spuzzum I think that that is the best thing you have said through this entire topic. the bottom line is DBZ is making everyone believe that there are no more features except building up stats and becoming stronger so that you can kill frieza or whoever, byond is about games without limits! it is about going BYOND the limits set by those who just made a really great game! if kemet is hard, just go play some game where you can vent on some pbags. enough said...

I suppose that depends on what aspect of Kemet you were talking about, the good side of it being open ended (good) or the down side of it being hard to get started in (bad).

Yes, open-endedness is good. FoomerMUD is like that too.

Everyone is talking like games must either be hard to they're pathetically easy. There is a thing called balance, which is what every game needs. Most DBZ games are in the pathetically-easy category, while people tend to think Kemet shifts into the overly-hard category. You really should play the game if you're going to defend it though.

I suppose a large part of the problem with Kemet, as LJR has said, is that most of it isn't finished yet.

Foomer wrote:

And if you make it too obvious, it becomes very easy.

Most games start easy and get harder as you progress. It's more fun that way, because if gives you a chance to learn the game. It wouldn't be much fun to play games that expect you to know everything at the beginning, then get easier as you play, would it?

I take your meaning and most others for too hard, as pure laziness. Something I care not to entertain.. If your up to a chanllenge on the other hand, and want to have lots of fun once you give it a try then it will be rewarding.

LJR

Sigh, I was planning on avoiding this topic, but it seems that LordJR's misinterpretation of my foibles precedes me.

So, I'll nitpick everything in detail, as my normal strategy for being annoyed with wrong information stands. As a standard disclaimer, if I sound snide, it's because I'm annoyed, not because I mean offense. Anything you read here is impersonal -- I'm addressing it in general unless specifically mentioned otherwise.


Canar wrote:

spuzzum I think that that is the best thing you have said through this entire topic.

I thought so too, but not for the same reasons you think of.

the bottom line is DBZ is making everyone believe that there are no more features except building up stats and becoming stronger so that you can kill frieza or whoever, byond is about games without limits! it is about going BYOND the limits set by those who just made a really great game!

I agree. I create games without limits, and like games that don't have limits as well. I despise DBZ, and all that the games stand for.

Games aren't just clickfests, they're things where you try to achieve an objective. That objective can either be a competitive one -- trying to be the best -- or a personal one -- trying to do this and that to make myself feel good. An objective can also be either an objective you set yourself, or an objective that the game prods you towards or hints at.

The keyword there is "hints at". The only way you can get any sense of direction in Kemet is by poring through a huge manual, which seems more mathematical than artistic. You read a manual not only to learn how to play, but also to learn what benefits you get from playing.

The game itself provides no hints as to what you should do first. Documentation and the game, as I've established, are two very different things, mind you -- the documentation provides information, but that's not the same as having the game provide information. Unlike documentation, a game is interactive. Speaking of interactivity, though, the interface in the game seems geared towards making gathering information difficult at times, too -- let's not forget that without that precious Thothian reading skill, you can't even read the vast majority of the signs. Unless you're prescient enough to pick Thoth first, you're going to be confused right from the get-go.

My point is, that the game has lots of potential, but to fully realise that potential you need to make people aware of it, inside the game as well as inside the documentation. A guided tutorial would serve Kemet well, as would a few simple hints that someone near the entrance to the game could give you straight away.

As experience has taught me, you need to put casual references to both the documentation and the game, in both the documentation and the game. One cannot contain everything -- they need to overlap. Casually dropping hints here and there would work wonders.

Believe me, with dozens of games under my belt -- many of which being practically incapable of being finished due to a lack of foresight -- I can understand when something is wrong. Kemet is making mistakes, just like I've made mistakes before. I want LordJR to fix his mistakes and make the experience better for everyone -- all of BYOND benefits when a game is actually planned out in detail; Kemet can become that, but in my admittedly unhumble opinion, it isn't yet. All in all, I want Kemet to succeed.

(Snideness of the GM aside, even.)

if kemet is hard, just go play some game where you can vent on some pbags. enough said...

No, I'd rather not. Please read my other posts on this thread in detail -- you'll find that I don't find Kemet hard at all; rather, I find it obscure. And that's aside from the fact that I find the concept behind "pbags" more offensive than swearing.

Canar wrote:

we invent a code

Pfft. How about we write some code that does this, instad?

Anyway, I simply have a nice big long list (it's getting quite long) of keys that annoy me. And they're banned from every game I make. Works for me, and it's more fun than seeing them turned into a whiny inanimate object. Odds are, they'll call me gay and start trying to spam.

--Tarmas.

True. It is nice.. but I rely on something a little better. You start with ten social points. The more you do social things and stay around online, you'll raise your maximum social points. You can't chat more chars than your social points, and they're deducted when you use them.. er.. if you get that.

Basically, only old people get to spam. And even then, there's a max of 1000 chars.

--Tarmas.

Tarmas wrote:

True. It is nice.. but I rely on something a little better. You start with ten social points. The more you do social things and stay around online, you'll raise your maximum social points. You can't chat more chars than your social points, and they're deducted when you use them.. er.. if you get that.

Er... you're saying that when you start out, you can only use expressions less than 10 characters in length? I'm confused.

Foomer wrote:

I suppose that depends on what aspect of Kemet you were talking about, the good side of it being open ended (good) or the down side of it being hard to get started in (bad).

Yes, open-endedness is good. FoomerMUD is like that too.

Then answer me this, the same damn question I get from everyone who enters my game well half of them....

"How do you play this game??"

It being open ended and all, what is the correct answer to this question?

LJR

man i was just kidding...