PlaneShift
Gameplay => Newbie Help (Start Here) => Topic started by: Wookie264 on December 05, 2010, 07:15:40 pm
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I have a quick question about my location. It may seem like a spoiler, but if a person grew up in the Hydlaa area, wouldn't they have a basic knowledge of where everything is generally? Anyways, to continue playing this game, I need a general idea what direction to go to get places. If I am standing, facing the entrance to Gugrontid, which direction would I go to find the bronze doors? Also, what direction would I go to get to the ruins? I have a package to deliver there. Thanks muchly.
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Im afraid that it would be a spoiler. The general advice is, to ask people you meet ingame. But you might find maps on the internet or after asking some guilds... (not saying you should/have to join those guilds)
I agree with you though, that it's weird for a character who's supposed to have grown up in Hydlaa to not know around...
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Thought I might Get that answer, but I have another question. How on earth do you join a guild?! Do you join in-game or on the site? Is there a good guide that walks through the process?
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You get invited to a guild within the game. It's then just click an accept-button. I'd suggest to choose wisely though which guild you'll join. Ask what they stand for and do and see if that fits with you and your character.
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Most guilds you will find have somthing to do with fighting, for one reason or another, but you can find some religous guilds, and race specific guilds as well
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There are lots of guilds you should get to know before joining one; and there are lots of players with a character who will tell you with pleasure where to go.
Some even play to tell directions and teach about Yliakum as a profession, like e.g. members of the educational oriented guilds "Explorers" or "Knowledge Seekers"...
The Explorers have an information booth at the plaza, a small tent next to a watch tower. Often you can find one of them there, offering guided tours.
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A few tricks if you can try when there's nobody ingame to ask or to buy a map from:
- After you played the tutorial, you should have a book in your inventory that describes at least the basic features of Hydlaa.
- And if I remember right, there are roadsigns to Hydlaa, the eagle fortress and gugrontid and a road crossing between Hydlaa and Gugrontid.
- Climb on a hill and increase the view distance. The wilderness maps are small enough that you often can see the next portal.
- When you are totally lost in the wilderness and you are desparate to find a roof for the night: Walk along the invisible border of the map.
Hope that helps a bit. :)
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Hughs hugs Minks. mate we are missing you. Hope you enjoy the pasta.
You have forgotten a way. Sometimes there is an advisor in the help channel that will be also help to bring the lost back to the road. ;)
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Hughs hugs Minks. mate we are missing you. Hope you enjoy the pasta.
You have forgotten a way. Sometimes there is an advisor in the help channel that will be also help to bring the lost back to the road. ;)
Im pretty sure advisors arnt allowd to do that, they might send a tells, but otherwise, no
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If they are able to imagine your location from your description of the surrounding landscape, suggesting a coarse direction should be allowed... we don't want to be known for letting our players down.
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What a place to start for my first post... probably going to get myself in a boatload of trouble and a reputation as a malcontent as well. Not my intention, and i apologize in advance if that's the impression i leave, but... what you read below are just my personal opinions, based on an admittedly VERY short time playing PS, but also with well over a decade of playing several other online MMORPG's, and over a quarter century of playing RPG's - starting with AD&D in the early 80's using polyhedrons, Plexiglas, graph paper, and grease pencils on a dining room table.
I understand - and even applaud - the desire for players to roleplay while in RP. I also understand wanting to make the in-game experience as immersive as possible. However after about a day and a half of play, from what i can see, in PS a good thing has been carried to an unreasonable extreme.
Let me make this clear: i'm enjoying PS so far, and there have even been a couple of players that have gone above and beyond the call of duty in helping my character. But while the players i've met thus far have been amazing, the game itself can only be termed "user-hostile." Virtually EVERYTHING has to be learned from RP-ing with other players, and not only are there no resources to help you, players apparently can be (and i'm sure, have been,) banned for creating any - or at least making them available to the general public. It seems to me SOME things ought to be okay to disseminate without being deemed "spoilers." Think about it: we are dropped as adults into a city we've allegedly lived in since birth, and we don't even know where the most basic of vendors or trainers are? We actually have to find another player willing to tell us?
