Re: Alter Aeon - Overall Game Direction
An interesting idea Mr. And! erson! but how will you play a mud when you have no hands to play it! .
Mmmmm, Sorry, (I just think Smith is cool).
On the one hand I agree I'd love to see some other activities in the game besides hack n slash. then again, alter is going that way. I am looking forward to trying the fetch jobs sinse I always find it much more interesting to go to an area (particularly one I have already explored), and be on the look out for six black spiders to kill for an npc than just to walk around depopulating the environment, even if it's a generic generation type of thing like Aardwolf has where your just randomly assigned one or more mobs to kill as opposed to being part of a pre written story.
Then of course there are jobs that specifically have other ways to get experience, like the druid's suntrap ability (I'm look ing forward to trying some druid skills and indeed might replace druid as my 4th class rather than mage).
On the other hand, the combat in Alter is more fun than in most other muds I've played, sinse it does make a difference what you do, and you have to often think on your feet as opposed to just pounding away. Plus, I am not sure that a full scale wilderness and survival system would really be appropriate and correct for Alteraeon, just because of how many of the areas work, sinse alter seems to me more based on some specifically designed areas populated by mobs rather than having a generalized wilderness zone with randomly occurring materials and animals, much less one that you could do skills like woodcutting or crafting in.
Generally if I want that sort of experience I'll go and play Clok, which has taken the art of wilderness survival to a very fine detail, to the point that even making a campfire is an achievement and an involved process, not to mentio n the fact that the animals are realistically dangerous (don't pick fights with bison), and I happen to say I love clok for that reason.
But, why should Alteraeon just do what other muds do. If I want a realistic game where I need to manage food and cook it, think about cold, hunger and thirst, cut down trees and craft things, in a world where even a wolf can kill you and a trained human can be instantly deadly, I'll play Clok. If I want a great fantasy game where I can be a mighty warrior and slay my way through a deadly and twisted swamp full of evil undead and nasty creatures, or descend into a dragon filled dungeon to pick off nasty dragons, I'll go and play Alteraeon.
Thus, I'm not really convinced too many wilderness survival skills or changing the butchering and skinning would fit! in the game.
If I were to suggest some none combat activities in Alter, I'd suggest something more based on exploring and gathering and harvesting. Mayb e some randomly occurring items would appear in an area that you'd need to find, eg you'd be told "the green spotted mushrooms are growing in so and so, go and find me 10 of them" , or maybe you'd need to go from one town to another say carrying goods for merchants or guarding a merchant's caravan.
I'd also love to see some expantions to the shipping mechanics with ship to ship combat, fights on the sea and lots of random places to discover, indeed perhaps some random sea encounters such as finding desert islands, having your ships attacked by seaserpent or occasionally running across sunken treasure.
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