f13.net

http://www.atitd.com/

I know.  I know.  I know.  For some reason, Teppy sends me three of every email.   :|  I'm not sure if that's love or hate.

**crosses fingers**

The picture leads me to think there will be sexy dames...?

In practical terms, this means digging mines to extract cobalt for processing eyeshadow.

I fell for that the last two times, Teppy. I shall not flax2crush nor brix2win again.

... well, maybe after E3.

Maybe.

Someone should cowboy up.  I'm playing with Seed, after all.

I logged in and chose my area and immediately bumped into Slyfiend, Numtini and others.  How strange and, yet, not strange.   :lol:

I stopped home for lunch and downloaded it.  If I can get any computer time this weekend I'll be on.

I'm game to try it.  I didn't try Tale 2.  I recall Tale 1 making my hands sore with all the mousework.

Unfortunately, I forgot how to do anything.   :oops:

I'll login and see what it's like, never played it before either.

Still looks as ghetto as ever.

I might update when I stop breaking blades and learn how to flax.

Personally, I think it's a good game to get ideas from. Not necessarily one to play.

Which area? :) I seem to recall trying out Tale 2 with them last time!  Nothing like spending hours jogging from place to place... May download it as I'm in the mood for casual-afk gaming :P

Seven Lakes.

Is there any chance, for those who played Tale 2, that this revision will be more fun, less tedium? I'm in a crafty mood.

If you love Excel and writing detailed macro scripts, this is the game for you. 

Yes, I'm serious.

Not really.. T2 was comparable in grindiness to T1 for similar tech periods. The basic mechanics of gathering resources will still involve mashing the gather grass button, clicking on trees, etc., I'm guessing.

Seven Lakes south or Seven Lakes west?

There are 0 people there now apparently.

I'll go look.

I still don't know.  My coords are 1641,1857 when I logged.  Go to your menu and click on friends list and add Signe.  I aasumed you're using Xanthippe so I added that name to my friends.  You've been offline an hour.  Numtini is still online, however, so you could ask her.  All I know is I'm somewhere around those wee blue lakes that are in a circle, near all the Uni's and stuff.  I can't seem to bring up the box that lets me tele to a new area anymore.

Ok, thanks, back from my Cinco de Mayo margaritas and on my way to more, I think.  At least if I can get the spouse to go buy mix.

Margaritas go with making flax, don't they?

Okay I'm trying out this game for the first time. You can add "Trippy" if you like. I'm currently working through the "tutorial" tasks.

What exactly is Beta 2, anyway?  When does this go live, and when it does go live, do our toons poof?

Is there any arrow key movement or is it all point and click?

I'm playing as Xanthippe, feel free to add me as a friend. 

Surely I'll figure out how to rot flax today.  My flax fields look like crazy quilts.

You rot flax by using the skill menu when you're next to water, it makes a little buoy and when the flag turns white it's rotten.

Just point and click.

And yes, as far as i know, everything goes poof and they do a bit of rescrambling of resources and such.

It goes live in about three weeks. And probably by now, you know there's no autorun or arrow keys for movement. POINT-N-CLICK YAY!

I've been to the desert.

ATiTD make hand go ouchy.

Seriously I didn't mind the tedium so much, you can do other shit while semi-afk and it's the kinda game I don't feel compelled to play for hours at a time all the time, but you have to click so damn much. It's like UO crafting only with nothing to kill inbetween. Teppy really should realise that the game is all about puzzles, statistics, and politics/community. Get rid of all the clickly crap plz.

I'm not crazy about the constant window click fest, either.  One thing I do when I'm making things like boards (one of the more tedious clicking event) is pin the menu in a comfy place.  The text in the box disappears after you make the item but you can still click the empty text box and it works.  Also, I always use the explorer's map when I travel.  The general purpose map generally has no purpose.

There's a TAB = mouse click feature, so if the mouse is over something I can hit the TAB key to act as a mouse click.

There's a offline task feature, so Xanthippe should have collected grass all night. 

The community in ATiTD is very helpful and friendly.  I forgot how pleasant that can be.

