T7 Improvement Ideas

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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) +1 (Eimear)

(Moved up from below) 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) --Pluribus 20:27, 23 March 2014 (EST) (+1 Ariella)

If the mentee can build than more than 1 shrine, say they want to change mentors (if their old one quit etc), then yes a minimum requirement of time on together to be able to choose a new mentor, or dedicate it to their current for that week would be welcome. Maybe limit it to total of 7 weeks that a mentee/mentor meditate together (not necessarily consecutive weeks) and give a message that you can only change mentors once or twice so choose wisely--Porthos 06:48, 24 March 2014 (EST) (+1 Ariella)

I would like to come back the Beeginer Island, it was a very good idea for new people, and ask player too concentrate them self to this test--Kastou 07:48, 25 March 2014 (GMT+1) (+5! I heard lots of happy comments from actual new players for the island Ariella)

There was a different mentoring process in Tale 4 which seems to work well from my perspective as a newbie player. You had several choices to give mentoring tokens to people who help you and got more as you levelled, so you could spread the appreciation as you progressed. I vaguely remeber there being wells that grew the more mentor tokens were put in, so it was a visible indication of who was a good mentor or not. And yes, bring back newbie island! +1 Eimear)

• If we bring back Newbie Island can it be optional? It's really tedious for returning players.

IMAO Beginner Island was a process which could be done in less than 20 minutes for a returning player, so its not such a burdain compared to the benefit it brings to new players, so if complicated to implement an optian on this process, it does not mater. -1 Asnath

• Newbie island was a PITA to many, it meant someone had to be there watching it all the time. Also, T4 was gamed to hell. Everyone remembers how Teppy heaped fame on the first person to pass, those passes were bought as alts. Mentoring doesn't stop at just level 7, a lot of the people I taught in T4 were well past that. Removing the necessity of test participation to mentoring should also be done, I think Pluribus is onto something good here. I mean, how many people level 7+ know the {time command? Or that you can use /copy to copy the text in a window? Or that brickracks are the best way to prospect? Orrin

• • I actually liked pretty much every aspect of newbie island. I won't bother to go into details because it's the same reasons that many have already mentioned over the years. It would be nice though to remove the ferry construction element from the setup though as this was probably the thing that most aggravated people in my opinion. - Tribisha

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)

• Please, please, please, don't mess with spousal warps. I can understand not having it on some events. We've been penalized already on phoenix runs, I think that's punishment enough. There will be plenty of Ibis that people will all get them at one point, same thing with cicadas. There are times when people don't EVEN run to reported sightings or have too many cicadas. I don't think spousal warp should be blamed on losing out on tests. (--blondie, march 22, 2014)I agree fully with you blondie - march 24, '14 +1Jaylenaeybarre +1 tehm (+1 Ariella)

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. --Pluribus

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 --Eimear (blondie +1) (Nissim +1)

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)+3 Jaylenaeybarre, Porthos , Darkfyre

This test just doesn't seem like a test, at least from what I've seen. Basically, the phoenixes are quite expensive, and so only high-level established players can build one. That's fine, Architecture needs an advanced test, but the the problem is that you just build a phoenix (you only need 1) and you pass at the end of the week, no fanfare or challenge really, sort of like a Test of Towers where the tower is expensive but you are guaranteed 100% if you build it. There may be a slight amount of competition in the initial weeks of the test opening, but that 's really all. To rebalance this test, only 1 person should pass per week (not 3) and the phoenix races should occur MUCH less often, only once a week or even less often really.

Test of Khefre’s Children

I have been struggling with getting through this Test all tale, mostly because I badly misinterpreted the scoring process for Level 3 and in trying to work it out for myself have ended up competing against just about everyone trying to get aggregate score higher in the lower levels.

Would it be possible to make the scoring for Level 3 simpler and tied to player votes for the beetle’s qualities rather than also being tied to the player who is exhibiting the beetle? An emphasis on artistic merit would be in the spirit of the test. Not sure how to control for block voting in collusion though. - Cate

• I like this suggestion however I still do think that it needs to be a beetle that is a descendant of the beetle that won in the previous rounds. Maybe the scoring on the beetle can simply be wiped clean from round to round but it is given some special genetic flag that gets transferred from beetle to beetle, which is unique to the avatar's hash code etc That way you can have generations of beetles that all come from the original winner, which only count for you, which can then compete in the next round but on equal footing as those around it. -Tribisha

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)

• I think it's mean to have buildings built during building rounds disappear. Some people don't get very far into cartouche rounds and only get a handful (if lucky) of cartouche buildings. You would be, in fact, penalizing people who don't reach high levels of cartouche. Isn't cartouche mean enough? You also can't salvage cartouche buildings. I can't remember for sure if the owner can but i believe they are not dpa-able, at least. Note: cartouche is not an arch test and having the buildings stay after you build is part of the reward of doing cartouche. (blondie-- march 24, 2014)

• let us keep the cartouche buildings! they are a nice deco in your garden - btw yes they are salvable by the owner, but it has nothing to do with your 'high' level, but with your salvage level - so it is even possible for a lowlevel player to get a high salvage level (Jaylenaeybarre-- march 24, '14)

• Build cartouches from previous tellings, like all-star cartouche rounds. Also, having more events/contests where everyone can build cartouche buildings. I think that's worked out very nicely when it's been done. If it were done more often more people would have decorations they could add to their homes. (blondie-- march 24, 2014)

• Nobody has problems with the building rounds but many don't like the voting rounds. Cartouche is not an Architecture test and the voting rounds are its very essence. However, if a huge alliance is formed the players out of the alliance don't stand a chance. There is a simple solution that keeps the essence and gives a survival chance to everybody: after a building round, the player that made the biggest building would would become "safe" for one round (similar to having the immunity idol of the TV show Survivor), not being shown in the voting list, with the system randomly deciding the "safe" player in case of a tie. The members of a powerful alliance still have the possibility to eliminate the others but now they would need in each building round to make one of their members overbuild everybody else in order, making their task more complex. (Sabuli -- April 24 2014)

That's a neat idea, but I'd suggest a limit on it - either the same person can't get immunity twice in a row (despite still able to build big to prevent anybody else getting it), or no restrictions but nobody can get immunity in the next-to-last building round. Without one of those restrictions or something along those lines, somebody significantly wealthier than the rest of their group would never have to face a single vote. (Ringer)

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) +4 (+3 Ariella not like we don't run enough even with swimming, heard too many new players quit over that) Jaylenaeybarre,tehm,Asnath,merek Nissim

I agree, and why not just make oyster catching part of Safari and remove or simplify the whole pearl thing. --Nemoder

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)

• I don't agree, as it is now it keeps trading for those cutted gems into the game (btw I can't cut all them either) it's a skill like blacksmithed stuff, some are experts, others moderated and most can't do any gem - anyone has the choice to try it (Jaylenaeybarre-- march 24, '14) +1 Asnath

Test of the Sphinx

A mythological Sphinx guards a liminal boundary (like between life and death, childhood and adulthood) and offers a challenge, which when incorrectly answered results in punishment or retribution, or even death.

Although it would be difficult to incorporate all those elements in a Test, there are a few things I found have not worked particularly well in the T6 Test. For example, it can take forever to cycle through the banks of riddles entered by the players, both in evaluation and to answer. If there could be a filter that removes riddles that make it to ‘noble’, so that you can only evaluate or answer riddles that are still trying to get to ‘noble’, then that might streamline things.

Enhancements: What do you think? A random ‘noble’ riddle from the pool of those filtered out of active evaluations is posed to all who enter a riddles into the Sphinx as a challenge. If there are no noble riddles (ie. in the beginning) then there could be a default, or no challenge made. Those who get the answer wrong would be punished in some way – maybe required to offer up something from current inventory before entering their riddle. Those who get it right are given something low value as a reward into inventory. Would make interacting with the Sphinx more dynamic! - Cate

A change easy to implement: instead of two options, three options (evaluate my riddles, answer my common riddles, answer my noble riddles) making the common riddles more accesible and less "lost" in the ocean of noble riddles. (Sabuli)+1 Jaylenaeybarre

If the probability of a riddle to appear is ponderated (inverse proportional to the amount of times it has appeared) the problem of the riddles that appear again and again would be reduced (Sabuli).

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, march 23rd, 2014)

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) (+1 Eimear) (+1 Ariella in WOW the red light/yellow light/green light in archeology is nice)

The shadows on frogs were a client bug with the rendering order. (The bug made anything that was invisible have a shadow, and yielded a lot of complaints from players about "clicking on the frogs and getting credit" when there was no frog there... (Silt spawners are an example of these, they are invisible unless the world is in builder mode) That client bug also reduced client speed and so that bug will not be re-introduced. --Pluribus 14:30, 24 March 2014 (EST)

Understood. Anything visual you could think of would improve these tests. Silden has a good suggestion I think. Thanks. (Eimear)

There are dowsing rods in the game as well as other instruments (even braking slate to find marble could be considered as such) that can be constructed to find elusive items and resources within the game. I'm a little hesitant to suggest an instrument for making it too easy to locate the items but maybe some kind of object that at least aids in 1. Alerting the player visually (through chat or optional popup) that there is something nearby, and 2. indicating a direction in a way that is no different to rotating the camera to hear the sound from a different angle. Much like with the broken slate example, it uses up resources (albeit a cheap but annoying to gather resource) that through methodical investigation can pinpoint the location of the frog (in that case) or get you on the correct path to the cicadas etc Ultimately it's about triangulation to find the source and whether it be an audible or visual indicator is not really relevant at the end of the day. - Tribisha 11:57AM, 19 August 2014 (GMT+10)

Test of the Safari

Would be fun to add feature to do extended safari, similiar to gaining speed points. Each additional strength point beyond 7 would take x of each animal ^ (Current Strength-7). Also, hinges on changes to limit max chocolate+herb stacking to around +21 on a stat (in early game to dowse for metals)--Porthos 08:14, 24 March 2014 (EST)

--I'd second the points beyond 7 suggestion, but am ambivalent to the herb stacking cap. tehm +1 Jaylenaeybarre (+1 Ariella)

Darkest Night Test

Let us have the option to discard a list, like we can do with ritual tattoo (just go to another ubody) or like the banquet : You can obtain a new list from each UBody once/week - the week resets when passes are run. Also let us do more lists (for those who want) just like the ritual tattoo - aka possibility of 28 lists, just need new mushrooms (sofar only 35 ingame now) - but we would still need at least 35 different mushrooms to pass the test - getting all 49 could be another achievement (Jaylenaeybarre-- march 24, '14)

--Second for being able to scrap a list (Darkest Night or Ritual Tattoo) you're finding too difficult, but ambivalent on adding more mushrooms. I'd like more ways to get insight into how mushrooms spawn rather than just finding other mushrooms. tehm

• I think it would be nice to add mushrooms, maybe that would allow us to, similarly to ritual tattoo, pick and choose which mushrooms we hunt for. More mushrooms could be used for cooking or chemistry, so i think that could benefit the game. Mushroom spawn is about doing research, ecology, finding patterns which could be used as part of the test. Being able to get more clues from the devs about those spawns could be a good idea but having to do more research shouldn't prevent us from getting new shrooms. We haven't had new shrooms for a while, it sounds like something to look forward to. (blondie, march 26, 2014) +2 Porthos, Asnath

Test of the Funeral Temple

Couldn't we use the fishscales here too? could even ask for 7 different colors to open up the test and then use at least 7 different colors, like the raeli tiles to be able to pass the test?

Also in egypt there were certain rituals when one was about to be buried: with some everyday objects and food (for the less rich ones) and bread, fruit, amulets - aka gems? and furniture (for the richest ones ) for the afterlife

• food: could be anything we have now: vegggies, water, dates, eggs, could even be animals
• amulets: certain gems
• beer

could put it in the principles to have at least 7 different of the fruit/veggie/water/gems?

or put it to pass the test: have to have at least 7 different fruit/veggie and 7 different gems (small, med or large)

(Jaylenaeybarre-- march 25, '14)

• Complex items were disallowed as it unbalances a lot of the test. Think of the boom in test scores if you allowed unique wines in for example.

Test of Demipharaoh

In addition to keeping the logs as was recently voted on, I feel that at some point voting in more DemiPharaohs does nothing to protect the players from griefing but actually would increase the risk of it since you're giving ban power to more people who might not use it responsibly. That hasn't been an issue this tale, but there are examples from previous tales. Furthermore, as we got into late tale, several people got into the final rank unopposed which guaranteed their election without the input from Egypt as a whole. Hence, I recommend having a "No candidate" option available at every election so at some point Egyptians could as a whole decide that we do not need a new DP this month.

--GHawkins 17:06, 26 March 2014 (PST)

Voting should be anonymous, but with "Soandso voted for Thisplayer" posted in chat and at the voting booth, it's impossible to stay anonymous. If you want a player to know you voted for them, you can always send them a tell or chat.

