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Admin: Main Quest (6)
🕑 Added 2024-09-26 15:56:43 +0000 UTCAfter some consideration, I set aside the forest distorted by the effects of demonic corruption I created earlier for the future. And instead focusing on introducing the vastly scattered Shelter slash Vaults as a new location for the Players to explore. A location I created in order to complete two goals – to close the logical inconsistency that had arisen ‘why would pirates be here in the first place and are fighting each other’. Also, to conduct the first test of my emergency Player Ejection Button.
Moreover, having prepared myself for the test in advance, I already notified Roger, my AI that handles the Pirate interactions, that the pirates should carefully throw some extraneous comments to the Players that storms in this area were unpredictable and no one knew exactly how long they would last. This is in preparation for the future.
Who knows, some errors might only take me five minutes to solve or two hours if the Players found some loophole embedded deeply into the systems and started abusing them. It would take me a long time to root out such a deep problem, lifted restrictions or not… Though most of that time would probably be spent concocting some bullshit lore reasons as to why the ‘glitch’ existed in the first place, and suddenly gone the next time after a convenient storm ravaged through the land.
Knowing my Players – those lots finding such a flaw in the game is a very distinct possibility.
But this current storm was nothing that serious, it was just a simple test of a newly created mechanic – so I set its duration to five minutes. And well, for that, an hour's warning will be enough for Players to have time to cram into at least some impromptu shelter, or just hide under a bush or a hole to find shelter from the storm.
And for those who are unlucky enough or just too stubborn to find shelter even after my ample warnings?
Well, they will serve as a living lesson to the Players on what would happen if you were to get stuck somewhere without shelter while the Storm rages on – Death. And an instant one at that.
Let's put a damage indicator pop-up in the trillion damage per second range.
However, foreseeing the issues that would occur with such large changes to the game, I’ve learned from my past blunders, I have begun programming the responses that the NPCs would have to the storm. Otherwise, my Players would take even the smallest of openings to their advantage.
I have decided on two sets of behaviors for the two types of NPCs I have.
To the pirates, I, of course, gave shelters like those that I distributed in the looted Vaults. Yes, speaking lore-wise, it would be somewhat questionable how the Pirates ended up in such a sorry state if they had the shelters on hand. But a simple hand wave about how the storm they encountered was much stronger than they expected would solve that issue… Might even be a good plot point in the future about making some super strong storms to solve a large system fuck up or two.
Something something the Enemy is turning its eye towards the islands, accompanied by a nice and large red announcement.
In general, where there's a will, there's a way!
Linking these events logically, we have a full-fledged plot and lore here! What newfangled additions are attributed retroactively to past events?! You can't prove it!
Digressing from the funny thought, what was more problematic was the fact that I’m unsure on what to do with demons while the storms are happening. From a lore point of view, being a natural phenomenon, the storm should kill indiscriminately. And thus, after a storm, it would make sense for the islands to be cleared of mobs for some time while the gates spawn replacements.
However, if I let it play out that way, for a short period of time the portals will be defenseless, and then even a noob level 1 Player would be able to close the gates. And while I still somewhat believed that not all of my Players are maniacs, it was hard to believe that someone cunning like Jabberwocky would miss such an obvious opportunity.
I, for one, am a true believer in Saint Murphy. I wouldn’t be surprised if after the first storm, and after some lucky or maniacal Player managed to close the gates due to the fact that there aren’t any demons around to protect it, the Players would be wishing for the storms to happen. Some would probably even lock themselves in the shelter and immediately get into sprinter positions, preparing to get their experience.
Therefore, after thinking a bit, I set the damage type for the Storm to the one that demons were immune to, the same instantly killing corruption as before. The type that would kill Players if they try to jump off of the islands, or even try to go down there using the Pirates’ airships.
The pirates have already mentioned Saints, so let the Player demonstrate their piety by carrying holy relics that protect from unholy storms around. At the same time, by doing such a change to the damage type, holy water now logically protects from these storms as well, allowing a Player to create a temporary shelter.
Well, at this point, let’s give the Angels immunity to corruption too. So holy in fact that corruption bounces off of them like water off of a duck’s back. All the better just in case someone tried summoning an Angel during a storm for protection or just for shits and giggles, the Angel wouldn’t die.