Play2Craft ftw

I joined up to see if there were any improvements to the kind of game I would play, but I havent seen any yet. As a matter of fact, the only sign that this is not version 2 is that there are different avatars. Granted, I am level 0, and only about 80% of the way to "citizen"... but you'd think that many of the chnages to a game would be in the early parts, where the most people would be exposed to them. I have seen nothing new at all yet. Nothing. **oops, okay, there IS one new thing. Everyone gets one free Jug they can use to carry water**

What do I want? I want offline vendors. I want personal chariots, mules, or horses. How about a hand-drawn or animal-drawn cart I can load stuff up in, since its hard to carry large amounts of stuff for long distances. I want GRASS and STRAW to have less weight AND bulk than friggin sand. I want a 50% increase in the amount of slate we find. I want to be able to "harvest" grass in a set area instead of having to run in a grid pattern and click the dang "gather" button every 4 seconds. I want to be able to build furniture we can USE. I want to be able to decorate a compound. And I want to see some hard caps on the number of skills a character can learn, based on their complexity.

It seems that ATitD is mostly just a game for big Guilds to have an informal competition on who can "research" the most stuff. I still think the game could be great. I love the music, and can accept the basic graphics. I think the pace is fine. I like the exploration part (except for the sheer boredom of running everywhere real slow). I think the skill tree's are great, and the political aspect is awesome. All in all its a good game.... but there are just some things that keep me form jumping in with both feet. If I could only pick one "I want"? Personal, player-built, transportation. RUnning around is REALLY boring.

**edit** I am AkkoriTep, btw....

I have to agree. I jumped in for a few hours to see what had changed. Took me about 3 hours to go from total noob to 'found a nice spot, built a compound'. The only things I'd seen changed from the last time I played (which was the first 2 months of T2) was that there was now a 'goal' window when you started a test and that there were now 'levels' locking you out of upper-tier stuff (although most of this upper tier stuff has yet to be unlocked in the beta).

At its base, no matter how much I want to believe otherwise, the core activity is running around grinding up piles of resources. If previous Tales are any indicator, once more stuff has been unlocked (unlocking being the primary reason for resource-grinding) there can be some interesting subsystems to play with - but playing with them will tend to have a grinding component to it. Cabbage for beetles, charcoal for metals, etc.

 Getting set up will be a week or so of building up; less if you and some friends team up, which is primarily how I was able to stand multiple months of the previous tales. A good diversion now and then, but I wouldn't, personally, make it my gaming mainstay (again).

Offline vendors will never happen, because of course they want trade to be personal. As for advanced personal transportation (aside from the chariot stops), check out the end of the trailer.... (clickzor!) (http://atitd.com/dl/bonus.shtml)

(For those not wanting to download and watch it, we get blimps somehow.)

Vendors to sell stuff when we are not online is the only way casual players NOT in a guild will be able to make effective use of their time. Well, that or letting us get to where we are going faster than running around on foot . And even then, you better have some saved up travel time or you'll wait at the chariot stops for several minutes too. ONE WAY! And even worse, casual players cant boost their stats (either perm or temp) because they dont have the *time* to grind up cooking, or to do the quests that result in boosts. So our carrying capacity is really limited.... Hmm... Karnak to the Red Sea to get 4 sheep? 4 hours or so. Blech

Way back in T1, I had an 'offline trade system' set up with regular trading partners that I knew I could trust. We agreed on a central location and each built a stashable-by-public chest there. Trades were arranged and negotiated via chats, which persist when you're offline thankfully. To fulfill a trade, one person stashes their goods in the other person's chest and then the other person reciprocates using the first party's stashable chest. Both parties retrieve the goods.

I'm really enjoying this more than I enjoyed Tale 1 (didn't play Tale 2), and my hands don't hurt.  Still noobing along, so I don't know how to do much.  I heard that you can use macros as long as you are not afk?  Now that would be neat.

That's what I heard in chat a couple of days ago. As long as you can respond if a GM comes wandering around you can macro, or so they were saying. Though you do have to wonder about this game's gameplay when the first thing I heard when logging onto to the game for the first time is a bunch of people discussing macroing and how to get their slate gathering macros to work properly.

You should always question the construct of a game where players would rather macro large portions of it than actually play.  This game is a great idea attached to a painful grind-fest.  I encourage you all to give it a try rather than take my word.  After a few days online, you'll see people writing macro scripts for 70% of in-game activities and using excel to solve optimization for everything from mushroom hunting to paint colors and recipes.   

The game does have the advantage of a relatively mature player base and some very intelligent people.  As long as you enjoy the social aspects of online gaming and don't mind reading books while playing, this game can be moderately interesting.  If you're looking for fun outside of the social/spreadsheet realm... I encourage you to play WoW or Puzzle Pirates.

Well, there is no combat in the game, so by definition, the intelligence level of the players is much higher.

