Demons and Original Content

It came up in the new slayer development thread. So let's give it it's own thread: Demons and Curses.

In the other thread Shuhei and others have made some good arguments for Curses

Instead focus your efforts on producing Demons and Curses!  It's the only new thing to pop in to the FT universe for a while and the only thing we made no effort to introduce on the site. To counter-balance the Demons & Curses maybe add Angels and Blessings lol. -Shuhei

What I'm more interested in is the Curses deal. I made a "Curse" a while back with Hydra, but it was just magic with a fancy name. I'm really interested in how you think this would change things though, as I've been curious about curses since the idea came out (while I was making my demon character). Can this honestly become a discussion at some point? -Axil


But more importantly, the bigger issue. There are way too many slayer types... I agree to bring in the curses and demons!! Yaya! -Lyra

So let's talk ideas

Demons:
I feel demons should be opened as a playable species. Demons will be unable to use magic however will be able to acquire an infinite amount of curses. They also take extra damage from demon slayer magic.

BUT WAIT KIRAFACE! Infinite curses is too op for this life! Well I do believe I said "acquire" Which brings me to the next topic


Curses:
For the sake of equality I think we can bend the rules presented by the manga and say ANYONE can get a curse. But there are rules to be considered, rules of usage and rules of obtainment.

Curses can be obtained in place of secondary magic for humans while Demons are allowed to start with it as a primary. To obtain a curse a Book of Zeref must be found(with exception of the one curse a demon starts with). Books of Zeref can be bought, obtained in events or obtained in special jobs as rewards. Each Book of Zeref has a pre-written curse created by the development team not to crush creativity but to ensure that the Curses follow the strict "usage rules." As stated in the demon section assuming a demon keeps finding books they can keep getting curses as long as the demon keeps all the books recorded in a thread in their character vault. Having staff pre-make the curses will also make it hard for a demon to get a couple books that combine into an invincible power.

Now onto usage. Based on information gathered from Jackal talking about his curse I designed an idea for curse function. A curse sets a condition on the player. This condition does not use up Mp or have a duration, it just always is. For example Jackal turns anything he touches into a bomb, based on his description it would seem he does not have control of this effect. The strength of a curse over magic is that unlike magic it never runs out, the draw back is that the user cannot stop using it if they so desire. An example(silly example) of a curse might be "Everytime the user greets someone that person is struck with lightning" a very useful power in combat but it has obvious drawbacks in that the person holding it will smite their friends every time they say hi. A curse is meant to be something bad, having a curse is a bad thing, but a resourceful person can turn it into a weapon.

Other examples:
"Everything the user bites will suffer spontantious combustion." Pro: Explosive bite attacks Con: Only able to eat burnt food
"Everything the user steps on freezes" Pro: Awesome kicks Con: Don't walk on the grass
"Laser eyes" Pro: Laser eyes Con: You can't turn them off

Curses naturally should be this simple because of how simple they are in the manga. Also if development has to pre-make a ton of these if they have one sentence descriptions it won't be so hard for them. More complex curses like Soul Dude or Mard Geer's can be made available as items of the month or through events. However they would follow the same rules, just maybe two or three sentances.

I believe this method I have described best mimics canon curse mechanics.

Note: A demon's first curse can be made themselves but requires TWO mods to approve.


People have mentioned Angels but meh

I would like to note that as Hiro is a 'demon' (devil if we get technical, or 'ruler of demons') and that this would interest me greatly as he's already cursed (IC negatives of not being able to leave SS's guildhall or surrounding area with no positives because fuck being nice to my characters).

There area already quite a few characters with demon origins in their blood and backstory (myself still an example, Satan, Daiko) so taking away what is already there makes no sense and is also going to piss people off (If I lost my magic and had to replace it with a bunch of curses I would lose my shit like seriously you have never seen me truly and honestly go off on a staff (hika has I think)).

Honestly the site can't say "your character has to be one of these species and not one of the ones we choose" because we would just tell you guys to piss off and go elsewhere. Demons are already a playable species and always have been so why make it sound like they aren't (even if not in the fairy tail definition which is definitely not everybody's definition.)

Pretty sure something like this was suggested but shot down. Rather than create new things constantly, we need to improve on things that have already been established.

I have to agree with Midnight here, we need to fix what broken before making anything new.

If we are worried about robbing demon characters of their backstory we could specify curse demons are "Zeref Demons" and make that a strong distinction between them and normal demon kind.

Regarding Towa and Midnight's concerns I am sorry but I have to say that kind of thinking has no place in the suggestions section. While I respect your opinion please if you are opposed to this suggestion please try to find an actual problem with the suggestion itself to bring to the table instead of this debby downer business.

