Idemark's Tower

Thothie

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Oyster said:
After you raped Deralia sewers I, for one, have no faith at all in your ability to enhance 'gameplay'.
The monster layout that did exist in Deralia Sewers (ie. from the forest entrance to the temple), is almost exactly as it was (save some swamp eyes in place of some of the dewm trees for sake of stability). There was nothing at all to do in the sewers, but that obviously wasn't the intent, it simply hadn't been populated. I'd really hate to just wander through empty sewers, myself.

If you really just want pretty mazes with nothing to do, you can go play Kreed's Climbing Adventure. But this is an MORPG - you kill monsters here. (Granted, even in Kreed's you have to climb around against a timer - but I can't name a multiplayer game, off hand, that's just mazes with nothing in them and no goal...)

If your favorite bits of the game are where you aren't playing it, it's time to find a new game.

Sure, you can run past those, but then again, you can run past everything in daragoth, too. And receive nothing.
You can't... At least, not if you're in the Daragoth's level range. You'll get your butt kicked, as nearly everything there is agro. Unlike the bears on Idlemark's that are just taking up space as part of a huge backdrop. Even if you do manage to squeeze by Daragoth's orcs and giant spider, you still have to at least dodge them all, and it makes for a playtime of, what, 2 minutes? But you can dash through nearly any map, if you outclass it by a dozen levels.

In a few years, when yer level 60, The_Wall will be a "hangout zone".

Oyster said:
And Daragoth is one of the best maps in the game because of it. The 'reward' is making it to the safe haven of Deralia where the player can engage in quests and the story can continue (of course, it doesn't because of a bizarre obsession with ugly, disconnected linear pieces of **** ) which is a hell of a lot more interesting than fighting a legion of misplaced mummies over a %chance to earn more loot. The fact is, people still run Daragoth from time to time. People still run Keledros Prelude and ruins. They still run chapel, isle and thornlands. They still run Aluhandra. Nobody will ever run Deralia sewers once they have the loot that drops there, and for good reason. It's boring, frustrating, linear, and, at least in regards to the unrelated map fragment that was tacked on for no reason other than to make the map longer and linear, it is ugly as sin (dridjes portion, however, it's beautiful and masterfully laid out).
That's a nice imaginary reward, as everything is just as dangerous as you left it when you return, and no one thanks you in Deralia, and you can even start there. I mean, at least someone in Deralia asked you to clear the sewers. And statistically, the most popular maps that run, those that run the most often, are still the most linear, oddly enough. (Also, how could you call Keledrosruins anything but linear?)

Really Aluhandra is every bit as linear as Deraliasewers. Like the sewers, there's only two ways to go, and you either go into an area with neigh endless monster spawns, or a long gauntlet.

...and how were these mummies misplaced? I mean, what's the alternative, yet more skeletons with x50 multipliers? It's pretty obviously an undead temple zone... Maybe I shoulda put bears in there.

Oyster said:
What about mummies? You can always add mummies and if they encounter navigation issues due to the terrain, why not just make them fly?
If it was a darkly lit temple and I was pressed for time, I might consider it. But I think they'd look a tad out of place flying around bright open grassland. ;)

Stoned said:
The change in style might bring in more players and raise the activity when new patches are released. Also, have you noticed the activity level of MSC when the last patch was released? It was nothing compared to previous path releases. MSC players just farm for loot and stop playing, there needs to be more goals in MSC rather than just farming. There's an entire novella to our disposal yet there really aren't any official lore quests nor items.
There's lots of lore items, I don't think more of those are going to help, in fact, they seem to do quite the opposite. More quests would be nice, and more variations in play styles would be nice (and I don't consider "empty map scenery" a play style). No one, or hardly anyone, wants to work on any lore maps though, as most mappers just have their own ideas going. New play styles, in addition to the fact that those proposed do not receive much enthusiasm, take quite a bit of time to work up and test. Of those few we have been added over the years, most mappers show little interest in taking advantage of them. These days, mostly, I just get empty mazes in my inbox.
 

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Thothie said:
No one, or hardly anyone, wants to work on any lore maps though, as most mappers just have their own ideas going.

From what I have been tolled, several people expect the lore maps to be absolutely godlike (in terms of aesthetics). Somewhere along the lines of shad_palace. I'm not sure how many mappers know this, but it's discouraging since not everyone is a Rickler, or a J-M, or a Crow.
 

Srgnt Rehab

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I think that Idemark's tower is one of the best maps in MSC right now. Its only turn off is how short it is. The first time I played it... all I could think of was that there had to be something I missed, a secret somewhere. After an hour of searching and then 10 minutes of checking it on my BSPviewer I realized that it was quite short :(

I think if we have more maps like this however, the exploration value of this game will rise, it was my favorite part of this game when I first started. Exploring > Dungeon diving. Its as simple as that.
 

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I should say that the_wall is already a hanging out map... :wink:

I agree with most of thothie's post right there, and some of oyster's.
Idemarks tower should get changed (not in terms of difficulty) but perhaps some questing in the area? Map looks fine for quests imo.

Also you know that every patch in ms:c doesn't bring the same people back every release, it's just near impossible to do such a thing, people like to check ms:c when they hear about anything big or interisting. And this is hard to achieve since the dev team is small, they can't work on something big so fast (take example of polearms patch). IF spellcasting actually gets reworked on, im pretty sure a bunch of people will pop back in to see the new spellcasting updates, untill then we will just have to keep on playing with what we get and with the people who haven't given up on ms:c already.

@Oyster
One last thing, if you consider the new latest patches that boring, then you probably don't know what you are talking about. Try comparing the time when there was no updates for like 2 years or so with a single monthly update(even if its a small one). Which would you prefer?
 

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zeus9860 said:
One last thing, if you consider the new latest patches that boring, then you probably don't know what you are talking about. Try comparing the time when there was no updates for like 2 years or so with a single monthly update(even if its a small one). Which would you prefer?

Good point, however... I still think that idemark's tower should be left un-touched. I don't have any beef with Thothie or anything, its just that I understand the magic of creating something yourself and I feel that the (For a lack of a better explaination) "love" factor of the map would die out.
 

jon50559

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melanion_ruins0001-2.jpg
 

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Osnap! Nice. :mrgreen:
 

zeus9860

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Looks v nice so far, imo. Couldn't see everything that good because of darkness but i guess i saw the most important of it.

Anyways a challenge: i dare you to finish it for next month! :mrgreen:
 

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zeus9860 said:
Anyways a challenge: i dare you to finish it for next month! :mrgreen:
Challenge... maybe accepted.
This is the first video I've ever recorded and it's ass :p
BUT I think it's better than some screenshots. It's also mostly populated, but I've killed all the monsters already before the video had started. Also keep in mind I'm still working on fixing basically any anomaly you see in the video, I was just so glad I got a pretty good compile that didn't crash both the compile tools, and MS:C! :mrgreen:
 

Red Cell

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Lookin' hot and sexy. Keep it up dude.
 

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The terrain and the house is amazing.
 

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