Occult Thoughts and Ramblings

"haisin;c-17977722" wrote:
Very interesting thread! I'm just going to comment on ghosts and merfolk.

The perks you described would make ghosts much more interesting to play. I recently played a couple of ghosts and the ghost interactions 'scare' and 'pass through' are fun and I wish there was more to them. Murphy bed ghosts' ability to posses sims and drain their energy is super cool too and my favourite. I wouldn't mind if the other ghosts could do something similar as long as Murphy bed ghosts would still have some special thing. I really like the different types of ghosts we have and their small abilities, because those make them more individual.

I have wanted merfolk to have their own perk tree, because then it's possible to personalise them more and kind of show how weak or strong they are depending on what they can do and how many powers they have. Still I kind of agree with your point too that they could all have equal powers and they'd just need more details and abilities. I think I'd be fine with that too, as long as they got more depth. I really like the little details you described.

@haisin
Thank you for reading through and sharing your thoughts.

To give them worthwhile powers and perks...you'd have to think outside of the box and make up new lore, whilst making sure not to retread the same grounds too many times. Those are the reasons I instead decided to focus more on the gameplay than the powers. On top of all that, most of their abilities would require Seasons to be more versatile, so there had to be some pay-off for those without it. In my mind, mer are just people with an affinity for water...so...water-benders, essentially.

I feel if they were limited to perks, it'd either be power-creep or unlocking pieces of a puzzle, which would still have the side-issue of being linear, but to be fair, I'll try to picture them like vampires:
They'd start out with no clear advantages besides being able to sleep in water, and a slightly faster swim. One could unlock weather control, storm summoning, the ability to communicate with fish and other sealife (for various benefits), the ability to freeze water (to the point of freezing others), the ability to heat it (to the point of creating fires), Siren songs, faster swim speed, and fortune-telling (one could use one's imagination to figure out how that'd work gameplay-wise). Maybe a couple of perks to better acclimate to the water: diving for longer (3 ranks), the ability to catch fish with just a hand, decreased aging speed (3 ranks), Sleep-bubble (added sleeping benefits in water).

Then of course one could have weaknesses such as drying out faster whilst on land, addiction to water, fishy smell, intermittent fear of the future (from being able to see it), consistent pain in one's legs whilst using them, lost voice (temporarily) if which causes fear to the mer and annoyance to other sims, and an inability to sleep soundly without being in water.

If I were to picture them like Spellcasters, with their powers all being available, but their perks giving various boons, then it would require more outside thinking to make them more powerful in certain regards, but not overly so, balancing each new power-up with a worthwhile detriment. Perhaps the faster swim speed is a perk attributed to an "aquatic affinity" tree, whilst something like siren songs and controlling the weather would be tied to a "siren" tree. The problem is that "trees" tend to limit uniqueness, so if I'm being honest, I'd be more apt to go the Vampires route.

Yet again, it sort of retreads old ground in some respects (but I mean what doesn't in this game?) and the lack of lore-based powers stunts things somewhat (when compared to vampires), but I guess if a combination of vampire-esque perks and little details were to both be present, it would be satisfactory. Perhaps each unlocked power would contribute to unlocked details around the game, with enough (hydrokinesis-based) to start with off-the-bat.