Progress Report (8/24/09)
 

Hi guys,
I'm posting this because it was brought up in a previous topic. I originally intended to keep players in on the loop of most of the major development projects, but where's the fun for me if I don't get to give any sort of surprise releases. I mean, that's what gives me the "jolly" of my position.

As a brief update as to what is going on with the server. Currently, a majority of development staff are focusing on finishing the "corners" (so to say) of the upcoming Pet System. The pet system will be centric on player involvement with their pet, in regards to "PvP", "PvE", Turn based battling systems, pet-based-quests, and more. The system will be as condensed as possible, giving the participating players a fun, but uncomplicated way of spending their time. There have been several public Beta tests, and some tests open to invite only, and staff only. We plan on one week full staff-only/invite-only testing prior to releasing the system as a whole.

My hopes are that the entire system can be wrapped up, and ready to be used by September 10th at the latest.

Some things the pet system will incorporate:

•- Special GMAP dedicated to the system. It's big, and will hopefully be something the players won't grow tired of easily. We plan on releasing smaller levels where some things will take place, and improving upon the GMAP (and the content of the system) as we go along.

•- Player versus Player battling, including a standard leader board; and obviously a "PvP" pet battling system.

•- Player versus Enemy systems, including NPC tamers which will be used for things such as quests. Tamers will be worked with so that once a player beats all the NPC tamers on the GMAP, they won't end up sitting around for eternity. The "PvE" includes wild monsters, which the player is expected to use for the bulk of their 'training'.

•- Items of all sorts. There will be different items used on your pet. At any given time, a player's pet can hold one item. These items will be used to boost a specific stat.

These things being said, it brings me on to describe the "stat" system. Obviously the possibilities here are limitless. We had to formulate a system that won't be too complex, because this is only a sidecar on the server.

Stats will be broken down into three things:
• Stamina: Defines health
-X amount of health is added per stamina pont.

• Strength: Defines hitting power
-An equation is formulated to work out the hitting power
of the attacking pet.

• Defense: Defines resisting power
-An equation is worked out to process defense vs
strength ratios. Defense defines the resistance to
attacks.


Leveling and Special attacks:
• Leveling:
Leveling is done on the basic experience table. It takes X amount of experience to make it to level Y. This is the same for many RPG concepts, and I'm positive you'll have no problem understanding this.

• Special Attacks:
Special attacks are worked out per type of your pet. There will be a maximum level/stat cap, which means that at one point your pet will reach the finesse of your liking. This will be explained further into the post.

Usage of special attacks in battle will be based off of the level of your pet.
1-9 = 0x per battle.
10-19 = 1x per battle.
20-29 = 2x per battle.
30-39 = 3x per battle... and so on.


• "Reincarnation":
I will only brush on this subject very briefly for the time being. Once your pet has reached the maximum level you can take him to, and you're ready to "restart" the process, you will be able to work in reincarnating your pet. When you do this, the pet will retain the special attack of the previous form along with the addition of the special attack of it's next form. A pet can have up to 3 special attacks at any given time, once you reach that, you will have to start overwriting.


Simultaneously as this is being done, we're working on the upcoming Halloween releases. These are planned to be addressed privately on the UN Radio before we make any official announcements.

After these releases, I will be working on focusing more on the player suggestions, and finishing the content I planned to release in Seaport. This includes a quest with many extraneous conclusions, it will all depend on how you want to handle things. The quest will incorporate many different appealing "mini-games". Said mini-games can be continuously done, and a leader board will be held for them as well. The leaders of these mini-games will get special tags.

Any questions on the content I just presented will be answered appropriately.
(This was just a general sum up of what is going on.)

I love the planned updates, it's been a while since the last update.

Looking forward to what you have to show!

I helped on the GMap
^___________________________________________^
Its gonna be SICK

ic

Cool

I didn't even know I was a registered user this is pretty neat :)

cool! awesome@!! o yeaa!!!!

Awesome.

FIX FOOLS RING PLX

this

One day, just one day, I hope for beautiful quests and some nice new sparring/pking/guild war incentives, with the addition of nice new non-messy levels somewhere, but good updates on the pet system though. I'm not really the kind of guy to go to UN to play a pet rpg, but I'm sure some will love it.

amen

Good, I'm sure everyone will love the updates.
Will probably bring me back to UN for some weeks =)

I don't really know why you're obsessed with quests so much. You wanted Classic to come out with quests as well, and that didn't turn out so good, so now you're trying to get UN to do it.

I myself never liked quests and find them pretty much pointless. Staff spend all this time making this quest (levels, graphics, etc.), however, how long does a quest actually bring me enjoyment? I can care less about the story line the only reason I do quests is for the prize at the end. Therefore, I do a quest for like 1 hour max and get the NPC or whatever it is then never go to the quest again. Staff can actually spend their time on something useful than just a stupid quest.

PS: Quests were pretty much never a big thing with UN, only had minimal impact.

PPS: I agree with you about sparring/guild incentives possibly. Those are some actual activities that have a big impact on the server.

I am not obsessed with quests. They are pretty enjoyable for a classic themed server, and while theyre making random things, they could at least make quests which has always seemed appropriate for a classic themed server. From reading your post, you're actually going to say a pet system is more relevant to a classic server than quests? You may be right because UN has always thrived on the most random ****, and that really isn't a good thing if UN wants to attract non 8 year olds for long.

Quests are however not stupid when made with a little bit of effort to have some half decent puzzles. UN hasn't really attempted that, and while UN remains a classic server, they should at least make things relative to a classic server. Quests are also very enjoyable for the people who like to engage in some non-competitive, self-paced enjoyment. Maybe that isn't the case for era as Era is a server whose playerbase only cares about getting the best gun to kill somebody. That there is a whole other story.