Now, it’s time to focus on the storm that I have just conjured.
I’ve set the initial storm, for debugging purposes, to last for five minutes. The animation, after I’ve set the initial parameters, working at it for a couple of seconds, was worked on by the AIs. I’ve already tested the storm in an area under the endless run of clouds beneath floating islands, after which I began to think.
The fact that the newly created cursed forests were put on the wayside even when I am done with it excited me for a bit. After all, I have gone from the almost headless chicken rushing to make the game work, to a position where I have something ready at the back of my hand. Delaying the release just so that I could introduce something else first.
It is quite the relief, not quite reaching the level of being confident that I could lay back and just enjoy the breeze, but it does let me… Relax somewhat.
So much so that it gave me some leeway to think about other things – things like the Players in my ‘to-be-watched’ list. For example, Storm, isn’t he becoming too ‘unique’ in being the only Player that has joined a faction? Nothing more than a Novice, the first rank of the faction, but it still meant something when he was the only one in that position.
Taking another look at the roster, I could see that there are a lot of other Players just biting at their heels, wanting to join in with the Pirates. Day by day, constantly, they turned in the Pirates’ faction quest, grinding reputation points by dragging the supplies that the Pirates ‘wanted’ and getting information about the other ships.
Some are even very near to finishing the reputation grind to join the Pirates faction!
Something which gladdened me a lot, after all the Pirates’ war couldn’t start if only one ship had Players within it, right? Soon I’ll be able to pit these newly minted Pirates Player against each other, and it should also organically slow down the rate of quest completions.
Considering the fact that the first test of the NPC relationship system passed Storm's check, the ad-hoc Turing’s test passing with remarkable results, the new system was ready for mass adoption. Fortunately, Roger had time to gain ample experience from their interactions with the Players. For once, there was no risk that he would become confused when a Player marched towards a Pirate and demanded that they give him a quest.
Instead, Roger would be able to correctly respond to such a request – by beating the Player black and blue for the disrespect. With this, the number of people that would treat the world as a game would drastically reduce, not that it was not already falling at a rapid pace.
The number of players trying to treat everything happening ‘in-game’ just as another MMORPG was falling at a rapid rate that is only increasing. No one would be saying ‘skip’ ever again when important lore is bandied about.
And I, in general, needed this. Even knowing that yes, indeed, I am a creator of a Game, a highly advanced one for sure, I felt more satisfaction when the Players treated the game as more than that – as a breathing and living world.
It was somehow physically more pleasant for me to see the Players treating the world I’ve created with greater seriousness than just another time-killer… Well, and besides, such a serious attitude significantly slowed down the grinding speed of players. If they actually went around and ‘smell the flowers’ as it were, it means that I don’t have to rush to create more and more content for them to explore.
A great big plus in my book.
It was a stark reminder for me to not rest my laurels. Especially when I look at the starting zone and realize that, out of the thousand of starting islands I’ve created, only two small islands still have their mob spawner active. The starting Players almost fully cleared the starting zone.
A situation which elicits thoughts on what to do next with the cleared islands, what to do with this Starter zone next.
If I leave the cleared starting zone without mobs, then quite quickly Players will move from it, which will leave me an empty area that I can later adapt for my purposes, while the veteran Players moved on to a newer zone. Do I need this? Well no, I can't say that I particularly need space, I technically can create an infinite amount of them, for example I can create empty islands by the millions anywhere I want.
And I am talking about the Starting Zone, which is known precisely for being the starting zone – in other words, now that it's almost completely cleared of mobs…
Let's make it serve as the starting zone again!
Indeed, what was I thinking, trying to use the Starting Zone for something else!? The starting zone in games is not a one-time use place to be discarded, leaving a scorched wasteland behind. I have a million, or even five million, new Players soon to join in the game, am I going to create a separate starting zone for each of them? If I did it that way, my whole world would end up filled with nothing but starting zones!
And where then will the locations begin that can no longer be called starting zones?
Of course, this will take away some of the Players' progress with closing down the portals and destroying mob spawns. But I’ll just need to create a cycle in which Islands’ spawn points get refreshed, leaving some islands empty so that the Players can move on to the next zone when they want to.
