Logged Ideas of Wyvern - Act Five

I'm free! Finally free from this most horrid idea of using my blog to showcase player ideas. I can finally get back to plotting all the lovely ways at which I can torment Binyamin, which are on their way, oh yes. Yes indeed! Anywho... you know what's going on by now and if you don't, I stopped caring, so just read it, scan through it, or skip it entirely. Whatever.

Ideas That Are Suggested to Death

Quite often we get the same ideas suggested to no end. Many of these ideas are things we never intend to bring to the game. Here you can see a few of them and my replies as to why they will never happen. I'm ending this series with this as there's no humor meant to be found in here, just serious replies so you people will better understand why you need to stop bothering us about them. Mostly it's just something I can point to when people go on about it on the forum again rather than having to write a reply all over again.

2003-07-30 14:36:24: T [wiz/arilou/amita/inn 9 4]
u should make it so u know exactly how much damage weapons do seeing as though all other mmorpg games do

Arilou's reply: What's this "other" mmorpgs nonsense about? Wyvern is a MUD and there are many MUDs which do not show you damage. There's actually an interesting article at http://www.topmudsites.com/ that goes into roll playing games versus role playing games. The first makes everything about dice and numbers. The second focuses more on your interaction with the world you are exploring (Wyvern is somewhere in-between). In the real world, you'd never pick one sword over another just because one happens to be the equivalent of a game sword having one wc-cut point more than the other. There's just no way of you possibly knowing such a thing. Rather, you would get a general feel for it by testing it out in battle a bit, looking at the material it is made of, seeing if it's balanced or magical, (yes I know there's no magic in the real world, just go with) and looking at the value that was placed there by those who inspected it closely. This way you have to actually put some effort into finding the right weapon/armor for you and there's no official item which is the best in the game. Instead, you have options that result in people running around with a wide range of things rather than shooting for that one thing with two more points of whatever on it. As a result, you may end up going around with something weaker than you would have if you knew an item's exact stats and we like it that way. It's balanced, it's realistic, and it can sometimes be fun.

2003-07-30 14:36:54: T [wiz/arilou/amita/inn 9 4]
also on that weapon idea u could make it like runescape

Arilou's reply: This is the same person from above and, surprisingly, we get this a lot. People tell us we should make Wyvern more like some other game and what they fail to realize are two things; One, we have no idea what that game does unless you tell us. Two, we are not out to make the game more like what you are comfortable with based on your previous gaming experience. There are so many people with so many different systems that in the end, we are going to do what we decide is best and if you like it you can play. Otherwise there are other games out there that may be more to your liking. That's the great thing about games - There's so many out there for every type of gamer that you can always find something you will enjoy. But, some people don't get that and they want every game they find to be something that they, personally, like as they get bored with knowing everything in one game after awhile and go out looking for a game that offers new experience but is otherwise exactly like it.

What they fail to realize is that there are millions of people out there who think very differently from them in what system works best for a game and many of them also go around to various games with the same egocentric attitude, but instead of wanting a game to be more like Runescape, they may want it to be more like Wyvern, or World of Warcraft, or Everquest, etc. The bottom line - let games be what they want to be and if what they want to be is not to your liking, I have a list of free online games for anyone who asks.

2003-10-21 18:13:22: N [wiz/arilou/amita/inn 9 4]
create a monster list that tell what exp you get for each type of monster

Arilou's reply: This sort of goes with the reply two posts up. We don't want you to know how much experience a monster gives. That just leads to you trying to calculate how many of a certain monster you need to kill before leveling up and that takes away from the fun of the game. As such, monsters give you different experience points at different levels and we change the values on monsters quite a bit. Thus making attempts by players to compile their own lists a waste of time.

2003-08-29 21:23:10: D [wiz/janica/naga/castle1w 12 23]
an air spell like fireball/blizzard

Arilou's reply: Ball spells are way too popular. The fact that you guys want more versions of them simply shows us that you're ignoring the spray and bolt spells too much. Right now air mages are more balanced and we may be looking into ways of limiting the mindlessness of being a fire/water mage down the road.

2003-08-31 12:46:14: L [temple2 9 6]
make it realistic... make it so players can wear ten rings (one per finger) but can wield no weapon, or can wear 4 amulets, but gets weighed down

Arlou's reply: Okay I know I said no humor, but 4 amulets? Am I the only one that thinks it should be in the brain damage list for that alone? In all seriousness, what people don't get is we're doing you a favor by only allowing you to wear 2 rings. If we made it so you could wear 10, we'd cut the stats on the rings way down. A ring of fire resistance, for example, would do 1/5th of what it does for you now. Then your 80 inv spots would be eaten up by 8 extra useless rings that you have to wear and they would all add to your weight.

