T7 Improvement Ideas

Please feel free to add your ideas of changes and things you would like to be implemented in T7.
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Tests

Test of Mentorship

Suggest to Scrap the Mentor Shrine, and change to a point based system where the mentee can award points based on a fixed schedule to player(s) that have been helpful to them. May tie it to levels/test advancement of the mentee. Changes the focus to not just be about mentoring a player up to citizenship. The number of points to pass will be adjusted accordingly, for example it could be 21 points from 7 different mentees. --Porthos 20:15, 22 March 2014 (EST)

Could keep the Mentor Shrine, but have the mentor build it, not the mentee. Once the test is opened, give each player one token on each level-up which they can then deposit in a mentor shrine of someone they feel have mentored them well. This will act as a cue to players not familiar with the test since they will have a token in their inventory, and allow multiple mentors to benefit from the assistance they provide. I also find that a mentor shrine built today doesn't take into account the mentoring I may get from other people at a later date. Silden 16:58, 23 March 2014 (EST)

Test of Marriage

When was this test modified ? T4 maybe ?

I liked it much more in T3, i.e. when *both* spouses would win the test on a given week and the points were Nb. of tests passed as spouses (by *either* spouse) x number of weeks since married. I think that it was way more of a collaboration between the spouses to win together the test of marriage than what is happening now since the test was modified. (Basically now only one of the spouse wins the test, if the other spouse has worked like a slave to pass as many tests as possible)

So...can we have the initial Test of Marriage back ? (Nissim)

FYI : The initial marriage test was in worship (didn't even need to pass worship init)and you could pass it just after you got married. So, yea, i'd guess the t3 version is what would be the preference, since it also includes casanova passes (Which even if we do have them in t6, are a rarity) http://www.atitd.org/wiki/tale3/Tests/Test_Of_Marriage (blondie)

I find that some of the perks for marriage provide too much help for other areas of the game. For example, spouse porting gives an unfair advantage in events that prohibit navigation/expedition/paid chariot travel. It also allows the progress in tests that are designed to make you get out there, and do so with next to no cost. Examples include porting to your spouse who has stumbled along an Ibis, then porting back home when your spouse has finished their travels or porting to a cicada and double hitting it. May I suggest that we change free spouse porting to an extra waypoint instead, where porting to your spouse will cost you navigation time. Silden 17:01, 23 March 2014 (EST)

Test of Seven Phoenix

Should be able to build a monumental Phoenix (in the same way we have with Monumental Towers) Silden 17:08, 23 March 2014 (EST)

Test of the Covered Cartouche

Buildings built in the building rounds should disappear once the round is over. Otherwise high level players just salvage everything at the end, and not feel the pain that lower level players with poorer salvage skills can manage. Should be able to build monumental buildings (in the same way we have with Monumental Towers) instead. Silden 17:08, 23 March 2014 (EST)

Test of the Oyster Catcher

Swimming shouldn't be given when you take the test, instead Swimming should be a skill you learn at school, and be a requirement to take this test. Silden 17:08, 23 March 2014 (EST)

Thought Tests

Can we remove the heavy reliance of so many cuttable gems from a lot of these buildings? Particularly from the principles, but from the actual building construction too... Silden 17:08, 23 March 2014 (EST)

T7 Improvement Ideas, Suggestions, and Requested Changes

Fishing Improvements

Reduce the cost to improve fly fishing skill by about 2/3, so instead of 1200 fishing points to go from fly fishing 1 to fly fishing 2, it would be 400 fishing points. Add in new varities of fish, increasing the total types of fish throughout Egypt to 243. Maybe add achievement for catching a # of different varities. Change how the game places fish, instead of by grid location, make certain fish only capturable in a region. Also tie certain fish to be near terrain features like shallow water, deep water, clay or papyrus or large stone etc, similiar to tattoo. Allow the higher quality fishing rods to be craftable by players. Maybe tie it to fly fishing level and carving level. Add in a rare random event (graphical or text message) that an epicly large fish of the appropriate species (for the location, time and month) is spotted near by. To catch the player plays a mini-game using sliders on line tension (line play), and reeling in, the larger the fish the harder to catch. These fish can be mounted (maybe add an achievement) --Porthos 20:15, 22 March 2014 (EST)