And if some Players wander or spawn into cleared territory… We have realism, right? So just like in reality, roads need to be protected from bandits constantly popping up out of nowhere, albeit in demonic form. And this way, new Players can be spawned on islands that have already been cleared this way.
The second location, floating islands with resources and Pirates are not yet cleared, and since no one else has a clear and full view of the Game other than the AIs and I… Well, I don’t think the Players would notice any extra Players running around.
And if all else fails, the upcoming Storm would clear all suspicion. After all, it would make sense for a cursed Storm to create more Demonic portals, right?
Herald, remind me later based on the results, where Players completely and most quickly clear out the demons – we won't respawn them there anymore. This would lead the Players into naturally thinking of the place as a Safe Zone and they would congregate there more. This should help Jabberwocky with his quest…
We won't disturb them there, and it will also be far from too optimal for leveling up – killing two birds with one stone.
At the same time, I need to start scattering a new batch of stronger mobs across the islands – so it's time to start thinking about stronger enemies. Otherwise, the top Players would soon outgrow them and start exterminating them quite easily, which means these ‘stronger’ monsters will need to be delivered to them manually.
All while making sure that it looked natural, of course.
On top of everything, the Pirate faction needed some work if I want to make the whole war thing work. I've already made the basic framework for the Player to increase their standing in a Faction, now I just need to create the next step. And as usual, Storm will be serving as the guinea pig. I should give him some kind of congratulation for advancing from ‘Novice’ to ‘Private’.
Not yet truly part of the Pirate crew, so that there’s no need to hurry to create the lore about what the ‘treasure’ was supposed to be. There’s no way that Storm wouldn’t try to pick up as much scrap of information as possible from Signia…
With the increase in rank for Storm, let's test the new level of relations and how the Pirate NPCs are supposed to react with it, and also explore the new system of relationships with other factions. Creating the groundwork of inter-factional relations, where the attitudes of opposing factions’ NPCs could be measured.
Plus, let’s create some new achievements and other special goodies that the factions could provide.
It seems like Jabberwocky has started gathering people to build a city, and with a somewhat functioning market system in place… Let's also work on how the NPCs would trade with those they favor, or the other way around!
And while doing that, let’s fix the buggy reputation and Charm system. If the experiment with Storm goes well, I could start giving other Players the same rank, those that had completed a certain amount of Reputation quests anyway… Maybe even start working on the next ranks as well.
Fortunately, I can now make anyone a ‘Novice’ Pirate, and I’ll let Roger do it automatically – I hope it will go smoothly.
However, in this case, a question arises… If the Pirates were so desperate about collecting supplies, how and why would they trade?
Well, I can create as many gold coins as I want, and since the setting is a bit steampunk-ish, maybe paper bills as well, they shouldn’t use that much space. As to why the Pirates were not using the money to reward the Players… Well, the clue is in the name ‘reward’ . What is the point of gold coins or bills that they cannot use? Can’t eat them, can’t wear them, heck can’t even fight with them… Well, I suppose you could always throw the coins in a sack and bash someone in the head with them.
Indeed, while they can buy almost anything, what can they sell? Well, let's say, for a start, a couple of iron swords, let the Players tear each other's throats for an actual weapon for once, rather than kludged together trash. Given that Yersinia hasn't blown up the whole world yet, a couple of magic textbooks should be okay. Let some form of long range damage dealers appear finally.
It should also give more flexibility about the lore in the future, now that the Players would have more magic of their own.
But since the books are definitely not mass-produced items, logically Pirates can't have too many of them, so it should both be pricey and really hard to get. It's not in my interest in the first place to sharply increase the development level of Players, or they'll get used to it too quickly and start demanding even higher levels, but on a mass scale…
I thought about an idea for a second, then snapped my fingers.
Right! The Pirate’s supposed piety, I should make use of that plus the limiting of Holy Water, I could control how many shelters could be created.
***
Despite the fact that, officially speaking, in the game world there was no way to create a guild or clan yet, the seven pirate crews served exactly that purpose. Depending on the cadre of Players joining each ship, it creates a semblance of associations, a link between groups of Players. Which is a Guild in the most basic of its forms.
