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Mortal Online DevBlog Update: Writing On Paper, Launcher Revamp
Rohn
Member UncommonPosts: 3,730
Paratus has added some very interesting information in his most recent DevBlog, which can be found here:
http://www.mortalonline.com/devblog
In addition to some information on improvements to the launcher, he talks about some of the implementation of the flash UI, including the ability to write on paper, which will make its way into the Dawn expansion:
"While we have a few pieces of flash UI in now, such as the library window and parts of the HUD, you haven’t seen anything even close to the cool-factor of what’s in the works. For example, books and paper where you can write notes or entire stories and trade them with other players. When you send a message via mail with a tangible item and not a magical message written in the mail interface like other games, interception of information becomes a real risk.
Books aren’t as simple as having a picture of a book or page which you can write on, though. Like most things Mortal, we want depth and detail! If you have a blank book you’ll also need inks to write in it. Ink is permanent, so you’ll need to be careful about what you’re writing as a mistake means tearing the page out of the book (don’t worry though, you’ll still have that page as a separate item) and starting anew.
You’ll see this feature with Dawn, and this is just the tip of what’s being done with the flash user interface. I can’t wait for everyone to see what we have in store!"
Hell hath no fury like an MMORPG player scorned.
Comments
How revolutionary.
Oh wait, UO had player written books 14 years ago, and a few games have written mail as an actual item if you so choose.
Who said anything about "revolutionary"? It's a nice feature for a sandbox game to have. It's also a fairly rare system for an MMO to have, per your admission.
In any event, there's a discussion about the topic on the official forum here:
http://www.mortalonline.com/forums/61263-paratus-devblog.html
Hell hath no fury like an MMORPG player scorned.
Will start playing again at dawn for sure
Ex. myth of soma, legend of mir, mu online and eudemons online player.
Current game : Runescape (until pc build is complete)
There is actually some interesting applications for this.
You can use paper messages not only for correspondance, but as a ruse to throw off others. "Attack at XXXXX 9:00PM" taken off a willing corpse on enemy territory, but you show up at midnight, after most of them got bored of waiting.
Perhaps you can keep a note in your backpack that says "Look behind you". Then if a thief rifles through your shit he may pause for a second to actually look behind him.
Writer / Musician / Game Designer
Now Playing: Skyrim, Wurm Online, Tropico 4
Waiting On: GW2, TSW, Archeage, The Rapture
Was referring to Paratus saying "you haven’t seen anything even close to the cool-factor of what’s in the works" when the cool factor of 14 year old systems is pretty non-existant (assuming it works of course, this is SV after all).
And the mail thing is rare, because it's generally a useless feature for the vast majority of mail. Free MMO's have it in, WOW has it too iirc (make copy of message). So again, where is the cool factor?
MO is not a sandbox either, it's just a box with some PvP'ers in it. If MO is a sandbox, then so is WOW as everything I can do in MO that is touted as "sandbox" I can do in WOW or any other game.
I wonder what their designers been thinking when they though anyone sane enough would actually use such a system for sending any interception worthy information.. But hey, SV at their best, introducing another annoying feature by disabling delete button when writing books.
I just can't stop being baffled at paratus ignorance in stating "mail wont magically appear on ingame UI".. He yet has to realise that every decision made in such themeparks as WoW have a heavy design reasonings behind them, which SV have yet to learn.
You mean this quote:
"While we have a few pieces of flash UI in now, such as the library window and parts of the HUD, you haven’t seen anything even close to the cool-factor of what’s in the works. For example, books and paper where you can write notes or entire stories and trade them with other players."
If my ability to read English serves me well, it appears he's using the ability to write books as an example of the flash work being done, not necessarily the totality of what's being done.
In any event, I thought this ability was cool in UO, and I think it'll be cool here, too. A feature doesn't have to be new to be "cool". And, I'm glad the feature will be in a game that I'm currently playing.
Hell hath no fury like an MMORPG player scorned.
Raise your hand if writing on paper and sending mail will bring you back to any MMO that is broken in as many places as MO is.
Hmmm, when did WOW add houses? http://us.battle.net/wow/en/forum/topic/2412201446
.... guilds that were not limited to one faction? (i.e. players get to define the "sides" in the conflict)
... keeps?
... any form of territory control?
You could certainly argue that the "sandbox" features of MO could be improved, but saying it has no more sandbox features than MO ignores huge portions of the game.
Also, as Rohn pointed out there was a little more context to Paratus's statement. From the context, it's pretty clear that he meant that 'you haven't seen the flash UI in MO used for anything even close to the cool-factor of what’s in the works' ( to paraphrase) not 'This is a revolutionary feature'.
@ hercules: *points to feather5*
He said it was an example of the cool factor in things to come.
Since he chose this example, I assume he means this is one of the more interesting and cool aspects, otherwise he'd mention something else. However this is nothing new, cool, or even vaguely interesting, fixing the game so it works properly would have been new for SV though.
I can already see usefulness of this with people sending pictures of penises with insults to each other and then someone steals those posts. Seriously this just adds junk to game since already people are using IRC or Vent/TS to handle communications thanks to lacking way to do it inside game. And where the hell is the pigeons, someone remember them?!? Or are they gonna introduce some skills in those books so player can teach them to each other? I can already see the fun copying ten pages of lorem ipsum and then find after completing you made typo and have to start all over, epic fun with realism.
Paratus may well have provided this example because he thinks it is "one of the more interesting and cool aspects". As Rohn noted 'A feature doesn't have to be new to be "cool". ' Of course, if you think it was a boring, bland feature in UO, I won't argue with you on that. After all, different strokes for different folks.
As to fixing the game, you could check the server status thread. Looks like the server has only been down seven times this month , with many of those being for maintainence.
