Telanoc: You want to know the three secrets to ATITD Rob?
Telanoc: 1) Invest in infrastructure. Even if you aren't going to use it all the time, it will in the long run.
Telanoc: 2) Don't be a dick. People will help you a lot, unless you are a dick
Telanoc: 3) Don't be afraid to try. You might fail, but then you will know
Pameow: almost agree, one thing, you can be a dick and do it solo!
Pameow: but a lot easier to do point 2
Pameow: can you add point )4) tel, make goal commensurate with amount of playtime and committment, and be prepared to change goal if needs be
Telanoc: That is true Pam
Telanoc: Oh, and there really is a point 5) Don't compare yourself to anyone but yourself. You aren't going to be the best at everything. You can try, but don't sweat it if you aren't
Pameow: I so love that one, condensed to compete against yourself
One of those things that keep drawing me back to A Tale in the Desert is the sense of oldschool camaraderie... the MUD-like continuity, if you will... the tangible sense of history, with wise old vets (and their evil mirror counterparts, the elitist jerks).
It's just...nice.
Maybe it tweaks some ancient Explorer desires in me, that there can be secrets and trivia and knowledge to accrue. Too often, MMOs are just "Raraarrgggh, level level gold gold kill big boss!" with blinders on.
Telanoc is an ATITD developer, and has played since Tale 1, so every now and again, he's got interesting stuff to share. Yes, a lot of GMs and devs are also players in ATITD, and while there is probably some of that oldschool "I know an imm!" cheating going on, eh, it is very MUD-like.
(Let's face it, Ascendere had an imm's ear. As our own imms got more powerful up the scale, we got away with more shit too. Not to say there was any open rules breaking, but we're talking, "hey, this mob is stuck, or this thing isn't working, can you check it for us?" "haha, plspls, auth this name" kinda social engineering stuff.
Let's not even TALK about Inconnu and Kali either, eh?)
But sometimes, this sort of insider knowledge can be helpful for the game and for veteran players' continued enjoyment. As fruitless as our joint Inc/DS/Asc venture into Kali's crazy revamped Tower of Despair was, there is a certain spice to knowing that an imm is watching your every move and basically being beta testers for something.
Something else that was quite curious is an incident I missed in ATITD. The discovery of silver. I wasn't online for the crucial 12 hours, so I missed all the excitement and people dumping mines willy nilly. Curiously enough, gold caps the silver vein, and usually there's room enough only for 3-4 mines at most. So a selfish group can easily hog all the gold and ruin future progress.
On T4A, they pretty much left it be, assuming that 1000+ players would be able to find more silver, and some folks will be bound to make their gold mines public. On T4B, because there's only about 350 players and not very many hardcore vets, it's less likely another vein of silver/gold will be found. Curiously enough, a public gold mine turned up, built by Telanoc.
Now did he just luck out and build his silver mine and find it gold, then decide to share it? Or did he have some insider dev knowledge as to where the gold was (easy enough for a dev to set their stats high enough to detect it) and go plonk the public mine down to make life easier for Egypt?
Anyway, sidetreked. Commentary on the wisdom itself.
The infrastructure is something I'm slowly getting a handle on. My first time in game was the common newbie mistake of making the bare minimum because we just wanted one of every type. This can become a pain the moment anything is time dependent cos there's a lot more waiting involved.
I ran into the mistakes of making -just- enough and not having stockpiles. Which meant of course, every time you have a recipe for a piece of equipment that requires 100 bricks, 50 boards, 8 rope, etc. you'd end up picking grass for futurebricks, getting wood and slate for futureboards, growing flax seeds for futureflax for futurerope. And that's just a blinding pain to switch activities like that. Learned quite early on to have a ton of these common materials on hand in a warehouse where one can just pulled them out and dump them into things.
I still didn't envision a big enough compound for my future needs. After losing the will to expand my dinky little compound any further, I migrated across the peninsula to the huge guild next door and gradually lost the will to hang around attempting to pass tests.
I lost sight of point 4). Which is to have an envisioned goal. Or rather, I did have an envisioned goal. Try out all the activities and minigames in ATITD at least once, or see it at least. I hit that to the limit of Teppy's future game Test releases, and then I got bored waiting for 2 months with nothing new to do.
Point 2) is amusing. I've been helped a lot. I guess I know how to project myself as essentially harmless. :P
Point 3) is like some sort of subliminal message to randomly trial-and-error stuff. I get the urge to run around dumping mines in random places every time I read that, in the hope of striking the lottery.
But well, it's a whole life lesson too.
Point 5) is something I wish more people would really follow. Admittedly, I used to feel it myself, and still do, from time to time, even though I'm not really mentally built for people comparisons.
It's all tradeoffs of time. Yes, the vets know how to manage time better, and thus will have more stuff. That goes without saying.
But if one focuses here, then one is unable to focus there, and so on. Unless one plays 24/7 with bots, but one is still limited eventually.
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