f13.net

starts right now

Come play the best crafting tech demo ever devised

Client at http://www.atitd.com/

:oh_i_see:

I'm in! I have some slate and I can't figure out how to rotate the camera!

Edit: figured it out. I also figured f6-f8 gives different views.

Fun game for a few weeks IF a) you've never played it before and b) you REALLY like crafting games and chat.

Forgot how much I loved this game.  Grindalicious as hell, though.

Yeah, I can feel the addiction except I know last time I played the hell out of beta, bought a year sub, and played an hour during it.

What region are people in?

Ugh. I still can't get over the khakis and polo shirts. Let me know when we can run around shirtless again.

The new compound design is nice though.

Downloading the client.  Wish I was getting better than 50KB/s.  Is there a mirror somewhere so I can start my grinding sooner than 45 minutes from now?

I just started up in 7L, which is now being called Shabbat Ab.  Player name Ouroboros.  Not sure if I'll stay on, but there's a reasonable chance.

Started out in Kush, but I'm heading over to Fool's Paradise, or whatever they're calling it now

After trying to plant flax in several areas and failing due to poor soil, this got uninstalled right quick.

HINT:  if you are going to force people to do something, don't make it such a pain in the ass.  make good soil increase yields, instead of punishing people trying to work through your newbie requirements.

The game is meant to be a problem solving game, not the typical MMO.  It is full of many roadblocks intended to provoke problem solving.  Fishing, vegetables, etc. all follow this model.  It may be best to get out now if the flax situation irritates you.  It only gets worse as people mine, irrigate, etc.

It doesnt irritate me for things like mining, herbalism, etc.  but if you are going to require something for citizenship, don't put in silly cockblocks that you cant get the answer to.  Ecology skills are needed to solve the problem and as far as I could find ecology skills are not available to non-citizens.  To become a citizen, you need to harvest flax, so its a matter of finding a good spot without any sort of visual cues. 

If you were unable to plant the seeds, or the plant appeared to grow differently, if you got some sort of feedback it would be a puzzle.  Without them its a cockblock.

It's pretty easy once you figure out that you need to plant only on grassy areas (i.e. not on sand, clay, etc.).  Unless something has changed, flax can be grown with varying degrees of success on grassland.  I don't think that's a tremendous cockblock. 

Edit: I'm not playing in this beta so I may be out of line here.

There were Tale in the Desert 2 and 3?   :ye_gods:

Yes, you just plant it on grass.  In most starting areas there will be 30-40 other people wandering around planting Flax to ask.

i'm pretty certain that I planted on grass, given that I was collecting grass to dry while growing the flax.

Meh, not like it really matters.  Wurm online does crafting better.

Wurm Online is really really ugly, though.   :ye_gods:

Sounds like someone PK'd ur flax!

Yeah, that's weird. You shouldn't even have the option to "Plant" unless you're standing on grass.

But yeah, if that wasn't to your liking, best to get the hell out now. It only gets worse. Teppy's wanted to make the game more forgiving, and give more cues as to what you're doing wrong, but hasn't gotten around to it yet. Personally I like the cockblockery. That was one of the allures of ATITD for me, that it took a lot of experimentation to figure out things.

The problem-solving is all well and good, but I was never able to solve the Everyone Else Is An Asshole puzzle.

I've found the decent/asshole ratio to be much higher in this game compared to an MMO.  The problem this game suffers is the cliques that have been established since Tale 1.  They are very hard to break into. 

Maybe I just didn't find the right people.  I felt like Rick Moranis in Space Balls.

The thing that makes the game helpful is that players can be members of an unlimited number of guilds.  A guild is little more than a chat channel.  The guilds you belong to act as nice Q & A channels for questions and most veterans of the game really enjoy helping with advice and suggestions.  Of course many will just send you to the wiki for help... not to be mean, but to give you the most complete guide.

WIKI NUB! My favorite thing to do is ask a random question in chat, then when nobody answers, make up some answer and count how many people who are quick to correct you.

