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 On the concept of shard lore.

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shit happens

shit happens


Posts : 14
Join date : 2009-04-01
Age : 36

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PostSubject: On the concept of shard lore.   On the concept of shard lore. Icon_minitimeTue Apr 21, 2009 5:58 pm

Fellow gamers,

I know I'm not officially part of anything around here other than being an occasional couch potato in the IRC channel - with specialities in ranting! -, but here me out for a second. Be ware, although I wrote this entire article in good personality, the context less void that is an on-line forum may make you believe that this is just a general rant. Please be cooperative and try to look over this! Smile

As I wrote in another thread*, once, I personally do not enjoy drawing the same picture in different colours, over and over.
This got me brainstorming in my free time to come up with a suggestion on what would be a good fresh idea for this shard as it's still in it's alpha stages of life.

From all my experience in every on-line game, the most named reason that people quit is that they get bored through repetition. This is because the game world is limited, in context of road to explore as much as things to do. Crafting will always be a grinding thing, but there being a limited set of foes one can think of - including later additions to land mass and creature database - there are a few set goals visible, such as highest level in skill, been to all places, fought all monsters, found all exotic items.
In case of UO, this is far more present, because of the game mechanics.
Removing this brick wall is really easy, but comes at a cost.

The exact opposite of this basic concept that eleven out of a dozen on-line games have, would be to just create a smack of land and go; "Here ya go, mate, now get to it!", with no tutorial to help new players along. (Much like X3: Reunion is, in contrary to it's newest semi-sequel, Terran Conflict.) But the downside is that the shard may lack depth. Some people come to these kind of games just to find something to do. IMHO, they're the worst kind of player, because they will virtually never put any effort into actually playing the shard, as supposed to playing the game beneath the shard.

However, this being a role-playing shard, means that if you would give a blank piece of paper to players, they will begin to write on it, themselves.

The great thing about this is that it creates enormous believability!
- You can have fixed lore, known or unknown to the population;
- You do not need to fiddle with a lot of lore rules/settings;
- Shard administration and players will actively and cooperatively create the shard's lore on-the-go;
- The high dynamic of this open world will make sure that players feel more at home on this shard, because they build the house with their own stones, as supposed to having to throw away your stuff because the house you are forced to live in has no room for them;
- From a staff point of view, you will truly see progression, or development, in your community. (A very rich experience!)


On the fixed lore;
The concept does not mean that you cannot have any set lore, at all. The entire concept is a flexible one and you decide how much you want to put down, yourself (As staff). My idea on this is to have some set lore, e.g. religion/worship and such, but make them "invisible". Have some seer-run quests (three people tops or 1on1) give away some information scarsely and otherwise get libraries where all the known IG lore is written by players (Or sometimes seers).

Sure, players will make mistakes and assume the wrong things, maybe even get a lot of followers as well, but that only creates more space for seer-run quests!

I hope you agree or atleast have some feedback/critic on my statement.

Thanks for reading!

*
shit happens wrote:
Hey man, I've read the few transcripts that are posted, but I was wondering about something.
On one hand, we have a very down-to-earth, typical viking, setting, where magic is almost unknown.
But to contradict, there are fine definitions on spirituality. Not to mention the fantasy races.

Wouldn't it be sweet to leave as much as possible open to player interpretation? TLEA had such an open interpretation system for magic alltogether, no one could tell how magic worked. (Which made the scholar characters write up a lot of IG lore on how magic worked, by their research. Sometimes fueled by personal quests/events lead by seers.)

It would also make the rare magical attributes and items more easy to implement, as no one would know where it comes from anyway..

Does this make sense?
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shit happens

shit happens


Posts : 14
Join date : 2009-04-01
Age : 36

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PostSubject: Re: On the concept of shard lore.   On the concept of shard lore. Icon_minitimeSun Apr 26, 2009 10:00 pm

I find the lack of feedback disturbing! /darthvader
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Billpete002




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Join date : 2009-03-06

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PostSubject: Re: On the concept of shard lore.   On the concept of shard lore. Icon_minitimeTue Apr 28, 2009 10:50 pm

Hey,

I generally only post on IRC (bad habit), but here it goes:

We are very open to new ideas and decided since the last meeting that the game would be very dynamic - also we are not creating the whole map in 1 go - just 1 zone of the map. As players cultivate the land and build empires we will introduce new lands and new playable races to induce more conflict (war between English (Saxons) and Vikings or Holy Roman Empire etc.)

As for grinding and such we actually are removing this with the use of "technology" making plate mail for instance will require a long quest (very long) and will require the aid of the dwarfs to unlock its secrets.

Another "technology" will be alchemy or mining new ores this makes sitting around and macroing all but impossible as new ores and items are unattainable unless you and your band of vikings attempt to seek them out.

As for normalcy and getting bored we are going to try to introduce permanent death - after you have been killed X amount of times you are dead. We MIGHT and this is a biggy we MIGHT introduce an age factor - so no player is really around forever - make it 2 years or something *shrugs* we are still in the air about it.

But basically what you do in game builds up your family (your other characters) and how the world is affected - for example there are no magical items in the world save those that are made through great deeds - you slay 1000 monsters with a blade - or it has been passed down from one character to the next it slowly gains new attributes.

Another factor are shrines, graves, or memorials (even statues) - those who accomplish greatness are immortalized through song, tale, and stone.

You are right that we need to alleviate the snooze factor in UO - and I think many of the current shard ideas do this. Like spell casters need to go on long quests for each spell and reagents are scarce but we will increase spell damage and abilities.

Also we are thinking about class systems and how to work quests in for abilities and such.

Sorry no one posted on here sooner but you should post on our IRC channel and we are much more likely to pick it up provided a link otherwise many of us just assume nothing is new here (myself included).
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PostSubject: Re: On the concept of shard lore.   On the concept of shard lore. Icon_minitime

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