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[Sern]

I was going to include the following in my introduction topic but I figured it was out of place there and might border on off topic. What better place than the general forum?

Say hello to my little friend, WALL OF TEXT!

Directed toward pspeed should he decide to read it. Basically just outlining why Mythruna is a promising alternative to us.
[spoiler tags not working?]

I am an owner at AvantiGaming.com - a semi-new 'in the works' gaming community. Originally Doug (the other owner) and myself decided to open up our doors to the Minecraft community due to its large player base and the stability of the game as it had been out for some time and been steadily built up. Unmodded Minecraft didn't really suit our community needs but since MC has such a large mod base we were able to locate programs like WorldPainter and mods which integrated with the server to provide a more unique experience. Unfortunately all of these mods and external programs like WorldPainter have their limitations and have slowed progress and our dream of a Minecraft server that would be ideal for role play.

AvantiGaming was born out of the history of IntegrityRP (a role play based community) which I will spare the history on. We wanted to expand upon our original idea of IntegrityRP in order to provide a wider range of entertainment (games) for the community. Thus Avanti Gaming Network (AGN) was born, but we have not yet attempted to notify our original player base until we have at least one sufficiently completed and accessible game up and running. AGN will utilize a multitude of games but will always retain a focus on providing quality role play. Minecraft was our primary focus for the above stated reasons but personally I'm beginning to question the viability of Minecraft to provide a quality role play experience, even with extensive modding.

That is why Mythruna has peaked our interested as it seems, at the very least, the initial development ideas lend themselves to an RPG style game, hopefully one with a much wider range of role play mechanics/options than Minecraft or associated mods combined.

Ever heard of Mortal Online? It was a lesser known but incredibly complex (sometimes not in a good way) open-ended/sandbox subscription based MMO. By open-ended/sandbox I mean it did not have the traditional model of forcing players to complete a set of quests, or any quests, because none existed. The idea was to let the players create their own quests. Another words, go do whatever you want to do; form guilds/clans/organizations, become a crafter, a builder, a leader of men/women, unite clans and claim new land, etc. etc. The point was to explore the world and make your own story, your own way. Truly an innovation in more modern MMO's as far as I'm concerned. But it failed in my mind because they lacked the proper budget/funding from the very beginning. The game was almost always riddled with game breaking bugs and still lacked refinement once released. Every hotfix was more like a hotbreak. These were the main reasons I stopped playing, that and my disagreements with the way the combat mechanics and PvP worked.

To me it appears that Mythruna could be headed down a similar direction, hopefully minus the negative aspects which I wasn't referring to. But headed down a similar direction in gameplay mechanics on the grander scale. Obviously it would have significant differences graphics wise but this is one issue of many.

We are unable to utilize Mythruna within our community at its current capacity beyond, "the current build is up now go play!", but are hopeful that the future may provide a different answer. In the end you, the developer, will realize Mythruna to its full potential and no one can predict with accuracy how your creation will turn out, maybe not even yourself. My only friendly recommendation is to hold on to the unique appeal that Mythruna provides in context with its RPG and potential role play elements because I believe it is what helps to set it aside from the competition.

Suggestions from potential players can cause those spontaneous "WOW" development moments when new ideas pop up that sometimes seem too good to be true. Others, not so much. But most of these are no replacement for your original ideas and dream of where said project will end up. I am hopeful that you will both welcome suggestions, consider them carefully, adopt those which make sense and benefit the overall experience, but also not let the mass of them dilute or warp your creation into something you no longer recognize in order to please others. I have made similar mistakes before and the outcome is often something that no one can recognize anymore.

[/spoiler]


I saw this topic you posted in regard to development planning. I was wondering how you currently, if it has changed since, organize your development ideas and objectives. I believe organization when developing large ideas is paramount since ideas can come and go like the passing of time and losing track of, or forgetting, an awesome idea is probably one of the saddest moments of the dev process. In fact that's not necessarily something which is limited to development. Failure to jot down ideas as a story writer can be...very bad. As self destructive as an alcoholic drinking alcohol.

I have, in time, found a number of utilities that facilitate the use of development planning or mind mapping, some free, some paid. I was also wondering if you've decided to do a game design document (GDD) or taken another route. I don't think any one way is always going to be superior to another.