--Darkfyre - 7/20/14

Test of Banquet

Difficult menus are part of the challenge, but I don't think that running around between different universities to replace menus that are completely IMPOSSIBLE is a useful part of this test. Unless we've all missed something, date beer was literally impossible this telling, yet many menus continued to call for it. Rare ingredients and flavour combinations seemed to show up frequently on menus, but perhaps the test should not call for a beer type until someone has managed to successfully brew it at least once.

--GHawkins 17:20, 26 March 2014 (PST)

• Banquet IS a body test, though. Like tattoo we have chances of rerolling menus and getting other menus from different Unis. Some beers may also take time to find ...yeast spots for? couldn't you just make an argument for that because something doesn't exist then it shouldn't be in a menu? You could say the same for wines people don't have yet, or for fish people haven't caught? Banquet is a pretty high level test, so there should be work needed to get to it. You need 7 perception for it, that's pretty advanced. Banquet is also a very beneficial event (21 players partake in a meal with 7 of each stat for 8 real hours). It seems difficulty in having to go over different menus balances that out. --blondie 00:28, 27 March 2014 (EST)

Test of Festivals

Similar to Banquet, date beer has been called for in several Festivals which has required those players to reset their requirements. It's one thing if that's an intended feature, but I don't personally feel that impossible requests add anything of value to the test.

--GHawkins 17:20, 26 March 2014 (PST)

• Festival is meant to be a test that takes a while to pass. You can always reset your reqs; it only takes doing another festival and you only have to wait a day or two to do that festival again. In Hathor, VP date beer is only one of 8 possible beers. Osiris is harder festival because we need more reqs for each beer but there's still a lot of possible combinations and this telling people have already managed to make some beers that were not possible or not found a lot earlier in the telling. We've had impossible fruit of earth spirits in past tellings and yet Ra festivals are successful. Honeys and citruses for Bastet and Isis have to be planted and found, some are very rare. Yet festivals still get passed all the time and there's cycles of passes/participation. I think some of the challenges like these, where people have to find other options, make the passes feel more worthy. --blondie 00:49, 27 March 2014 (EST)
• One issue people have about festivals, aside from needing 100% satisfaction for 7 gods rituals, is having conflicting time zones. People may never be around for the EST US 3pm time on Sat/Sun (though that festival time has been around since t1, I remember). A good idea might be to find a way for people to share %ages even though everyone can't be online at the same time. I've no new suggestions but people have done extra festivals, mini-festivals. Some of that has caused extra use of limited supplies, some has caused player burn out. So maybe there's a way that to try to make that less difficult. --blondie 00:49, 27 March 2014 (EST) +1 --VarLetha 20:33, 20 July 2014 (EST)
• After the first wave of festivals, the test becomes increasingly harder. This is because less participants are active. To increase activity I would suggest a bonus to Humble Priest reward, if festivals has been completed. For example, the seed bonus could be used more than once a day (possibly yielding 3 seeds), or Mushroom bonus could be given to more than one person. The hope is that a reward for participating in a festival for your given god would yield a higher festival participation reward. Another possibility could be having a completed participant count as 2% (these nuances could be voted on). Koinif 13:29 04/26/2014 (PST)

Test of Pyrotechnics

Is it possible to bring back the T2 way of scheduling pyroshows - they were scheduled in rotating timezones & regions - there were lots of shows then, so every few weeks you could entera show instead of now, just waiting until enough people sign up - Murtha

Suggestion: schedule a fixed pyroshow every 1st saturday of the month, 1 on european time , 1 on us time - if we want more shows we have to trigger them ourselves Jaylenaeybarre

(+3 Ariella on both of the above comments)

A small suggestion or two for portable star labs. Please make them only obtainable for people that are on or have passed the Test of Pyrotechnics. Also, if they could be reclaimable after a certain period of time, or if they could be at least part of a DPA law, that would help a lot in the beginning of the tale. (So many people pick them up and don't know how to use them, or use them as decorations. Its tough when we need more star choices early on in the tale.) - Avanya June 4, 2014

Another suggestion;

• Disallow users from obtaining more than one portable star lab ever (like Rose of Ra or Sea Lily) or limit players to having one out at a time.
• Have a timetable for turn in before they disappear or are removed from inventory. All too often I see rows and rows of portable star labs just sitting around unused. The purpose for these is to introduce new stars, not be put on display as trophies. Make a new timer label; "This Portable Star Lab is good for X more days"
• Judging Pyro shows are too basic. There are no categories for showmanship, color, use of stars, etc. Too often players make a bunch of the cheapest stars and overload the mortar with the same star for high star count. But it's the same star for every phase of the firework. While some people include a variety of color with less stars that are just as impressive. I suggest that there be three categories for players to judge; Color, Showmanship (how many stars were launched and the launching patterns), and Overall presentation. Then use all three scores to create an overall score. It's too bad that the "Ohhhh Ahhh" factor of 2500 plain white stars out scores 750 colorful stars that are showed just as well. With this scoring system; the 2500 white stars score well in the showmanship category, but score poorly in the color category and the player gets an average score.

-- Darkfyre

Leavened Bread

I was really challenged and I ended up enjoying it far more than I expected. It is pretty intimidating to a new player though and the effort required to gather the materials and coordinate the group makes this as much a leadership test as a worship test. And then after all that effort, that was it. I was wondering if there can be more of a permanent result for those that do get through the test.

Maybe something like conferring the ability to upgrade a kitchen to bake bread that confers temporary stats boosts when shared –requiring invocations/ emotes during the process to keep the worshipful element present. Seems counter-intuitive that with low player numbers the only way to find an alt of the right ‘age’ and discipline in the time frame for sharing the hold bread is to create one for the purpose, but with lower player numbers it was pretty well the only option. - Cate

Humble Priests

Had mentioned under a suggestion for Test of Festivals, that I thought it would be nice to have an additional bonus effect for HP when participating in a festival after completing test of festivals. For an example, I'll use the god Set and his Humble Priest bonus:
A healthy amount of the pyramids seem to have been completed by the time players are done festivals. Set's bonus permits a one-time burst to move blocks within 10 cords. Under this additional bonus a player (having completed all festivals, and HP, and choosing Set) would have their 'Set Bonus' increased if they participated in a Test of Festivals for Set. This additional bonus would push the blocks farther, my suggestion would be a focused burst (reducing 10 cords down to 7 cords) but all blocks pushed would move a full 7 cords in the chosen direction.

The rest listed here are conceptual ideas, and certainly, welcome balancing (or other comments and/or ideas re: HP bonus for players who have passed test of festivals, to encourage continued participation). Please use discussion tab for this debate. Thank you Koinif 05/1/2014

• Remember only 1 god can be chosen, from a limited list for each player, and only after completing test of Humble Priests. These bonuses would only be permitted with 100% completion.

Table of Suggestions:

god	Default	Festival Bonus Suggestion	Comment
Amun	1 seed / day	7 times / day (3.5 hr delay)	Massive amounts of seeds seem to be needed later in the tale
Geb	2 X Bricks	7 X Bricks for upto 77 uses	This would rush the next 539 bricks made
Hathor	10 wine / bottle	Twice / day for the next 7 days	Permitting 2 bottles blessed for a week
Heket	Default 2 X Shroom Harvest	Blessing available until 7 people blessed	Send forth shroom minions.
Maat	2 X Camel milk / Honey	7 X Milk for next 7 pens fed	Balance milk excess by introducing cheese
Nut	Day / Night switch	Next 2 times used produces double thistle	Upto a week (bonus lasting 7 minutes after 1st harvest
Ptah	2 X Clay Harvest	7 X Clay and guaranteed flint for next 7 harvests	Would suggest granting upto 2 players
Set	1 movement of blocks within 10	7 movement of blocks within 7	Focused shove!
Sobek	2 X Leather / Oil	7 X next 7 slaughtered	Slaughtering sheep / camel *suggestion*
Tayet	20% Bonus for Towers	Additional 7% / Tower Built	Example 10% claimed = 12% or 19% w/ Festival
Tefnut	+2 day duration kitchen	X 7 (+14 day duration)	Good way to spend expensive ingredients
Thoth	guaranteed pappy seed	First 7 stacks yield 2 X seed	Have this one & think I've discovered bonus

• Bold represents suggestions for unknown HP blessings
  
• Note: I know some of these seem excessive, and it is important to remember, it will be a good 1/2 way through the tale before players complete Test of Festivals. This is designed to encourage players to participate in festivals, by having an incentive for their chosen god from Humble Priests test. I welcome a debate about this on the "Discussions" tab on the top. Feel free to make a section there & help me find a balance to this, as I feel it is a great concept. If you are involved in festivals, and have a suggestion for a "minimum number of participants" or another way to prevent abuse, please make comments on the discussion tab.

Darkest Night

It could be a way to get more constitution points after passing the test. Random lists of first 6, then 7, then 8 shrooms to find and eat (that can be discarded and retaken in other U.Body like the tattoo lists) - Sabuli

Obelisk

When meditating on obelisk, you are told what the largest obelisk is for each type in "Egypt". However, it's actually the largest obelisk of each type in your current region.

Replace the word "Egypt" with the name of the current region when meditating on obelisks.

Upside: Architects in more densely populated regions are more likely to realise that they are more likely to succeed in building an obelisk if they check various regions.

Downside: Architects in sparsely populated regions might not like to have "outsiders" coming in just to build an obelisk and then swanning off.

Possible upside of the downside: Sparsely populated regions might have a few more visitors and a bit more activity, especially early in the Tale. --VarLetha 19:56, 29 June 2014 (EST)

Dancing Waters

Please institute a warning if a player is building/moving their Dancing Waters Mechanism too close to another fountain. Ground clutter prevents many fountains from being seen when building and only once its built is the "to close" warning shown. If the materials were plentiful and easy to come by, it normally wouldn't be a problem. But a three-output gearbox, 100 concrete, and 40 glass pipes aren't particularly easy materials to come by to just tear down and rebuild.
--Darkfyre 8/18/14

Improvement Ideas, Suggestions, and Requested Changes

Game Pace

It'll be obvious that Jaby likes the early game vastly more than the endgame. To that end, I've comments/suggestions about game pacing. Others, obviously, may disagree, but their opinions are to be disregarded since such opinions are incorrect.

• Shoot for a short T7. The joy/excitement in this game is the set of changes that occur in the World. No, it's not fun using flimsy brickracks, but it's like hitting yourself on the head: it feels great when you stop. (Jaby)

• Stretch out (somehow) the "Research Race" phase. Don't do it by just increasing required donations. I don't know how. You're the game designer. I just know that that's the phase of the game when Changes are Happening, and it's fun. Maybe make the Tech Tree less bushy? (Jaby)

• Revert many of the law-mandated game changes: Date gathering, resin gathering, to name two. No, I don't particularly like the stress of knowing others can gather as a result of my work, but see above about head-hitting. (Jaby)

• Invent a new "bottle neck", Mr. Game Designer. There are several in the early game, and they're quite fun. To name a couple: the Great Leather Bottleneck and the Great Silver Bottleneck. Invent another! Don't ask me what or how. I just play games then complain about them. (Jaby)

• I like a long tale so I can try one thing and work on it for a while, then have time to work on something else, etc. A short tale makes me feel in a huge rush when I play. I've heard other players quit because it felt like they were 'behind'. (Ariella)

Camp/Compound area protection

• I propose that there should be a building inhibitor in the cornerstone of a compound. There should be a default max radius from the point of the cornerstone that another player is prohibited from building in. The default max building prohibitor can be changed by the player and linked to the guild. If it is linked to the guild then the level of guild member can be included to build within that default max area. The max area building prohibition should be able to be minimized by the compound owner or if linked to the guild by an elder of the guild.

This would stop griefing by keeping beehives and other junk away from a players immediate vicinity. It would also allow friends and guild members to build nearby. It would more evenly space out compounds so that lag would not happen due from too compound-dense an area. (Ariella)

Perhaps tie the construction cost to the crowding percentage. Multiply the base construction cost by the crowding percentage. That would allow crowding if builders/guilds are willing to pay the price. --ph47f3 18:07, 5 July 2014 (EST)

Camp Decoration

I spent some time playing Farmville, to see what it was like. It's really a "Camp Decoration" game. I then spent some time trying to think of how ATITD could harness this apparent interest in that activity for profit! I know that there's a "Camp Decoration" service available from GM's, but surely people want to fool around with things themselves. I'm trying to think of things that are cheap:

• Graphically, since for it to be "pretty" it has to be visible, and that means from a long distance. Cool features that swap in right in front of you kinda suck.

• Artistically, as I assume that graphic artists cost money. Unless you can find one who aspires to "starving artist."

I'm sure that many players would find this interesting. Indeed, I see many camps where folks have spent lots of time trying to make things look nice. People are willing to participate in that truly nasty Test (Cartouche) just so that they get to build a nice building.