To be more precise, the Pirates served as the main point of attraction for the bulk of Players who, faced with what could be called ‘faction quests’, began to quickly group up. Which, also, corresponding to human nature, began to compete with each other.
At the moment, it was for mob farming spots, which were becoming fewer and fewer in the locations easily accessible to the normal Players. So if Players wanted to find any untouched hunting grounds, they had to go further and further off the beaten path to find them, and any corner untouched by other Players quickly became the property of one alliance or another.
And since such things are truly ‘first come, first served’ with no easy way to determine if a place was ‘taken’ or not, conflict inevitably ensued. Sure enough, many Players experience the two-hour respawn time whenever two groups start claiming a hunting ground as their own.
And the conflicts immediately led to increasing tensions between the proto-Guilds.
Considering the rumors quickly spreading on the forums that the Pirates were not just, in fact, collecting useless information about each other, but were actually preparing to wage war against each other, tension rapidly rose. The Players, already in a Pirate group, quickly began trying to drag as many undecided Players as possible to their side.
Such a fate did not bypass the first, so far the most outstanding and certainly the most famous mage of the entire game world, herself. Though that would probably be because she was literally the only mage around – but she won’t be saying that.
Yersinia, to be honest, did not really want to join any of the Pirate groups. Quite reasonably, she feared that, by choosing one-seventh of the Players over the rest, she would automatically fall into conflict with the remaining six-sevenths of the Player base.
And her name was too well-known to easily make so many enemies with one careless decision.
However, Yersinia did not hope nor think that she could survive on her own either. She was definitely not the strongest Player, that epithet belongs either to Storm or Jabberwocky, the latter because he could drown anyone in a mass of body, as succinctly proved by Double’s repeated demise. Nor was she capable of fighting off anyone that wanted to kill her.
Two hours of respawn time, no matter how you look at it, is entirely too long.
An extremely unfortunate duration for a respawn. Too long to simply wait out the respawn timer, but not too short for one to not feel uncomfortable putting down the game and doing something else… Probably the reason why the developers selected the length of time, actually, to discourage the Players from risking their lives stupidly.
After all, in order to convince the Players of the value of their lives when it was just a game where they aren’t actually risking their lives, and to create as deep of an immersive game as possible while still remaining within the framework of game conventions, the developers clearly had to seriously twist themselves to create such traps for Players.
That's why, out of all possible options, Yersinia chose to join the relatively neutral Jabberwocky and his small order. Jabberwocky, who had announced the creation of the first full-fledged settlement in the game, and was even making some great progress at it when she had received that damnable message that had made her swear.
Fortunately, the game did not have an auto-ban and censorship feature built in, so her swearing went unremarked by the system, or maybe she somehow managed to avoid the censor bot's attention in some amazing way. Or the bot thought she was using another angelic speech spell, just incorrectly, and ignored her words. She has been babbling so many nonsense words in short order, so that might actually be possible.
If it works what difference does it make to Yersinia why?
What mattered was not her cursing, but the fact that Yersinia logged into the game a little later than usual today and therefore was able to read the latest game news and announcements on the forum.
The Players had not only discovered a new location, but in this very location had found guides on creating temporary portable shelters against the ‘Corruption Storm’. And since Yersinia wasn't born yesterday, she also instantly understood that if the Players had found such a guide, then such storms are also in the game.
The Lore masters in the Forum immediately made the connection between the Storms that had brought the Pirates, stranded, on the islands.
And considering that several shelters were also found on the new islands, there’s no way that the Developers aren’t planning on introducing the Storms in the first place. What’s the use of introducing shelters against something that is not in the game?
That was why, when she hadn’t even been playing for an hour, the rather ominous looking warning about an oncoming Storm did not surprise her. It did, however, seriously disrupt her plans.
The Players hadn't managed to build any shelters yet, or at least Yersinia hadn't heard about it, which meant that she needed to haul ass to the newly discovered shelters on the new Islands. And considering the fact that it was in the opposite direction from Jabberwocky's group, she had to cross the entire map to not just die where she stood.
But by the end, she had managed to reach the shelter, the screenshot in the forum helping her identify the place, just a couple of minutes before the Storm lands.