MindMeister is an example of a mind mapping tool which I find to be quite useful at outlining and then use other methods for filling in the details. I've fairly recently been working on a mind map for a dream project of mine which may or may not ever be fully realized. I mostly just do it on my free time for fun and to slowly but surely work out what I consider to be the kinks in many MMO's. But much of it is opinionated as is usually the case when it comes to what people enjoy about their games, it varies. If you want to take a look since it resembles a game design mind map I will send it. Only the Pro version allows link sharing, lame. It is open to comments as sometimes my friends will take a look and input their own opinions, although recently they've done so verbally which makes it hard to record, lol..

I also use Google Docs since you can assign multiple editors and maintain a saved revision history of what's going on. Anyone miss Google Wave? - These design templates can also be a great way to receive feedback on existing game mechanics. As for suggestions, that's what the suggestion forum is for. Although such suggestions, especially ones considered to have good potential, could be better organized using some of these outside programs.

So most of this is pure conjecture as I can only guess at what your plans are and the way you're going about dev planning and it may be useless info you already know. I just put it out there in case it were helpful. It may even be helpful to others unrelated to this project.

I personally plan to donate to this project once I am confident it will continue on in the pursuit of something of a scale to contend with titles such as Minecraft. I urge anyone else who is capable to also support this project if and when you feel it is truly a beacon of light to those seeking an alternative in this genre. Development doesn't pay for itself.

P.S. - I'm quite curious about your design processes although I know it can be tiring answering an endless onslaught of questions, many of which have been answered elsewhere, which is why I will restrain myself. (A great reason for an extensive Game/Design FAQ.)

[pspeed]

P.S. - I'm quite curious about your design processes although I know it can be tiring answering an endless onslaught of questions, many of which have been answered elsewhere, which is why I will restrain myself. (A great reason for an extensive Game/Design FAQ.)

I have a pile of accumulated ideas to draw from that I've collected over the years.  In my mind, I've wanted to write some form of RPG for at least 20 years or more.  Ever since I played Ultima3 for the first time, I've had in my head to build one.  I also played and ran a lot of pen-and-paper role playing games.  For a long time I ran many RuneQuest adventures back in the 90s and had a bunch of world lore built up from that.  I have several notebooks worth of raw info to draw from there.  A couple friends of mine and I even made from scratch a Star Trek-based role playing game that we played the heck out of. 

For a long time I was active in the NeverwinterNights community producing utilities and helping out in the scripting and custom content forums.  I'd designed about 50x more material than I could ever get into my servers.  I spent most of my time implementing basic systems.  My friends and I ran a couple persistent world servers and I found the idea or "repeatable quests" that didn't get boring very challenging... and we had a few that I added to the worlds we played.

These days I keep a directory of text files with different ideas and designs.  I have one general one where I just write down little snippets of ideas, almost a bulleted list.  Then I have more focused text files where I have more detailed designs.  Generally these take the form of a conversation with myself.  I propose certain ideas and then pick them apart, redesign them, etc..  It's an effective solution because if I have to stop working on something, I can easily pick it up later just be rereading the notes from the beginning and following through my original line of thinking.  Often times when returning I will be even smarter on the subject than when I left it so I will leave notes as I go about my latest thinking... then start adding to the end again.

Though perhaps not the best example because it's pretty small compared to others, I'm attaching my original notes on caves from way back before I added them.  I think it shows the conversational "we" style I try to use in these documents.  I think it makes it easier to disown bad ideas and glom onto the good ones.  It's a process I've been using for probably 15 years or so.

Here is about half the files in the main directory (there are also sub-directories):


I hope that answers the question.

I've used mind mapping and other things before but I find the free flow conversation more useful for me.  There is no impedance to getting ideas down and the full thought process to how I got somewhere is all there.

[Michael]

P.S. - I'm quite curious about your design processes although I know it can be tiring answering an endless onslaught of questions, many of which have been answered elsewhere, which is why I will restrain myself. (A great reason for an extensive Game/Design FAQ.)

