Preludes 13: Virtue Rework and the Virtue system as a Whole: Lets Have a Talk

[opaque igloo]

Look I don't actually hate the idea. I think yes it is a bit more restrictive, but I get the reason why it was implemented. However some thoughts on the problems I've seen reflected with this new addition to the Virtue System. This is gonna be a long one but here are those thoughts along with some solutions or considerations:

**Prism Collection: **Restricting the hybrid prisms to rank 2 factions kinda sucks for any kind of build diversity, especially for new players. And the extreme prisms at rank 4? Ouch.
Solution: Starter prisms are given to players when meeting the corresponding enclave as is currently. Hybrid prisms could also be given the same way OR be given as rewards for completing the Fables for the first 3 Omen Beasts. In order: ||Garren Rood gives Spirit/Grace prism; Orengall gives Grace/Courage prism; Bromius gives Courage/Spirit prism||. Doing it this way would allow new players to work towards getting their newly gained pacts from them but also try out new prisms in their current pacts as they gain the materials to craft the new ones.

Armor Attunements: The idea of attunements on armor seems really fun but needs more work for sure. The Virtue requirement for many pieces too high for any of the hybrid prisms to actually reach the requirement without sacrificing a significant amount of pact points to reach it. Not to mention, certain aspects of their Virtue scaling seems underpowered compared to others. You would think that armors that scale to one would be stronger because the requirement is higher, but actually dual stat armors are much stronger because it scales off of two virtues instead of one.
Solution: If you want to keep the requirement amounts the same, then distribute it based on the scaling. As an example, Fire King's Plackart requires 15 Courage while being 2-star Courage/2-star Grace split. So instead, make it a Courage requirement of 8 and a Grace requirement of 7? OR Courage of 10 and Grace of 5? These numbers are way more tangible for newer players who definitely **don't **have the MR levels yet to allow this kind of stat diversity in order to put on semi decent armor for protection.

Weapon Attunements: I get the idea of wanting to make certain weapons categorized into certain virtues, but that just backfired the idea of build diversity. Now a Spirit-based Bromius build can only ever use staves and gauntlets and still remain viable. Or Courage-based Orengall builds can only use Long Blades, Polearms, Great Swords, and Sword and Shield and still remain viable. No more bows or short swords for them.
Solution: Revert back to previous Virtue Attunements for the weapons, temporarily. Use those virtue attunements for their damage scaling, and allow us as the players with the use of joineries, to change their virtue attunement how we wanted them to be. As an example: The Royal Tines In P12 were Spirit-attuned 3. With Joineries, I can make be attuned to Courage 3, or Grace 3. However, if I used an Iridis' Blessing joinery, I could make it a Spirit 4 attunement, making it scale slightly higher to spirit.
Doing this would allow for weapons to still retain some sense of thematic identity while also allowing more player agency to choose how they wanted to play the game they wanted.

Virtue Identity: I've noticed that when asking the playerbase what each virtue means, of course barring in-development changes, you will get different answers. There is no clear indication what each stat does for you as a stat, their scaling, or what they interact with. The only thing used to gleam any semblance of information is flavor text that, although very cool and immersive, leaves much to be desired. I can understand not wanting to clone a bunch of stuff from your previous game. However if you have certain things that work and work really well, why not use it? Why force yourself to reinvent a wheel? Just make it look different.
Solution: When looking at the Virtue window, hovering your mouse over the Courage icon will open up a secondary window showing the P13 flavor text and then below it is the character stats that Courage will affect. Same goes for Spirit and Grace. And if more information is needed can be placed below those changed stats in a different font as a indicator to the player that this information is "out of game" for the purpose of immersion.

Virtue Categorization: The recategorization of each virtue also feels rather clunky. Like stated previously, it appears that Virtues still don't have a sense of identity and as such we as players can't figure out efficient build diversity nor build synergies. This makes current gameplay interactions between players and characters/combat for the purpose of build crafting rather meaningless and that's really unfortunate.

Solution: Health should not be dependent on a specific stat but allocated collectively like in P12. Ability cooldowns should also be based on collective pact points allocated, not solely on spirit as is currently on P13. For each Virtue, I will give them their own section for clarity:

Grace could be for ranged weapon damage (nonmagical), stealth window opportunities, and critical damage multipliers. For stealth window opportunities, think of it as how long it takes for an enemy to notice you. And for critical damage multipliers, think of it as if smite or backstab or headshots were crits, then how much damage is done when doing it. That kind of thing.

Courage could be for melee damage, stagger resistance, and stagger cooldown. Beefy boys should be able to poise their way through hits. Still taking the damage of course, but can actually take a hit without falling like a crumpled wet paper bag.

Spirit could be magic weapon damage, CC strength(and/or CC duration), and ability durations. This would also work for the allocation of summons and ability buffs for a lot of pacts.

Conclusion: These are the ideas I have been ruminating over since the launch of Preludes 13, the virtual rework as a whole, and the information given from the previous devstreams and the Envoy Hour. I really do think this rework has a lot of potential and the prisms, like state it by the team before, really has awesome cool interactions as tangible items for players to earn as rewards for completing sections of content. It just has to be done carefully and in the right ways for it to be successful. I would love to know the thoughts of the other players as well as the devs and their feedback on my notes, my criticisms, and my solutions. What do you like? What don't you like and why? What would you change? I'll be eagerly reading the responses!