Let's talk about ways to improve Uru as an MMO

Simone · **Joined:** Tue Feb 23, 2010 10:43 am **Posts:** 282

mszv wrote:

Ok - if you don't want someone to get their KI as they start the game, how about they get their KI when they link into their neighborhood? Make that darn thing close to wear they link in, and have a sign.

I wish we could implement it right away, because I'm *very* curious to know how many people would still not read the sign and just wander around! =)

Egon · **Joined:** Thu Nov 09, 2006 6:21 am **Posts:** 48

kaelisebonrai wrote:

Egon wrote:

I just cannot stand to think that D'ni build such easy-to-stuck-age-with-no-way-outTM. It seams to stupid. But my problem probably lais in the fact that Nexus is now only private instace. In reality, such stuck person would probalby would have to just wait for somone with the KI device.

I've done some more info hunting.. and.. that's pretty much what happened. According to a certain Canon expert, who will remain nameless "The D'ni would monitor the Nexus and check for people who got themselves stuck there."
EDIT: Apparently, this comes from one of the DRC, originally. =) Shiny. /EDIT
EDIT2: Might be Kodama. /EDIT2
EDIT3: vid thinks he asked Kodama in the "Town Hall dealy", not sure more than that. /EDIT3

I might be in minority, and it's kinda inrrevelant, but I'm old fashion: If information is not accessible directly in the game, it don't exists, and it's not part of the cannon.

kaelisebonrai wrote:

Egon wrote:

I was thinking more in a way that "modern days explorers" have modyfiied Nexus.

You'd think the DRC would've done that, obsessed with safety as they were, and that whole we don't approve of Yeesha's stuff, etc, thing they had going on, when we first got access to the Nexus.

I can see the quote already: "We have the technology now... "

Simone wrote:

mszv wrote:

Ok - if you don't want someone to get their KI as they start the game, how about they get their KI when they link into their neighborhood? Make that darn thing close to wear they link in, and have a sign.

I wish we could implement it right away, because I'm *very* curious to know how many people would still not read the sign and just wander around! =)

From totally new player perspective? "What is KI?"

kaelisebonrai · **Joined:** Sun Jan 20, 2008 2:14 pm **Posts:** 902

Egon wrote:

I might be in minority, and it's kinda inrrevelant, but I'm old fashion: If information is not accessible directly in the game, it don't exists, and it's not part of the cannon.

This.. I can't get over this. So, by your reasoning, /none/ of the Live Events are canon? None of them. The Lake Light Meter never existed, Bevin is just a myth. All the Bevins are really just Bevins... They were never called Neighborhoods, The Great Bahro Scream never happened. Seret never existed, either. Are you really trying to tell me this is... even partially sane?

This is on the level of "RAWA is wrong!" (about canon)

Whilyam · **Joined:** Tue May 09, 2006 1:04 am **Posts:** 4134

Egon wrote:

I might be in minority, and it's kinda inrrevelant,...

Correct you are!

If the current form of the game (or any game) was the sole source of canon, there are countless things that would not make sense. For example, information given in a live event, information from the novels (some isn't, but most is accepted canon), and information from Uru's previous incarnations.

aloys · **Posted:** Fri Jun 11, 2010 5:16 pm

andylegate wrote:

The Hoods have always bugged me. Both Bevin and Kirel, the only obvious way in and out was with the Nexus.

I mean there should be a small dock and harbor.....the boats in Ae'gura showed that the D'ni used boats to get to places in the Cavern.
(...)
Still, I'm looking forward to seeing some fan made hoods that show at least one boat dock, or a tunnel (even if it doesn't go anywhere and has a locked gate). That would give me much more of a sense of realism.

I couldn't agree more.

Egon · **Joined:** Thu Nov 09, 2006 6:21 am **Posts:** 48

kaelisebonrai wrote:

Egon wrote:

I might be in minority, and it's kinda inrrevelant, but I'm old fashion: If information is not accessible directly in the game, it don't exists, and it's not part of the cannon.

This.. I can't get over this. So, by your reasoning, /none/ of the Live Events are canon? None of them. The Lake Light Meter never existed, Bevin is just a myth. All the Bevins are really just Bevins... They were never called Neighborhoods, The Great Bahro Scream never happened. Seret never existed, either. Are you really trying to tell me this is... even partially sane?

Well since You putting it that way, simple answer would be: yes.

For example: I didn't play though Prologue era, so anything which happened then, and didn't leave a mark inside the game, don't exists for me.

Quote:

So, by your reasoning, /none/ of the Live Events are canon? None of them.

If they didn't leave any mark inside the game, than no.
I run my cyclic event http://www.guildofmessengers.com/content/eder-tsogal-delin-marathon-event but by no means I would not call it "cannon".
Would You?

Quote:

The Lake Light Meter never existed,

Nope, same as above.

