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Obduction Backer |
Joined: Fri Feb 12, 2010 8:39 am Posts: 2
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I love perplex City. It was a terrific experience. The intersection of Uru and Perplex City was that they both invited players to discover an alien civilization, developing all sorts of art and culture in a unified space. Where Perplex City was only an ARG (Alternate Reality Game), Uru is an MMOARG (Massively Multiplayer Online Alternate Reality Game). Perplex City was played in slow trickles, whenever updates were posted, and Uru could be logged into and played any time at all.
Making a puzzle set which meets the kind of 24-hour demand which Uru is necessarily capable of would be tricky. I think it would require, as a minimum, a broad range of puzzles, in a wide breadth of skill levels. Perplex City solved this issue handily enough by allowing players 8 different levels of difficulty in puzzle cards, which were released in 4 waves (most of the individual puzzles themselves were solved fFairly quickly).
Taking a look at other systems, games like World of Warcraft tend to be successful because they offer a constant level grind. There is always something an individual may do to raise some level of something. Puzzle building is extremely simple fFor the developers, in this case, because they simply place a start point, and end point, and a set of simple tasks using established game conventions. I mention this not to suggest that Uru should be more like WoW, but because I think the lesson here is that simple, repetitive tasks can be very appealing to some players, and make fFor good progress indicators.
Towards the end of the MOUL life the fFirst time around, there was a very big, herculean task, put to the global community at large. We were asked to help purify the lake. A gauge was placed at the docks, and progress could (theoretically) be measured as more people dropped their fFully baked pellets into the lake, which should purify and start glowing more brightly. This was a terrific example of what Uru can do. The problems here are simple. 1) there was very little incentive to accomplish the task, other than a vague promise that we might see the lake "come to life." 2) no actual progress was ever observed, and the gauge was declared broken and quietly removed. I have not actually had time to involve myself in MOULa, so I don't know if this sort of thing exists now.
I think, what I often fFeel when exploring Uru, is a sense that we should be *exploring,* not simply wandering. The DRC could release new content, but there is no real connection to what the DRC was doing, and what the explorers were able to do. I have come to fFeel like it would be very nice if we, as explorers, could advance the reconstruction process, it would have fFelt less like we were tourists looking at wallpaper, and more like we were involved in uncovering a lost civilization.
I wrote a nice set of ideas over on unfiction, some while ago. Generally, the ideas do not expressly address your question, but I see some relevance, I would say. The point here, I guess, is this: involve the players in new and interesting ways, and we will be delighted to be involved. Allow us to "help uncover the cultural mystery" and -- some of us, anyway -- will be thrilled to take part.
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