Recreate Unseen side events with NPCs?

[The stranger]

So everyone get to see events? uh... no. No thank you. I understand we want to make the game more fun but we can't start getting unrealistic. There could be other solutions... recorded video tapes? really, I would love to watch events, but not when it's getting unrealistic (for this game, that is). That's not Myst IV.

[Mac_Fife]

So you saying a developer should spend the time to create a cutscene that will be seen by a grand total of 1 persons every 3 months?

That's the burden that worried me back on page one of this thread. Many of these things will have an "expiry date" too, I guess; a point at which they become too old to be meaningful, and that makes the burden even harder to bear.

There's "deep back story" and "recent story" (back or otherwise). Deep back story occurred before "we" ever entered the cavern. We should never go there: It's history and part of the aura and mystery of URU is uncovering that story bit by bit as an ongoing learning process. Things that happened more recently will tend to shape our attitudes, opinions, what we talk about, etc., and missing out on that can leave you feeling pretty left out.

Those unseen NPC events in MO:UL were anchors for other bits of storyline, some of it "live". The fact that they were unseen probably had a lot to do with the logistical and economic challenges faced by Cyan. Missing the live action bits though, really miffed a lot of people. As I said before, I could live with that; I can't be in the cavern 24/7 and I can't be in every age at the same time, so I'm going to miss things. What ticked me off though, was that there wasn't an in-game resource that I could access to get up to speed on what I may have missed over the past day or week or whatever. I was never happy about being forced to trawl forums to find chatlogs, etc. - I was paying to play a game, not browse web sites .

It's been suggested that "live" events should be repeated at an alternate time of day so more people can take part, but 1) that is extra work for the NPC actors and in a fan run environment it could be asking too much, 2) it'd seem a bit odd to say the least if you happened to come across the same "live" event being re-enacted, say, 8 hours later than when you first saw it, 3) you'd lose spontaneity in a re-enactment - people having the seen the first "house" could preempt some of the action and 4) you could end up with, for example, two quite different chatlogs of what is supposed to be the same event If people want that , then fine, but I'm not a fan of the idea.

In fact the whole NPC thing bothers me a bit: We shouldn't be tempted to over-estimate our capability to deliver this kind of content in an Open Source URU. At the moment we don't really know what we can deliver; capabilities will vary between shards. One of the worst things that the fan content creators can do would be to build up player expectations too high, and then disappoint. Although I will readily concede that "NPC" events are probably far easier to deliver on than, say, "one quality fresh new age every month".

[Lehm]

I was never happy about being forced to trawl forums to find chatlogs, etc. - I was paying to play a game, not browse web sites

You're not alone there, and pretty much the reason I'm suggesting cutscenes. They are the most logical solution I think. Didn't get your comment about them expiring. If they're part of the story why couldn't they reset each time you restarted the journey? I realize this would break the realtime aspect but only so long as they are catching up. Which takes less then two weeks after that they would begin experiencing the cutscenes as they are released with everyone else. And yes everyone gets to see them.

As for starting a project, I'm not committing to anything until the source code is released. I want to see what's involved in doing a project before committing to one. If I did start one it would be along the lines of getting random NPC's wandering the city. There seems to be more of a concensus that that's a good idea, and would lay the foundation for possible cutscenes. But that's all conjecture not doing anything until we have source.

Edit: And another thought occured to me, don't forget that there will be multiple servers/distros. It doesn't have to be the same way on all servers...or it could even be a client side option. So that if you're not interested in them they can be disabled.

[Mac_Fife]

I was never happy about being forced to trawl forums to find chatlogs, etc. - I was paying to play a game, not browse web sites

You're not alone there, and pretty much the reason I'm suggesting cutscenes. They are the most logical solution I think. Didn't get your comment about them expiring.

What I meant was that some of the back story items were created as crutches for the overall story line (Sharper, Nick and Ril's expedition to Neghilan, Engberg's disappearance, etc.) - once that story line loses currency then the back story item starts to lose relevance. It's like the Airbus ditching in the Hudson River recently was big news; six months on it'll be forgotten (by most people), along with the back story aspects of the pilot's history, the design features of the aircraft, etc., so people don't generally see the need/desire to go and revisit those events.

[The stranger]

I agree with mac_fife. Memory viewing isn't uru's thing and it won't work here, because once this game is online memory veiwing just become an everyday thing for 100000 players- something I don't want. I realise people want to have fun but when it comes to showing cutscenes of past events, with no actual connection to the game (I think memory viewing is myst iv's thing) and "just because we want to" isn't the way to go, in my opinion. As I said, maybe we could find other, smarter options- such as videos of events (a control room in negilahn with camera showing the pods, and sharper's expedition? I'll have to think harder).

[Mac_Fife]

@The stranger: That's why I suggest using the classroom imagers in the 'hoods. The classroom is a place to learn, so go there to learn about what has happened .