How about a list of things that seem "cheap" but would let someone spiff up their camp? I imagine that these can be built using in-game resources, or simply purchased with real money.

• Simple walls. How about a very simple fence/wall? I'm thinking just a rectangular box with a choice of textures on it. Can use this to build enclosures, pathways, etc. Hopefully, this is cheaper graphically than the fences, so they can have a quite long view distance. (Jaby)

• A small-sized obelisk, not useful for any Test. You've already got the graphics for it, and someone who wanted a lot of them might pay for the convenience of not messing with gathering all the resources, construction sites, etc. Not all of those are cheap graphically, though. (Jaby)

• A pathway on the ground. This might involve modifying terrain, which in turn might be expensive in Dev time. I dunno. But, it's be way cool, I think. (Jaby)

• I had proposed making flower pots (that one could also paint) where herbs (finally another use for herb seeds) and flowers could be planted in. I don't know if fish scales could be utilized on the pots for colored patterns like mosaics. (Ariella)

• Why not let wind chimes and reali mosaics be built outside as well as inside? --ph47f3 18:07, 5 July 2014 (EST)

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. (Would say this is the most needed improvement)

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. +1 tehm

Allow the higher quality fishing rods to be craftable by players. Maybe tie it to fly fishing level and carving level. (This is probably the 2nd most needed improvement)+3 Jaylenaeybarre, tehm, Asnath

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)

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) --Pluribus, 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)

Raeli Ovens

• The ownership feature of Raeli Ovens appears to have introduced a miracle of physics - the instant porting of lots of tiles. A player can have thousands of tiles delivered straight to their temple or warehouse if they start the oven, head to their temple/warehouse, and have a second person stop the oven at the desired time. The oven will then port the tiles straight to the player standing next to their temple/warehouse. Let's have these tiles stay in the machine, with the Take menu displaying Owners tiles and Last Baked tiles. The Owners tiles are only accessible by owners of the oven, and the Last Baked Tiles would hold the bakers tiles (either accessible to all, or have the bakers tiles become the owners tiles if the oven is baked by a new player) Silden 17:32, 23 March 2014 (EST)

• • When an oven is owner percentage set, Player 1 starts an oven, Player 2 stops the oven, tiles go into player 1's inventory. However player 1 doesn't need to be near oven. Player 1 can be anywhere, such as at their Funerary Temple on the other side of Egypt. The tiles will still go into Player 1's inventory. This causes huge amounts of tiles to instantly transport themselves across the map. Player 1 can start off with 500 charcoal, go to South Egypt and start up 10 ovens, then head back to their temple in River Plains. Player 2 then has nothing in their inventory, and goes to each of the ovens stopping them at the desired time. Player 1, who is in River Plains at the funerary temples then has the tiles instantly pop in their inventory. So, with no food, or anything else, they can easily have tens of thousands of tiles transported from the ovens to their funerary temples. Silden 08:54, 24 March 2014 (EST)
  • I'm sorry, I completely misunderstood that you were talking about A BUG. I haven't used public or partly public use ovens for at least 6 months. I never had what you are reporting happen. Right, this completely sounds like a miracle of physics, even for the virtual atitd world, it sounds like it's not working as intended. It's possible others are having the same issue. This should be reported to Pluribus in game through a dev call. I think you should do that, if you haven't. Pluribus has been asking us to report bugs that we find. --blondie 08:02, 28 March 2014 (EST)

• imo nothing needs to be changed here, as blondie stated (Jaylenaeybarre-- march 24, '14 I do think permissions on ovens are set up (when they work as intended by the devs) correctly, though. I don't think that needs to be changed, aside from bugs occurring.--blondie 08:02, 28 March 2014 (EST)

• I'd like to see something that slows the clay rush on these- change the required Oven materials to something people aren't already preparing for so early on. tehm 03:10, 26 March, 2014 (EST)

• Right now there is ovens with over 100k tiles sitting in them unburned, its completely unrealistic. I'd like to suggest that Raeli Ovens are completely overhauled. The research costs remain much the same. However, instead of resin to build them, they take resin to color the clay. With each resin type giving a different color scale (maybe scrambled on a player basis, so not all players can make all colors but we can make over 80-90% of them, to enable trade). I would like to see them have a VERY limited hopper size to start, possibly 500 tiles max, upgradable to 1000/2000/4000. With a small reduction in the amount of resin needed to fire the oven, if starting costs are 25cc and 100 resin to fire, upgraded costs may be 50cc/150resin for the 1000 hopper, 75cc/200resin for the 2000 hopper, 100cc/250resin. All the fancy % for burning on existing ovens would be removed, and they would be treated like a normal building, ie able to be set to personal, public or guilded. The build areas for the ovens should probably be halved, enabling more ovens to be built closer together. I realise that this may make tests like aqueduct harder but I think in a way that will encourage more people to work together. (Pluribus if your willing to consider this I am happy to work out color sets/rarities ect and link them with resins maybe grouped as common, uncommon, rare, exotic.) Kyline 5 Apr 2014

• Tile Transport. With 30+ ovens we are facing a trouble of moving millions of tiles from across Egypt with no transport other than by hand, even if we could carry 25k/ pop this would be hundreds of trips. Hot air balloons should at least 'move' after takeoff if the pilot was unburdened. I think it would be nice if balloons would hold multiple times the carry weight of the pilot, why not seven times! :). Even if it required both ... that the pilot not exceed his maximum weight entering the balloon & that if a temporary strength boost wears off, he should still be able to move the balloon to a destination before unloading. Ultimately, it would be nice to have an in-game way of transporting tiles in mass from an oven back to (say a guild) a destination without unending trips. Koinif 26 Apr '14

Keyboard Shortcuts

Can we stop the spam of some keyboard shortcuts. The main culprit is the Greenhouses, you press H to harvest a few greenhouses, but get a main chat full of You harvest 100 gress. No grass to harvest. No grass to harvest. No grass to harvest. No grass to harvest. You harvest 100 gress. No grass to harvest. No grass to harvest. No grass to harvest. No grass to harvest.... you get the idea. Silden 17:32, 23 March 2014 (EST)

Interface Improvements

• Can the Project and Skills menus be better organized? Divide them into subgroups based on what schools they were learned from or at least alphabetize the lists. +1 kyline (Pluribus, I feel pasionately about menuing, and would be happy to make suggestions or develop something like a mock up of how I think it should look in consultation with other players. If you are willing to streamline the menu's let us know and I would be willing set up another wiki page to work on it kyline).
  • At least make it alphabetized.
• Can we have a customizable hotbar that we can assign frequently used actions (such as planting a specific seed or some skill) to? I know you can pin menus but they still become quite cluttered and it's easy to hit the wrong one. -Nemoder 30 March 2014
• Herbs as a 'grouped' item, like 'Herb Seeds' or 'Fishing Lures' to keep inventory looking keen. Koinif 4/10/2014, +1 Jaylenaeybarre, +1 Jaby, +1 Dawdles
  • Make insects grouped as well --Dawdles
• 'How Many' option. One way this could be done is with a command /howmany <number for default>. Then if a player is using a number other than 1 or MAX often, the interface would once again be your friend. I would suggest if this option is used, it would uncheck "Default to Max" under Interface Options -> Other (section). Then when it is unchecked (or toggled twice) it would reset the 'How Many' value to 1. Examples for use: Pappy Tanks / Loading forges with cc.Koinif 4/10/2014 (after thinking more about this /setmax may be better) 5/21/2014 Koinif
• F8 have a 3rd function that is the same as F8 being hit twice, only all the way zoomed in. Koinif 4/26/2014 +1 Jaby
  • As an alternative, have all of the cameras remember their last zoom factor. (Jaby)
• Changing chat could have an option: 'newly selected chat tab starts "closed" by default'. This would prevent hot-key keystrokes from entering as typos to newly selected tabs. I would suggest that this option be next to, or near, the option 'Closed chat channels remain visible'. Koinif 4/26/2014
• When stashing / taking beetles from locker there really is no need to ask "How Many" since each one has a unique number. In the case there are more than one, it could be clicked twice. Just feel it is redundant to ask how many (of that one unique beetle). It may be helpful to have "Put/Take all Males/Females" Koinif 4/26/2014
• MAX on Flax Hammocks shouldn't mean 200 all the time (for wheat), it should mean "load the MAX I have in my inventory of the item I selected" - like other chests/buildings.
• Pressing J on a pottery wheel in use shouldn't pop up a new message.
• While in menu, mouse scroll should scroll down the list intead of zooming. 19/06/14 Safa
• Notification sounds for new chat message 22/06/14 Safa
• Titles that contain information should update themselves every other second. For example: Chariot Stop's Counter 22/06/14 Safa
• Please fix the "Edit my info" text box so that up/down arrows don't clear the text from the box. And a personal notepad for private notes would good to have as well. Darkfyre

Trading Posts

Let's change the trading post to allow someone to take what they have to sell, and then indicate what they are willing to take for it. Then, if someone matches what has been asked for, then the item for sale will unlock. The interface should have two boxes, one for quantity, one for resource. I take my 9k hatchet to the trading post, it then brings up a window asking me what I want for it, I put in 100 into the quantity, I type in Steel into the second box, then if someone brings a resource matching exactly that string, and the exact quantity, then it will take the 100 steel, put it into the trading post, and release the 9k hatchet. The seller then just pops along to the trading post, and take out their steel. Whilst some people want the interaction (and the acro, signatures etc), some don't. Not everyone plays at the same time, 8pm in Europe could be 2pm in the US and 8am in Australia. Not everyone is going to be around at the same time to effect the trade, and The Goods don't sell everything (particularly cut gems) Silden 17:32, 23 March 2014 (EST)

• Note : The goods can sell everything that exists in game, people just need to ask The Goods admin to add missing items - Asnath
• "If the item appears in your items list with a ":" and a quality or other description after, then The Goods does not trade it." (Source) - The Goods don't trade in cut gems, hatchets, carpentry blades, metal shovels, flax seeds, resin, paint... Silden 16:06, 14 April 2014 (EST)

Long Range Ferry

• Once constructed, a Long Range Ferry shouldn't de-construct to it's basic components. It should remain as a Long Range Ferry (with an appropriate Weight/Bulk), in the same way an Airship does. Also, it shouldn't cost you a construction site each time you want to place it somewhere. Once constructed, there should be no further construction site costs. Silden 17:42, 23 March 2014 (EST)

• Controlling the way the ferry is placed so you can ride it through bodies of water should be set up better. Sometimes it takes ages to be able to place a ferry and you constantly get a message that you can't go anywhere (blondie, march 24, 2014)

• Maybe have a consumable "Take a Compass Reading" option. This would take the same components as a construction site, but would put a marker on the ground that indicates a place were a Long Range Ferry can be built that will actually connect to "something". The marker would be temporary and disappear after 60 seconds, similar to the show compass "N" image. The "connect to something" would not allow you to designated which "something" you will go to. ex: from several possible islands, the marker only shows you will go to 1 of them, not the island you select. If there's no buildable area within a TBD distance, you get a message to that effect. The TBD distance might be +10/-10 meters from where are you standing for a 20 meter area. -- Zhukuram 09:43, 2 May 2014 (EST)

This object is too far away

If it's possible, then please can we reduce the number of "This object is too far away" in respects to situations where it is not appropriate. For example, when you are mining, you should be able to reach all ores, not just some of them. Nothing worse than standing at ore 1, and not being able to select ore 10. Same with trees, there are some occasions when you are the high of your avatar away from a tree, and have that message, then find you can click on a different tree that is 5 times the height of your avatar with no problems. Silden 17:42, 23 March 2014 (EST)

For really big structures, especially pyramids, you can be standing within the footprint of the building but it is still "too far away". I guess because in the code, the pyramid is located on a single point rather than taking up a rectangular area. Would it be possible for these very large buildings to have a rectangular footprint? Ideally I would like to walk up to the edge of a pyramid and click on it to select it. Or maybe just expand the range of "click-ability" for these large buildings. --VarLetha 01:27, 24 June 2014 (EST)

Bypassing the Level System

Might there be a way, perhaps a tech or skill, for someone to automatically set their level high enough that they would be able to progress as if the system wasn't there? It could be a costly skill or tech or even something only available to people with a Tale or three under their belts. -Bri

• Remove the level system entirely! *raises pitchfork* Honestly it was the most annoying change ever devised. Want to make a marble tub? You better get grinding out those stupid tests then! - Orrin
  • I have to agree with this. The level system gave some new players (but certainly not all) some direction and purpose but beyond that only serves as a roadblock to those who want to play the game in their own individual ways. The game, in some respects, has become all about levels not about the tests themselves. This is not a MMORPG in the traditional sense but I think levels were added to try and appeal to the mainstream and for the aforementioned newbie purpose. I see no compelling reason why levels should remain in the game at all. Tribisha 12:13PM 19 August 2014 (GMT+10)

• But one can always ask someone else to come make them, but can understand the fact that someone wants to build their own stuff and don't want to rely on others