I have a pile of accumulated ideas to draw from that I've collected over the years.  In my mind, I've wanted to write some form of RPG for at least 20 years or more.  Ever since I played Ultima3 for the first time, I've had in my head to build one.  I also played and ran a lot of pen-and-paper role playing games.  For a long time I ran many RuneQuest adventures back in the 90s and had a bunch of world lore built up from that.  I have several notebooks worth of raw info to draw from there.  A couple friends of mine and I even made from scratch a Star Trek-based role playing game that we played the heck out of. 

For a long time I was active in the NeverwinterNights community producing utilities and helping out in the scripting and custom content forums.  I'd designed about 50x more material than I could ever get into my servers.  I spent most of my time implementing basic systems.  My friends and I ran a couple persistent world servers and I found the idea or "repeatable quests" that didn't get boring very challenging... and we had a few that I added to the worlds we played.

These days I keep a directory of text files with different ideas and designs.  I have one general one where I just write down little snippets of ideas, almost a bulleted list.  Then I have more focused text files where I have more detailed designs.  Generally these take the form of a conversation with myself.  I propose certain ideas and then pick them apart, redesign them, etc..  It's an effective solution because if I have to stop working on something, I can easily pick it up later just be rereading the notes from the beginning and following through my original line of thinking.  Often times when returning I will be even smarter on the subject than when I left it so I will leave notes as I go about my latest thinking... then start adding to the end again.

Though perhaps not the best example because it's pretty small compared to others, I'm attaching my original notes on caves from way back before I added them.  I think it shows the conversational "we" style I try to use in these documents.  I think it makes it easier to disown bad ideas and glom onto the good ones.  It's a process I've been using for probably 15 years or so.

Here is about half the files in the main directory (there are also sub-directories):


I hope that answers the question.

I've used mind mapping and other things before but I find the free flow conversation more useful for me.  There is no impedance to getting ideas down and the full thought process to how I got somewhere is all there.

Ahh!! I never can read a post that long!! (or longer) it just burns my eyes e.e
Anyways, i saw the image. I did see da word 'design' so, just if you ever need image design help at all, just PM me

[belgariad87]

Starting off with a bang, huh Sern?  This forum is a wealth of information, it may take awhile to get through much of it... so take your time!

[Sern]

I completely agree with what you're saying (pspeed), especially the part about conversing with yourself in a way on your own ideas.

With the mind mapping tool I've been using recently you can be concise in your design descriptions but seamlessly attach notes to each one which acts as an expansion upon the base idea. I believe this allows me to keep the mind map relatively organized and to the point while allowing for instantaneously more detailed descriptions at your finger tips. I can also link to outside documents like Google Docs with bookmarks that take you to exactly the content you want within the document, no Control + F required. I suppose you could also link to local documents on your own drive, haven't tried that.

I often find it hard to have bulleted lists when trying to organize my thoughts because when I return to those lists it can sometimes feel like they lack flavor or depth and even worse, they don't re-create that original idea in my mind as it came to me the first time. But like I said, I've found the notation feature bridges that gap for me.

Although it sounds like you've got something that works, which is great. Even better, you don't have to spend money on software. In fact it sounds as if you've got yourself an encyclopedia of references and more experience with older innovations like Ultima than I. My only references are newer sandbox MMO's such as Mortal Online which was described as being heavily influenced in the design process by Ultima.

I currently have been playing quite a bit of Guild Wars 2 and love it. Although I can never get over the fact that I think quest based MMO's limit the creativity, dynamic player interaction, and general free form gameplay that provides a seemingly endless amount of replayability. I believe, given a well thought out feature set is provided, that players can create their own unique experiences and continue to do so. Whereas a quest based MMO, even one as good as Guild Wars 2 is (in my opinion), places an emphasis on quests and a story which is laid out before you, preset story and gameplay, predetermined outcomes. The first time around it's new and exciting because you don't know what to expect but afterward the "WOW" factor is just toned down dramatically.

So as much as I enjoy GW2 and find it to be a truly innovative Fantasy MMO for its genre, I contend that the real future of a thinking man/woman's MMO is one where the players maintain an active role in the game world around them and relies on the inhabitants to create experiences worth being a part of. What better to entertain the players than the players themselves?

So I can see I may have gone a bit off track. I also am far from done responding to your post, even though I went a slight bit off topic. I'm sure I do have more to comment on in regard to your reply.

