Elder Tale Online Discussion

Pavel

@Mercutio said in Elder Tale Online Discussion:

@icanbeyourmuse
I was not aware this was an important information point. That’s easily documented, and I’ll do that right now!

Edit: Completed.

We’re nerds, everything’s an important information point to some of us.

Mercutio

@Pavel said in Elder Tale Online Discussion:

@Mercutio said in Elder Tale Online Discussion:

@icanbeyourmuse
I was not aware this was an important information point. That’s easily documented, and I’ll do that right now!

Edit: Completed.

We’re nerds, everything’s an important information point to some of us.

Fair.

A bunch of updates have been made on the site and application rooms to cover some of the information discussed above.

Pavel

On a more serious note, I’m testing out some questions I want to ask anyone advertising a game that I’m hoping you can answer for me.

In conversation with your players, what is the key (or top three if finding one is hard) thing that they describe this game as excelling at?
Do your players have any oft-repeated complaints that are worth noting?
While we all might want a game to go on forever, do you have future plans to draw the game to a conclusion - and if so, how far away do you anticipate that to be?

and

What’s one thing you, personally, like about the game and one thing that you find a challenge about it?

icanbeyourmuse

@Mercutio You’re willingness to listen to feedback and take it seriously endears me to play the game. It is not so much the implementing the requested feedback that endears me but the listening.

Mercutio

@Pavel said in Elder Tale Online Discussion:

In conversation with your players, what is the key (or top three if finding one is hard) thing that they describe this game as excelling at?

Deep Lore.
- Even on day 1 we had people who spotted the use of Hymmnos on our front page (originating from a game called Ar Tonelico) and they rushed to translate it, and were theory-crafting about what it could mean.
Friendly players / sense of community
- We are generally just very low drama.
A sense of ownership
- Ownership of things they created, especially as a community. All shops, inventions, homesteads, etc are done by groups. We always have people offering assistance to eachother. Also, because we mark milestones both on the MUSH and on the site. For instance, the Scale Emblem Alliance has to beat a boss to get to a higher level of the tower - and each room shows what they beat, and who were there to beat it!

@Pavel said in Elder Tale Online Discussion:

Do your players have any oft-repeated complaints that are worth noting?

Staff has been pretty slow on +jobs in the past. We are addressing this by hiring on new staff (a much needed thing) to solve this on the long run.

@Pavel said in Elder Tale Online Discussion:

While we all might want a game to go on forever, do you have future plans to draw the game to a conclusion - and if so, how far away do you anticipate that to be?

There are a variety of ways we could draw the game to a conclusion, but we also have a lot of long term plans. We have enough content for at least another 10 years or so. It’s a bold statement, I recognize. Every single year played is one I am happy with.

@Pavel said in Elder Tale Online Discussion:

What’s one thing you, personally, like about the game and one thing that you find a challenge about it?

Like: I adore the excitement people get about engaging with the deep lore and slowly peeling away the many layers of secrets.
Challenge: Having a lore-heavy game has made it so the players feel it is harder to run their own (larger scale) content, something that we intend to address in the next few months by making more lore publicly findable and creating a way for them to find spots to interact with / things they get to hold onto and play with, with less staff interference.

Pavel

@Mercutio Most excellent answers, thank you. One more question, since I forgot it off of my list

How friendly is the game to more casual players? Many of us are old and grey(ing) now, with many commitments. Is there a distinct disadvantage to only being able to put in an hour or three a week?

Mercutio

@Pavel said in Elder Tale Online Discussion:

@Mercutio Most excellent answers, thank you. One more question, since I forgot it off of my list

How friendly is the game to more casual players? Many of us are old and grey(ing) now, with many commitments. Is there a distinct disadvantage to only being able to put in an hour or three a week?

I think the best way to answering this are the following items that our game keeps in mind:

Unless it’s an FC, we don’t ever idle a player out, and we don’t have activity requirements. And even with FCs, we are fairly relaxed in our stance, as long as folk at least log in. Most importantly, we just do not idle-nuke, ever (aside from non-approved characters who have sat idle in the app room for ages).
We have a few European players. We have a few players who actually use SceneSys to play-by-post when they are having trouble with schedules.
We keep a page of ‘things that have happened in the world’ so that if someone was not around for a while, and comes back, can catch up quickly.
We do recognize that more casual players may miss our bigger scenes, during which lore tends to drop. Which is why we use the Codex system to try and distribute it. We keep all bigger scenes published as public Scenes, which can be found on our website.
Bigger scenes are scheduled, usually at least a week ahead of time. They are announced on Discord, so more casual players at work might be able to check in on the game.
Players can also use our OOC and IC channels through Discord, which connect directly to the MUSH.

Hobbie

This entire concept around complex systems built in Penn that aren’t necessarily RP-inspired intrigues me, and not just because I’m doing the exact same thing. What are some of the coding/technical challenges you’ve come across?

Mercutio

@Hobbie
The main issue I encountered was my own hubris in trying to create a Graph Database out of MySQL to drive my system. In theory, it works. It functions. But really, MySQL isn’t meant to do that kinda stuff.

Back then, PennMUSH didn’t have @http built out yet, and I hadn’t gotten enough into the hardcode to create an http() function. One of the technical challenges I am meeting right now is trying to port from MySQL (remarkably slow) to ArangoDB (ridiculously fast).

But it’s slow going because <life>.

But I’m not entirely sure I am answer what you are asking. Are you asking about the Codex system perhaps, or what are you seeking to learn about?

Hobbie

@Mercutio The question was super-general, and the Graph DB issue is an interesting one. You could say the same thing about trying to code a near-MUD in Penn (what I’m doing). There are easy ways, but it’s the road you’ve taken, and I respect it a great deal.

~~Out of curiosity, why ArangoDB instead of something like MariaDB?~~ Disregard, you’d have the same problems as MySQL if you went with MariaDB.

I should probably actually play the game, that way my “How did you do this?!” questions will make more sense lol

Mercutio

@Hobbie MariaDB is a binary-compatible interface replacement to MySQL. But I actually use MariaDB. I just said MySQL since it’s the more commonly used one and would cause less confusion.

And you should! Give it a go! See what we’ve got in place.

Let me know if you need any assistance on the near-MUD stuff. PennMUSH recently removed the 1-second wait time and has sped up its queues quite a bit thanks to it. But I know some stuff that can help you out. Can always PM me for my Discord or the like.

Tez

I forked off a few posts, old and new, related to a former and now-banned player. They can be found here: https://brandmuday.mythicus.net/topic/359/eto-drama-fork/11