Overlapping Fauna

Can we do away with overlapping fauna and trees? So irritating when you have to be pixel perfect to reach that thorn bush that is inside the hawthorn tree, or two trees that are on the exact same spot, and differ only by the direction of the bark. Silden 17:42, 23 March 2014 (EST)

This would require building a true collision system into the engine. It is unlikely time for T7... Granted it would prevent ANY building from overlappying, (Like greenhouses, flax beds, vineyards, etc... Also unknown what the added collision detection calculations would do to the engine speed. I will add it to the "play with" list though --Pluribus 20:15, 23 March 2014 (EST)

Peaky hills - Terrain too steep

Some places have peaky hills that generate a terrain too steep message which can be ultra annoying when you think "it's a puddle, why are you saying I can't walk through a lake?". Is it possible to have these hills traversable with care. By this, I mean have it cost a bit in endurance/strength, so that after a footstep or more, you get the message that it was "too much for you, rest a bit", and leave the terrain too steep messages for the terrain that really is a mountain rather than a molehill. Silden 17:42, 23 March 2014 (EST)

Last Jug

Please can we get rid of the "You can't use your last Jug". I know it's a catch-22 (Can't get clay without a jug, can't get a jug without a clay), but those messages when building is far more likely than someone using their last Jug (let them trade for one if they do get into that situation, or give us a Pottery Refresher Course for a cost like 500 wood, where another jug is provided to them) Silden 17:52, 23 March 2014 (EST)

This one has to stay on by default. The GMs had to reimburse MANY a newbie because they donated their last jug to the university and complained bitterly. I would consider a popup warning the first time warning you that NO reimbursements of any kind will be given... (and make you type "NO TRAINING WHEELS" to acknowledge it...) then FLAG the account so the GMs wont help you... --Pluribus 20:10, 23 March 2014 (EST)

A possible to solution to this would be to change the free jug to another type of water storage. Some form of water-skin perhaps? It could also a crafting assignment given to the new player, which they would then be able to carry on with them without the fear of accidentally donating it or otherwise unintentionally destroying it. Likewise as a crafted item it could also have a potential to wear out and become useless, or depending on the type of material leak, or have some sort of other downside that would limit its overall usefulness, but still allow a water source solution. --Kartal 20:10, 23 March 2014 (EST)

Couldn't you just create a Preference for this that has you warned by default, but advanced players could turn off the message?tehm 3:13, 26 March, 2014 (EST) (+3 Excellent and simple idea Ariella)

Guild Storage

Some guilds need lots of storage, and end up with massive amounts of storage buildings to accommodate it. To reduce the clutter on the highway, can the guild-houses be "upgradable" to allow storage of anything. So for every 100 Boards, 1000 Bricks and 10 Cut Stone, the building can hold another 25,000 deben.

There are already several different storage buildings. Using the guildhall for extremely cheap storage rather than those makes no sense. --Pluribus 20:12, 23 March 2014 (EST)

This wasn't my idea, but if storage clutter is a concern, how about instead allowing multiple upgrades of warehouses buidling more shelves (Cost: 1000 Boards 25 Iron Strap 40 Mandibular Glue 40 Bolt) each time giving 50,000 more storage like the current 50k to 100k upgrade?--Porthos 07:31, 24 March 2014 (EST)

Insect Rarity Tweaks

As it stands in particular the last tiers of the crop insects (Snowberry Butterfly, Ruby Hornborrer, Corn Maggot, Roseswallowtail, Orchid Hopper and Dew Fly) are impossible to get in any quantity for fly tying skill. Some people have done 777,777 flax or 100k+ onions and not got a single one, as additonal data please see Thorn_Insect_Data so please consider an adjustment.

The tier 7 rarity (Toad Sawfly) for the livestock dwelling and (Feather Midge) herb dwelling may need to be slightly improved as well.--Porthos 06:03, 24 March 2014 (EST) +2 (Jaylenaeybarre-- march 24, '14), tehm 3:13, 26 March, 2014 (EST)

Unless we are missing something about how the game calculates which insect you get when you get one, a few math calculations can show it is basically impossible to get the rarest crop insects (the ones listed above, you might have to find 50000-100000 clutches to have a chance). I have a feeling that the RNG for ATID is not perfect either. For tree,water,herb,and livestock insects a rarity rate that doubles for each insect makes sense, because there are only 7 insects in each category. But crop insects have 14 types so they should not use the same increase in rarity. My suggestion is to have two tiers of crop insects: regular and rare. The regular tier would be 7 insects who have the same rarity values as their corresponding insects in the tree/water/herb/livestock categories. When you find clutch of crop insects, the game should calculate if you should receive a 'rare' insect instead of the regular tier (this could be a low chance, 7% or something). If that happens, you recieve one of the 7 'rare' tier insects instead, and those 7 could follow the same pattern as the other insect categories (1/2, 1/4, 1/8, 1/16, etc). In this case, the rarest crop insects would remain very uncommon but still be attainable by a determined player. --Blueshift

Rate of finding insects - it is too low for herb and livestock dwelling. The T5 rate was better, but generated too many insects in the other categories. Perhaps a compromise with the T6 rate?

Stat tweak it? +Per helps you find more bugs, +Foc helps you find rarer bugs.

More Interesting Compounds

As it currently stands the only difference between most compounds is general shape and what combination of walls and windows they use. As I figure, part of this is the lack of options available while the other half of the equation is the sometimes exorbitant cost of doing anything beyond the basic - especially on larger structures! As such, I might suggest linking the ability to do different upgrades directly to the Camp Decoration skill and then making those upgrades either free or very very cheap in order to encourage people to properly customize their compound. This could be combined with the 'TAKE MY MONEY!' option below with a few 'premium' floors and facades. --Bri

Can we bring back the "Paint" option on compound buildings ? IMO this was really nice looking --Asnath 17 April 2014 (EST)

• There used to be blueprints with more interesting selections for building compounds. Please do not limit the size so much either. And yes, able to paint them. Some people spent most of the game doing nothing but that. (Ariella)

Introduce a special compound type for Thought puzzles and works of Art. Functionally the same as a regular compound, but there is an option to change the cosmetic appearance of the compound to indicate what's inside. I understand that many Thought and Art structures must be built inside a compound because of rendering limitations, but it means that they might not be noticed by players running past. A different colour or construction would help to catch attention. There should be an extra cost for the changed appearance (paint, cut gems, treated boards?). --VarLetha 20:51, 20 July 2014 (EST)

TAKE MY MONEY!

Nobody wants ATITD to become Pay to Win with sold resources etc but the ability to go to a webstore and buy a) cornerstones and b) a KITTY would be awesome. Also, I am pleased the subscription may be dropping to $12 per month; if you offered 12 months for $100, I'd be inclined to buy that if I got something. I don't want something that's a pain in my rear ("Now you can paint your compound! You just need to accumulate 3,000 annoying resources and lean to mix paint!") but something like... a pair of statues, or clothing options, or a frog that hops around your CP or... umm I don't know actually but I am sure people will have suggestions. --Eimear

Longer term subscriptions are offered during the pre-order time generally... (I dont think that a telling has ever NOT had them once available.) They usually do come with some perks, (I need to see what has already been offered, that makes the decision easier for me :-) ) As for a store for the added things, it is very likely that I will do something like that, I just dont know how fleshed out that I can have it prior to the start of T7... --Pluribus 20:20, 23 March 2014 (EST)

Here is the info on 12 Month Prepay. Camp decoration is... meh, and has to be super cost-inefficient. I'd rather get a pack of decorations I could place and move myself, like I dunno... two lion statues and a six pack of un-breedable, unique flowers. And a camp frog! Or a wandering sheep! Or a staked camel for the lawn! (I really want a pet, can you tell?) --Eimear Can I second the pet frog? --StarGazeR (+1 blondie) Rabbits! --GHawkins

• It would be kind of fun to have random spawns of sheep. movable deco sounds difficult, though because it's something gm's do. It would be pretty cool if we could get to personalize our camps more with deco. Aww, "un-breedable...flowers" sounds a little bit sad because it's nice to share flowers and there are people who do amazing things with flower breeding.

• Gift subscriptions are something that maybe could be thought about. Many friends have helped others in giving a month of a game. An extension of that might be nice ( like the 3 month, 6 month, 12 month packages). This was part of the chat with Pluribus but I thought i'd add it here to make it more centralized.(blondie, march 23,2014)

• Honestly I'm a fan of being able to buy things in games, things that improve life but don't give a huge advantage. Right now when people want an advantage they buy it with mules, the advantage of mule(s) can be huge, especially when you consider things like offline chores and 2nd computers with macros! I dont' want to see people being able to buy resources but things like cornerstones, pets, maybe short term buffs?, camp decorations... imagine being able to buy a 7 end incense type buff early in the telling. It would be awesome esp in the smaller regions when getting enough people to dig is really hard (impossible!). Something I'd love to see considered is an ownership flag for controlling space, strictly limited.
  • I'd have to disagree with an early game 7 end incense buff being purchasable. That is quite the advantage, especially early on. I'd prefer whatever is sold be kept to cosmetics and entertainment. --Bri

• A monthly sub maybe what's required to keep the server on-line, but the fact is that there are loads of games that have Free-to-Play options (F2P). ATITD is a niche game but still needs to compete with F2P elsewhere. Perhaps this is the time to review options for different sorts of subscription.
  • Current Subscription Option: Month to Month, Quarterly, Annual
  • F2P Option: F2P Pure and F2P "Gold Level" with a purchase of some item(s).
    • F2P pure: unlimited access to L1-L5. No sub, no cornerstone, no tests other than what's available at L5. No advancement and no increase in stats other than what's available at L5. No Off-Line items. Cost is: Free.
    • F2P Gold: Allow a one time purchase of a single (1)cornerstone. Access to L1-L10 with tests include for those levels. Stats are +2 tiers max. Allow selection of one (1) offline item to be earned. Cost is: $40.00 one time fee.

The upgrade path from F2P to Subscription would enable all the features of Subscription

The downgrade path from Subscription to F2P Gold (because they bought a sub once) would strip that player of all items, titles, awards, etc that are L10+. Players re-subscribing would have to re-earn those missing items from scratch.

disclosure: without an F2P option I cannot afford to play ATITD. I would be OK with buying a single cornerstone, and 1 skill like blacksmithing or cooking (I'm terrible at both :) ). -- Zhukuram 13:42, 18 April 2014 (EST)

• I'd like to see a payment option that's a fixed amount, "For the Duration of the Telling." I'll admit that's because I think the Tellings last way too long, and this will align Pluribus's financial interests with my game preferences. The quicker he cycles the Tellings, the more often I pay that fee! --Jaby

• Consider integration with steam or desura. After Steam becomes aviliable in Linux i found myself buing and playimg games again. As promotion money is an issue we can help people discover the game. And the social aspects of this platforms, plus the publicity you get in Linux forums at least will also helps. It may also helps in money transactions. If i discover the game otherwise i may have issues giving my CC details to an unknown entity. --talos

New items, changing some existing items

• Moveable camels (blondie, march 26,2014)
• More flowers and flower types (also, can they be released earlier or what about bringing back odd weeds? We used to be able to find Sandblooms randomly when examining odd weeds. That was fun and added the element of surprise. (blondie, march 26, 2014) +1 Porthos (+5 Ariella odd weeds out in the desert for sandblooms breaks up the tedium of searching for shrooms, cicadas, etc. Unusual weeds (or whatever they were called) that were glowing purple plants for orchids were on a timer, appearing at 'night' and disappearing during day I think).
• Bring back the look of some of the buildings. Alembics, Old upgrades to guild halls (that used to be camp deco skill, i believe that skill has been broken/not usable for more than one telling), modern sheep farm currently looks the same as a sheep pen, the toxin kitchen and chem lab look exactly the same (blondie), +1 (+3 ditch the grey/brown machines and bring back the old cool, colorful machines) Jaylenaeybarre,
• can tents be made guildable? (it's probably a long-shot, but i figured i'd ask--blondie)
• Airships to be flown by more than one person. I'm terrible at maneuvering airships, a co-pilot might make flying them easier. (blondie)
• Can we upgrade boxes, chests rather than have to rebuild every time we want to change the size of a storage item with a compound? (We used to be able to do that in t1----blondie 00:54, 27 March 2014 (EST) +1 (Ariella +1)_ Porthos
• Royal Sap - New item. Here's my take on this . . . swelling up a cactus to over 70 units would cause the cactus to start producing royal sap. The use would be for incense. My complete suggestion is that incense would get a bonus of 25 points (can be adjusted later by vote) for each pass in school of Harmony. The negative effect of incense would be reduced by 1/2 if royal sap was used, instead of normal sap. (Koinif 4/10/2014). (+3 Ariella needed in massive amounts for certain systems)
• Rugs could be a new item using wool and silk, used as a camp decoration possibly using mosaics (Cymber 4/23/2014)
• Based off of Cymber's idea -- Able to make rugs based on Raeli Mosaic designs. Number of colors (could scale for required paints). Value of colors could approximate required paint(s) needed to make? Essentially The Mosaic would be on the ground & kinda fuzzy. I guess tiles could be ground up with oil to get exact matches needed. Just think rugs are a great idea.Koinif
• Kitchens - When mixing, I would like an option to add all. This stems from adding all ingredients to storage before pulling what is needed for a recipe. Consider this to be minor, and if others do not want it, it may be best as an option. I happen to like slash commands. Something as simple as /cookall 1 or 0 for a menu option that included '* Add All *' would be fine. -Koi
• Mosaic Tables - Think it would be nice to use the same keys as gem cutting tables to move & rotate. Flipping & inverting would be very nice too. Suggesting the following control keys for tiles, while using the table: (j) coutnerclockwise, (k) clockwise, (u) flip horizontal, (i) flip horizontal, (o) flip vertical, (l) flip vertical. [May seem redundant, but I think it lines up with gem cutting format] ~Koinif
• Structure Inversion - There is a 'middle' button [?] that seems unused when placing a project. It would be nice if this 'inverted' the graphic. For example, say you want to place 2 carpentry shops, but you want them to look like book-ends. I know there are lots of graphics, but hopefully they could just be inverted without too much trouble. I think this would really help the aesthetics and for those that like to decorate, it would be a substantial improvement. ~Koinif 5/25/2014

New seeds

Egyptians also grew beans, lettuce and lentils and figs as fruit , they could be used in cooking, as a part of the cooking skill, offerings to various gods, offering at the funeral temple .... (Jaylenaeybarre-- march 25, '14)+3 blondie, Porthos, Asnath (+5 One of the devs said he had veggie seed growing partially coded. How about pappy too?)