Unfortunately it's almost 3am here. And I have classes tomorrow, I mean today.......AHHHHHHHH!! - I will be back with a more organized response properly quoting as needed if not later today, then tomorrow when I wake up and am sane again. There is NEVER enough time in the day.

Thanks for your in depth analysis pspeed and the replies from everyone else.

[pspeed]

In the early 90s, I played a text based MUD... cost $4 an hour and I was totally addicted.  The depth of play was really nice but death was so nasty for noobs that I never ventured far outside of the main town.

Anyway, I found out about a sort of hidden skill you could train... or at least it was mostly undocumented.  Alchemy was available as one of the options but they basically told you nothing about it.  You'd train it and then you could use it.  They gave you the simple mechanics: one catalyst + 2 ingredients + a glass vessel to keep it in.  That was it.

It turns out that in the town there was a secret alchemists' shop.  I only found out because I was talking to someone who happened to befriend me and let me know.  He was also an alchemist and he let me hang out with him sometimes.  Clued me in to some of the trade secrets and showed me how to find the secret shop.

In there was a shop that sold some common ingredients and a few more expensive ones.  In the back they had glass blowing equipment... with basically no instructions on what to do.  It was a trainable skill but not a main experience based one... anyone could train at it if they wanted.  I spent hours in that place before I finally made my first vial.

I watched this guy work the in-game economy.  People would come to him for certain potions and he would demand some gold and rare items in return.  200 gold, eye of a giant spider, red dragon scale, etc..  Some of this was sometimes for the potion he was trying to make them but often times some of the ingredients were for completely different orders he took from different players... or just to keep his supplies up.  Alchemists in this game were extremely secretive so they tried as best they could to keep people from guessing what the real ingredients might be.  He was popular enough that he basically never had to collect his own rare ingredients.  I was lucky to get to follow him around for a while.

I remember all of this because this person was basically a walking quest generator.  Just a simple resource allocation/acquisition problem suddenly generates a variety of bizarre quests.  And it was all so logical and apparently arbitrary but his customers had as much fun gathering the required payment as anything else they did.

The thread in that idea is sort of fundamental to where I'm going.  Proper NPCs have needs... money, ingredients, materials, help, etc..  If they freely barter with these needs then a boring gold shuffle suddenly becomes a quest rich environment.

Wizard will sell you a magic doohicky that you really want.  But in return he needs a bunch of gold and two small emeralds.  You raise the gold by selling off some of your stuff but the store in town doesn't like you because of something you did before so you have a choice to change their opinion through favors/gifts/whatever or travel to the next town.  Assuming you get the gold needed then you need to find the emeralds.  So you ask around, someone will tell you but they need you to help them fix their house.  You can mine for them, find someone that will sell them ($$$$$), or there are some giant lizards that occasionally drop them when killed + skinned.  But they are on an island to the south only accessible by ship... And so on...

By the time you are done, you don't just have a magic doohicky but a bunch of interesting stories on how you got it, too.  If I do my job right, most of your cooler equipment will have similarly cool stories to go with it.  It's not just a jeweled long sword with two component slots but a bunch of memories, too.  And it's way better than a generic skill point or 1000 XP.  You can't look at a pile of XP and tell stories about it... but your equipment can be a living testament to who you are and what you've done.

[pspeed]

It occurs to me that this old post might be useful here:
http://mythruna.com/forum/index.php?topic=196.msg3081#msg3081

I have a few interesting story characters designed at this point with some story arcs exposing different aspects of the game.  Fayd is still my favorite, though.  Her lack of specific focus leads to more interesting possibilities for stories.

[belgariad87]

The thread in that idea is sort of fundamental to where I'm going.  Proper NPCs have needs... money, ingredients, materials, help, etc..  If they freely barter with these needs then a boring gold shuffle suddenly becomes a quest rich environment.

Wizard will sell you a magic doohicky that you really want.  But in return he needs a bunch of gold and two small emeralds.  You raise the gold by selling off some of your stuff but the store in town doesn't like you because of something you did before so you have a choice to change their opinion through favors/gifts/whatever or travel to the next town.  Assuming you get the gold needed then you need to find the emeralds.  So you ask around, someone will tell you but they need you to help them fix their house.  You can mine for them, find someone that will sell them ($$$$$), or there are some giant lizards that occasionally drop them when killed + skinned.  But they are on an island to the south only accessible by ship... And so on...

