I do understand what you mean here Lehm, I for one had difficulties with attending the 'visits' of DRC, they often occured during non-friendly european time . On the other hand I can agree with Mc_Fife - one can't be evrywhere during a day-night cyccle (though I wish I could ). But that doesn't mean that we could arrange something better this time - if 'we' decide to have such events in OSMO. 'Visits' could occur say two times a day for europeans and americans to catch.
As for 'replaying' Sharpers visit in Negilahn - well, that has already happened and can't happen again. New stories will come instead!! And now we could have something like TCT to cover them , and we can have both chatlogs, pics and maybe even movies after the event. /me dance
It's not a true backstory replay, but when I started MOUL I found an episodic set of movies that documented the Sharper and Henderson stories.
I can't recall right now where I downloaded them from (the TCT website?) but I still have them -- they were constructed from screencaptures and annotated with subtitles. Eleven episodes in all I think.
Okay true, I suppose what I'm talking about is not the live events. Rather the side story we only got to hear about. 'Back story' doesn't really fit has that what comes before the game.
So the low down on what I'm suggesting recreating the side story events we only heard about as NPC cutscenes that would progress as you progressed through the ages. That way has new players (and old) play back through the journey they would get caught up on the story.
I understand there are some that like the realtime nature that the game currently has...but this is a game. It needs to be enjoyed and experienced, and I think we are missing some of that by missing out on these events.
How about journals and "documentary films" (either in or out of the game). That way people can experience, and even see, the events without going through time. For OSMO events, have something that films it automatically. For past events, re-enact it with special animations and all and then disperse the recording in or out of game (it would be as camcorder or videos on a computer or something for in-game, just a videos on Youtube or for download out-of game).
My posts represent the views of me, Gehn, lord of ages, and not any companies or groups which I don't belong to.
1. An in-game video, available from the options manu, which shows you narrated "news" of what happened last month in uru.
2. More events. More, more, more. If there will be a way to just make more events around in a day, people what get all annoyed when they miss one.
3. Several more NPCs. A random one for each player, arriving at a random time. In some ages. He could be updated to tell you of things which happened lately, and maybe give you "missions" to do (like, an NPC in teledahn will tell you that he thinks the office in the great mushroom is interesting, but he can't find a way to get there. So you will have some more things to think about). After a "speech", the NPC goes away, and returns when he has something else to say. Each player may have 5 different rendom (a different look for each player) NPCs arriving from time to time. Yes, it's not live events, but it makes thing more personal and interesting. It may keep players going around the age, even if they are dome with the age and it's updates, until the next update arrives.
Last edited by The stranger on Thu Feb 19, 2009 6:33 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Remember Myst IV? That item you had that would replay "memories" from certain locations? It was a relatively good gameplay device to give you the backstory for the ages. Perhaps something like that could be used to "replay" NPC actions that you missed. Yeesha magic could be used to explain it away IC
A few other things I really think Cyan dropped the ball on regarding live events were 1) Having a population limit on the ages the live events took place in (instead you could allow multiple instances that the events could be replicated across), and 2) Not having character journals in-game that would be updated to reflect the plot (like Sharper's journal was in Uru Prime). I agree that having to read chat logs on a fan site was a very very poor solution to the problem (though I read them all religiously!).
Then again, how much "in-game plot" is really going to occur in Open Uru? Nothing can happen that will affect official cannon, so we're probably left with small events and stories organized by fans. I don't think these will be as much of a problem when it comes to people missing live events.
Though I think that adding some journals that explain the plot of Uru so far for new people would definitely be a good idea!
Do you think that the GoMe or GoA might be willing to take on the charter of "recording events"? Just as there was a "relayer" team that almost always was willing to forward details of events (although most of them were scheduled events), I'd be willing to bet that some members of those guilds will be present at most newsworthy events.
I'm not really looking to suggest things that other people or groups can do. But I don't see right now a technical-only solution to providing access to past events in the cavern (yes, we could keep a transaction log of the vault, but what resources would that take? And who would prune boring events out of such a log?) At some point I think some of the in-game tasks may have to be done the old-fashioned way -- by the participants.
The stranger wrote:
1. An in-game video, available from the options menu, which shows you narrated "news" of what happened last month in uru.
I have an idea for that. Zandi would have a portable DVD player attached to his trailer (with an extension cord to keep the power, and maybe one of those laptop locks to make sure nobody steals it). He'd also have a stack of DVDs. These would be added by shard owners, and could include videos of events, as if they were recorded by explorers at the scene. This of course could also include OOC walkthroughs, fan made videos, etc.
This, along with more continuing journals, could keep people up to date about what happened. It also is completely in-game and uses only IC human technology (unless we want to say the videos were taken on KI's, to explain why we never see camcorders going around). Plus, it gives another fun friendly thing for good old Zandi to do.
While some of these are interesting ideas, they defeat the main purpose of my suggestion. Making the story more personal to the player. Lets take an example from one of the earlier games. Riven: imagine the scene when you run into that one guy in the caves and he makes a run for it and takes off in the transport. Imagine reading about that instead, or hearing about it second hand.
. On the other hand I can agree with Mc_Fife - one can't be evrywhere during a day-night cyccle (though I wish I could 
). But that doesn't mean that we could arrange something better this time - if 'we' decide to have such events in OSMO. 'Visits' could occur say two times a day for europeans and americans to catch. 
and can't happen again. New stories will come instead!! And now we could have something like TCT to cover them , and we can have both chatlogs, pics and maybe even movies after the event. /me dance