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[increpare]

Certainly pretty solid.   Played it for a couple of hours last night.  I was able to get positive forum buzz of over 4000 near the start of my game (by making it as difficult as possible), but later on in the game, I found myself unable to get either a positive or negative buzz to go above 50, even though I still had 10k users.

(is there something weird that happens when you set the subscription above 15?  I found that my population dropped whenever the subscription cost went above this. It also seems like it's a better strategy to keep a good turnover of users, because of the fact that you can easily enough charge people the full purchase price, so that's going to make you a lot more money  (unless you max both out, in which case from what I saw you'll keep a steady subscriber population of about 400/500 with v. high turnover.  you still make piles of money though).

Highest average addiction score I could get was 2.

[mewse]

Played it for a couple of hours last night.

This makes me happier than I can say. 

(is there something weird that happens when you set the subscription above 15?  I found that my population dropped whenever the subscription cost went above this.

Yes -- the rival MMORPGs all have $15 monthly fees, so if you charge more than that, you'll have higher than normal numbers of subscribers leaving to join the other MMORPGs.  I guess I should make that a "complaint" which will show up in the complaints report. 


Anyhow, I've just uploaded a new version 1.0.4 (link back in the top post), which fixes most (all?) of the issues that have been reported to me over the past 24 hours.  This includes a couple crashes and a graphical bug if you remove a building which still has a road attached to it.  Plus a few minor glitches involving the road placement tool.

But the big change is that I've done a massive revamp to the player satisfaction/addiction calculations;  hopefully they should be a little more reliable and believable now, and you won't get quite the same hugely profitable turnover as before, just by abusing your customers, taking their purchase price, and letting them unsubscribe.  As an extra assist, individual users will now show their satisfaction and addiction levels in the "Inspect" dialog, if you focus on them.

And I finally remembered to actually wire up the "Attack" and "Defense" values of monsters and player classes, which had slipped my mind several times, before.  High defense values will tend to make combats drag on a bit, unless countered by high attack values on the other side.  So if your users are gaining levels too quickly, you  might increase monsters' defense values, or decrease users' attack values.  Or both.  Or just go into the 'General' design tab and increase the number of XP it takes to gain a level, and be done with it. 

[Xotes]

I also had a couple goes at it yesterday, and I must say I'm thorougly(sp?) impressed.

The only problem I had was the I couldn't figure out how to zone at first, so I just kept clicking the zone icons until (20 minutes later) I figured it out.

I know not all players are as dense as me, but it MIGHT help if you add how to zone to the instructions.

Still, it was fun. 

EDIT: Also, add the ability to save, plox. 

[Taysticles]

Nice. simple, but fun!! Thiz does not suxxes tha ballz

[Tommunism]

The only problem I had was the I couldn't figure out how to zone at first, so I just kept clicking the zone icons until (20 minutes later) I figured it out.

Ditto, might benefit from an ingame tutorial...or if there was one I totally missed it. Looks very nice though...very Tronish. good job.

[mewse]

The only problem I had was the I couldn't figure out how to zone at first, so I just kept clicking the zone icons until (20 minutes later) I figured it out.

Ditto, might benefit from an ingame tutorial...or if there was one I totally missed it. Looks very nice though...very Tronish. good job.

Yeah..  it desperately needs an in-game tutorial.  There just wasn't time to finish one for the compo. 

But I'm going to continue work on it, after the compo.  Big things I want to add for it are an in-game tutorial, tooltips on the buttons, and a few improvements to the user AI (make them go exploring even without a quest, give them inventories, make them follow a road partway to their quest target, etc).

[cyber95]

 I started out adding a few extra zones and people kept complaining for some reason, so I added all sorts of shit, and then people still were complaining, so eventually I decided that they're all jerks and deserve a crap MMO.. So I raised the level cap to 50 and set every area as a level 50 zone.
I then made sure that the paths were unsafe and density was max.  Once this had been done, I had a steady number of people subscribing and unsubscribing. That is, somebody subscribed, noticed that it sucked, and unsubscribed instantly. Thing is, this worked for me. I was pulling in cash flow because people would buy the game just to see how bad it is.  Next, because I wanted a few people to stay for the suffering, I added exactly two level one zones. As soon as you left a level 1 zone, you would be in a level 50 zone. I still got massive complaints about it being too hard, but the strange thing is, that every day I would get ten complaints of it being too easy.
Overall, it was pretty fun.

[Melly]

In the new version, I got infinitely increasing bad buzz by sticking everyone in an island level 1-50. I stopped playing when the negative buzz reached 75,000. Fun times.

