(mid-save.) |
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| Line 3: | Line 3: | ||
==Overview== | ==Overview== | ||
TMW is a reasonably young game, based on the Ragnarok engine when it was released as open source (a server rewrite denoted as Manasource has been in progress for a few years and is in alpha since 2010 - i.e., a development server is up and running). Ancient Anguish is based on the MUD engine LPmud, and has been around for two decades - since 1992. | TMW is a reasonably young game, based on the Ragnarok engine when it was released as open source (a server rewrite denoted as Manasource has been in progress for a few years and is in alpha since 2010 - i.e., a development server is up and running). Ancient Anguish is based on the MUD engine LPmud, and has been around for two decades - since 1992. | ||
Ancient Anguish uses player donations to pay for hosting and hardware, with minor perks provided for donators (freedom to add a few lines of description, more flexible emoting commands, and occasionally donator healing - a NPC "logs on" for a few minutes and heals all donators sending it a tell). TMW (as far as I can tell) is operating on donated server space and runs a 0 budget. There are no donator perks. | |||
On TMW and AA, the number of characters per player is not limited. | |||
On TMW, players can be divided into three types: regular characters, GMs (the daily "police force" dealing out bans to botters and other miscreants, and with some monster/item cloning capabilities) and developers (I'm not actually sure what in-game non-GM developers have). GMs are elected into their positions through votes, developers recruited based on ability. | |||
On AA, players are more strongly divided into regular players and | |||
==Player's perspective== | ==Player's perspective== | ||
| Line 10: | Line 18: | ||
===Social=== | ===Social=== | ||
* On TMW, character personalization is limited to hairstyle and colour, gender and worn equipment. On AA, players can influence their description permanently through | |||
* TMW has a number of features that actively support collaborative behaviour: healing | |||
===Game-technical=== | ===Game-technical=== | ||
TMW is an "easy" game. It is equipment-saving, location-saving (you return to the same place when you log back in), and has no death penalty (you are just teleported to a "save point" with your HPs halved). You can essentially just log in and continue where you left off. In contrast, AA both demands more preparation time per playing session, and punishes death reasonably harshly (by contemporary standards). On higher levels, a death incurs the loss of maybe a week's worth of active play in experience, weapon skills and anything that was carried. | TMW is an "easy" game in the sense that it requires little preparation before playing and does not punish mistakes. It is equipment-saving, location-saving (you return to the same place when you log back in), and has no death penalty (you are just teleported to a "save point" with your HPs halved). You can essentially just log in and continue where you left off. In contrast, AA both demands more preparation time per playing session, and punishes death reasonably harshly (by contemporary standards). On higher levels, a death incurs the loss of maybe a week's worth of active play in experience, weapon skills and anything that was carried. Further, every two days Ancient Anguish goes through an automated "reboot", which cleans out all items in the game (from shops, for example). Reboots originated from technical limitations, but has since ended up being a major balancing feature in the game. | ||
* In TMW, the there are few ways to set back a player - they can really only gain more money and items. Money sinks involve mostly outrageously priced "luxury" items (for example, a high priest's crown, which is not particularly useful for more than boasting, costs some 100M gp, where a typical gain per mid-level kill is on the order of 100-1k gp). | |||
** On Ancient Anguish, only money, stats, abilities and class skills are stored; the player starts out naked every login, and the player-supplied stores are (practically) emptied by a bi-daily reboot. Beyond re-equipping and heals for each session, the major money sink for the millionaires has been player-owned houses sond through auctions. Houses provide a new permanent reboot-proof item the player can advance through furnishing - the furniture provides minor game advantages at best, and it can be bought or found from areas supporting it. For example, an anvil or painting in an area can be picked up and installed into a house. | |||
* Travel between the four different major areas/continents (and one island) of TMW costs money (on the order of 1k+ per one-way trip) - there is a hidden way to teleport one way between two major continents and death returns the player to the save point they have chosen, but otherwise there is no way around the costs. On AA, only two continents are clearly separated and there is relatively little incentive for players to (permanently) migrate to the new continent - both have the basic services, and the new continent mainly has a few high-level kills the other does not. In addition, high-level mages can set up permanent teleportation gateways that can be used by all players, and this has become a major community service by mages, with 10+ gates set up every boot. | |||
* In TMW, reaching the maximum level is not uncommon for long-term active players. In AA, the highest level is more a theoretical maximum, with maybe one particularly obsessive player (you know who you are, Bazhi) realistically pushing the limit. | |||
* TMW is somewhat grind-oriented: killing the same monsters over and over again is rewarded equally independent of the player's level, which supports particular monsters becoming the "go-to" kill for exp and/or money on a large level range. In AA, weapon skills are not earned as quickly for too easy monsters, which encourages players to seek out targets they can only barely defeat. | |||
===Quests and quest reward balance=== | |||