Sorry, but Warhammer is not owned by any players it is owed by faction.
Excellent points. Sandbox versus themepark is indeed a continuum.
Having said that, cherry-picking seemingly "sandbox" features from a multitude of themepark games in an attempt equate them with the features found in a single game is disingenuous at best. LOTRODAOCEQWAR is not a single game. This is especially true with examples that are in no way equivalent in anything other than name.
As an example, equating keep building and ownership in MO with appending your guild's name to an existing keep in WAR for a loot bag and some guild renown is deceptive at best.
Same difference with MO housing (player placed and built, upgradeable with crafting stations and vendors, non-instanced, destroyable), with the pre-built, instance-based housing in LOTRO's subdivisions isn't even in the same ballpark.
Then there are other things: thieving, the best gear crafted by dedicated crafters, taming and selling of mounts and animals, the ability to train a single character in a number of skills and change those skills dramatically over time, etc.
Certainly, with enough agenda-laden mental gymnastics applied, someone might be able to make some very rough comparisons to each system with something found in a themepark game. But, generally speaking, it'd be a very "rough" comparison, and it's likely that it'd be the only "sandbox" feature that themepark game had.
A game isn't generally labelled a "sandbox" because it has one or two systems normally attributed as such. The totality of systems is usually taken into account.
As far as the writing system is concerned - it's a system that SV has planned on implementing for a long time, and it's a system that many players have wanted to see in the game. MO has been criticized for not having enough such systems in-game - it's amusing that they are now being criticized for adding it with the expansion.
Hell hath no fury like an MMORPG player scorned.
It sounds like MortalOnline will be the first 3d MMO to allow users to create there own ingame books online and trade them for ingame money.
This was a HUGE feature in UO. Many players in UO would just spend hours reading or writting player made player fiction.
This is yet more sand for the already sandiest MMO 3d on the market.
Never trust a screenshot or a youtube video without a version stamp!
{mod edit}
Regarding the actual topic of the thread, in a thread on the official forum, Paratus did say that the entire UI will probably not be replaced with the flash based UI, and why:
"The entire UI revamp won't be in there, no, but there will be some more parts of the existing UI replaced and enhanced, in addition to several completely new pieces.
The reason we haven't seen the entire UI replaced yet, or even more of it than we have, is that the new system has a hard time communicating with the old and thus we need to release much of it together at the same time, in one mega-update. A lot of work is being done on the rest of the UI, though, since SV knows how important it is."
http://www.mortalonline.com/forums/61263-paratus-devblog.html#post1135555
That's a bit disappointing overall. It would have been nice for it to have been ready with the expansion.
Hell hath no fury like an MMORPG player scorned.
So Paratus is still the one doing the launcher?...
Please return to the topic of the launcher and updates within. Move the discussion of whether the game is a sandbox or not to another thread if you wish to continue it. Thanks.
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It was great when people actually stuck to the "RP" style of gameplay. But it doesn't apply today because today's gamers will take whatever shortcuts and methods they can to get ahead and beat others. I don't think this is going to be used at all, but hey, I could be wrong.
In over 30 years of gaming, I'd say that this isn't just a problem with "today's gamers". This type of issue applies to gamers past, present, and future. Some of the tools available to gamers have changed over the years, but the mentality is the same with a lot of them.
RP-types, of which I am one, gravitate towards platforms that support that style of play. I think some of the limitations imposed by this game attract those types of players a little better than some others (recognizing that min-maxers exist in MO and every game, and always have). Personally speaking, I'm pretty excited by the writing system as proposed, and will likely make quite a bit of use of it. From reading the thread in the official forum, and some of the posts from players here, I'm not alone. And, as GTWander stated, I'm sure a lot of people will come up with some pretty creative uses.
Of course, time will tell.
Hell hath no fury like an MMORPG player scorned.
Nothing in this dev blog (or in MO's current features) addresses the concerns of the players regarding the broken content and lack of sandbox content. It merely emphasises that there is nothing new or unique in MO that distinguishes it from the themepark games that MO fans appear to dislike (as shown in http://www.mmorpg.com/gamelist.cfm/game/361/view/forums/thread/313552/MO-Sandbox-or-just-a-Box-to-PvP-in.html this thread).
Instead of addressing these concerns and adding to a barren, sterile game, lauding writing in books as the highlight of the update would be laughable if it wasn't so indicative of SV's methods. Methods that so far have produced a game with a retention rate of somewhere around 2-4% (and that is being generous).
If you go back and reread this thread, you'll find that your post quoted above is the first and only post that claims the writing system to be the "highlight" of the Dawn expansion.
Contrary to your position, not even Star Vault identifies the writing system as a highlight, as evidenced in the announcement of Dawn:
http://www.mortalonline.com/news/first-expansion-dawn
in which the "highlights" of the expansion are listed as:
New Mount and Gene System
Attribute Reserves, Hunger and Sleep
Cooking
Graveyards
Fishing
Mail and Trading Tools
Gameplay Tutorial System
Player Housing Updates
As you can see, the writing system is not listed as a primary feature of the expansion.
Since that announcement, SV has stated that content other than the listed features would also be included in Dawn. This DevBlog has given some information regarding some of that additional content, in the form of an updated launcher, some new flash-based UI elements, and the writing system. We've also learned that the guild system will be upgraded with Dawn.
Most fans appear to think the writing system will be a nice addition that will help flesh out the game, and that's about it.
Hell hath no fury like an MMORPG player scorned.
Within the context of just the DevBlog, the writing system is the most notable feature.
As has been stated many times, whether or not it's "cool" is a matter of personal taste.
Hell hath no fury like an MMORPG player scorned.