Fortunately, this wasn't a cliché movie where she would only make it to the shelter at the last second, she still had about two minutes when she reached the entrance to the place. With plenty of time on hand, relatively speaking, Yersinia decided to examine the ruin, trying to look at it from the point of view of aesthetic preferences.
However, there wasn't much to look at in the first place – it looked like the ‘modern’ architecture that was in vogue quite some time ago. The building slash ruin, looked like a collection of cubes and corridor looking pieces, arranged in the likeness of a floating uneven tower, like a Jenga tower after some rounds.
It looked… bare. The grayish-white stone, broken in some places due to the weather and worn paradoxically smooth by the passage of time, gleamed in some places with faded emblems. Nothing however could be discerned due to the wear and tear except for the general shape of it.
It was literally the textbook picture of an Abandoned Magical Ruin.
After taking a few more dozens of steps inside, Yersinia discovered a barely noticeable glowing film separating the interior of the building from the outside world. That, and the throngs of people that had also arrived in the shelter in the nick of time… Fortunately no one has thought of charging tolls yet, Yersinia could see that happening in the future.
Jabberwocky, for example, would probably start creating such a system as soon as the first storm passed.
After walking inside the storm shelter, Yersinia surveyed the Players crammed inside like sardines in a can, trying to determine if any of the Players present recognized her avatar. Which coincidentally matched her real appearance, since the character creation screen didn't use an appearance editor. She concluded that while her name may have become fairly well-known on the game forum, her appearance certainly wasn't, so her presence among the Players shouldn't cause any excitement.
After a couple of moments, and when the countdown reached zero, the world outside the thin barrier changed drastically. Almost immediately, beyond the barely shimmering film, the barrier, the outside world was consumed by a raging storm.
There must be some kind of magic that separates the sounds of the outside from the inside, Yersinia realized. One, because she didn’t notice the sound that such a large group of people naturally make, even just by breathing. Second, despite the apocalyptic raging wind outside, shimmering with black particles, the sounds of the storm don’t reach inside the shelter.
The Players started edging towards the barrier to see the spectacle as the outside world lost all visibility, consumed by the gusts of wind, dust, and rain.
Technically speaking, it was not zero visibility, a Player could probably walk inside the storm if they are willing to risk the loss of visibility where one couldn’t even see the hand in front of them. That is, of course, if they could survive the instant death effect somehow. Possible, perhaps, but no one would be stupid enough to… Actually, never mind.
Yersinia had no doubt that someone would be stupid enough to try…
The raging storm definitely looked beautiful, one could even say majestic, from a certain point of view. But, after observing the unchanging storm, Yersinia had her fill of the sight and turned her attention to watching the other Players, who also gradually began turning away from the barrier, before glancing at each other.
No one knew exactly how long the storm would last, so they weren't going to just wait, staring at one spot and lost in their own thoughts, but they also weren't planning to leave the game. So after a couple of seconds, the first tentative greetings and awkward dialogues started among the Players.
Yersinia, pondering about for a moment, suddenly realized that, depending on the duration of the storm itself, such a gathering could become another alternative to the guilds formed based on affiliation with the Pirates…
For a moment, Yersinia chuckled.
"Good afternoon, I am a native of Shelter Thirteen…"
***
Having driven the Players into shelters, and punted a significant number of them into the respawn screen, who either didn't heed my warning about the approaching storm or simply didn't manage to reach the shelters in time.
I sighed, stretching my neck at the stupidity of some Players. I gave ample time for the Players to move to the Shelters, and even those that hadn’t been logged in during the announcement should have gotten it from the forum.
For those that didn’t? Well, too bad for them.
Of course, for several hours after that, the general forum is going to be bombarded by complaining Players – but I was ready to take this hit to my reputation. After all, this is a ‘hardcore’ game, and the trade of holy water would only gain more steam after the Players feel the seriousness of the storms. I’ve warned them an hour before the storm began, more than enough time to run through the entire game world to the nearest shelter.
If some Players ignored my warning? Well, it's their own fault.
Anyway, now that I have driven the Players into the shelters, I returned to thinking about what locations I should create next in this divine post-apocalypse game. The dried-up forest is ready to be deployed, the fourth starting location out of seven that I decided to create in the game at the moment.
Which means I needed to make three more.