By the time you are done, you don't just have a magic doohicky but a bunch of interesting stories on how you got it, too.  If I do my job right, most of your cooler equipment will have similarly cool stories to go with it.  It's not just a jeweled long sword with two component slots but a bunch of memories, too.  And it's way better than a generic skill point or 1000 XP.  You can't look at a pile of XP and tell stories about it... but your equipment can be a living testament to who you are and what you've done.

That sounds... Awesome! Thats an incredible way to go about it!

[Sern]

It occurs to me that this old post might be useful here:
http://mythruna.com/forum/index.php?topic=196.msg3081#msg3081

I have a few interesting story characters designed at this point with some story arcs exposing different aspects of the game.  Fayd is still my favorite, though.  Her lack of specific focus leads to more interesting possibilities for stories.

I don't have time for that full response I meant to give yet as I have to leave soon but just wanted to note that the link doesn't seem to work for me.

The topic or board you are looking for appears to be either missing or off limits to you.

[pspeed]

It occurs to me that this old post might be useful here:
http://mythruna.com/forum/index.php?topic=196.msg3081#msg3081

I have a few interesting story characters designed at this point with some story arcs exposing different aspects of the game.  Fayd is still my favorite, though.  Her lack of specific focus leads to more interesting possibilities for stories.

I don't have time for that full response I meant to give yet as I have to leave soon but just wanted to note that the link doesn't seem to work for me.

The topic or board you are looking for appears to be either missing or off limits to you.

Ooops... it's in the "Friends of Mythruna" group.  Even though it will miss the rest of the discussion, I will at least put that post here:

@kaml1234, that's a lot to try to respond to all at once but let's see if I can.

I think building a fortress will seem pretty boring when you could be creating your own thriving city populated with NPCs, etc. going about their daily business.  So for the "builders at heart" who want to play the non-creative-mode version of the game, I suspect that will be the logical next step.  And getting a town or a city won't be completely straight forward... but I've written about that elsewhere.

You will definitely have relationships with NPCs.  They will make a first impression and that will affect how they react to you.  There will hopefully be things you can do to affect your relationship with them... getting them something they want, helping them build/repair their house, etc..  This might be necessary, for example, to get signatures on the petition to get your town.  Or maybe you just do it to get a better deal on what they are selling.

Your player will be very customizable, right down to the ability to plug magic components into yourself to give you additional abilities.  The goal here is that no matter what race you choose, you can augment yourself to give you the abilities of the other races... at the expense of component slots.  This is why the races with lots of in-built abilities will have fewer components slots.

I'm also a fan of equipment customization and that will be a strong influence as well.  Your sword, bow, whatever should be as unique to you as the clothes you wear because you've tweaked it and customized it over hours of game play.

And anyway, most of these things should also be just a stop on a longer journey.  Maybe you want to build a town/city and spend time building towards that.  Maybe you want to be a dragon hunter and so spend your entire life devoted to perfecting your magic, combat, and party-magic skills to figure out how to kill one.  Or maybe you want to rescue NPCs from danger.  Or maybe you want to find dragons and release them so that you can rescue NPCs from that danger at a fee... maybe you run your own sailing ship and charge good money to let them leave their continent to flee the dragon.

There is a series of articles that I'm writing from the perspective of in-game characters.  This is supposed to be a glimpse of the possibilities surrounding a world where your quests are your own.  To answer a long post with another, I will include one here...

Fayd Talwin is a female character... I'd originally envisioned her as human but I may make her Pantherian.

From the diary of Fayd Talwin:

Yesterday I finally found my emerald.  It's no bigger than a seed
but I knew it would satisfy the last requirements of the mountain mage.

The change of strategy finally worked.  I'd been trying for a few
days to dig one up by tracing a rich mineral vein but had no luck
and I hate working underground, anyway.  I'm just not cut out for
it.  I even sleep in the trees when I can.  When the vein finally
tapped out, it was a good excuse to try something else.

