Cleaning Up Instancing

[realXCV]

Except for the last bit (which if I understand correctly, means you could not add the Eder Kemo book to your Relto by using the Eder Kemo book in a public Eder Gira), I've advocated this same approach - that public Ages shouldn't include the rewards. However, that doesn't seem to satisfy people who feel that accessing later parts of the Age - those hidden behind puzzles - is itself a reward.

You can only add the Eder Kemo book if you are coming from your own Eder Gira. As for areas behind puzzles being a reward, my proposal doesn't go against that.

Thus far, I see the following options:
* Don't let the puzzles be solved in public Ages - I am not fond of this solution, but it does have some precedence. In 'hood-instanced Gahreesen, players could not progress beyond getting their KI. The Age could not be solved.
* Don't let players visit the public Ages until the private Ages are solved. This is the approach I proposed above, but as realXCV observed, it does prevent groups from immediately visiting the public instance of an Age when a new Age is opened. Under my proposed model, however, players could still form groups quickly and easily and explore each others' private Ages as soon as each player has claimed his own copy of the Age.

Another idea would be to prevent the player from solving puzzles and accessing parts behind them before solving its private instance. The drawback is that each book would have two public instance. One that can't be solved, another that can be solved.

The risks that players take when they link to public instances are the same as when they link to someone else's instances.

My original proposal for bookmarks was to only use only a public and private bookmark, but 'private' led to a the instanced controlled by a group organizer when the player has joined a group. (I very strongly dislike the 'share book' system because someone must stand at the book and share, share, share, share to invite a large number of people to his or her private instance. Also remember that I do not want invitations to instances to be deliverable through the Nexus system because it breaks the separation of Yeesha magic and technology.) Alahmnat, I believe, felt that the benefits of adding a third bookmark for groups would outweigh the negative of adding complexity... and so that's how I landed on the "3 bookmarks" design.

When I originally wrote my idea, the only thing on a book would be a public/private toggle system. Mixed with the "If you are in X's Gira, you will link to X's Kemo", I thought that would suffice but I found one place where that doesn't work. So I added the "share book" but only to books that link to private instances and that are in a shared age.

* A "shared age" is a non-ownable age, the main public cavern or a "private" cavern.

[Kenguin]

public Ages shouldn't include the rewards. However, that doesn't seem to satisfy people who feel that accessing later parts of the Age - those hidden behind puzzles - is itself a reward.

Yeah, that's basically my stance. But I'm also worried about people accidentally going to the public version of an age they haven't seen yet and having the immersion of the puzzling experience be broken, or at least being confused.

* Don't let players visit the public Ages until the private Ages are solved. This is the approach I proposed above, but as realXCV observed, it does prevent groups from immediately visiting the public instance of an Age when a new Age is opened. Under my proposed model, however, players could still form groups quickly and easily and explore each others' private Ages as soon as each player has claimed his own copy of the Age.

I definitely think that groups being able to visit and solve ages together should be possible immediately upon release of an age. I was thinking that a private grouping/invite system like those being discussed would be used for this. The public age wouldn't be necessary for group expeditions. By "public age" I'm assuming we mean a persistent "true instance" of the age where everyone who goes there sees the same current state and everyone else who happens to be there. This would be a cool place to visit for social/RP/story/group activities, and for that sense of it being a "real place," and access would be part of the "reward" for solving the age first.

Removing yeesha elements and rewards from public ages makes sense, but my preference would be for all the integrated puzzle mechanics to still be operable, as long as they are compatible with the "persistent multiplayer age" notion.

[Nalates]

There is so much here… I may have missed this… If I did a link would be appreciated. This also seems to be a mix of instancing types but one falling more in the Yeesha category.

The behavior of ‘The Last Cloth’ touched (Yeesha book page) seemed somewhat OOC to me and a concession to a game save type need. But then it could be use in the Ahnonay puzzle solution…

In Gahreesen and Ahnonay ‘The Last Cloth’ seemed to behave differently. In Gahreesen one always arrived in the same room in spite of the tower rotating. So, one was likely arriving at different locations but next to the correct cloth. It was great for quicker returns to the Maintainers’ Wall.