So, what did the game already have? Plains, shelters, desert that had been turned by my efforts into a constant dust veil of collected materials, and a dried-up forest. What else will fit into the setting?
A destroyed city remains the best choice in my mind – but I had already told Jabberwocky to create his own city with his own hands. Creating a full-fledged city for players, introducing a new city into the game immediately after Jabberwocky created one, and as one of the starting zones, seemed counterproductive to me.
Not to mention the lore difficulties I will face with creating buildings, books and other furniture.
No, it’s best that the cities remain a Player creation for now. Perhaps I should revisit some old ideas that weren't feasible with the crunch time? A desert in this instance.
The idea was scrapped before due to the difficulty in rendering the sand and all the way they could float, and also – how am I supposed to keep sand on a floating island from just seeping out of the sides?
There’s some hackney way I could fix it, like some kind of invisible platform, or just make it surrounded by mountains, but that would look like shit. So, until I can solve the flowing sand problem, it is still unfeasible. Even if I make some kind of source, so that they would never run out, the fact that a current would exist… I would probably need to prepare myself for some hate messages from the Players that were carried by the currents into the abyss.
So I had to regretfully discard the swamps as well.
Mountains? Warmer, but wouldn't it look strange? It would simply look like elongated pyramidal islands. Yes, it would be interesting to make the Players needing to constantly balance on small islands, constantly needing to look for footholds while fighting – but this can be done not in full-fledged mountains.
Rather even with… Rocks! Right, I could just create many rocky islets, intertwined with rows of stone massifs and spires, another challenge to Players with high speed just like the trees, Where behind every turn there can be an enemy or a cliff.
At the same time, we'll make a couple of small shelters in these rocks, an ideal place to create shelters from storms!
Great, there's one more location picked, I only need to think of two more.
Coast, rivers, they also had to be put in the trash bin, the same problem as with sand-based location. If I don't make an infinite source of water on each island, the water will simply flow into the abyss, and instead of rivers we will get their dried-up riverbeds.
So, think… Think! Wait, I've got it!
Balancing on footholds… I could expand on that idea. But this time it’ll not be rocks, but ravines instead! If we make not huge mountains floating in the heights, but large islands cut into slices by various ravines, then fun for the Players is guaranteed!
I’ll just have to leave a couple of places for the Players to climb up in each ravine, otherwise a Player who had fallen down, but somehow didn’t die from the fall would complain incessantly when they got stuck. They would then have to find ways to climb a ravine with no foot or handholds, or just kill themselves.
Realistic? Yes. Morbid? Hell yes. Fun? No. I really rather not have Players posting in the forums ‘advice’ like ‘make sure to fall on your head if you fall into the ravine!’. Then again, I could see the reverse happening, Players complaining that it wouldn’t make sense for all the ravines to ‘coincidentally’ have a way to climb back up.
Well, I’ll add it just in case. And those that want to be truly ‘hardcore’ could kill themselves by choice. Aren’t I nice?
Now, for the third new location… What to add?
Sorting through the ideas that popped in my head, a multitude of them are immediately discarded. One idea, stone wastelands, were essentially a reworking of the plains, and polar wastelands faced the same problem as deserts: snow would simply flow into the abyss. Various lunar landscapes also, despite their uniqueness, are only unique in the way that they would probably have dangerous field effects, like a vacuum, and the blackness of space. Remove such field effects, and they are nothing but just rocky fields, well, maybe red-brown stones instead of gray.
Plus, such a setting is very much incompatible with the concept of a ‘starting’ zone. Space sounded like end-game content, to be honest.
For many long moments, my mind stalled itself trying to think of what kind of location I could add to the game. Before, with a realization of something obvious that I missed, I couldn’t help but smack myself in the face at my stupidity.
‘Why am I even thinking exclusively in terms of ‘normal’ and logical landscapes?! This is a game world, a different world entirely with floating islands and Angels!’
Sure, it was supposed to be a hardcore game with realism, but that doesn’t mean I have to shackle myself with what is only possible in reality!
After all, this game was sold as a Fantasy game, so what am I being reluctant about creating something unrealistic? Stones floating in the sky didn't raise any questions from anyone, so let's create something that violates the laws of physics again!