The problem with the suggestion itself is that you are one of many people who keep wanting to add more things for people to overpower themselves. Not only that, but to give staff more work than they already have. Rather than help with suggestions that can aid what is already broken, many just want more and more and more. Like Towa said, how about we fix what's broken before piling more onto an already shaky bridge.

I didn't say moderators or admin I said development team. I can see the development corner and it is totally devoid of activity while Chaotic leads a charge to fix various site problems I see this as a team for the development team to really get back in the game. Adding new fun content will help bring in new players and inspire new ideas in old players its just something to keep things fresh. Curses are some of the only new content the FT manga has put out in forever and I feel we should be jumping on this chance.

I'm not even sure how to address the start of your post where you said the problem with the suggestion was me. Because that was just ow

I wasn't blaming you. I was blaming the blatant under-appreciation towards the staff on many occasions, this being an example. This is a VERY active site and the staff team is not that big. And there are new members everyday, some requiring help in various matters. So like I said, why don't we fix the problems we already have before adding in new material that will need to be balanced severely.

As the voice of reason let me point out an obvious middle ground and then take it WAY WAY WAY in another direction because I get like that.

Chao's "charge" in getting everything fixed should take absolute priority. If we create something new before its done, then it'll just be something else that needs to be fixed in order to incorporate updated rules.

This however doesn't mean you can have one or two people just playing around with other stuff or adding irrelevant stuff that shouldn't have to change at all (such as the metagame section stuff that was suggested by Ill which wouldn't be effected by any change at all. It would also take 30 seconds to do. Just saying). Even with how many staff members we have, which isn't much, get your cbox mods involved. they may freaking surprise you. That's easily another 3 people just throwing ideas in the table which can make things go faster from a brainstorming idea on how to fix things.

I get WAY OFF TOPIC HERE but still worth noting so spoiler. Also ranting:

The point is, the site already has so much to work on before even attempting to add more. Even if more mods were hired, all the changes need to move up the chain of command towards the admins then to Seijin. A group effort towards helping to fix the broked would go long way than trying to insert more content.

As midnight has stated currently the priority is on fixing systems rather than adding new ones.

We do appreciate the suggestions, but any suggestions like this will be seriously on the back burner until things are fixed. Why? Because then we are having to incorporate new items into the rules we are fixing whilst we are fixing them.

Yes, we don't have that many staff because recently a few have dropped out due to stress, real life or just wanting to focus on rp rather than being staff. I can appreciate all that. Having staff focused on a particular area seems good in principle, but what if all the staff for a particular section go off on holiday or dissapear or whatever. Or even if one or two do. That means more stress on either the few remaining ones or the other staff who are now not as familiar with those sections.

Still thanks for the ideas.

The whole demons and curses thing has been raised in staff chat and will be discussed further in the future. Balancing it is going to be difficult unless we basically build it like magic, but then what's the point? We will work it out. It will be a slow process, but I don't see any rush for a system based on Zeref's demons where Zeref isn't even a major plot piece on site at this moment (nor has ever been). The only in canon villain figure we've had is Acnologia.
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If the development team decide they want to begin working on a demo version of this then fine, but realise that it might have to be either a. heavily altered or b. scrapped entirely depending on how the rules change.

I like the idea of Zeref's demons, but to be honest a race system perhaps seems like a better idea. We could give some basic races human, demon, exceed etc and if people want a new race then they can apply for it. D&D in some cases allows custom races so why not on here? However, like I said on back burner till stuff is fixed.

Okay Zack that was close enough to permission I guess. I'll draft up a demo in the development corner for whenever new content becomes a priority again.

A lot of members are heavily discouraged by the amount of "Fixing" being done and not being done and by how long its taking to be done and so on.  

New things during times of depression often spark motivation.  If the staff is busy, but the people want more, make a team of non-staff capable of handling such a task and then just have some admins give the "Ok" upon completion.  If it doesn't work out, it doesn't work out, oh well.  You were going to shoot it down anyway.

Shuhei that team you just described is called the development team.

where is this group of developers who build things on the site without being staffers so I can join, take it over, and put them to work?

uh its mostly me. I'm sure there are others but we don't collab very much so its hard to say who all is on it.

As dev, I will consider this as honestly there is no work in devs now. However I do not want to flood new mechanics to admin when they are doing an utter reshape. I will wait a month then bring a draft form to the admins. Whether it passes or not will be determined by them.

I have already made talks about this, but currently I am not feeling well. Please be patient as certain things are taking priority right now.