The Mana World Forums

I suggest players will be able to buy a copy of a book. Especially spellbooks and books on crafting/alchemy.

librarys usually don't sell books. but there could be bookstores everywhere in the world where you can buy a copy of a book for yourself. although i doubt that anyone would spend money on them, because it's just a matter of time until you can read all the books on the internet.


by the way: i didn't thought about implementing the books as real items. i thought about them as npc's which you "talk" to and have the options to read them or pick them up when you got the quest to fetch them. when you picked up a book it could be represented by an item in your inventory but it could also just be represented by a scripting switch. you can't "talk" to the bookshelf anymore when you took the book until you gave the book to the quest giver or dropped it. but others still can. not realistic but it prevents conflicts between players.

you can't leave the building with a book in your inventory. a spell binds the books to the library and makes it impossible to take them out of it.

I think they will be bought. In (MMO)RPG's people even pay for worthless things or they collect them eventhough carrying them around burdens them.
Believe me, people will buy them of they are sold.

Besides, books could have more worth then just reading. Some skills could need books to be used. Or maybe only the first # times.
Say you want to brew a cool beer. First you'd need a book on brewing. And after you brew 10 beers you can do it without the book.

books could be worn in the shield slot to increase a stat.

i could think of a mage who goes into battle carrying a wand in the right hand and a magic book in the left.

but books shouldn't increase any melee combat related skills. just think about a warrior fighting an enemy while reading "swordfighting for dummies".

@offtopic
ummm Cordoba q bonita ^^...

Okay... books are pretty dorky, plain and simple. Any extensive use of books for anything, really, would be nerdy to use. It'd be like players having to use a beaker as a weapon or complete a mathematical equation to cast a spell. Well, some people don't like science. Some don't like math. Some don't like reading. Not shooting down the idea, just discussing the ramifications of the idea.

Well, the main part of an MMORPG is the role playing, which involves stories. I suspect if they like stories, they'll like reading >_> not to mention the fact that all the dialogue is also reading.

Plus, not all books would you have to literally read, there might just be a 'read' action and the given skill/spell would be added to your skill/spellbook and a short description given.

if you want to be really hardcore, you could have a Reading skill, where certain books (advanced scientific texts, ancient tomes, foreign language books, etc) could only be read if you had a high level. But maybe that's going too far.[/quote]

Let this difficult problem be known: All of the players that use the forums are of the role-playing, reading type, but the game itself is much more diverse. In fact, the "other guys" outnumber the forum type. However, they have no representation and therefore often get trumped for new features for the game, hence the problem. Need an example? Who brags for post-counts, the forum guy or the game guy? Who brags for kills, experience, levels, and all other trophies of adventuring, the forum guy or the game guy? Once again, i'm not trying to trump any idea, only making sure ramifications (especially those dealing with the people who aren't represented well) are known.

but the problem is that it's frankly their own fault if they aren't represented. If they don't want the game to go in a certain direction, they should be sure to try to keep it from going that way, especially in the early stages such as now.

Although, that can be and is a problem.

Can there really be fault in a video game?
It's made to entertain people, not necessarily for people to painstakingly map out how they should be entertained. The non-forumers range from "i would rather not engage in something as difficult as making a game" to "i am, beyond what i can help, too antisocial to be productive in the forums." Would you punish them for either?

if you wanted you had to read a book to learn a spell...

you could actually have stuff you have to read in order to get answers... and you must have them write to get taught the spell or learn it

I guess then people would write down the answers and no one would have to get the book or read it...

but you could also make it so you have to have the book with you or something

I like the idea of a library. Was it forgotten because it had been found as a bad idea or because there is no artist to make special tileset and items?