Click, wait 15 seconds... click, wait 15 seconds... click, wait 15 seconds... Not very stimulating. I'd much rather have a click, and have the bobble land in a random place, then bob when there's a fish. On clicking the bobble, a powerbar appears with green in a random part, red on either side, and a black bar that randomly moves left and right. Your job, get it to the green area within a couple seconds, and keep it there. Once the allotted time has passed, you catch the fish. The bar on the powerbar moves faster the lower your strength (hence harder to keep in the green area), and the duration of this power bar assigned to Endurance. I would find that much more stimulating. Silden 17:18, 23 March 2014 (EST)

Sound Based Tests

I understand Safari and Cicadas are beloved tests and I don't want to suggest changes that will take away from those tests for the majority of players, but I would like to explore if there is a way to make them accessible to players with hearing loss. This was less of a problem in T3 (see the Test of Marriage issue, above), but this Tale my spouse is playing as me to drag me through Marriage so we're not penalised for the fact that anything with directional sound is not going to happen for me. Suggestion: maybe a visual HUD people could load if they wanted it? I realise that would make the tests easier, but it would also make them accessible to more people. (Eimear)

• I wanted to add about safari. Frogs used to have shadows in the past. Is it possible to add shadows back? That may help those who have issues with sound (blondie)

Add me to the issue with Sound Based Tests. I'm registered Hearing Impaired, and I have a problem with Cicadas and Bullfrogs too. If nothing else, for Cicadas have a Main Chat entry when the system first starts to play the cicada chirping saying "You hear the faint noise of a Cicada nearby", and for bullfrogs, as Blondie says above, bring back the shadow, that helps. Alternatively, a range of messages based upon the strength and direction such as "You hear a faint sound of a Bullfrog", "A chirp of a bullfrog can be heard in the distance", "You hear a strong sound of a Bullfrog to your left", "You hear a strong sound of a Bullfrog"... Silden 17:14, 23 March 2014 (EST)

Responses from Pluribus

are some of these improvements possible? are some very difficult to code? can some of these be rethought and improved (just to give examples--blondie)

Mentorship - I definitely want to increase the amount of interaction between mentor and mentee. However, I don't want to just tie to tests/achievements, etc.. It would feel like Prophet/Promotion/Marriage etc... What about keeping the Shrine, tying it to player retention and requiring both the mentor and mentee to meditate together on it once a week to show that the two actually got together at least the once to accumulate the points. Maybe points based on time logged in at the same time (Bonuses for tests and achievements, but I don't want the majority of points to come from that) (IE - You cant mentor effectively if your not on at the same time) I hesitate to do within proximity of each other with the wide use of chat channels for mentoring it would make mentoring harder which isn't what I want. I am thinking a having test passing be based a threshold, with added bonuses for scores beyond the passing level. (level of effort: 4 hours)

Marriage - I haven't followed the changes in marriage. My understanding is that the complaint is that both players don't advance at the same rate. (IE - one player works his butt off to advance tests and only the partner is rewarded) So, you want me to solve the dead-beat spouse issue... Or is this just a marriage between a main and a mule? (In which case, I dont see a problem) Isn't picking a spouse who wont leave you high and dry part of the test? I am just trying to better understand what the problem is.

• I think marriage passes could be an issue both if you have a mule or if you have a real player as your spouse. If you look at it the way marriage is now, you basically need your spouse to pass tests if you want to pass marriage. That would encourage you to have a mule that passes tests so you can pass marriage. So, if we had marriage go back to t3 ways, both spouses would get credit every time either passes a test. This seems more like the spouses working together for a common goal. Also, the spouse passing tests/active is getting credit for the work they are doing. The t3 way: spouse A passes 2 tests, Spouse B passes 3 tests; they both get 5 points, that gets multiplied by the weeks they've been married. Hopefully that makes more sense in terms of what we are looking for in the test (blondie)

Fishing - Fishing needs to be examined in the context of Isis' bounty as I have explicitly been requested to permit fishing from boats. (Not sure the animation system will allow the blending of the boat animations (the boat) with the fishing animations properly while keeping the two together) If doable, then fishing areas will greatly expand. As for the rest of the things, Flyfishing is new tech to me, Let me look at that code a bit and see how easy it will be. (Likely significant time to code)