The Mana World Forums

Hi,

Amun had an excellent point: many players are not familiar with the 0.0.x and 0.x numbering scheme for versions. Thus, rule changes-- particularly the first set of rule changes they encounter in the game-- are often a bit traumatic (depending on the player in question). Thus, it would be good if players were explicitly pointed to the transiency of any particular active set of game rules, and to the eAthena/tmwserv switch. I'm not completely familiar with the details of the login process, but here are four ideas:

(a) This could be pointed out by the same NPC that currently points out the game rules
(b) This could be permanently prefixed to any announcements
(c) This could be placed on the login screen background (the png image) with a pointer to the in-game help for further details
(d) There could be a popup box underneath the initial login box to point this out

(a) would be easy to implement but wouldn't reach existing players.
(b) would make the announcements harder to read but would be in a place that players do tend to check regularly.
(c) would be trivial to implement but would make the login screen background a bit messy.
(d) would be reasonably clean but would require a client update.

I'd suggest (c). Any thoughs?

-- fate

How about a short message at the top of the client news? Those who don't use updates should already know the pre-alpha status of the game.

Hi,

here is some proposed text:

`The Mana World is in constant development. The game mechanics may change at any point, with or without warning.'

eAthena client only (this would obviously not be something we can put into the background screen):
`You are playing on the world of tmw/eAthena. Please note that game development will at some point migrate to the world of tmwserv. If you move to tmwserv at that time, you will not be able to take your experience or possessions with you.'

The first part would fit on top of the client news, but the second might take away a bit too much space.

-- fate

Hi,

Delasia pointed out to me that this message should be localised. I'd thus suggest taking (for now) the top-of-the-news approach and introducing using the persistent background window warning approach with client release 0.0.30.

-- fate

The "or without warning" part of it is really unproductive IMHO. Sooner or later someone will complain and you all will work your asses off for 3 days answering the complains in game, on irc and forum. We all know the pre-alpha stage of your work, but you can't reasonably expect high level players to regularly check every spell and piece of equipment in the game or to walk all the map to see if something new has been inserted. Exploring is fun when you work on discovering the game, not when you know it inside out. People already have strategies based on their game experience.

Important changes should be announced. Recent experience showed us that global announcements are not the best way for developers to share information with the players. Please use the login news instead.

Hi,

There are excellent points, here!

I propose to update news at least one day before doing a game balancing next time.

Regards,

Kill3rZ,

your point about explicitly noting particular game changes in the updates to point testers towards points of particular interest is a good one. However, we sometimes forget to remember smaller updates, fixes for what we believe to be obvious bugs, or updates that we believe to be of little consequence. The `or without warning' part is meant to cover for these cases. (Also note that the player community is usually very quick at noticing changes.)

Also, recent discussions have shown that many players are not aware that this is a pre-alpha game.

Bertram,

I respectfully disagree.

`Fixed exploit in NPC X,' or even just `Fixed money-gaining exploit' are prime examples of things we do not want to announce a day in advance. In fact, I'm not sure what announcing an update a day before its release would accomplish.

-- fate

I'd rather not hard code such a message in the client. Instead, I'd like to add a way for the server to give the client (possibly) translated text in addition to the normal news (translated news will be a big pain). Alternatively, we can translate part of the news.

i can translate in french

i connect every day just send a pm or a message on my hotmail or memo on irc

Regards