Our fair city has a library. One might think the library, with its thousands of visible books, might include a few useful resources, like basic maps that would tell you - generally speaking - how to get to adjoining towns, maybe even with a metaphorical "here be dragons" warning or two?
Going to a trainer gives me a "point of book learning," if you will, but no actual instruction on how to do the thing i was allegedly just trained in. I just paid the trainer to teach me something... why didn't he?
Our fair city has a bulletin board in the center of town... why wouldn't that board include a map telling visitors where they might find various products and services? Or perhaps those two map halves i found in my inventory could be a little more detailed? Seriously, and i know i'm repeating myself, i've lived in Hydlaa my whole life, i should know where things are, don't you think?
It's great to want people to learn from each other. In any game i've played, i've learned a LOT from other players - often more than i did from in-game resources. But speaking as a former programmer, learning how to use an application shouldn't require a new user to learn from another more experienced one. After all, there may not be anyone around that's either willing or able to play teacher, and that's simply not fair to the player. The application, and all its features, should be well documented such that anyone can learn to be expert at its use all on their own.
Yeah, I know, "it's a free game, and no one's forcing you to play." Agreed, but entirely beside the point. Let's at least be logical enough to admit there's a vast gulf between producing a lowest common denominator grindfest and a game that requires a player to be a MENSA candidate to be able to figure out on their own how to cast the simplest of spells. I don't want to be handed everything on a silver platter, but at the same time, every single scrap of knowledge gained shouldn't be the result of painstaking toil and hardship. It IS supposed to be fun... right?
All that being said, i'm going to keep on pulling them teeth, because from what i've seen so far, the people that play PS are worth it.
Regards to all - and especially thanks to the developers,
Arj
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I personally had a quite easy start in game, because I got picked up by someone only seconds/minutes after I joined. But what you say is a complaint that I read more often and I take it as fact, that it's an obstacle for new players.
Just one thing: Did you create a map for the board?
As a side note: A forum post doesn't really have a big effect on the game. Give specific (up to copy/paste) suggestions or join a group like the skunkworks project. Or even dev, but Im sure someone else will tell you that ;)
Sen
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I guess I was lucky enough to play my character as if they were from out of town :-\
but seriously, do a few quests first, they really teach you the lay of the land. I'd say after about a week of play I knew where most of everything was, although i'm still discovering new stuff everyday.
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Agreed with the above... The best way to get to know your way around the place is by running quests.. The easier quests are geared towards newer players, who still have to learn the layout of the Dome. The quests continue to increase in difficulty as you get further along, and I believe, provide a very good basis for getting to know the land, and developing your character.
With regards to "knowing" the land from your character's point of view... Most, and I hesitate to say that, but most players have their backstory set somewhere else than Hydlaa. That's not to say that it's inherently "bad" to have your character's story set in Hydlaa, not at all. But for example, Caraick only came to Hydlaa and the surrounding areas when he was in his late teenage years- the exact age that I began to play him. Naturally, it fit with his character to not know the lay of the land, so to speak. That fit well with my knowledge of PS's layout, which was close to nil :D My suggestion here is to find something that works for your character, and play it accordingly. If your character's story is set so that he/she/kra grew up in/around Hydlaa or Ojaveda, try and run a few quests in those cities, you'll pick up the layouts much faster than you'd think.
If you're not a questing type of person, and are having trouble finding your way around, then, as Arjaizen said, the PS players are a great crowd, ask someone for help. I was fortunate enough to be blessed with an experienced player who took me under his wing from day 1 until the day he left. Not all of us are that bad of a crowd, so have a little faith in the players who are above you in the PS experience ladder, so to speak ;) A few of these older players are also advisors in the /help channel, and while they cannot give you a spoiler as to where to go if you're lost, they can at least give you a hint, or a general sense of where you should be going :)
Hope this helps :)
-CD
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http://www.planeshift.it/quickstart.html
http://www.planeshift.it/roleplay.html
http://www.planeshift.it/faq.html
http://www.planeshift.it/guide/en/index.html
http://planeshift.ezpcusa.com/pswiki/
It's not like you are doomed to start in game completely clueless. Not to forget the really important tutorial (there was none when I started).