In Ahnonay the clothes moved also. But a ‘The Last Cloth’ link took one to the physical place where the cloth was last touched, not its present location, which seems to have really confused people.

If behavior was consistent, I would think arrival in Gahreesen would have been somewhat random, depending where the tower was in its rotation. Yes/no?

[75th Trombone]

Even before Yeesha came along, the Art had a built-in mechanism to prevent some death links; if the spot you would've linked to is now home to a mountain or other object, you link to the nearest place that's not occupied.

Given that, and given what else Yeesha Magic has accomplished, I don't think the difference between Garrison cloths and Ahnonay cloths really needs explaining.

[Owehn]

My explanation for the different behavior between Gahreesen and Ahnonay cloths is this: When you touch the Gahreesen cloths, they're already moving, so the linking spot they register moves as well. On the other hand, the Ahnonay cloths are stationary when you touch them, so the linking spot is stationary as well, even if the cloth's location later changes. That seems to fit nicely with how linking spots already are presumed to work: they follow your path as the planet rotates, revolves around its star, etc., and it makes the most game-mechanics sense anyway. Of course, that doesn't expain why you can't set up a moving Ahnonay link by touching a cloth while the spheres are rotating, but since you can't link in halfway between spheres through the ordinary linking books, I'm willing to chalk it up to limitations for gameplay.

On the other hand, the Delin/Tsogal cloths don't register links at all, so it might just be that every type of cloth functions differently, so we shouldn't expect the different varieties to behave the same way.

[Marten]

Y'know, I had never thought about the Gahreesen vs Ahnonay cloth behavior! It's a good point. It's an inconsistency I doubt we'll be able to resolve though - it just seems that in Gahreesen, Yeesha bent more rules than in Ahnonay. She's so fickle that way.

[realXCV]

The only place with inconsistency is Gahreesen. In every others ages with save cloths, it links you to where in the age you were when you registered the cloth.

[Grogyan]

There is so much here… I may have missed this… If I did a link would be appreciated. This also seems to be a mix of instancing types but one falling more in the Yeesha category.

The behavior of ‘The Last Cloth’ touched (Yeesha book page) seemed somewhat OOC to me and a concession to a game save type need. But then it could be use in the Ahnonay puzzle solution…

In Gahreesen and Ahnonay ‘The Last Cloth’ seemed to behave differently. In Gahreesen one always arrived in the same room in spite of the tower rotating. So, one was likely arriving at different locations but next to the correct cloth. It was great for quicker returns to the Maintainers’ Wall.

In Ahnonay the clothes moved also. But a ‘The Last Cloth’ link took one to the physical place where the cloth was last touched, not its present location, which seems to have really confused people.

If behavior was consistent, I would think arrival in Gahreesen would have been somewhat random, depending where the tower was in its rotation. Yes/no?

There is a book in Gahreesen that talks about the tremendous difficulty the writers had when writing a link within a rotating tower, on a planet that also moves. So the bookmark takes into effect automatically the dynamics of how a specific link was made, so its all IC.

[Kenguin]

Maybe "hand cloths" link you to where the cloth is, but "shell cloths" link you to where the cloth was when you touched it (minus the rotation of the planet, etc)?

Anyway, I chalk "using the savegame mechanic as a puzzle step" up as one of those "experimental" puzzle ideas in uru that may have looked good on paper but end up being a bit confusing/inconsistent/frustrating (like fireflies, kicking objects around, jumping 30 feet down to platforms, waiting in one place for an extended period of time, etc...). Oh well. Cyan can't be perfect

[Marten]

I'm still writing up my instancing ideas. I'm making suggested changes and resolving oversights as I work through it - I decided to keep the privacy tabs in Relto after all, but make them work in a better way.

The work in progress is on the wiki. Please don't edit it - I'm still working on it.
http://wiki.openuru.org/index.php?title ... :Bookmarks