In TMW, all quests are equal - they award (notable amounts of) experience, money, items and/or skills (levels of magic, and trait-like skills which can be "focused" one at a time and "unfocused" through a quest). On AA, almost all areas contain one (or more) "miniquests", which are similar to TMW's quests, although they can also not involve any talking NPCs (instead e.g. finding the scattered keys to a boss-type monster from an area). | |||
A major type of quest reward on AA (that can commonly also be gained by just killing a boss-type monster) is a "unique" item, which is more powerful than others but that can only be held by one player (or limited number of players) in the game. It is lost if the owner is inactive for prolonged periods or the item is not carried. In addition, reboots reset uniques. | |||
In addition, AA has quests that award quest points - these are necessary for becoming a developer (as developers are "immortals", it is also a form of "winning" the game - if you can call the position of workmule a reward ;)). A list and brief hint description is provided of all quests. A third type of "quest" awards players exploration points, one or more per area, which are also necessary for attaining immortality. | In addition, AA has quests that award quest points - these are necessary for becoming a developer (as developers are "immortals", it is also a form of "winning" the game - if you can call the position of workmule a reward ;)). A list and brief hint description is provided of all quests. A third type of "quest" awards players exploration points, one or more per area, which are also necessary for attaining immortality. | ||
* Many of the quests in TMW involve acquiring X amount of item Y and delivering it to NPC Z. As the dialogue is pre-set, the main puzzle challenge comes from finding the NPC. TMW has no in-game overview of where to find quests, and hints are reasonably sparse. A spoiler wiki is commonly used by players to find and finish the quests. | * Many of the quests in TMW involve acquiring X amount of item Y and delivering it to NPC Z. As the dialogue is pre-set, the main puzzle challenge comes from finding the NPC. TMW has no in-game overview of where to find quests, and hints are reasonably sparse. A spoiler wiki is commonly used by players to find and finish the quests. | ||
** On AA, the quest list provides some hints and spreading quest information is strongly frowned upon (or even punished if caught in-game). In addition, an NPC hints towards exploration points once a player has found a few by themselves; these may help find the miniquests of the area, or be completely unrelated - finding a rare flower in a pile of junk, for example. | |||
* On TMW, most quests are limited by level to stop players dumping items on lowbies (and particularly their own lowbie alts) from speed-leveling them through instant quest rewards. On AA, explicit level limits are rare; high-level player aid in questing is somewhat more demanding, involving e.g. the killing of a specific monster together, while search-based quests may be limited by the searching skill (gained through experience) of the player, for example. In addition, the rewards from quests are lower - and more temporary in nature (as any items are lost every 2 days). | |||
* TMW NPC states are typically player-specific - an NPC happily thankful at one player is in dire distress when another comes by a second later. On AA, NPC states are global - while a quest NPC may remember (e.g. for one reboot) that a player has finished their quest and not ask them again, it must typically also "reset" (which happens about once every 30 minutes) before they forget they were helped and can recruit another player. | |||
==Developer's perspective== | ==Developer's perspective== | ||
In both TMW and AA, intelligent NPCs are scripted using a dedicated language. In AA, the language is called LPC (I do not actually know if the TMW language has a name). | In both TMW and AA, intelligent NPCs are scripted using a dedicated language. In AA, the language is called LPC (I do not actually know if the TMW language has a name). | ||
Developers are also strongly encouraged to bind their areas to existing areas - e.g. having the NPCs refer to each other. (There is a unified history that areas must adhere to as well.) | |||
Revision as of 19:15, 18 May 2011
The Mana World (TMW) is an open source graphical MMORPG. This article highlights some features of the TMW project and compares it to the text-based MUD Ancient Anguish (AA) to see the differences in the two worlds and potential good things that could be adopted.
Overview
TMW is a reasonably young game, based on the Ragnarok engine when it was released as open source (a server rewrite denoted as Manasource has been in progress for a few years and is in alpha since 2010 - i.e., a development server is up and running). Ancient Anguish is based on the MUD engine LPmud, and has been around for two decades - since 1992.
Ancient Anguish uses player donations to pay for hosting and hardware, with minor perks provided for donators (freedom to add a few lines of description, more flexible emoting commands, and occasionally donator healing - a NPC "logs on" for a few minutes and heals all donators sending it a tell). TMW (as far as I can tell) is operating on donated server space and runs a 0 budget. There are no donator perks.
On TMW and AA, the number of characters per player is not limited.
On TMW, players can be divided into three types: regular characters, GMs (the daily "police force" dealing out bans to botters and other miscreants, and with some monster/item cloning capabilities) and developers (I'm not actually sure what in-game non-GM developers have). GMs are elected into their positions through votes, developers recruited based on ability.
On AA, players are more strongly divided into regular players and
Player's perspective
TMW is graphical, with killable monsters and NPCs that can be communicated with using pre-set dialogue only. In contrast, AA is purely text-based, where both monsters and (most) NPCs are killable, and any intelligent creatures can be communicated with using keywords, emote commands or by giving them items or money.