The only reason quests had minimal impact was because most recent ones are of poor quality and UN before had a 200+ playercount with lots of active sparrers/pkers/guilds to suffice the enjoyment. Honestly, the quests that were made recently are just walk through doors, and fight some buggy boss with your sword. Although, I did find the dojo quests interesting (though hard), when they were released 3 or so years ago.

You do understand that even though I play Era currently, that doesn't mean I never played any other server before. I have more hours on UN and played UN for a MUCH longer time.

What i'm trying to say though is quests are for the most part boring, no matter how you set it up. You do it once get the item, never do it again. There's no reason to doing quests other to achieve the prize at the end.

Staff and development work is better suited else where. Do you honestly believe that people will keep on going back to do quests when they have no reason to do so. I don't care if it's a puzzle or not once I do it I most likely will be able to solve it again even faster.

Also, i'm not trying to say a pet system has any relevance to a classic server, however, did Manta's RPG system have any relevance to a classic type server? No, they are the direct opposites. However, the pet system will most likely interest a group of some people and it's actually something you can do multiple times and not get bored of. Quests you do once then never do again.

Just a brief redirection towards the little news-a-majiggy. While I did emphasize the release of the pet system, I also said I planned on working on some bold quests.

These new, quests will be done in a new, innovative fashion. It will be a fashion that will hopefully have some longevity to it. While it won't last forever, and obviously players won't enjoy doing it every hour on the hour, it will be available for that 20 minutes you have to kill "Oh man, what should I do right now..?". (This doesn't mean the quest itself will take 20 minutes. You'll be able to move back into "pieces" of the quest)

There will also be a Halloween quest released for a week, and a quest released prior to Halloween that will tie into the holiday, but hook onto Seaport at the same time.

the thing about the news/forums that drives me insane is that there's no option to turn the automatic pop up off.

& zelph please don't reply to this.. i realize that you won't add it because "people won't read it".

Quests have replay value if they're built good enough. quests are supposed to be part of the single player enjoyment and a good way to release items. It's pretty subjective to say that quests are boring, though a majority of the playerbase would say quests are pretty enjoyful. I don't know man I'd like to see a few quests with new relevant item releases.

Streety: I sort of skimmed through your opening post and didn't realize you made a comment regarding quests. With that said, I noticed that it was some mini-games sort of quest, and not really the puzzle/dungeon type of quests. Oh well.

The planned idea for said quest is to combine different aspects of questing into one, but have a relative form of game play that is (like I said) something with some longevity.

I'm not too sure about how, or what kind of puzzling will be incorporated, but there will be some. On top of that, it's going to be a quest with many different outcomes. The further you take the quest will decide what item you get.

OH SH-....

I already told you that I'm probably going to add an option to hide it when there's no new news, and that things will be a lot better in the next graal version where the window can be made external.

Deja vu...

I think you guys should fix things on the server before you make new stuff ^_^

Usually when people post things like this, they list some actual things that need to be fixed. You should probably do the same.

Nice work with your updates UN.

right right so that'll be when we get the quote button too, right?

I hope you're not being serious about being annoyed on how the news pops-up every login. Even before Rage's News NPC thing, there was a PM from the NPC-Server that would PM you every login saying the same stuff. What's the difference?

All you have to do is press the X on the top right, it doesn't take that much time out of your Graal time does it?

however the PM didn't block your entire focus. you can barely see your player, and can't move when it pops up. if you start being pked when you log on, you can't pause or move.

you have a choice to open the PM or not.

It takes 2 seconds to exit out, not that big of a deal.

it's annoying, and that's big enough of a deal for me.

The developmental updates to the forums are subject to my schedule of time, not your schedule of wants. Of course, I could go in to how that feature would require some changes to the database structure and would also open up more potential problems, but I have to consider the audience here

Besides, that sort of statement would only be effective if I've promised to add a quoting feature for a prolonged amount of time. Making a remark that it's in my future plans a couple months ago doesn't really warrant your negativity (although I'm used to it)

well, my schedule and a lot of other players schedules are running out of time.

You know, it's not required for him to work for your standards/schedules. He can leave it there forever.

I guess the only thing left to say is, don't login if you don't like it.

Yeah guys like when you walk around and the Autumn Tileset comes up and these random little tile errors...

Ya, I noticed all sort of tileset errors(like the autumn one mentioned), and especially day/night bugs where it flashes between day and night as you enter levels.

I, again, agree with disabling the pop-up on login. Why force such a thing(on players) because you think it's right. It's a trivial thing to argue against... really, let the players do what they want. It's not going to hurt anyone.

Just following on from what Dusty said here; the day and night system seems to be completely messed up, I had it on for a while and it just seems to do its own thing.

@ Rufus and Alex:
From what i've heard is that Rage might has something up his sleeve about systems and etc. I think he is going to end up rescripting most of everything.

Most systems/scripts are reaaally old.

I don't think it functioned off of a planned "day/night" system to begin with. I mean, I could be wrong, but I've deducted that since it DOES change on random parts of the gmap, it was probably triggered to change by level. I assumed it was more for questing purposes, but it seems kind of silly.

I'll def. have that wrapped up for sure.

fix manta rpg now!!

It used to do it when you walked out of town center to the forest leading to delta I believe.

Yeah, so that's what leads me to believe it's just a basic level based thing.

I mean, that's really silly to me. But IDK, outdated stuff I guess.

Squirt you noob

LOL Quests are useless... you do them once and they just sit there and rot for the next 10years.

For some reason I think this pet thing is going to fail, I mean you guys worked so hard on the CS thing, now look at it.. no one is even using it.
I bought EVERY gun there, I wasted like 200ep wtf!