I had heard in town that there were giant green lizards that ran
wild on the islands to the south.  More to my interest was the fact
that the occasional emerald could be harvested from the gut of one of
these nasty beasties.  The thought of cornering and killing
a two meter long reptillian monster didn't appeal to me but it sounded
a lot more interesting than digging holes in the dark.

I sold my water breathing module for some extra coin (who needs another
encounter with the sharks, anyway?) and used that and the last of the rest
of my gold to buy supplies and passage south.  The chain of islands was larger
than I expected from the tales and it took me two full days before I found
one of their nests.  Then it was just a waiting game.

They say that nine out of ten of these nasties will yield nothing but
a pile of bloody mess and a nice skin.  I was lucky.  The first one that
I trapped and killed gave me what I sought.  Unfortunately, I had to leave
the rest behind because I could hear his brothers just around the corner.

So this morning I finally made the trek to the old wizard's tower and
turned in my payment: 10 units of black marble, a garnet, 2 units of
sand, 4 saphire chips (almost as common as sand around here), 6 wood
staves, and the emerald.  Given that the emerald was the only
non-negotiable item when I made the deal, I suspect it is a necessary
component to the device.  I have little interest in the tinkering of
wizards and they are reluctant to share anyway.

An hour later he produced what I came for: a small wooden wafer
that glowed slightly in my hand, the etchings shimmering magically
in the light.  I immediately installed it in the gap left by the
water module, just left of my heart where it could be easily activated.
I've heard that modules based on life energy always work better close
to the heart and that has been my experience.

The world looked strange the moment I activated it.  It took my eyes
several seconds to adjust to the new magical light it was seeing, but
there in front of me the auras were unmistakable.  The forest was teeming
with small glowing lights of various sizes and colors.  I could see a
fading blue line of bubbles where a medium sized animal had come through
recently.  Following it to the right of the path was a purple trail of
something larger.  As I stood still, I could also detect three distinct
yellow man-sized auras on the path to the mage's tower.  One of them even
looked like my own heading up the path.

Tracking and hunting should be much easier now as long as I don't move
too quickly.  As I jogged down a hill the forest got so bright that I
couldn't see and all of the auras disappeared for several seconds.  It
will definitely take some getting used to.

The unexpected bonus I discovered was that when I do walk very slowly,
I leave only the faintest trace of my own aura behind.  An extremely
useful side effect, maybe.

[Moonkey]

In my own opinion, I see Mythruna as an RPG that takes your mind to its limits through the possibilities. What people have dreamed (Or at least what I do) is to see an RPG with the possibilities of real-life chance. What Paul describes Mythruna as, is a dream come true to me. (this is to show that I believe in Paul's potential to create Mythruna)

     Now, on-topic. About PvP. So far what Paul has talked about sounds great. PvP sounds VERY promising. Trying to keep my excitement down about the lan parties is impossible. Haaaaaah, read the entire post and I have to say, It was engaging. Thanks for the post Sern.

[Sern]

Starting off with a bang, huh Sern?  This forum is a wealth of information, it may take awhile to get through much of it... so take your time!

A bang indeed. I imagine it could take me weeks to get a better understanding of Mythruna at this rate but I'm in no rush. I'm handling a number of projects both minor and intensive at present and juggling them all is not very easy or efficient. The roles I play are typically small but widespread.

It's refreshing to see a primary game dev who is willing and able to respond to a wide variety of questions and general inquiries, and in a timely manner. This is the way in which I try to run our community, the current one and the one prior. It wasn't easy having such a wide variety of tasks demanded of myself or to respond to every inquiry but I felt if you wanted to have an open community where you were to set positive examples then you would just have to go the extra mile.

We learn by example and are shaped by our experiences, growing up in a world where a lack of example could be just as detrimental as a negative example.

In the early 90s, I played a text based MUD... cost $4 an hour and I was totally addicted.  The depth of play was really nice but death was so nasty for noobs that I never ventured far outside of the main town.

Anyway, I found out about a sort of hidden skill you could train... or at least it was mostly undocumented.  Alchemy was available as one of the options but they basically told you nothing about it.  You'd train it and then you could use it.  They gave you the simple mechanics: one catalyst + 2 ingredients + a glass vessel to keep it in.  That was it.