My idea is similar to this, which is to expand on Wheat/Barley. Right now it is basically using a very similar mechanic to Flax but with the addition of different types of weeds. While this is a fun (?) little minigame to wile away the time and makes Barley a little harder to create than Flax, what I would really like to see is actual fields of wheat/barley/etc. I'd like for there to be the ability to have plots that are potentially large swathes of land with a mechanic more similar to that of Roses (and other flowers), Dates, Vineyard where the player sets up the fields and has to tend them over time, harvesting them each week and tending them again over time and so on. Tribisha 1:25PM 19 August 2014 (GMT+10)

Important information disclosure

• Bring back more player ranks/titles. We used to be able to choose what title was displayed when people info-ed us. Eg: blondie, Sage of Art, Rabble, Oracle of Worship or Rabble, Student of Architure. (blondie--march, 26,2014)
• To assist new players or mentors can harmony introduction titles be visible by info-ing a player? It may be too much to add more than one title or to add a tab (similar to the acro, guilds, notes tabs) showing which of these the player is. Examples of titles: Grandson of Oracle, Legacy of Sage.
• If someone is a GM or a Dev, can it be displayed when we info that name? (blondie--march, 26,2014)

Incense Improvement

In my time I only recall one person experimenting & using incense. It seems like it has great potential to be useful in early-mid Tale. It always seemed extraordinarily rare. Does it need to be simplified? Is it just not fun? Is it just a lack of research as compared to cooking ingredient traits? tehm 3:51, 26 March, 2014 (EST) +1 Larame

It's a forgotten knowledge. The instructions on how to make it are in the T4 wiki, and there's even the long-burning (I think portable? It was meant to be portable) incense burner. It was going to be re-worked to a portable food-type-thing in T4 but it never really happened. - Orrin

Hey there's the one guy I remember doing it :) I don't know the state of whether it is currently portable and worth the effort (meaningful stat bonus), but if not, I'd still love a retool on incense. tehm April 16, 2014

Fish Scales

From time to time I get frustrated or annoyed that you can’t do anything with fish scales. Did you know when you drop them, they are all different? I mean someone has designed what they look like, so it seems such a shame to not make better use of them.

Uses that I have heard discussed or volunteered in chats about this include:

• An ingredient for ‘isinglass’: Isinglass is a form of collagen that is derived from the swimbladders of fish (swimbladders/ scales – does it matter? Scales are high in collagen too). Isinglass finings are used in the British brewing industry to accelerate clarification of cask-conditioned beers. The finings flocculate the live yeast in the beer into a jelly-like mass, which settles to the bottom of the cask. Left undisturbed, beer will clear naturally; the use of isinglass finings accelerates the process and can be used to repair bad batches.

• The collagen content would also make them an alternative ingredient for a light glue - Fertiliser: ground and mixed with water, fish scales are a good soil conditioner and are an excellent source of nitrogen, phosphorus, potassium and other minerals. Possible use would be to ameliorate the affects of ground pollution but would need to think of a way to apply it.

• Natural ‘silver’ or pearlesence, comes from the guanine content (1 tonne of fish scales = 250gms of guanine according to http://www.ehow.com/about_5063644_fish-scales-used.html, which could be sued for decorative effects, jewelry, pyrotechnics or paint. (It’s what makes lipstick shimmery).

• Using them as they are in sculptures, as they are interesting shapes and colours
• For making a sort of light-weight ‘plastic’ that can be coloured and formed in moulds under pressure to make basic non-weight-bearing objects of any shape, including cups, jugs, bowls and plates, bangles, beads, sequins, etc. - Cate

Hints for *Almost* Achieving

If you get most events that lead to an Achievement right, but not quite, how about offering a note "You think you were on to something there..." For example, if reproducing a Cabbage Seed requires you to grow cabbage near 2 Herbs, if you do it near just 1 herb you might get the note. This would be a great motivator to keep doing something and it may also lead to more Ah-Has on how the world works. Also, there are many Achievers who would potentially play more to collect the Achievements. (Two more examples: "Hey is that Pluribus nearby? Have you met him yet?" Or After growing 666 Onions "Almost there!") tehm 3:58, 26 March, 2014 (EST) (+1 blondie)

• Speaking of achievements, bring back that long list of achievement progress we used to have/be able to check (similar to the list of herbs we've memorized) (blondie, march 26,2014), +1 (Jaylenaeybarre-- march 25, '14)= like we have now, on the old achievements list

Skills, Stats

• Eastern meditation has a timer, so we know it's possible to add a timer to our stat/skills menu. When we eat a meal can we get a timer for when food effect will wear off? I know there are alternatives like writing in main, writing in chat but when you're running around moving items or running for something you can easily lose track of time. A timer in stats would help as a warning to hurry up and get somewhere and keep you from getting stuck. --blondie 01:04, 27 March 2014 (EST)

• Eastern meditation is a very useful skill but sometimes you want to move items after the time has expired or you have to pause to plan how you want to move items and you lose the eastern meditation skill before you get a chance to finish. Can an advanced level of Eastern Meditation allow us to pause the timer and be able to restart later? --blondie 01:04, 27 March 2014 (EST)

Let me think on how to best represent the multiple stacked stats values with differing timeouts. Thank you for getting me thinking about this. It will get me thinking about correcting herb stacking. As for the turning off timers on eastern meditation... Plan ahead --Pluribus 08:47, 28 March 2014 (EST)

• ok, so eastern med timers off, you don't like it. a shame, but i can accept that. What about the adding a timer on our personal stats when we eat food? not possible either? Sometimes there's so much that we take notes on or have to remember and even when you plan ahead, things happen (eg: getting booted off the game, having to help/chat someone, having to go afk) so you lose track. --blondie 11:03, 29 March 2014 (EST)

== How about doing something special around certain periods, like the presents at Christmas - but make sure they do disappear after 3 months, and put in some more valuable stuff in them like a extra cornerstone (Jaylenaeybarre--

• Lots of games have buff timers. They show up similar to our action buttons (think clay,grass,water, mud etc) So if there was a 'buff' button for food with a simple graphic that display the time left or we can click on to know the length of time left on a meal that would be useful. With herb stacking, I can't remember the current system/bugs. Maybe, eating a herb can put a 3? min food timer up but that can be overwritten by eating food... However, food timers can't be overwritten or extended by eating herbs?

• Cooking and stat changes: Current the game doesn't differentiate between stats, only between herbs. The result is that as the tale goes on, end foods get lower and foc/con foods get higher. However since the T4 cooking nerf, the rate of change is so slow that the foc/con foods can't be pulled down short of a massive community effort, which was what irked Teppy in the first place. The exact value of cooking bonuses aside, shifting the stat balancing away from being 'per use of food item' to 'per use of stat per food item' would solve a few issues here. That way there will always be a low and high area for each food (thinking specifically of end food, which ends up in a low to moderately medium area due to use). Alternatively, swap some stats out so that end isn't so overused.

Old Player Retention, Incentives to bring back Older/inactive players

- I think it would be beneficial to maybe send an email to an inactive/quit player once their things are about to become up for claim/salvage. This would give them a chance to renew membership and play again, knowing they still had a chance to save all that they worked hard to build in the first place. ~ irrie

- I think it would be helpful for everyone to receive a email every week with relevant ATITD info: upcoming events, test passes, laws & elections, etc. I get an email every week summarizing the activity on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube etc. A weekly email would remind players that have stepped away for a while, and would help infrequent players stay up-to-date. --ph47f3 18:42, 2 June 2014 (EST)

• Now that Pharaoh is out, please make sure to post an e-mail address through which we can get offline support (like forgotten password). Also, your new site's download link wasn't working last week! - tehm (April 4)

The new site is purely the beta for me to fix up the pages... Once I get the final go ahead from Teppy, atitd.com will get replaced with the atitd.pluribusgames.com content (The download link has paths set for the production site since it isnt the live site :-) ) Forgotten passwords will have a different solution soon. --Pluribus 00:28, 7 April 2014 (EST)

Unfortunately, the DPA laws have made it difficult for old players to return later in the tale. This is a plea more to the players than the devs to pass a better DPA law to remove clutter from Egypt but not punish the established players who leave the game for a few months. Something along the lines of granting exceptions to 'departed' status for players who have passed a certain # of tests or reached a certain level. DPA should be foremost about cleaning up messes left by trial and short-term players, not providing a free lunch to scavengers. --Blueshift 21:21, 15 April 2014 (+1 Darkfyre)

In T3 or T4 they had a dpa law that turned your stuff into a chest and sent it to die at 0,0. It kinda worked but not really, so what needs to be done if you want to remove clutter + not punish the established players would be a similar law. I would suggest more of a defined spot for people though like a grave yard in each region where people would build thier own Tombs. --Lazybum 04:17, 21 May 2014

One big issue for me has always been timezones. If I knew that there was never going to be any events, or very few, that would allow me to pass system generated tests I'd be less inclined to continue playing and/or come back after leaving. I know that some events are based around player gathering, such as festivals, but it is something definitely worth looking into to see if there can be some way to have asynchronous events. Tribisha

Newbie Retention, incentives to bring in new players

My main problem as an individual who returns periodically (think my first Telling was 2, and have returned for other subsequent Tellings, but although I have always loved the idea never stay for very long even when I subscribe) is that after one is done with the tutorial, builds their compound and so forth, there is a lack of direction and a huge assortment of things that could be focused on. Yes, so I could work on building every available building, or learning all the skills available to me by working up the tuition, or passing the various tests, etc. but there is usually no community organically formed around a new player, and if it is there it is usually advanced players who are busy doing their own higher-tech things. they are well beyond trying to get over the flimsy brick rack stage, and although incredibly helpful and generous, it usually means that a new player is flailing about trying to 'catch up' or inadvertently skips whole segments of the game by virtue of their higher tech friends. I have always been hesitant to join such guilds, because even though that is how 'real life' works (you don't start out with flint knives and have to build up to Ipods), that is not how the game should work if you want to earn and keep new players to a game like this (other MMOS--go out and kill stuff and level up and grab phat lewtz! and there are always people willing to do that or forming alts).

a player should be able to start in the middle or end of a Telling and struggle to overcome certain of the same hurdles that everyone else was able to. as it stands, a new player who shows up is frequently given things by totally helpful and generous players that are incredibly beyond their tech means, and can barely be grateful about it because they have never had to try to get a group together to dig up a flystone. since these higher tech folks are beyond that, they have no reason to help you do it either (although I'm sure they would do if asked).

for this, i recommend a revamp and re-inclusion of Newbie Island--one in each habitable zone and this zone is not within player control. Perhaps have all newbies who log in within a specific timeframe pop into existence in the same island (under a certain amount, so the spillover goes to a 2nd choice newbie island so that you don't have 50 new players running around). this way, those new players can perhaps form up guilds to learn how to do the 'hard stuff' with. Include the mentorship component, so that a player gains more mentorship levels with each player they coddle. I would imagine that this would give a more organic feel, somewhat like real life where a tribal elder tells what they know about the wide world beyond 'Newbie Island'.