[Saladan0]

Couldnt find what I was looking for, so Ill just ask it here.

Have you implemented zoning yet? I have the feature ingame, but it doesnt do anything..

[Melly]

Couldnt find what I was looking for, so Ill just ask it here.

Have you implemented zoning yet? I have the feature ingame, but it doesnt do anything..

It's been there for a good while, but it can be hard to figure out how to get it to work. After you set up the level range of the new zone you actually have to click into the box with the level range written before being able to place it on the map.

[mewse]

It's been there for a good while, but it can be hard to figure out how to get it to work. After you set up the level range of the new zone you actually have to click into the box with the level range written before being able to place it on the map.

Yeah.  Next time I do an update (probably not until after compo voting is over), I'm going to modify it so that clicking on any of the level range modification buttons will activate the zoning tool;  this is a very common bit of UI confusion that people have been having.

The empty dark blue button above the zoning button is the "unzone" tool, incidentally.  That'll allow you to remove the zoning information from an area (that is, it'll make a region look like that dark blue button, in the same way that the zoning tool makes a region look like the zoning button)

[mewse]

Yeah.  Next time I do an update I'm going to modify it so that clicking on any of the level range modification buttons will activate the zoning tool;  this is a very common bit of UI confusion that people have been having.

I wasn't going to do an update until after the compo voting was done, but I finally decided to make this modification;  it's in the new 1.0.5 version (linked in the top post).  There are no other changes to gameplay in this version;  those will all be delayed until after the compo is really over. 

[Terry]

This seems really cool, but I've had trouble getting into it - any chance you'll write a tutorial? Or even a quickstart guide?

I've played all the other games in the contest, and this is literally the last one I have to try - I really want to give it a proper shot

[sidereal]

I'm going to go out on a limb and guess that vectorstorm is getting crushed by the interest (Raph Koster posted a mention of MMORPGT on his blog), since the server is timing out when I try to get a copy.  Any chance of uploading it to mediafire or something similar?

[msdss]

A bunch of people at my job were playing this at work today. Got home to play it some more but the download link is dying on me, anyone have a mirror?

Oh and any friendly tips on how to make players happy or stop my forum buzz from dropping? Also an option to save progress would be spiffy! =)

[mewse]

I'm going to go out on a limb and guess that vectorstorm is getting crushed by the interest (Raph Koster posted a mention of MMORPGT on his blog), since the server is timing out when I try to get a copy.  Any chance of uploading it to mediafire or something similar?

Trying to get a copy of the 1.0.5 version right now, so I can upload it to a mirror site somewhere. 

Hopefully it shouldn't be too long!

[diaskeaus]

Really cool idea.  It kind of got repetitive though.  Didn't seem like I could make much progress after a certain point.  Seemed very business-driven.  Stuff like this works if it's like the other Tycoon games, where you can somewhat join in the experience, after all the work of setting something up is done.  Some suggestions (which you are free to absolutely ignore):

Add a wiz mode - where you can actually go down into the world as a wiz (or a gamemaster) and do things like fry characters, start wars, etc, to try and improve the game rating.  Players often react to how the imps treat them.

Maybe tag some of the areas and such with different colors: so you could make mountainous regions, water regions.  I know it won't much different with the concept you are trying to put together, but it will make it more interesting for the player to actually know they are constructing a landscape.  Maybe there is a way for you to tie it into the gameplay mechanics.

Offer the option to be able to visit the other games you are in competition with, to spy on how they are progressing.  Otherwise, it's just a blind number, but in the MMORPG world, you can easily visit your competition.

All for now.

[Melly]

I like the idea of being able to edit the landscape of the game. Making a game with diverse landscape work should be more difficult, but having a very varied landscape makes your MMO more appealing and interesting, earning more subscribers and positive buzz.

[Caelitar]

Sadly, nothing happens when I try to run it. I'm running Mac OS 10.4.11

I tried running it with terminal when it didn't work and it quit with "Bus error"

If there is anything else you would like me to try, please let me know.

[msdss]

10,000 subscribers, around 1,500 online at a time. -33000 buzz... Bah... It's either too hard or too easy. You just can't please these people! Its just like a real MMO! Hehe.

A few questions for anyone who knows the answers...
1) What does # of employees do?
2) At the top it says 'click here to name MMORPG' but clicking there doesn't do anything, how do you name your MMORPG?
3) Are there any tips/tricks to getting rid of the negative buzz?
4) I'm assuming you want 0 players who think its too easy or too hard, is there any way to get a nice balance?