a promise to the forge, that the item forged with these ingredients will be usable, and if the promise fails, the item is returned unharmed.

- - Enjoy,

Mur