And even though the official documentation is heavily outdated, it is still mostly valid. Unfortunately, much of the "solid information" is as much in development as the game application.
But indeed, learning from others is an important part in defining the community. Be happy that the game world is still so small and you can learn it all in a few months. Not even a quarter of the upmost level is made.
It is possible to make own maps and to sell them in game. I hope you will find a mapmaker in game who offers you a fair price.
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After a little more time, i'm a bit less frustrated. I've also managed to find my way on foot from Hydlaa to Ojaveda and back again. I have noticed something that i wonder if any of the developers have considered. We always want a way to orient ourselves. In the "real world," we do it based on the direction a compass points. However, before that people used the positions of the stars. Now, we don't have stars, but we DO live inside a giant, hollow crystal, one that's not uniform. Look up, and you can see differences along the inner surface.
Couldn't there be shapes or natural designs in that surface that might be identified much like the Big Dipper or the Southern Cross? Having a few of those to use as reference points would help players find their way in new areas in a way that makes complete sense from an RP standpoint.
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A wonderful suggestion, I really like that.
Just hope I won't be the only developer with such an opinion. :)
But to make it work correctly, the 3D artists will have to ensure that the orientation of maps will be consistent, that their local coordinate systems will be reliable.
And a bug needs to be fixed (possibly with support from the CrystalSpace team) which shows several sky spheres from adjacent maps at the same time.
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The simplest way to do it, before implementing th ewhole idea of it, would be to give a kind of compass, doesnt neccisarrily have to be north east south west, so you know what direction your going, and from an RP standpoint, just rp that you looked up, that could be temporary or permanent, depending on how well it works
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Well, it's important to remember that there's no such thing as cardinal directions in Planeshift. East Hydlaa is apparently named after some bloke named "East", and that's the only occurrence of the compass being referenced in-game. That being said, a sort of system akin to constellations in the rocks above the cities would be very effective in forming a general sense of direction, as well as location.
The only issue that I forsee with this is how to implement it. Obviously, the ceiling of the level isn't exactly low, but neither it is terribly high, meaning it wouldn't be too difficult to make out large patterns or formations in the rocks above. Short of making the ceiling of each map a textured surface with the aforementioned patterns loaded on them, I don't see how this could be done... However, I've never been accused of being very good with designing these sorts of things, so I'm sure it could be done ;)
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Apart from using rock formations, the Yliakum equivalent of a Sextant is completely sufficient to determine one's evaluation. Since the crystal is a non-moving lightsource, the azimut could be determined by simply looking at the shadows of all the rock lying around: You define a zero line (Maybe between Crystal and most important Bronze Gate), then measure an angle between the defined line and the line between the observers position and the crystal (which could be done by making a map once, afterwards it's just a question in which segment you are: use landmarks for that or observe the shadows moving relative to you).
Just an idea, might contain nonsense.
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Couldn't there be shapes or natural designs in that surface that might be identified much like the Big Dipper or the Southern Cross? Having a few of those to use as reference points would help players find their way in new areas in a way that makes complete sense from an RP standpoint.
this is an awesome idea. i've been racking my brain trying to come up with a PS equivalent of astronomy, and i think you hit the nail on the head.
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Just an idea, might contain nonsense.
Firstly, I think it's a great idea, Mask :)
Secondly, you should use this as your sig, makes for a nice little disclaimer ;)
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Firstly, I think it's a great idea, Mask :)
Secondly, you should use this as your sig, makes for a nice little disclaimer ;)
Well, a short search revealed that it has been discussed before, e.g. here (http://www.hydlaaplaza.com/smf/index.php?topic=36893.0). That was about a year ago. I would like to see it implemented slowly, it would give guilds like the Explorers or Knowledgeseekers some books to write and maps to draw that are percise and scientific (still wondering why there's so little innovations and scientific advancement visible when people run around with Int>150 now).
Did that. Now, with established credability, onto the topic of economics I propose following model... :whistling:
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It would be highest praise for ones character to receive a constellation in the sky
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Hardly possible. Noone could "engrave" into the Big Crystal, its radiation is deadly in close range.