Quote:

The Great Bahro Scream never happened.

"Say what?"
(Yes, I know what it is - read my "bottom line")

Quote:

Seret never existed, either.

What is Seret?

Quote:

This is on the level of "RAWA is wrong!" (about canon)

Well sometimes even author don't know everything about its work,l there is this thing called "plot holes" You know

@Kaelis, Whiliam: I think that my words "it's not part of the cannon" that set You off, and I agree that I overused it a little. I do acknowledge that authors needs sometimes to clarify some things, and hence making something canon outside of the game. But this also has it's limits..

For me bottom line is: can a new player can find out about "this something" inside the game? If not, than it don't exists for him.
If something is not existing for players, how can You say it's a cannon?

P.S.

Whilyam wrote:

Correct you are!

Thank you Whilyam. That Would be all. Unless You will behave

("Cutting others people sentences to putt they words out of context" - two can play that game

)

jadawin12 · **Joined:** Fri Jul 24, 2009 3:17 pm **Posts:** 270

aloys wrote:

andylegate wrote:

The Hoods have always bugged me. Both Bevin and Kirel, the only obvious way in and out was with the Nexus.

I mean there should be a small dock and harbor.....the boats in Ae'gura showed that the D'ni used boats to get to places in the Cavern.
(...)
Still, I'm looking forward to seeing some fan made hoods that show at least one boat dock, or a tunnel (even if it doesn't go anywhere and has a locked gate). That would give me much more of a sense of realism.

I couldn't agree more.

Nice, Someone once suggested a cool kind of monorail that went along the rim of the Cavern that could hit all the Hoods, (I like that idea) Not that Docks aren't awesome and all.

Whilyam · **Joined:** Tue May 09, 2006 1:04 am **Posts:** 4134

Egon wrote:

kaelisebonrai wrote:

Egon wrote:

I might be in minority, and it's kinda inrrevelant, but I'm old fashion: If information is not accessible directly in the game, it don't exists, and it's not part of the cannon.

This.. I can't get over this. So, by your reasoning, /none/ of the Live Events are canon? None of them. The Lake Light Meter never existed, Bevin is just a myth. All the Bevins are really just Bevins... They were never called Neighborhoods, The Great Bahro Scream never happened. Seret never existed, either. Are you really trying to tell me this is... even partially sane?

Well since You putting it that way, simple answer would be: yes.

For example: I didn't play though Prologue era, so anything which happened then, and didn't leave a mark inside the game, don't exists for me.

As a wiser man than I said: "I'm ignoring this stupidity and stepping out of this topic and I actually mean it cause [this] dude has no freaking clue."

Frisky Badger · **Joined:** Tue Mar 20, 2007 6:48 pm **Posts:** 746

Egon wrote:

For me bottom line is: can a new player can find out about "this something" inside the game? If not, than it don't exists for him.
If something is not existing for players, how can You say it's a cannon?

You can find out about all of this inside the game; just ask around. I have a feeling that when we can start adding fan content there will be people that add journals chronicling all of the past activity.

Zander_the_Heretic · **Joined:** Sun Mar 14, 2010 2:37 am **Posts:** 278

I have heard rumours that outside the Cleft there's this whole planet called Earth, but of course I don't believe all that rubbish.

Egon, if you ignore all the backstory that came before Uru you are making your whole experience of the game much much poorer than it needs to be. It's a great way to resolve the inconsistencies that Whilyam takes such delight in reminding us about, but I think I'd rather live with them and have the history. And as FB says, it's all there in the Uru oral tradition. Just ask.

Rudolfson · **Posted:** Fri Jun 11, 2010 10:50 pm

By egon's reasoning Eddie is now nameless. 'sniffle'

Marten · **Posted:** Sat Jun 12, 2010 12:52 am

Egon's position is probably correct for the average new player. Backstory doesn't really matter unless it is accessible. This should really be more obvious than I suppose it is, so please humor me as I explain.

For the typical person to care about an event, first they have to know about it, and second there has to be some reason it remains in one's consciousness. How many of you hadn't ever heard of, or had forgotten about, the 1984 Union Carbide tragedy in Bhopal, India until it was mentioned again in the news just a few days ago? It has had continuing repercussions for those affected... and yet for so many of us, it is something that we've probably gone through years of our lives without even a passing thought towards.

Back to the topic of Myst Online - as someone who participated in the end of Prologue, the events of that time matter to me. But the only part of Prologue that is really discoverable to new players today is what has been recorded in Douglas Sharper's journal. Hopefully, curious explorers who've read that book will ask others about what happened. But this is far from ideal... there are not a lot of people in cavern who know much about the in-game events from 2003... so there's not a lot of opportunity for new players to learn. And there are no pointers in-game as to where out-of-cavern a person can go to research more information about the past story. (I dream of a day where the Prologue Video project might be seen on imagers within an Age.)

