Shorah my friends!

I am really excited about the return of Myst Online and I think that there are some great ideas floating around about how to make this a really popular and fun game once again. I thought I'd leave my 2 cents and see what you all thought. I'd really appticiate your opinions!

I was always very intrigued at the thought of restoring the cavern, and bringing D'ni back to life. I think that, in order to keep interest, that area of the game became somewhat negelected in MO:UL. Not that that wasn't the right thing to do at the time.

I know that my following ideas would require a larger development team or much involvement and help from the Myst community to accomplish, so I'm posting them more as ideas for the future, rather than suggestions about what should be done now. Here's what I was thinking:


-Allow players to live in Bevins and perhaps new areas in Ae'gura.
I've always thought it would be terribly fun to be able to actually have your own house in the Cavern. Bevin owners could choose their residents and explorers could be able to transfer to one of their friend's Bevins if they wished.


-Add quests and mini-games that revolve around repairing the Cavern.
This is what I think needs to be implemented the most. There could be various NPC's around that would ask you to run plans or samples to other NPC's in return for DRC points which could serve as the game's "currency." There could also be a variety of tasks and mini-games for explorers to participate in such as:

Repairing damage to the cavern by clicking on various cracks and damaged areas of the city and playing some sort of cement and mortar mini-game which would result in the damage disappearing for a while and DRC points.

Using cranes by the harbor to fish out fallen pieces of the city with fellow explorers. Maybe this could require a team of explorers, some diving and attatching the crane's hook to fallen debris and others opperating the crane.

Have the Great Zero lose its signal over time so that explorers have to continuously play marker missions throughout the game which would also give you DRC points.

Perhaps a game where a group of explorers has to move a large rock out of the way with rope.

DRC points should be awarded for pellet dropping.

A water sample collecting mini-game of some sort.


-Open a DRC point exchange booth
Players could spend their DRC points at the booth on things such as exclusive clothing, furniture for your house, decorations for your Bevin, and party supplies such as snack tables, drink coolers, balloons, and maybe even different types of stereos that would allow you to broadcast music in the cavern more easily. Perhaps even eating and drinking animations could even be added!


Those are most of my thoughts for now! I do think that if any of these things are implemented they should be combined with everything else that Cyan plans to add to MO:RE because we also don't want to lose focus of the age exploring aspect of Uru.

Thank you to anyone who read through this, and as I mentioned above, I'd love to hear your opinions and ideas!

-Trevor1017

Last edited by Trevor1017 on Sat Aug 30, 2008 7:01 am; edited 2 times in total

Nice ideas. Each one of these ideas would take time, even with a large development team to implement. I'll briefly go over these:

The Bevins were designed to allow multiple instances of the same age with on slight variations from Bevin to Bevin. Making it so people could live in them, despite the number would still be quite hard, as behind the house textures there is nothing. Access would have to be implemented and a lot fo the Bevin would have to be redesigned leading to canon issues eventually. It would take a major re-work but not impossible.

Probably the biggest task of all. The problem with thisis something I call "cumulative progression" and was a problem with the lake lighting in MOUL. Cyan didn't have a means to implement a way to make the lake get gradually brighter as people added more pellets. Therefore we added them in futility as it would require someone to press a button "beind the curtain" to make a change happen. The same goes for this idea. What you're talking about is the same principle of the lake lighting but on a more massive scale. If we wanted to restore the whole cavern, it would mean that eventually, there'd be nothing left to restore. The cavern is only so big and as more new players keep coming, the less there would be for them to do. However if this was seperated down into instances so each "team" or guild could repair their own instance of the cavern then that migh work but would prove problematic for canon issues in the main instance.

As far as I know, Cyan were eventually trying to implement this anyway. They wanted to keep adding clothing, but there issue of time and priotrity of ages over smaller things. I think Kirel represented your initial idea here with the "festival" feel in it with the Guilds and Tshirts etc. Eventually, I'm sure eating and drinking animations could be added. I remember it was possible to make yourself look like you were sleeping in UU by rotating the avatar.

All fo your ideas, like you say require time and money and if MO:RE eventually becomes profitiable, I'm sure Cyan will have these as pretty high priority on their list(s).

TG

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"The Ending has not yet been written" - Yeesha in Tomahna!

Well spoken, TG...

Yeah, I figured many of these things would take a great deal of time and many people to implement, and the cavern restoration does indeed pose a problem. It did take Atrus' team quite a while to restore only a small area of the cavern, so if we could find a way to not have oppurtunities taken away from others by more consistent players, then the cavern restoration scenario could, I suppose, hold out for a while as there is always maintainance needed.

Thanks for the info, and I'm anxious to hear everyone's ideas! Feel free to post them or add improvements to mine!

restoring the Cavern??? this might be set up as an ongoing process, almost done restoring one section of the cavern and something starts to deteriorate in another, So you send a team over to the other section to do repairs and still another possibly a section that was already restored starts to deteriorate. (inspired by an old Ford Tractor I used to work on) fix one thing and three other items need repair) any how this way their will always be something to restore for the new visitors.

The Caverns are Supposed to be quite old and restoring it without this sort of thing happening seems rather unlikely any-who

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Quote:

When you eliminate all other possibilities, what remains, no matter how improbable, must be the solution.
Sherlock Holmes

There is a lot more to this than just restoring the cavern and then have another area fall apart. The Lake Lighting is a prime example. There is a very large part of the community that just wants things to happen quickly. They have busy days in real life and they don't want to wait for something like a 6 to 12 month lake lighting project. Who cares about the science behind why the lake will light up or new players, "just light it up, I dropped my 100 pellets!"
Same for the restoration of the caverns. If a group works to restore an area, they will be proud of thier work and want to show it off. If they link back and find it has started to fall apart again they will just start compalining that the game is stupid and it's all just "Grinding". So once an area is restored it'd have to stay that way and that leave us back to the "what will new explorers do?".

The writers of the new ages need to concentrait on ages that give satisfaction in a matter of hours or days and then crank out a bunch of them.... one a week. Once that is accomplished and maintained another group can start writing ages that have a longer more story driven aspect to them.

There is nothing wrong with wanting to have something to show for all your work. I understand that, I like that too. MOUL just didn't have enough of the other stuff to do while we waited for all these "New Explorers" to logon and drop a few pellets. If in MOUL the Guilds were writing ages and putting them out about 1 per week, that would have given Cyan a chance to bring in things like the pellet drop.

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Trevor1017 wrote:

Bevins

Neighborhoods. There is only one Bevin.

Sudre wrote:

If a group works to restore an area, they will be proud of thier work and want to show it off. If they link back and find it has started to fall apart again they will just start compalining that the game is stupid and it's all just "Grinding". So once an area is restored it'd have to stay that way and that leave us back to the "what will new explorers do?".

That's exactly one reason why I would like to see the GZ or the Lake Project be a maintenance item which degrades from lack of attention. It's not just realistic, but new people will have the same opportunities as anyone else ever had.

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OpenUru.org: An Uru Project Resource Site : Twitter : Perfect Speed Is Being There.

JWPlatt wrote:

Trevor1017 wrote:

Bevins

Neighborhoods. There is only one Bevin.

So if the Kirels become instanced, what do we call those?

TG

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"The Ending has not yet been written" - Yeesha in Tomahna!