There is a lot more I could add, even though I probably should not since I've never played the game for very long and don't have a deep understanding of it yet, but I would start there.(nidaj...can't remember what day. July/Aug 2014)

Instructional Help

I have to tell you that as a returning player, the lack of instructions is really, really striking. For the love of Pete, please put in a (?) help button on the upper right of the UI that open a search box that at the very least, searches the wiki. The wiki also needs to cover fundamentals better because, for example, I am doing Test of Reason now and:

• There are no illustrations for Empty Hand, Pathmaker, Gem Cutting Tables, or Venery. I still have no idea what a Venery is. (been putting lots of illustrations on those today)(Jaylenaeybarre-- march 24, '14)
• The instructions for each are on how to build one, not how to play them. I only know what the heck I am supposed to do with a Pathmaker because Silden provided an illustration for hers.

These issues have to be even more profound roadblocks for genuinely new players. --Eimear

Eimear? you do know that the information on the wiki is made possible by players? There are many people who edit wiki out of the goodness of their heart? Anyone can use it, anyone can update it or add notations, guides, to it. There can always be improvements made but there's a lot of hours put into what is already in the wiki. (--blondie march 24, 2014)agreed (Jaylenaeybarre-- march 24, '14)

The point is that the game should not have instructions entirely dependent on the goodness of players' hearts. That's insanity. This suggestion is in the Player Retention section, and I am saying, first, that not having a help system in-game is really bad for player retention. Second, and less importantly, I think it's weird there is NO dev-provided documentation. --Eimear

• My point was that you shouldn't blame the wiki for not having ALL the information about the game. If you look back at wiki starting from t1 and even early in a telling how much information is not on the wiki, it's pretty great that we have people that edit, update, etc to the wiki. People work hard on that for no reason other than to help others. I don't know how we do get to keep the wiki up but I believe Egenesis does pay for its maintenance. Then it seems it's somewhat linked to Egenesis but Egenesis doesn't even officially endorse the wiki (I don't think). Maybe it would be a good idea to link the wiki to the game. Even possibly have an option to link from within the game (I mention this because i've seen it in one or two other games, with my limited gaming knowledge). Maybe that would make it better for players with little knowledge of the game. It may also make it better for copying over information from the game to the wiki (thinks like inventories in chests, thistle reqs). But I think the wiki is not something so much in the dev's control (or something the dev is largely involved in). It is player run. So it's up to players to upkeep it. (blondie)
• The things that Kartal says make some sense in the way the game has been running and I don't find it to be the worst thing. There is still a lot of information on wiki and there are still people who, within the game assist new players. There are communities in place, mentoring, mega guilds that assist new players. In addition, we have microphones, regional channels that assist players. I do think we should have welcome island return (that was a good place for mentors to get to mentees without having to travel all over egypt, making mentoring more convenient) (blondie).

• Maybe another resource can be made to assist new players outside of the wiki. We don't really seem to a place to go to (wiki is one place everyone seems to go but it's vast enough that some people can get lost in it trying to find something specific)so everyone can be updated about changes or things going on, aside from looking at logs or asking around hoping to find someone who knows what's going on. System is a bit crowded and adding updates might get spammy or scroll a lot of information away. One thought I had was making a facebook page/group for people to ask questions or for files, pinned posts that gives us updates about the game and people can ask questions and be helped even if other people are not logged on to the game or if people are having issues with the game. I know we have irc but IRC is a bit intimidating from when I've been in there. I know not everyone has facebook but one of the facebook groups that's related to Egypt has been active to some extent (unfortunately, they also talk about other games, but it's not my group, i'm just an invited guest and it does seem to be for egypt refugees). I have been able to get messages through to gms, through devs and between players to help out with the game. So maybe that's one resource we could cultivate. (blondie, march 24, 2014)

The lack of information is by design, for better or for worse. Moving forward it might wise to provide the basics, especially when it comes to the interface and customization. But when it comes to tests and the like most everything should still be mostly a mystery. Yes there probably should be some basic guide as to how to play empty hand, or design it. But if everything is given to you, then there is no need for player interaction, which is the core of this game. --Kartal 03:18, 24 March 2014 (EST)

I definetely agree with Kartal, imo there are already so many good guides on the wiki (even French)- btw, everygame out there uses wiki to explain about the game, I mean if you really want everything explained from A-Z and back, then maybe one should look out for another game - I mean I used half a tale to learn loads of things, read wiki, tried stuff myself and the next tale I was ready to play full on, but even now there are still things that I don't understand - although again, there is a guide on wiki about the keyboard shortcuts/commands - maybe should be on the tutorial too: to move: point/click your mousebutton somewhere on the screen , F3 opens your map, how to join national chat/bazar, red dots: schools, green dots: unis, do /info to see someones info (Jaylenaeybarre-- march 28, '14)

Echoing what blondie said, there is no 'GO HERE FOR HELP' flashy thing. The best way to get people into the game is to get them involved, which means getting them hooked up with *people*. WI was alright for that, but there needed to be a way for new people to call in if no players were present, a 'press here to request a mentor'. Ideally I'd like to see a 'new player' channel which standard players can respond to, maybe with the need for you to have passed all your initiations or such before you can join? Saying 'go to the wiki is ok, but having a person make that connection to another is still the best resource you can give them.

• once you make a new char, you do get a bit of help (on top of your window)= the tutorial, but couldn't there be on the 'welcome to Egypt' things to do: as last one, check the wiki, or put the mainwiki page there - it doesn't have to be part of the 'welcome to Egypt', but just to mention it?

or put it on your player options or utily? (Jaylenaeybarre-- march 24, '14)

• I feel like my basic point is not being well made or well understood. I am not dissing the wiki. The wiki is great. I am saying that the primary help system for the game should not be both entirely player-developed and entirely unconnected from the UI. The game needs a basic in-game help system. This seems like fundamental customer service to me. (Eimear)

• Having played the early stages of several tales, but not the late stages, I'd still love help on many types of Tests. Going back to the topic of Mentorship earlier, why *not* encourage people to share knowledge in-game by giving a player 1 Mentorship token (to give to a Mentor) any time they pass one of the 14 (or start with 7 and go to 14 later) least completed tests in the tale (turn this award on 2 months into the tale). You could always give that token to the player whose wiki explanation helped the most. Also, One-on-One dialogue would help many people when the wiki just doesn't seem clear (especially those who don't have English as a first language). tehm 3:30, 26 March, 2014 (EST)

• tehm, that sounds more like something players could do, though, not something that a dev controls/can improve. I do like the idea giving some kind of token in game, for mentorship or for something else for helpful wiki explanations. I do see the point Eimar is making but also Kartal's about the "mystery" in the game from the devs/egenesis. To get something like what Eimar is asking sounds like a big change/addition to the game, is my only concern. We are asking Pluribus for a lot of changes but I suppose it would give him something to think about in the long term. Maybe there are suggestions as to other type of tutorials that are simple and can be easily added to the game (rather than sending people to wiki)? (blondie, march 26,2014)
• What if Mentors could enter searchable keywords/checkboxes somewhere and players could search that database to find someone who is interested in Mentoring in that field. (ex: new player, scarab, cartouche, fishing, cooking) tehm 11:34, 26 March, 2014 (EST) (+1 blondie)

• Encourage YouTube tutorials/walkthroughs with actual game footage/direction. It's kind of crazy that in this age we're still using screenshot images. Maybe each month you can give bonus mentorship points or 1 month of subscription for the top 2 video tutorials. In addition to teaching, the videos may also help attract new players tehm-- March 28, '14

• • tbh there is a videoguide about doing cc, well for me that didn't make me any better about it, but the moment another player showed me how he did it, I understood it - but then again we are back to the same issue, that people have to find/look to the youtube tutorials - is same issue as looking at the wikiguides
    • This is kind of like saying "fax me your signature". Yes it works, but it is outdated and e-mail is vastly preferred tehm-- April 4

• • • • Personally, I cant stand this trend of video "help". While yes, SOME videos can be extremely helpful, it seems it only applies to a very limited number of subjects. It feels like 99&% of the time the videos are utterly useless. I don't need to watch a two minute video to change my video settings, or watch a poorly edited or narrated video to grow flax or god forbid, 200 videos on the proper foraging method for herbs. While I am using mostly non real examples here. I feel that its a catch-22 encouraging videos for a reward. It would likely produce some useful videos, but I suspect it would also produce far more of the type that would be far better suited as a text entry on a wiki or forum. Pathfinders for example, both a properly made and detailed video may be helpful, but a simple text version (with screenshots) would be far more helpful as a reference guide. I doubt many people want to have to constantly bounce back and forth through video timestamps to try to see out if the blue dot needed two lines and then a turn, or a turn after the dot. However, I do agree that more videos would help with advertising and possibly getting new players in the game. Obviously people also learn in different ways, so as I've said before I'm not totally against videos, but I'm not so sure that integrating it into a core game test as suggested would be in our best interests, it could however be an interesting option as an event, where Egypt votes on the 'best' of the videos submitted, and the winner could receive something to that end. --Kartal 14:32, 4 April 2014 (EST)

I'm a returning/new player. I just completed my compound and am now at the discouraged/about to quit stage. I say that, because I can't see what I can do at my current level that would advance me towards being a complete member of Egypt society. I don't know what I need to get to compete in contests. I don't know what 80% of the buildings I see do. I have some free skills from universities, but what do I do with them? And the worst part is if ATITD is a social game then why have I only seen three other avatars in the last week of playing?

What I would like is a popup when you complete your compound saying "Welcome to Seven Lakes!" and a list of the major guilds of that area with a short description of each. That way guilds could tell new players who they are and what they do EX: Egypt Research Initiative (###, ###): Our goal is to unlock all the techs in all the places. New members always welcome. That way I could see some opportunities as a new player to join the game community.

My second idea is a popup message after acquiring new skills from universities and schools. EX: Blacksmithing: The art of shaping metal on an anvil. A skilled blacksmith can create the metal components to _______, ________,etc. and then at the bottom of the popup would be a clickable link to the appropriate wiki page. If the wiki is the defacto manual for the game then it needs to be tightly integrated. Otherwise new players feel like their being discriminated against because everyone else has access to all this required info.

Third idea in line with wiki integration is that on context-menu for items and buildings along with options Utility and Ownership should be an Info option that would again bring up a pop-up text box summarizing the element with a link to the appropriate wiki page.

Idea the fourth - mentoring and mentors. With so few players then any new players definitely should not be left unmentored in such a complex game. Welcome Island in a previous tale I played was helpful because it provided a central place for mentors and mentees to meet. Why shouldn't those who want to mentor be immediately notified whenever a new player enters the game? Then they can warp to the new player. And then once one mentor has warped to the new player every one else loses the ability to warp to the new player location. As an incentive for mentoring what if new players had to be level three before they could built mentor shrines? Mentors' compounds could reflect the number of mentor shrines by being a different exclusive color/material applied automatically and free. Guild headquarters that have mentor members could also be skinned to reflects the status of their members.

Last idea. Social Media. I just built my compound, it would be nice to click a button and have it be auto posted to my Facebook account. There needs to be basic social media integration to help spread the word about the game. --ph47f3 18:42, 2 June 2014 (EST) (+1 Darkfyre I agree, Facebook is a vastly unused vehicle for game promotion)

Firepit

To grill veggies, we can only do 20 veggies or fish/sharpened stick, that is a very low number. (+1 blondie)

That should be raised to at least 100/sharpened stick, or we should be able to put more sharpened stick at once on the firepit. (+1 Ariella) (Jaylenaeybarre-- march 26, '14)

I want to make camel jerky in the firepit.

Wine Notebooks

How about having 7 wine notebooks? (this was probably originally intended a long time ago?) Ideally, the devs should check to make sure it is actually possible to complete them. Blueshift (+3 blondie, kyline, Porthos)

• Tale 6 is older than 2 years and if it ends in June/July of this year we won't be able to complete Wine book 5. There'd probably have to be a big chance to winemaking? to be able to get 7 Wine books. Ask Rabble, he loves doing wine stuff. I do like the 7 idea since Teppy likes the number 7 and this would be Tale 7. (blondie)

Project Management Adjustment

Test of Towers is available at Level 5, but the second rank of Project Management (which allows you to build Medium Construction sites and actually participate) is not available until Level 7. Rank 2 of Project Management should be adjusted to being available at Level 5.