I cringe to think how things would be if the book were empty again (as it was when MOULa first launched!). Then we'd have a real nasty chicken and egg puzzle - how would new players know at all to ask for more detail about past events, if they didn't know the events happened in the first place?

World of Warcraft reinforces its past history by referencing and cross-referencing it. The only way you can play the game and not learn about the past of Azeroth is if you deliberately choose to ignore all the quest text and fixate on "OK, the next objective is...". Part of the reason this works is because WoW is inhabited not only by players, but by a large number of NPCs (non-player characters) who will patiently and tirelessly teach Azeroth's history to every new player that comes along, time and again.

By contrast, Uru - despite its setting of an ancient city - is so very much mired in the present that events taking place there are quite fleeting, and our records of these happenings are preserved outside of the cavern rather than within it. D'ni is inhabited only by ourselves - no selfless NPCs to say, "Good sirs and ladies, let me tell you about the tragedy that befell young Wheely and her friend Rose", and we're fickle about the topic du jour. We spend as much time discussing the implications of Sharper's attack on the "Good Bahro" as we do discussing Napolean's defeat at Waterloo.

There were numerous requests from players during Season One to increase the amount of journals within the game to provide a record, within the game world, of what was happening. Instead we got the opposite - Sharper stopped updating his journal because someone confronted him about its contents.

Quite seriously, this is an aspect of the game we'll need to address when fan content starts to go in... Hopefully this will happen as Frisky B suggests it will.

Egon · **Joined:** Thu Nov 09, 2006 6:21 am **Posts:** 48

Frisky Badger wrote:

Egon wrote:

For me bottom line is: can a new player can find out about "this something" inside the game? If not, than it don't exists for him.
If something is not existing for players, how can You say it's a cannon?

You can find out about all of this inside the game; just ask around.

I think You took the letter, and not the spirit of my message. If I get info about something from another player, how can I treat it as a cannon?

Quote:

I have a feeling that when we can start adding fan content there will be people that add journals chronicling all of the past activity.

Now that I approve

Zander_the_Heretic wrote:

Egon, if you ignore all the backstory that came before Uru you are making your whole experience of the game much much poorer than it needs to be.

I don't ignore back story "on purpuse" . My point is: from a newcomer perspective there is no backstory.

All in all: I hope for more NPC interaction, or ad-least more journals.

Zander_the_Heretic · **Joined:** Sun Mar 14, 2010 2:37 am **Posts:** 278

I think I'm starting to see what's going wrong, and Marten has nailed it. Sorry for misunderstanding, Egon. If I have it right now, you aren't saying that the events of the past aren't important, you're asking how a new player can consider them important when there's no evidence for them inside the game apart from hearsay?

The current situation inside the game (excluding all the forums, newsletters, websites and so on that happen out here) is that there's no communication infrastructure. Suppose there were no newspapers, no TV or radio or internet, and someone told you there'd been a horrible disaster in India in 1984. You would, at very least, have much more of a choice whether to believe it or not than you do now. You certainly wouldn't automatically regard it as a historical fact.

Uru's canon, as established by Cyan, dances on the edge of this distinction between fact and hearsay, but now we are effectively alone down there we need to make something more solid, at least till we can add journals or something. Maybe some kind soul could dedicate a hood imager to holding a very brief summary of past events and keep that hood public. I'd love to see the Prologue videos played out on imagers in the city (they're very good) but since we don't (do we?) know how to make imagers do video, if they even can, we could use a quick fix. It would still be hearsay, but in the end, that's ninety per cent of what history is.

If we believe, and I do, that part of Uru's virtue is its history, then Egon is right; we need to make that history available to players within the game.

mszv · **Joined:** Wed May 10, 2006 5:28 am **Posts:** 2266

RAWA, being, as far as I can tell, the author of much of the story and backstory of Uru is great, really and truely, but for all that -- if it's not in the game, not Uru canon. I'm with Egon here. If the live events were important enough to do, then they should have been important enough to have that reflected in the game. I don't play an online game to read forums so I can find out what happened. Also, if it's on a piece of paper in someone's desk, or on a whiteboard in someone's office, it doesn't count. In my admittedly traditional view, story in a game arises out of what's in the game -- and not just pages and pages of in game text -- gameplay. In Uru's case, that would be solving puzzles to reveal the story. Given that Uru is so non interactive (odd for virtual world, don't you think?) -- reading the text also counts.

That's been my opinion, for, well, forever. I realize, that for some (many?) fans, it's a minority opionion.

Even if you think that all that came before is Uru canon, it's irrelevant for today's game, particularly for new players.

But -- coming up with a positive thing here -- it gives us something to talk about.

Let's talk about ways to improve Uru as an MMO

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