[MUD-Dev] Total Annilation of Downtime

[Amanda Walker]

Daniel.Harman at barclayscapital.com <Daniel.Harman at barclayscapital.com> wrote:

> The item to gold conversion is actually fairly annoying, the UI
> being pretty slow and clunky, especially as I've not found a way
> to turn the confirmation box off each time you convert an item.

This is a widespread complaint--they've announced that they'll be
fixing this in the next update (which is Wednesday, I think).

> The crafting system sounds interesting, but I didn't spot any
> details on how it worked in the manual, so haven't had a chance to
> look at it yet.

It's in the back of the manual, as I recall, although enough people
ask about it in-game that it's not very obvious from the docs ;-).

> They've definitely worked to eliminate down time, the death
> penalties are fairly limited (although undoubtedly I'm too low
> level to see how bad they get (only level 10)),

They get worse, though they are still not too bad.  Also, they don't
decrease your skill, they merely decrease your available health and
vigor (= "mana"/stamina).  Basically, it's prudent to fight smaller
stuff for a while if the penalty gets too big, but it's not enough
to require you to be really risk-averse.

> Since there are no npc vendors, if you want anything that a
> monster doesn't drop, you have to buy it from a craftsman. I'm not
> really sure how one is meant to meet up with one though - there
> are no automatic trader bot type things and no reason to go
> to/hang around town. This aspect is definitely under developed.

This is where crafting comes in.  Towns are fairly hopping places
once you get some good craftspeople going.  Lots of chatting,
pick-up groups for dungeons & quests, jamming with musical
instruments, etc.  Towns are where you get good equipment, and if
you're a crafter, where you make it--being next to a forge, for
example, boosts your armorcrafting and weaponsmithing skill enough
to make it worthwhile.  Same for other town resources for other
crafting skills.

> You can't inspect what another character is wearing. This is one
> of Everquest's best features - whilst it doesn't let you see the
> name of any item someone is wearing, you can see the thumbnails
> for each one. That's a great balance as it gets people motivated
> to improve their gear, and gets them talking to each other too.

I never liked that about EQ.  Whenever I got the message "so and so
is inspecting what you're wearing," my first impulse was to slap
them.

> I find myself wondering if they've stripped out so much because
> they actually wanted to, or moreso because they ran out of
> time. There are allegations that the game has been dumbed down,
> and I can't say I disagree.  This undoubtedly the easiest game of
> this genre that I've played so far in terms of combat
> difficulty. It was fun playing last night, but I suspect once the
> novelty has worn off, I may be quickly bored.

I dunno.  It's certainly a different game, but that may not be a
bug.  For example, I'm finding it an explorer's haven compared to
most other MMORPGs.  Lots of interesting scenery, opportunities for
speculation ("hmm, there's a square plot of grass here in the middle
of the woods--I wonder if buildings will appear here later..."), and
things to do besides kill the wildlife.  When I started playing in
the beta in August, my first impression was "hmm, this is way easier
than AC1" based on combat at early levels.  However, the game is
deep enough to have kept my interest, and I'm still having quite a
bit of fun 4 months later.  The game has surprising staying power,
at least for some styles of play, and combat at level 20+ is much
more interesting than it was at level 10.

One difference, as I noted in an earlier note, is that they've
decided to treat the first 10 or so levels as "game orientation"
rather than just dropping you into an incomprehensible free-for-all.
I think this is a good thing.  It's also expert-friendly.  Once you
get the hang of things, you can bring up a new character from
scratch to 10 or 15 in an evening.  This makes it much easier to
experiment with different types of character, skills sets, etc.

Amanda Walker


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