It turns out that in the town there was a secret alchemists' shop.  I only found out because I was talking to someone who happened to befriend me and let me know.  He was also an alchemist and he let me hang out with him sometimes.  Clued me in to some of the trade secrets and showed me how to find the secret shop.

In there was a shop that sold some common ingredients and a few more expensive ones.  In the back they had glass blowing equipment... with basically no instructions on what to do.  It was a trainable skill but not a main experience based one... anyone could train at it if they wanted.  I spent hours in that place before I finally made my first vial.

I watched this guy work the in-game economy.  People would come to him for certain potions and he would demand some gold and rare items in return.  200 gold, eye of a giant spider, red dragon scale, etc..  Some of this was sometimes for the potion he was trying to make them but often times some of the ingredients were for completely different orders he took from different players... or just to keep his supplies up.  Alchemists in this game were extremely secretive so they tried as best they could to keep people from guessing what the real ingredients might be.  He was popular enough that he basically never had to collect his own rare ingredients.  I was lucky to get to follow him around for a while.

I remember all of this because this person was basically a walking quest generator.  Just a simple resource allocation/acquisition problem suddenly generates a variety of bizarre quests.  And it was all so logical and apparently arbitrary but his customers had as much fun gathering the required payment as anything else they did.

This is why I enjoyed Mortal Online. The crafting system had a lot of depth to it, although I'll say I never was able to fully experiment with it. Everyone I played with though also said the same thing about it. There were recipes that no one had discovered up to a year after its release. I loved that there was no cookie cutter discovery in crafting. Soon after MO's release there was a ton of experimentation going on regarding what ores could be smelted and combined with other ores, what could be combined and crafted from the smelted material, etc. The basic combinations were figured out pretty quickly as expected but like I said some weren't ever figured out until the day I left.

Smart crafters kept the secrets of the trade and shared them only with the most trusted, if ever. Unfortunately there were a few dumb ones but most knew that the higher level crafting wasn't to be shared with just anyone if you wanted to retain the value of your trade.

Ooops... it's in the "Friends of Mythruna" group.  Even though it will miss the rest of the discussion, I will at least put that post here:

@kaml1234, that's a lot to try to respond to all at once but let's see if I can.

I think building a fortress will seem pretty boring when you could be creating your own thriving city populated with NPCs, etc. going about their daily business.  So for the "builders at heart" who want to play the non-creative-mode version of the game, I suspect that will be the logical next step.  And getting a town or a city won't be completely straight forward... but I've written about that elsewhere.

You will definitely have relationships with NPCs.  They will make a first impression and that will affect how they react to you.  There will hopefully be things you can do to affect your relationship with them... getting them something they want, helping them build/repair their house, etc..  This might be necessary, for example, to get signatures on the petition to get your town.  Or maybe you just do it to get a better deal on what they are selling.

Your player will be very customizable, right down to the ability to plug magic components into yourself to give you additional abilities.  The goal here is that no matter what race you choose, you can augment yourself to give you the abilities of the other races... at the expense of component slots.  This is why the races with lots of in-built abilities will have fewer components slots.

I'm also a fan of equipment customization and that will be a strong influence as well.  Your sword, bow, whatever should be as unique to you as the clothes you wear because you've tweaked it and customized it over hours of game play.

And anyway, most of these things should also be just a stop on a longer journey.  Maybe you want to build a town/city and spend time building towards that.  Maybe you want to be a dragon hunter and so spend your entire life devoted to perfecting your magic, combat, and party-magic skills to figure out how to kill one.  Or maybe you want to rescue NPCs from danger.  Or maybe you want to find dragons and release them so that you can rescue NPCs from that danger at a fee... maybe you run your own sailing ship and charge good money to let them leave their continent to flee the dragon.

There is a series of articles that I'm writing from the perspective of in-game characters.  This is supposed to be a glimpse of the possibilities surrounding a world where your quests are your own.  To answer a long post with another, I will include one here...

Fayd Talwin is a female character... I'd originally envisioned her as human but I may make her Pantherian.

From the diary of Fayd Talwin:

Yesterday I finally found my emerald.  It's no bigger than a seed
but I knew it would satisfy the last requirements of the mountain mage.