Also, people don't get that it's not really all that realistic. For one, try putting on 10 rings. It makes it harder for you to grip a weapon as they move your fingers apart. This situation worsens when dealing with one with thick gold bands, as you see in Wyvern - With one ring, it melts into the skin of the two fingers between it, with several, the bands touch. Secondly, any ring worth wearing is magical and so you automatically have to approach this from a perspective different than you would take in life. You see, in Dungeons and Dragons you can only wear two rings as well and the explanation is that having so many various magical items actively working at the same time, while so close to each other, is a recipe for disaster.

2004-01-10 10:30:19: M [wiz/arilou/amita/orcdungeon 10 22]
let us be able to open display cases

Arilou's reply: Again, I want to put this under the brain damage list, but you have no idea how many times this gets suggested. I can't imagine that people do not understand that we do not want you to be able to get the items in display cases as to do so would be too unbalanced. We put them in there for show and if you could break into them, we'd only be allowed to put a bunch of worthless junk inside like string, one silver coin, rope, and sharpening stones. Not only would you no longer care to break into display cases, but the game would become so much less colorful.

2003-10-12 13:31:06: O [village/village 16 20]
naga tail rings to subsitute for boots

Arilou's reply: Nothing with a tail will ever be given tail rings. It's just an attempt on the part of players to overpower races that are already fairly decent.

2003-04-24 17:52:15: H [wiz/arilou/forgotten_oak/mansion2 10 4]
all players being able to refresh a map that no one is in, people would get exp faster but it would not be an imbalance becuase every1 would get exp faster

Arilou's reply: Unbalances are usually exploited by everyone, that's what makes them unbalanced. Everyone who wants a map to unload faster or wants a way to unload it themselves fails to realize that we do not want you all to reach level 30 in a week and we do not want you going into the same map over and over again to no end. We want to challenge you with various maps that are fun and we want you to explore to find them. That is why the maps you find the easiest unload so rarely - The whole thing of players going into maps they really like so often to check to see if there are monsters there, making it so that those maps do not unload very often, is by design and is, in fact, real balance at work.

2004-07-06 10:44:34: A [wiz/arilou/amita/house2_basement 2 3]
a wyvern 3d cluient keep the old one too and let that be updated but do the same with the 3d one

Arilou's reply: Absolutely not. Wyvern will always remain 2D. We will also always be striving to improve the graphics... within a 2D model. 3D games make it very difficult to add new/original content and require a team of graphic artists working around the clock (which is a costly enterprise). It also ruins the flavor of Wyvern by leaps and bounds.

2004-07-15 14:53:41: S [continent 117 160]
you should make it so that there are like 5-9 different begining towns and that befor you star the game you get to choose whotch one you where born at and train in that one intell lv 4

Arilou's reply: There are four main problems with this:

1) We should never be telling a player where their race was born. This limits RPing as they should be allowed to say they were raised in Alaria, Minath Elion, New Verden, or wherever.
2) It makes no sense that everyone of an entire race are all born in the same small town.
3) It really limits the game when you can only group with Fire Giants, for example, until level four. Meaning you can't meet a wider range of people who could potentially become your friends and meaning that if you and your friend start a new account at the same time you can't group unless you both decide to be the same race.
4) This assumes that you are born in Amita, Davos, or New Verden. You are not. After deciding to be an adventurer, you ventured to the tutorial tower to learn your craft and then began to explore the nearby areas as it was suggested of you by your mentors.

2004-10-11 18:57:07: C [continent 147 148]
when you are in a boat or a hot air ballon there should be light surronding you

Arilou's reply: No, there really shouldn't be. Type "view in" when in a boat. That's the only place where a light source should realistically extend to. It should be limited to a small portion of the deck of a ship or to the basket of a balloon (yes, it looks nothing like a basket, just go with it). It makes no sense that your tiny light source should extend from your location in the air (which is so high that you can go over mountains) all the way to the ground. The same with a boat - The Ocean is massive, more so than you may think given that it is not to scale. Your little light source is not going to help you very much there, especially in bigger boats.

Of course, some of you don't care about what makes sense or not and just want to complain that it's hard for you to get around at night. Well guess what? That's the point. This encourages you to use departments of transportation (dots) and it encourages you to walk more with the aid of things which allow you to fly or walk over water. You guys are overly spoiled with balloons and boats - They're a nice aid for you, but they're not the end all and be all of transportation and we don't ever want them to be.

Well that's it, we're done. I just want to take this time to point out the obvious - I changed the template... again. I know it was like this originally and maybe one day I'll edit my own version. But while I liked the other one, the brown background was driving me crazy. It had these awful patterns that you expect to see on some floor from a tacky house in the 70s. I couldn't take it anymore, I just couldn't.