Bring back old tulimshar

deepthought · Post by **deepthought** » 22 Oct 2015, 17:31

I know lot of thought has been went to changing the tulimshar but many players feel old tulimshar is better. We miss many places like pirates in northern tulimshar open area, snake caves and open auditorium.

Post by **wushin** » 22 Oct 2015, 17:34

Which old Tulimshar?

Post by **EJlol** » 23 Oct 2015, 07:18

It had lots of open area's. And sometimes lots of snakes. It did not had pirates or caves though.

deepthought · Post by **deepthought** » 23 Oct 2015, 14:25

The one before tulimshar is reduced.

Post by **Matt** » 24 Oct 2015, 08:27

I feel a disturbance in the force.

deepthought · Post by **deepthought** » 24 Oct 2015, 10:40

Matt,
It's just an opinion poll. If many don't feel the same as me it's ok.

Post by **gumi** » 24 Oct 2015, 13:38

The main reason we reduced the size of Kaizei (ice continent) and Tonori (desert) was because we have too few players for such a big world. There's so much maps that even if you put every single online player in a separate map there's not enough to have at least 1 player in each map so the game as a whole feels desolate.

This was my impression when I joined 2 years ago — I started in the noob area in Tonori and there was no one nearby. And since I had no money for the ferry I had to do the noob quests in Tulim (the grinding was painfully was long with no one around to talk to or ask for help) to pay it before finally finding Argeas (the grassy continent).
After a while, I came back to Tonori but this time to help new players that were stuck in a situation like me. Even then, many of them after 10-15 minutes of gameplay told me something along the lines of "this game sucks, there's no one!" and then they quit forever.

One year later we at least improved on the situation because many players had complained. You could now skip the tutorial entirely and you could also use the ferry without paying. Even then, the player still started in Tonori and Tonori was still empty (except for the pirate cave) and there was no clear sign that said "Take the ferry if you want to meet another soul".

We talked about that and found that the best way for new players to meet people was to force them to meet people because no one was coming to Tulim (aside for a new haircut). The early prototype was to put the noob area in the map right above hurnscald (in the farmer's house). This worked fine but there was a problem: we couldn't move all the "noob quest" npcs to Hurnscald because it would get too crowded so wee needed another map. Candor was the best candidate after Hurnscald because there was mostly always players there and the island was empty. The new Candor (made by wushin) was sublime and while it wasn't directly above Hurnscald it still accomplished its purpose because the ferry communicates directly with Hurnscald.

The noob problem was almost solved but there was still the problem of Tulimshar: it was huge and empty, hard to navigate (and easy to get lost in), with no one to ask around for help. We needed to make Tulimshar more easy to navigate, more noob-friendly. By shrinking it, we were able to reduce it to the bare minimum so players don't get lost anymore and it's easy to find the npcs you need because they are all in the same area.

TL;DR: the new Tulim was the result of a series of attempts to make the game less frustrating for new players

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I am 100% OK with bringing back the auditorium because it was used for events and such so for that part I say yes but I like the new tulim very much and I don't want to see it go away (yet if more than 50% vote yes we'll have no choice but to do it). My proposal is to put the auditorium somewhere around Hurnscald or maybe in Nivalis. Maybe we could also re-purpose the Theater into the new auditorium. Depending on the event you are doing you could also use the huge table in the house next to the storage/store building (I enlarged this table so we could do the "dev/gm meetings" there)

I agree that the old snake pit should get back (sorry, I had totally forgotten I was supposed to revert that)

SDN · Post by **SDN** » 24 Oct 2015, 19:13

Hmm, I don't really mind with the new maps, although Tulimshar now feels like being abandoned somehow. But anyway, I remember when all of tmw continents are being "isolated" by the ferry (or the starter map by it's citizen who not letting me go to bazaar before doing everything they ask). To me it has it's own charm to make me stay in this game.

And yes, at the beginning I feel like playing this game all alone, no one there I can ask for help (I wonder why there was no GM stationed in the starter area?). To add more frustration, I'm not the type of wiki/walkthrough gamer, so i have to figure it all by myself. But that's what makes me feel "OMG! At last, I met a human being!" when I saw other player. Plus, fortunately, that player taught me how to play this game better. Thus, I keep playing, leveling, and helping new player who came in after me. Even after I reach Hurnscald and got my lvl 60, I keep coming back to Tulim and help noobs who might feel the same like I was (that's when I met Cassy). I even login/out from Tulimshar. Hurnscald has never been my fav area of this game.

Old Tulim was never too big for me. I never lost in there. Even if I did, it was too fun to realize (I remember entering the snake pit and keep coming back there after respawn just out of curiosity until I finally know how deal with those snakes, accidentally found out a useful "skill" throughout the game).

But this is solely based from my experience with the old Tulim. May not be the same with other. So, again, I don't mind with the new Tulim. But I'd be happy if you reconstructed back the Old Tulim.

pateame · Post by **pateame** » 24 Oct 2015, 22:27

There was a lot of changes since I leave the game in 2013 and returned this year. I'm not blaming about these changes but about the lack of new content.
There's tilesets, spritesheets and lots of ideas wasted in the forgotten stuff so instead of restore an old version of a map you should focus on start working on the map areas TMW never finished like the Volcano area, Thermin city, Savannah, Desert temple, Catacombs, etc. A bigger world may not be noob friendly, but can keep players busy exploring and playing more than just be reduced to a sitting town.