The change of strategy finally worked.  I'd been trying for a few
days to dig one up by tracing a rich mineral vein but had no luck
and I hate working underground, anyway.  I'm just not cut out for
it.  I even sleep in the trees when I can.  When the vein finally
tapped out, it was a good excuse to try something else.

I had heard in town that there were giant green lizards that ran
wild on the islands to the south.  More to my interest was the fact
that the occasional emerald could be harvested from the gut of one of
these nasty beasties.  The thought of cornering and killing
a two meter long reptillian monster didn't appeal to me but it sounded
a lot more interesting than digging holes in the dark.

I sold my water breathing module for some extra coin (who needs another
encounter with the sharks, anyway?) and used that and the last of the rest
of my gold to buy supplies and passage south.  The chain of islands was larger
than I expected from the tales and it took me two full days before I found
one of their nests.  Then it was just a waiting game.

They say that nine out of ten of these nasties will yield nothing but
a pile of bloody mess and a nice skin.  I was lucky.  The first one that
I trapped and killed gave me what I sought.  Unfortunately, I had to leave
the rest behind because I could hear his brothers just around the corner.

So this morning I finally made the trek to the old wizard's tower and
turned in my payment: 10 units of black marble, a garnet, 2 units of
sand, 4 saphire chips (almost as common as sand around here), 6 wood
staves, and the emerald.  Given that the emerald was the only
non-negotiable item when I made the deal, I suspect it is a necessary
component to the device.  I have little interest in the tinkering of
wizards and they are reluctant to share anyway.

An hour later he produced what I came for: a small wooden wafer
that glowed slightly in my hand, the etchings shimmering magically
in the light.  I immediately installed it in the gap left by the
water module, just left of my heart where it could be easily activated.
I've heard that modules based on life energy always work better close
to the heart and that has been my experience.

The world looked strange the moment I activated it.  It took my eyes
several seconds to adjust to the new magical light it was seeing, but
there in front of me the auras were unmistakable.  The forest was teeming
with small glowing lights of various sizes and colors.  I could see a
fading blue line of bubbles where a medium sized animal had come through
recently.  Following it to the right of the path was a purple trail of
something larger.  As I stood still, I could also detect three distinct
yellow man-sized auras on the path to the mage's tower.  One of them even
looked like my own heading up the path.

Tracking and hunting should be much easier now as long as I don't move
too quickly.  As I jogged down a hill the forest got so bright that I
couldn't see and all of the auras disappeared for several seconds.  It
will definitely take some getting used to.

The unexpected bonus I discovered was that when I do walk very slowly,
I leave only the faintest trace of my own aura behind.  An extremely
useful side effect, maybe.

I definitely agree about player customization. It's something that really keeps the game alive for the individual player and when you look at someone else in the game you want to be able to say, I'm unique. I think there's an inherent limitation for this simply because customization has a limit. Borderlands 2 as my example has TONS of guns and you will probably never see them all, at least not for a long time. But the character customization is much more limited. Being that it's primarily an FPS/RPG (attribute system) I think they put the emphasis of customization in the right place, on the guns. But as their design and creation process has time stamps being put on it, creating a vast range of character customization and putting it into the game wasn't something they put a lot of thought into.

However, other games I think do require much more insight into the individual character based customization process. I will make another topic soon about the psychological boundaries players reach when it comes to boredom. Much of it may seem obvious and I will say it is incomplete. I still find it useful to have it laid out in writing.

Also that diary entry was quite an interesting read.

Haaaaaah, read the entire post and I have to say, It was engaging. Thanks for the post Sern.

No problem. The experience of learning pspeed's thought/design process was engaging as well. More posts will come when I have time. Not all at once most likely. I will try to keep them spread out so as to drag out a meaningful conversation. Although I already have two or more topics lined up. All of which may have been discussed elsewhere but I doubt to the extent I will go into as far as comparisons of other related topics. We'll see though.


And now I'm off to take that test. That's why I've taken so long to finally respond. I've been studying for this bane of my existence and now I have to hope I've retained the information because I'm out of time.

[Moonkey]

I hope you do well! Hard to find people so determined.