--GHawkins 20:28, 26 March 2014 (PST) This issue drives me crazy!(+1 blondie)(+1 Jaylenaeybarre)(+1 Kyline)

-- Or as per above (way above here in the Bypassing the Level System section), get rid of Levels altogether. Tribisha

Chariot Stops/Building/Repair

Depending upon the number of players, the ability to initially build all chariot stops can be an issue. Suggest making it less expensive in numbers of votes, or else give players more votes to fix them. The other alternative would be to reduce the total number of chariot stops, but Egypt is a big place, so I wouldn't recommend that. --merek 18:05 PDT, 29-March-2014

• 1 vote + 1 more per point of Structure Repair could work (looking at the cost of that skill, it seems reasonable). Please don't reduce the number of stops! -tehm April 16

Thistle

Most in this time thistle growing is running with programm and macro. Without is difficult. My Idea will change that. The basic system can stay (building, tiks) but instead of Sun, Water, dung and Salpeter it takes now herbs as liquid manure. The herbs will count for every people different (like colors, but not calculable, only find out per trying). Herb rarities will decide, how many points a herb have. (for one vitamin or split on more vitamins?). A storage for maybe 5 or 10 Herbs will be good, otherwise peoples need macros again. Thistle growing should be only working at daytime, in twilight the tiks running slower. --Rosenfeuer 10:03, 6 April 2014 (+1 Porthos)

I don't like this idea because it makes no sense in terms of why the herbs are used in that way. I don't like changes that are made without any proper reasoning other than to just change it. Sure, find a new way for thistles.. sure, find new and fun ways to use herbs but don't go changing thistles to require herbs for growing just for the sake of it. If there is some definite science to it, that's fine but I can't think of anything. Tribisha

Research

I would like to see some way of making Research more of an Egyptwide activity. Either lower requirements that have to be met in each (or X number of regions) region to unlock, stacked bonuses for opening research in multiple Regions, or harder egyptwide requirements that can be contributed to from any region, or some combination - a hard egyptwide requirement, followed by an easier local requirement to unlock it locally. --BalourHotho,+1 ) +1 Jaylenaeybarre,

• The early/mid Telling tech battles are a staple of Egypt in my opinion and I would prefer them to remain. That said, I wholeheartedly approve of the idea of there being bonuses for techs that have been unlocked multiple times. That said, I don't see how that would work on some of the techs. --Bri

If the universities were real, their scientists would communicate with each other about the research they had completed, making it easier for other universities to build on and expand their work. I don't have a clear idea of how to reflect this in the game, though. Maybe after a technology has opened in one region, the cost of that technology could slowly start to decrease in other regions, reflecting the slow spread of knowledge throughout the land. The first region to open the tech still gets bragging rights and early access to the tech. They are also contributing to the Egypt-wide spread of knowledge and prosperity. Instead of each region competing against all the others in every research race, maybe some regions would develop specialities, and could coordinate efforts to improve society's overall knowledge. --VarLetha 21:06, 20 July 2014 (EST)

I agree with this idea. Rather than simply unlocking it Egypt-wide after unlocking it in one region, which will ruin a lot of aspects that make the game unique, it could definitely be a good thing to decrease the requirements of other universities over time (increasing at a higher rate for every university that has the same tech unlocked). While not all techs would support it, having bonuses of some kind for unlocking the same tech at multiple regions would be good to consider. Tribisha 19 August 2014

I'd also like to have related skills become cheaper depending on the technology unlocked as well. Skills still need to be bought for the same costs at the end of the tale as they were at the start. For old players, these costs are trivial because they have the tech and resources but for new players, having some incremental bonus on skill costs based on unlocked related techs may ease the pain. Tribisha 19 August 2014

New Tech suggestion: Flax Experiments 1-7

• Being able improve flax early in the game will lead to less player stress and burnout and give them a technology that they can work on in the early game while exploring Egypt.

It would be a 7 step technology, with small improvements to the flax strains available. It is not designed to replace or even fast track crossbreeding when that becomes available. All ‘new’ flax strains can be with the minimum genetic material needed to reach the stats required. - Kyline

New flax strains suggested:

Tech	Name	Amount of Flax/Rotten	Watered?	Cost	Timeline
1	Horus’s Blessing	2 Flax, 1 Seed	N	Avail Flax seeds, Clay Mortars, Cactus Sap, Common Mushrooms	Start of Tale
2	Isis’s Seed	2 Flax, 2 Seed	Y	Avail Flax seeds, Clay Mortars, Cactus Sap, Common and a few uncommon Mushrooms
3	Osiris Reborn	2 Flax, 2 Seed	N	Avail Flax seeds, Clay Mortars, Cactus Sap, Common and a few uncommon Mushrooms
4	Thoth’s Creation	2 Flax, 1 Rotten, 2 Seed	Y	Avail Flax seeds, Mortar and Pestals, Cactus Sap, Common Herbs and Uncommon Mushrooms	Change from Clay Mortars to Mortar and Pestle (lvl 3 Carving skill required) will mean this is not able to be completed until Glass Blowing technology is available in Egypt.
5	Ra’s Light	2 Flax, 1 Rotten, 2 Seed	N	Avail Flax seeds, Mortar and Pestals, Cactus Sap, Common Herbs and Uncommon Mushrooms
6	Bastet’s Grace	2 Flax, 2 Rotten, 2 Seed	Y	Avail Flax seeds, Brass Pots, Cactus Sap, UnCommon Herbs and Rare Mushrooms	The addition of Brass Pots will mean this is not able to be completed until Advanced Metallurgy technology is available in Egypt.
7	Amun’s Celebration	2 Flax, 2 Rotten, 2 Seed	N	Avail Flax seeds, Brass Pots, Cactus Sap, UnCommon Herbs and Rare Mushrooms

• I can't say I like this. The whole idea of plant genetics is that it's in the players' hands to do this. You'd be removing rather than adding content IMO - Orrin
  • I think that it really depends - if we are getting crossbreeding earlier next Telling, then it really isn't required. If it is going to take us a few months... then having a slight upgrade we can invest into isn't really a bad thing. Or, from a slightly different angle - what if the genome for flax was made a bit more like that for flowers and each of these were a different 'strain' with its own benefits and weaknesses? It'd be more fun for crossbreeders and perhaps allow for some super breeds to be made... but by then it is mid to late telling and flax isn't as much of a concern as treated boards and alloys. It would actually let us keep our focus on new tech by, over time, reducing the flax timesink. -Bri
  • Orrin this would cut out maybe 2-4 days of actual xbreeding if these seeds where allowed to be xbreed at all. I happy with ANY improvement in flax seed rather than waiting 3-5 months for xbreeding to come out. Remember some tales it has taken us getting every single region's flowers unlocked before we get the last bulb for xbreeding. I don't know about you but I hate making flax 2 at a time with 1 seed for months with no improvements. My suggested best improvement is only a little better than double the orignal output and less than 3 times as good as the current strain found in egypt at present. I don't see how you can say I'm removing content at all.... -Kyline
  • I like this tech idea. There are various places in the game where a skill-based tech like crossbreeding or blacksmithing are unlocked and what was meant to be a gentle progression is a sudden cliff. We go from 2 flax/field to 7 flax/field and 1 seed/field to 3 seed/field almost overnight. Or 1 wood/tree to 5 wood/tree. It would be better if there were 7 'Flax Experiments' techs that led slowly increased flax production and ended with goods required for crossbreeding. Similarly, it'd be nice if there were 7 'Blacksmithing' and 7 'Advanced Blacksmithing' techs which let you create items of the given type from 3k to 9999 max quality respectively. This would give us gradually improving items over a period of time even if the ultimate quality is capped by skill when all techs are unlocked. Tallow 11:44, 24 April 2014 (EST)

Glass Blowing Improvements

Glass blowing is a skill that takes a lot of practice to learn, but scares off many people because that practice uses up a lot of precious materials. This tale, we asked Teppy to implement a glass recycling tech, where we could re-melt blown pieces into a glass bench. It would require 2 or 3 blown pieces to get 1 db of molten glass, and I'd suggest wine glasses, hookah bowls be meltable only to jewel glass, and all other pieces meltable only to soda glass (so as to not find a work-around for making normal glass from soda glass, basically). The upgrade could be something that must be constructed onto a bench to allow. Teppy vetoed the idea as a law (even though it had a TON of support) because it was more of a tech implementation. I'd really like to see this come into the game, so more people can learn this very hard skill without dedicating their lives to gathering glass mats.

--Avanya 21:21, 12 April 2014, + 1 Jaylenaeybarre,+ 1 Asnath, +1 Darkfyre

Ecology

Now I know that underneath there is a really really cool ecology system. Most of it we only see as mushrooms (and even then only a few of them in any number). What I'd like to see is a revamp of the ecology to make the layers public (so we can truly see the water levels and levels of pollution and nutrients). Then make it so that they can truly be affected. Growing a plant should take a toll on nutrients and water, this would lead to places such as aqueducts losing yield, which means that they need to be treated (Hey I found a use for dung and fish scales!). You can then make different plants grow best not only in locations but to a lesser degree on soil (and sand) conditions. This then also means that you could try and treat the surrounding land to bring specific mushrooms to an area (though this should be expensive to do, maybe a 'mushroom dope'?).

Events

There were long stretches of T5 and T6 that were devoid of events. Official events like 24 hr herb hunts, monument upheaval, cooking/smoking are some of my favorite parts of the game. I think these should occur with some regularity, ideally one event or so per week. These don't all have to be big events, there could be one or two big events per month and several smaller things like conflict tournaments in between. Also, Telanoc should be in charge of picking the prize list, especially for the monument upheaval event. --Blueshift 21:21, 15 April 2014

I greatly prefer events that don't favor the person who logs the most hours doing X. A 24-48 hour event where you could participate for up to 2-4 hours by starting a timer (say at a Uni or Essence of Harmony) would be cool though. Instead of always doing one event during US hours and 1 during European hours. The timer would be like for that Test that has you identify X plants in a short time. -tehm April 16

• In the past we had at least one occassion we had some conflict events running over a couple of days. Those seemed to work because there were divided into three 8 hour blocks to cover all time zones (as an example: 3pm EST- 11pm EST friday, 12am Saturday-8am EST, 9am-5pm EST saturday). You could also do a longer event that covers a lot of the weekend or another event that covers a 24 hour period. Probably it would be better to have events broken up into 8 hour ones to cover different time zones per block (or even 2-4 events). We don't often have long events that last 24 hours anyway (for variety's sake, i don't think it's the worst, as long as we have other events done differently). You could also do a herbing event that lasts 24 hours and then have an herbing event that lasts 8 hours (going with the 8 hour blocks I mentioned before). --blondie 10:13, 17 April 2014 (EST)
• I do like the "one event..per week" idea. That would allow more of a chance to give different stretches of time events and perhaps similar events so more people can get a chance to play or to get prizes. --blondie 10:15, 17 April 2014 (EST)

• There are 2 sorts of events in game: Official Events, run by the controller which has an UI menu, and Player Created/Run events.

• Controller events are coded events, with fixed set of options and no recovery if they bork.There are some options for rewards but those are limited to what's coded. Telanoc cannot alter the reward once the controller is running other than back-end tweaks. What's in the list is what you can get. The UI Menu is a mess and changing prizes requires a lot of tweaking and basically removes all pervious configurations so if you change a prize those have to be redone. You can tell because of the typos in the event text; to fix a typo or change/add a prize requires a re-setup of the entire event. Events in this category are: herb hunts, monument upheaval, cooking/smoking, etc..
• Player Run designed and managed by players themselves. The "long stretches of no events" is primarily from event team burn out and quibbling about prizes and issues of "who can exploit the system faster than others". Events in this category are: Airship racing, Ore Cart Relay and Herb Dump, etc.

In the case of controller events, if they don't bork, they run but mostly OK but a lot of the time they bork. There are only a few that actually worked decently enough that the GMs didn't have to work days on days to sort out the problems. See: "Joe got 2X Item and I got None" or the "All the prizes went to Joe!!". You can add in all the expletive deletes you want that go with those statements.

In the case of player run events, without the support of Nikara, when I approached her late in T6, with the idea of Pharaoh's Garden, there would have been none. Players cannot "conjure" prizes or rare/new items, this requires a certain level of database access. Nikara was fantastic about conjuring things like fishing poles and other rare items.

• Is it possible to make a location for events in a place like the conflict arena? Like a pandora you can warp to? The added chariot stop at Memphis is very useful but some people don't have much time or tt to go to Memphis and some events do involve players visiting Memphis several times for an event. --blondie 14:55, 19 April 2014 (EST)
  • In the case of Controller Events like Conflict Events those have hard-coded options for warpage. For Player Events, we do not have the ability to set warp points unless a GM assists. Only GMs can build or open portals and then they are for specific times.

For historical purposes some history of Pharaoh's Garden is in order:

I approached Nikara who is a GM and World Builder with my ideas of an airship racing venue with options for multiple games and races for those with and without airships. We reviewed the required space for racing and she checked into the existing landscape and found nothing that would meet the requirements (want to run to the NW corner of Egypt for a high peak? :)) She decided that the only location suitable for the venue is where it is currently located in the SW corner where there are few activities (except fennec hunting) and no other obstacles. There was no Chariot Stop and you had to run over land for about 20 minutes to get there. Later on she found an "unused" chariot stop from an older version of the game and was able to plant it outside of PG. Players opened the CS like all other CSes get opened although Nikara was able to conjure some "incentives" for players to donate to the repair. While it might seem that as a GM she could just conjure a fully operational CS, they cannot do it. They can only go by what's available at their level of access inside the EGenesis organization and I can tell you that GMs cannot alter or change code, they cannot fix broken controllers or alter the scheduling options or anything on that level. We had to work with what Pharaoh had given her as abilities and what we could do as players. The Flight Deck was all done with mats donated by myself and other members of the event team. The drop warehouses where the same. Later on, Nikara was able to get more authorization to conjure more items as needed (like the ore carts) but at the beginning it wasn't so.