Social
- On TMW, character personalization is limited to hairstyle and colour, gender and worn equipment. On AA, players can influence their description permanently through
- TMW has a number of features that actively support collaborative behaviour: healing
Game-technical
TMW is an "easy" game in the sense that it requires little preparation before playing and does not punish mistakes. It is equipment-saving, location-saving (you return to the same place when you log back in), and has no death penalty (you are just teleported to a "save point" with your HPs halved). You can essentially just log in and continue where you left off. In contrast, AA both demands more preparation time per playing session, and punishes death reasonably harshly (by contemporary standards). On higher levels, a death incurs the loss of maybe a week's worth of active play in experience, weapon skills and anything that was carried. Further, every two days Ancient Anguish goes through an automated "reboot", which cleans out all items in the game (from shops, for example). Reboots originated from technical limitations, but has since ended up being a major balancing feature in the game.
- In TMW, the there are few ways to set back a player - they can really only gain more money and items. Money sinks involve mostly outrageously priced "luxury" items (for example, a high priest's crown, which is not particularly useful for more than boasting, costs some 100M gp, where a typical gain per mid-level kill is on the order of 100-1k gp).
- On Ancient Anguish, only money, stats, abilities and class skills are stored; the player starts out naked every login, and the player-supplied stores are (practically) emptied by a bi-daily reboot. Beyond re-equipping and heals for each session, the major money sink for the millionaires has been player-owned houses sond through auctions. Houses provide a new permanent reboot-proof item the player can advance through furnishing - the furniture provides minor game advantages at best, and it can be bought or found from areas supporting it. For example, an anvil or painting in an area can be picked up and installed into a house.
- Travel between the four different major areas/continents (and one island) of TMW costs money (on the order of 1k+ per one-way trip) - there is a hidden way to teleport one way between two major continents and death returns the player to the save point they have chosen, but otherwise there is no way around the costs. On AA, only two continents are clearly separated and there is relatively little incentive for players to (permanently) migrate to the new continent - both have the basic services, and the new continent mainly has a few high-level kills the other does not. In addition, high-level mages can set up permanent teleportation gateways that can be used by all players, and this has become a major community service by mages, with 10+ gates set up every boot.
- In TMW, reaching the maximum level is not uncommon for long-term active players. In AA, the highest level is more a theoretical maximum, with maybe one particularly obsessive player (you know who you are, Bazhi) realistically pushing the limit.
- TMW is somewhat grind-oriented: killing the same monsters over and over again is rewarded equally independent of the player's level, which supports particular monsters becoming the "go-to" kill for exp and/or money on a large level range. In AA, weapon skills are not earned as quickly for too easy monsters, which encourages players to seek out targets they can only barely defeat.
Quests and quest reward balance
In TMW, all quests are equal - they award (notable amounts of) experience, money, items and/or skills (levels of magic, and trait-like skills which can be "focused" one at a time and "unfocused" through a quest). On AA, almost all areas contain one (or more) "miniquests", which are similar to TMW's quests, although they can also not involve any talking NPCs (instead e.g. finding the scattered keys to a boss-type monster from an area).
A major type of quest reward on AA (that can commonly also be gained by just killing a boss-type monster) is a "unique" item, which is more powerful than others but that can only be held by one player (or limited number of players) in the game. It is lost if the owner is inactive for prolonged periods or the item is not carried. In addition, reboots reset uniques.
In addition, AA has quests that award quest points - these are necessary for becoming a developer (as developers are "immortals", it is also a form of "winning" the game - if you can call the position of workmule a reward ;)). A list and brief hint description is provided of all quests. A third type of "quest" awards players exploration points, one or more per area, which are also necessary for attaining immortality.
- Many of the quests in TMW involve acquiring X amount of item Y and delivering it to NPC Z. As the dialogue is pre-set, the main puzzle challenge comes from finding the NPC. TMW has no in-game overview of where to find quests, and hints are reasonably sparse. A spoiler wiki is commonly used by players to find and finish the quests.
- On AA, the quest list provides some hints and spreading quest information is strongly frowned upon (or even punished if caught in-game). In addition, an NPC hints towards exploration points once a player has found a few by themselves; these may help find the miniquests of the area, or be completely unrelated - finding a rare flower in a pile of junk, for example.
- On TMW, most quests are limited by level to stop players dumping items on lowbies (and particularly their own lowbie alts) from speed-leveling them through instant quest rewards. On AA, explicit level limits are rare; high-level player aid in questing is somewhat more demanding, involving e.g. the killing of a specific monster together, while search-based quests may be limited by the searching skill (gained through experience) of the player, for example. In addition, the rewards from quests are lower - and more temporary in nature (as any items are lost every 2 days).
- TMW NPC states are typically player-specific - an NPC happily thankful at one player is in dire distress when another comes by a second later. On AA, NPC states are global - while a quest NPC may remember (e.g. for one reboot) that a player has finished their quest and not ask them again, it must typically also "reset" (which happens about once every 30 minutes) before they forget they were helped and can recruit another player.
Developer's perspective
In both TMW and AA, intelligent NPCs are scripted using a dedicated language. In AA, the language is called LPC (I do not actually know if the TMW language has a name).
Developers are also strongly encouraged to bind their areas to existing areas - e.g. having the NPCs refer to each other. (There is a unified history that areas must adhere to as well.)