That's awesome.  Even better would be to have two accounts (presumably a buddy.  Who duel-boxes atitd?).  One to ask the questions, and the other one to give shitty answers.

You'd probably get exiled by the Demi-Pharaoh for being wrong.

I got involved with a guild, The House of RA, last time around in beta and really, they adopted me quickly, it was one of the nicest friendliest most helpful group of people I've ever gamed with. I think as long as you come in at the start, you make out pretty well. Getting back in the middle, you just have a lot to catch up on.

Apparently I was doing it wrong.  Downloading.

I'm putting in an agreement on the flax. Apparently very large areas are polluted. I eventually just teleported to another region.

Ooooh, the shitty soil problem.  Yeah.  Forgot about that. 

Just go to Fool's Paradise

I guess the game starts Saturday at noon? Good idea to keep the beta short, provided they actually finish up some of the rough bits.

In any case, I'm going to stake out a little plot on the less fashionable side of the Nile somewhere and give it a shot at playing casually rather than hardcore.

Heck, maybe I'd join you, make a loose confederation of crafters, etc.

Nice to see some validation on the flax issue ;)  Yes, I've calmed down about it.

Also, heard that outdoor chests are not going to be allowed, that such things will have to be kept in warehouses.  thoughts?

It's funny, when I saw my first chest that was one of the big things that hit my nostalgia gene. I can't imagine the game without them. Teppy posted something about making them decay over two weeks, but I also heard someone in regional bitching about how much the big ones cost to make, so maybe he's just economically nerfing large ones to try to get people to build warehouses?

I'm Numtini in game and I'm thinking somewhere near 7 Lakes since it seems to be fairly busy and I'd have the most opportunity to meet people. Though I know a fantastic place in UE if I want to live in the middle of nowhere.

How are the new terrain, avatars and other graphics?

Compounds look great. I freaking love them. They're all ancient mudbrick wattle and daub and whatnot, instead of the freakish brick warehouses they used to be. Avatars are weird. They literally wear 20th century clothing now, except one that's a medieval serf. They added a turban to one of the avatars, so maybe that one's supposed to be Persian?

When I played, sand and mud and grass were the same color, but they said they were going to fix that, so it may be fixed by now.

Compounds are not onerous to build, and in fact you have to build one as the first Architecture test.  They get expensive as you grow them, but you won't need to expand your first one for a while.  Plus, they're a great way to mark territory.  It used to be you'd see a couple of chests and a flax comb and not know whether that guy was ever going to come back and whether they wanted that whole forest or what.  Now you stick a big, obvious house down where you're going to be settling and you can see it from a mile away.

Unfortunately, I'm probably not going to be playing this tale.  I can't get a look at the multimonth subscriptions since the servers are down to prep for the launch, but unless they're a pretty good discount from the normal $14 a month, I don't think it's worth it.  I'm not exactly strapped for cash, but I can't justify paying $168 a year for a game with that narrow a focus and that limited a set of activities.  I could pay a little more and renew WoW, and ATiTD doesn't stand up well to that comparison.

$10 a month, maybe.

I think the grass is darker and people were complaining it wasn't as green. I found one female avatar I rather like, but I'd agree they're not quite as Egyptian. I seem to remember last time around that more options were added between beta and release though? There are some differences that I've found functionally less useful--the weeds on flax come to mind immediately--they're far easier to see in T3.

For whatever reasons, the graphics have always worked for me. The chat and item interfaces are horrible though and the lack of scrolling in the map makes me crazy.

And there's no significant discount on the multi-month stuff, you just get fireworks, sheep, cornerstones, redecorating, and the eye bugging titles are back too.

And now I'm waffling.  I reminded myself in another thread that the major problem with MMOs is that every other player is a fucking idiot.  Except in ATiTD, that's not true.  It's niche enough to self-select and most players are pretty good.  That has to be worth a few bucks.

If there's a group of f13's playing, I'd be tempted to join up for another tale for some very casual egypt crafting, exploring, and crazy teppy social experiments adventures.

email from Teppy about Tale IV:

I would be up for that, just let me know where and who;  will find my way to you.