Post by **gumi** » 25 Oct 2015, 01:03

pateame wrote:There was a lot of changes since I leave the game in 2013 and returned this year. I'm not blaming about these changes but about the lack of new content.

There has been a lot of changes lately but mostly internal changes that are not visible to the players. This is a necessary step in order to be able to create more content as there is right now a lot of technical limitations to what we can do. We concentrate our work on the engine (TMWA) so that it is more flexible and can accomplish more things. Most of the projects we have can not be realized until we add those new functionalities to the engine. Also, before creating new content (new maps, new quests, etc), we need to fix existing content. Some former devs wanted things to be done quickly instead of fixing the core of the problem (the engine) they used a lot of dirty workarounds for the technical limitations or used bugs as features. As we make the scripting engine stricter and fix more bugs we are confronted to those problems left behind by former devs and we need to fix them. Today, I would say the game is in a state of reconstruction. In order to add more content we need to fix what we already have. If we just ignored those problems (while they could be fixed right now) and created new content (using more of those workarounds) it would create a lot of new issues that other devs (or ourselves) would have to fix in the future.

But we are not just fixing internal problems (the scripting), we also try to find solutions for long-standing problems ("tulim is a huge desolate town" being one of them) in order to make the game more enjoyable for everyone (not just old players).

Also, a lot level 99 players asks us to make more quests for level 90+ players because once they hit 99 they have nothing more to do. We technically could allow players to level up to level 255 but we do not plan on doing it right now. When we once again start working on new content it will not be level 90+ content but rather level 30-60 content as there is a huge gaping hole until you reach level 60. The plan is to make every quest have a minimum level required so that you at least have one quest for every level so that you actually have something to do aside from grinding. Before working on levels 99+ we will need to work on adding more content to fill those holes.

Post by **wushin** » 25 Oct 2015, 02:41

Discussion about what to change or fix is welcome on the forums. Most all of what we do is based off someone's suggestion, sometimes incorporating several views.

Changes were made to Tulimshar after many discussions and ideas about how-to better TMW. Granted more work could be done, but all the content needs so much work we often talk about starting it all over from the beginning. <- (Which never works for TMW)

Anyone is welcome to submit changes or additions to TMW's content. If you don't like something or want to add something create a patch or pull request on https://github.com/themanaworld. This is an Open Source project, the only people to blame for a lack of new content is anyone that uses the software, i.e. The Community.

Like meko states we are progressing towards something new without breaking anything old. TMWA, the engine for TMW, is quite out-dated as a game engine goes. Currently, we are working on extending what scripts, mobs, npcs, magic, skills can do as a lot of it is hard coded and limited in features.

Even if we bring back the old Tulimshar, The current Tulimshar will be asked for by someone to be brought back.
So this thread should be called, lets change Tulimshar again!

I can get behind changing Tulimshar again. Which is exactly whats being suggested in this thread.

P.S. I don't like the flow of the caves yet. Cassy had a PR with their Witch Cult quest that added a new quest and patched up the caves nicely, but it never made it in.

pateame · Post by **pateame** » 25 Oct 2015, 04:04

By new content I was refering only to the map areas, but now you told all the official speech of the development situation in TMW I read it alland just imagined two pixies.

It's a excellent work fixing and improving features but it can also be interpreted as an excuse to stop development fearing new catastrophes. Quoting Paul Virilio: "When you invent electricity, you invent electrocution... Every technology carries its own negativity, which is invented at the same time as technical progress."

Most of the active old users now have several chars grinding and repeating the same quests. ¿why not repeat something different, at least killing a different creature in a different place to get a different item for a different purpose?, ¿What kind of limitations do it have for example spawn snakes in the Tulimshar sewers?
I think isn't code or TMWa features, is free-time and imagination. And as you said, it's a open-source community, and not anybody (i.e The community) is avaliable to share and pull in a open-source project as you and the others do on github.

Post by **gumi** » 25 Oct 2015, 04:25

You are right that there is no technical limitation to add snakes and I'm not against it.
My reply was about you saying "I'm not blaming about these changes but about the lack of new content." and I was saying that if you want to get new stuff (maps, quests) we first need to fix the existing code.

And yes, we do lack free time. None of the tmw devs are paid to work on tmw so we can not put a lot of time working on it. We have jobs, families and can't possibly spend all of our free time working on the project.

<wushin> Most people don't understand only a handful of people are ever working on TMW at once.
<wushin> Nor the scope of work that needs to be done.

As for the imagination, there's no problem on that side; we have a bunch of projects half-done that are just waiting for our TMWA refactoring to be done

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I would suggest adding a 3rd option to the poll that says "keep the current tulim but bring back the missing features"

Post by **gumi** » 25 Oct 2015, 20:04

I made a new auditorium in the map where there's Dimonds Inn
http://i.imgur.com/bwu2IgF.png
http://i.imgur.com/lSeK69t.png

If you have suggestions for another place that would be more suitable please tell me
maybe GM Island would be better suited as its task is to host events

Post by **Matt** » 26 Oct 2015, 17:29

deepthought wrote:Matt,
It's just an opinion poll. If many don't feel the same as me it's ok.

No, I just meant my old dug out screenshot. I don't know the new Tulimshar.