 :evil:

Yes, you can macro by any means you wish, as long as you are there ATK. And yes, it does say something about the game when you not only have to research the game Wiki to learn how to do something, but also have to learn how to use one of those macro programs. I probably spent more time reading the Wiki than I did actually playing for the first couple weeks in T2. Its awesome that the level of complexity in the crafting mechanics is such that you need a college education (or more) to figure out efficient methods to create stuff.

The weak link is still the distribution of goods, and the lack of a World currency. It would also be nice to have "Farms" to replace the Offline tasks. I'd rather pay upkeep and such to enable a custom growth level for wood, flax, grass, veggies, etc...

And PLEASE make grass weigh less than and take up less space than friggin sand!!

Difficulty in and of itself isn't necessarily indicative of depth; it can also be indicative of bad UI and/or documentation.  It's important not to confuse the two, much like it's important not to confuse gameplay with grind.  (Not saying that one or the other is applicable here, just saying be careful with that line of reasoning, because that way lies lots of catass.)

I understand it's a joke, but I still don't get it.

Because one game has a different presentation than another doesn't make it any more or less intelligent. Two games with completely different front ends could very well be the same basic game on the inside.

I keep thinking that this game would really rock if it did have combat.

A mmog-civilization where you have to research technology to get it but then you can use it to crush opponents.

I think I'm missing the whole point of atitd.  I like the sort of crafty-grindy-relaxing thing of picking grass (now that I can use a key to hit) - it's akin to playing solitaire or doing sudoku but I can do it when my brain is tired - but the vast empty landscape ... I want more things there.  Preferably things I can kill, skin, and eat.

So that I can invade the other regions.

Why do I crave conflict?

Teppy is a hippie.  That's why there is no combat.

Honestly, I think that adding combat would be cool. i dont have a problem with fighting in general. If its done well, at least. I know its a game, but I would like combat to be HARD. If you get shot, you DIE. Its why I liked the combat system in Shadowrun so well. You could be killed by a little hold-out or pen-knife if you got hit right. The DnD method and the one all MMO's use is dumb. Get chewed on by the 10-story tall dragon for 5 minutes and walk away whistling with vials of blood or scales or something.

I think Arena's and gladiator events would be awesome. It would be something to do along with all the other things.

But first.... VENDORS!!

If you put combat in ATITD, then nobody would do crafting, and everybody would complain that the combat system sucks and crafters get too much love.

Teppy wants conflict, he wants strife, he wants competition and even outright griefing...just without swords and guns. In fact, if people get too warm-n-fuzzy cooperative, he'll make mule characters, get together with his GMs and other staff, and start griefing everybody. And he's reeeeal subtle about it too....

We have seen so much clever stuff from Teppy.  I am sure he could figure it out . But yes, a Diku clone wouldn't work.  But it's shame his game is limited to a handful of players; I would love to see what he could do with a real staff.

I want to ride camels and carry a paintball gun. 

Explosives would be good too.

I'd like to be able to deface someone's guildhall "Xanthippe wuz here"

I slaughtered two sheep yesterday.  Not only was there no blood, there was no blamblam, there wasn't even a damned squeal from the sheep.  What a letdown.

Sheep need deathcries.

Xanthi i i i pe! Why y y y y!
We were so go o o o od together!
Baa aa aa aa a
aaahhhhhh

Warcraft 2 had some good sheep killin'.

Well he apparently is doing the Alvin Maker game, which doesn't surprise me as OS Card is very careful about who he licenses to, and I think I saw that is going to have combat in it. I would guess that will have a larger playerbase than ATITD.

Necro post!

I'm going to dabble in this game a bit with an old friend.  For those of you with a passing interest, the 3rd Telling starts at 12pm EDT on Saturday, May 27th.  If you're bored or have questions, feel free to /chat Nebu in game.  Also, /info Nebu will tell you if I'm on or not... funny how you can chat with people that aren't even on.

I like that feature.  It makes chatting to myself more meaningful.  There are a few of us who will be also dabbling.  Me, Righ, Xanth, Slyfeind, among others...  some have even bought small pre-order packages.  In beta we settled in Fool's Paradise, which was a nice little area but woefully under-populated.  Hopefully, it won't be that way in release. 

I think I'm going to settle in CoTS.  It has a special meaning to me as I almost got banned in T1 for making my obelisk there when the area designer thought it was closed to the population. 

Look me up if you guys need anything.

I will require a paintball gun forthwith.