I talked myself into starting T3. Never again!

I played T1 6 months, T2 for 2 months, and T3 for 1 month. 

I'm out.

The pattern suggests you have to play for 2 weeks.

Maybe he counted beta?

Screen shots would be cool. Off a players machine, not a devs sanitized screen shooting machine.  :grin:

I'm Quinton in Tale four.  Not sure where I want to setup shop.  Anybody more organized than me planning on anything?

Also, I probably won't have much time in-game until tonight/tomorrow due to stuff going on in EVE...

I'm hanging out in Cat's Claw Ridge at the moment, out of nostalgia.

I think I'm giving this phase a pass.  I walked around a bit, pulled up some grass, logged off and haven't had the urge again.  What happened with the thingy about Teppy killing himself off or something?  It said to log in Saturday to find out but I'd rather someone just tell me.

I have a compound up just north of the U-Arch in Ab whatever (used to be 7 lakes) right on the Nile.

I have indeed been to the desert.

Now that it has gone live, quinton and I are neighbors in the CCR region.  The people are friendly and helpful, with publicly available facilities for your more advanced needs or bulk projects.  Impressions (last time I seriously played was T1):

1)  Travel seems faster...speed changes depending on what you are running on, with roads being the fastest and sand the slowest
2)  spawn times for things like mushrooms and herbs seem to be faster;  when travelling I can count on coming across at least 5 different herb spawns
3)  flaxing is still flaxing, le sigh
4)  Endurance based activities (digging, processing flax) feel more bursty...for example, you used to have to rest between stages of flax processing...now you can do it all in one go and rest before you clean the comb.

All in all, I don't find it as grindy as I feared it would be.  some of the tests are kind of wierd (present two camel milk and two grilled fish at the school of worship in the presence of 21 people), but I'm having fun running across the landscape, identifying herbs, and making stuff.

Quinton and I are both interested in mining and metal work, so we may make a small mining concern.  I know we are all die hard MMOG cynics, but if you want to give it a shot, come on in.

I'm having a great time. I wandered around... a lot... Did a full tour of 10 regions and never once got a ****ing onion seed. But if you're short on cabbage, I'm your girl (10 Universities, 5 gave me cabbage--I've since traded for two onions).

I'm still not sure where I'm settling. I met one of the people from my T3 guild and I'm set up with them, but I think they may be too much on the achiever side for me. I burned out last Tale essentially before beta even finished and I'm thinking life in the sticks might be more to my liking.

Ugh, people are having fun, and even Numtini is enjoying it. I'm jealous. I just can't get past the cockblocks. I hate sculptures, but you have to do them in order to start acrobat. I hate acro too, but you need it to get your stats up.

That, and I miss the Ancient Egypt themed avatars.

I built my scultpure, threw in three pieces of grass, and tore it down. Zap. I agree on the levels, but at least so far, I can tolerate it.

I'm pretty happy in Cat's Claw Ridge at the moment, but if some huge awesome collective of f13 folks formed elsewhere, I'd consider relocating.  I'm probably going to play a bunch over the next two weeks (holiday vacation time) and then likely in fits and bursts.  I'm not hardcore enough to do megagrinds for unlocking stuff, but I like to contribute here and there, try new technologies, and contribute to local projects.

I'm totally happy being part of a more casual guild (or guilds -- this is ATITD, if you don't have 20+ chattabs you're some kind of hermit), or being a casual contributor to more hard core achiever projecty things.  Mostly I enjoy ATITD for a change in pace from classic MMO stuff and the pew pew of EVE.

I'm Quinton in-game too, feel free to say hello!

oh, you dont NEED to make a successful sculpture to pass, just build it, open it to judging, and tear it down?

I know what I'm doing tonight!

On a horse with no name?

I met someone on the road making trades for seeds and ended up moving to Sinai (http://www.atitd.org/wiki/tale4/Guilds/BratPack).

Has this gone live yet?  I'm bored with CoH.

EDIT: Appears that it did on 12/13.

I can't bring myself to do it. The initial allure is great but then there's always that wall of grind that you hit.