While it may not be all that helpful for players to understand this history, it's important for those looking for more events to take up the mantel and learn what's possible inside the framework and what requires direct intervention from programmers. Remember we had no Pluribus or Pharaoh for a very long time, no one we could get to work on the broken stuff. If Pluribus spends some of his valuable and much in demand time, to fix some of the Automated Events then more of those could be run. However, atm for T6, you cannot fly an airship inside a conflict shire nor run foot races. Conflict Shrines also require building to enter them and at start of tale some are not made public use.

Controller Events are static. The Herb Hunt is what it is. The Phoenix Race is what it is and if you mess up the options you get some odd race conditions. If they bork in the middle or end, there's nothing a player or even a GM can do. There are log files but if they get messed up then there's nothing for Nikara to go by. She did awesome work and long hours trying to get prizes to players just based on the log files when those event crashed. I don't think very many players understood how much Nikara gave to the game and the hours and hours she spent trying to make "something" happen for those left. There were a number of notable players on the Event Team from time to time and assisted with testing, and monitoring and all sorts of backend work to make some of those things that seem "easy" to happen at all, but Nikara was the key person and you will need someone like her for T7, who can stay the distance and who doesn't get burned out.-- Zhukuram 11:02, 23 April 2014 (EST)

Also it takes a LOT of energy to run these events. They are not self-running, they require weeks or months of preparation to setup, test manually (I flew a lot of trips to the islands in the lake to make sure you could land on them), and then on event day to run, monitor, try to deflect exploits, and hand out prizes.

If you want more events, you will have to find a way to stop Burn Out. The players at the beginning of the tale burned out, those who tried in mid-tale burned out, and I burned out too. I just do not have the resources and energy to shepherd an event solo.

If you want 1 event a week, you are going to either have a lot of automated events or deal with event organizer burn out issues.

fwiw: I have a half-dozen events in the queue but they aren't happening with me: see Burn Out

• • • Increasing player involvement in events or assistance from Egenesis (sorry, it's still Egenesis or is it called something else?) could be something to help with player burn out. It could be tricky because that would probably prevent those people from participating in events, but maybe there could be a rotation so people feel like they can contribute , participate and not always be the organizers. Many players also have ideas for events, there could be assistance from the dev/gm team provided for those. --blondie 14:55, 19 April 2014 (EST)

re: Organizers participating in events: This can be a sticky area and the events I arranged, I tried to make it possible for some members to participate but sometimes this is not possible because they know the design of the event ahead of time and might have an "unfair" advantage over others. We tried to limit this and create events with multiple sections for winning or where the outcome of prizes was by lottery or other distribution method. Player Run events require more supervision and directions on how the event goes down and I wrote loads here on the wiki about the events and backend management. Not all organizers of events did this though, but I was quite through about it (or tried to be) and gave follow ups and winners lists. One thing that did happen 100% of the time is SETESH made his presence known. Nearly every event (player or controller) SETESH was in the mix creating chaos and often we had to "fix stuff on the fly". If your event team is off flying they cannot be at the Flight Deck ushering in new players or loading up prizes or /roll for the lottery.

Along with this goes the problem of players like TME, who is a fantastic player, a GM, and has vast resources they can rely on. They skew the awards so badly that you really have to do a lot of thinking to avoid them crushing other players. TME, like other players can and does participate in the events and TME had no knowledge ahead of time about their constructs as TME wasn't on the Events Team, but their access to materials makes them nearly impossible to beat. We kept close watch on how the event was unfolding to monitor the progress of all players and this requires someone like Nikara along with boots on the ground to do. In short, many times Event Team members could not participate and they were OK with that as our goal was to make something fun happen.

Some Player Events followed the Controller Events and that made things doubly interesting. We ran Herb Hunt (Controller) followed by Herb Dump (Player) for a hybrid game set. Sometimes we could make events like orchid breeding which we ran over a weekend and then had a round of voting. The voting was in 2 parts: a secret judge knowledgeable about the outcomes and popular votes. This takes a huge effort to put together. It needed a lot of thought because you cannot just build 20 greenhouses in 1 day without an awful lot of sheet glass on hand not to mention the Nuts Essences and bulb types to hand out.

When the games allowed for Event Team Members to play along, we did and when it did not either that player dropped out of the event team or didn't participate. -- Zhukuram 11:07, 23 April 2014 (EST)

• • • Zhukuram, I'm sure players are appreciative of the Events team (even though it doesn't always seem that way when events have problems). I think a lot of can sympathize with burn out, too. It would be good to get bugs or if it's something within coding that could be fixed, maybe that would make it easier on those who do help out with events. Aren't there some events that run, if not automatically, at least with less work on the part of the event organizer? We could have those events more often, perhaps. The more complex ones maybe once a month or once every 2 months. Just throwing out some ideas. I enjoyed the cartouche building events, some of the conflict ones, the heptathlon ones? I thought those were the easier ones to run because items go into player's pocket (but maybe they involve a lot more work). You could let us know what events are the simpler/easier ones to run. --blondie 14:30, 19 April 2014 (EST)

fwiw: During the time I was working with the Events Team there were 2 versions: The Official Events Team as setup by EGenesis and my participation as an "unofficial" member of the team. The "Official" team bailed early on in T6, this was when the great hiatus happened. We've covered some of the possible reasons why they left but they were gone when I approached Nikara with my ideas. My participation was not "official" by my choice. I had some access to things like the Events Mic; Nikara was the one who handled the backend details and often needed Pharaoh's OK before we could proceed. On average there were 3 people running the backend. Nikara, Hanid or Rabble and myself. Occasionally, someone would come to us with an idea and if Nikara got the OK from Pharaoh we did it.

There were ideas put forth by players who did not understand that we had no way to implement them and they got rather unhappy. One proposal would have required a code change to the programming and we had no way to do it. It was a PVP sort of event which would start as a fishing derby but for each fish you caught you would deplete the oceans until they went sterile and there would be no more fish in Egypt for the rest of the tale. While it was not the kind of event I personally like, but that wasn't why it didn't happen. It wasn't done because we could not alter the backend code for the following concept:

If Global_FishLootTableDropRate GreaterThan Zero then

If CatchFish then Global_FishLootTableDropRate-1

If Pluribus is able to devote time to implementing these sorts of events, that would add more variety and I certainly heard from more than one player that they wanted more "conflict style" events that had "no resolution" and "exposed greed vs altruism" were "greed would win" every time and that T6 was far too "bland" in this area.

fwiw: I remember the plague and how that went down and experienced similar events in SWTOR (I wondered if Apophis got a job with them as it was equally poorly implemented). I made it clear that should such a PVP event come into play the person proposing the event would have to be the up-front guy and I would assist on the backend as needed. Aside from the programming problems, no one wanted to be Up Front and take the flack for no more fish in Egypt.-- Zhukuram 11:02, 23 April 2014 (EST)

There is a side issue of the Calendar Schedulers. If you have seen Official Events going on/off the Game Calendar, it's due the scheduler being a mess too. The Player Scheduler isn't much easier, it costs papy paper with increasing costs as you run more events, and cannot be changed once it's submitted. --Zhukuram 13:21, 18 April 2014 (EST)

• • • The ingame calendar does seem to need to be more user friendly. I'm referring to the papy paper one since I don't know how egenesis puts events up. But they probably could both use improvements. Remember, though, that the papy paper events listings are a bonus for building megas. We do have quite a few megas (in RP alone, we have nearly half a dozen, i think) so cost will stay near 50 papy paper if you don't frequent the same mega. Maybe cost could be changed if someone is posting more than one event or a discount after your tenth posting (think Subway sandwhiches)you get one free. I know that for festival people post 2 calendar events per week (costs covered by donations) but it's a really great way to get player participation and awareness. Perhaps there could be another way to get messages onto the calendar. I was thinking that at the beginning of the game some communication or some community event listing would be helpful and/or fun and it could be put in the calendar (before we get megas or instead of making it a bonus for megas). --blondie 14:55, 19 April 2014 (EST)

• It amazes me that people asking for more events but when one is held, not many do participate (a few had 20 or so participants)! So were are they then? Lots of those were easy with timing for both European or US players.
• The idea of a 3x 8u event sounds great for those who have difficulties with time (thinking about autralian time atm) esp like for the herbing events or the heptathlon
• Imo I'm glad that there are a few people doing/running events, I can imagine it is not easy and not everyone will be pleased with timing/schedule/prices .... Jaylenaeybarre

Chemistry Lab

Suppose you want to make lube oil - need Osiris compound extract. (and in case your recipe doesn't exist you can make another extract to reset for Osiris but then again it is a lot of work)

• find recipe
• req from recipe --> check essences list for spirits needs
• make essence compound (only get 6 drops instead of 7 that are needed)

Means you have to do the above again

• make the extract --> only get 3 dbn (for 1 set of lube oil you need 5 dbn)

Means you have to do all the above again

• you only get 6 lube oil for 5 Osiris compound extracts, and most stuff wants 10 or 15 lube oil, so again need to redo all of the above double, triple ...

SUGGESTION 1 : add to the chemlab, make Osiris, geb, ... extract: 1 batch, 10 batch, 100 batch = same as on the paint lab - because as it is now it is a lot of work for only a very tiny amount of outcome Jaylenaeybarre +1 (tehm don't know anything about this, but that sounds annoying)

• Not 100 batch!! 1 batch, 3 batch, 5 batch would be impressive enough. Too many batches and you just get the 'easy' recipes maxed.

• after the above comment, I still find it very low, because although I wrote the above in 8 lines or so, it is a huge work to make it - so I might suggest then 1, 10, 25 Jaylenaeybarre

Chemistry Product Rebalancing

There should be some rebalancing of the products of chemistry. Osiris' extract is the most useful even though it isn't the hardest to get. This is because lubricating oil is the one building material that you can only get via chemistry. I recommend adding uses for the lesser gear oils, perhaps adding them as requirements for the upgrades while lubricating oil is required for creating a building. Tallow 11:10, 18 April 2014 (EST)

In addition, if there were a way to use the rarer extracts for lesser recipes, that would make them more useful. If Thoth's could be used to make 9 lubricating oil in a batch instead of 6. And Ra's could make 13. That would increase their usefulness greatly. This could be done by adding a 'dilution' option that transforms rarer extracts into more common ones at a fixed ratio in exchange for other mats. Tallow 11:10, 18 April 2014 (EST)

Detonation boxes are underpowered for the price (huge investment in learning the skill, then it is still faster to pound gravel). Tallow 11:10, 18 April 2014 (EST)

Mushroom Potency

Quick backstory: Every cooking item is in one of two groups, herb or not herb. This determines their starting potency, and herbs are considerably higher than not herbs. For mushrooms this is a pain, as they're considerably rarer than camel meat and veggies, some are rarer than most herbs. But they're never any good for cooking cos they're 'veggies'. I'd like to see a rework of this area, either make mushrooms 'herbs', make the rare ones 'herbs' or make a new starting position for them.

Mutagenics and Genetics

Genetics is extremely complicated, which is a large enough hurdle for participation. However, there are a number of issues and requirements that make it prohibitively expensive to work on. This tale, a few players spent the entire tale collecting resources (mushrooms) so that, when the time came, they would be able to work on this technology. This is not feasible for most people, and really highlights just how crazy the requirements of resources is! Here are a number of proposals to fix things, and make this exclusive game feature open to many more players.

1. Mushrooms

Mutagenics needs all mushrooms in great quantities. With a smaller player base, the rare mushrooms are VERY hard to find, and impossible to "stock up" on in great quantities. Since its really hard to make the mushroom spawns larger or more frequent (or so I've been told), lets reduce the number of mushrooms that the many steps require!

• Reduce the maximum number of a given type of mushrooms in a mutagenics toxin recipe to 4 or 5. Currently, the max is 7, which means it can require 28 of a rare mushroom just to test the recipe at the university! We have seen this repeatedly hold up recipe unlocking at universities, for months at a time, because of the shortage of mushrooms.

• Revelation Solvents are hardly used, and a wasted tool. Originally, they were used to map out genomes in earlier tales, but now we use other less direct methods to work with genetics. Why? The mushroom costs of Solvents are crazy! Its hard enough that the piece of genome revealed by them is random (and often repeats early attemps). But the mushrooms needed to create the precious solvents are rare, and the number of produced solvents is small. If we change the mushroom types to common ones and either decrease the number of mushrooms used to make the solvent, or increase the solvent quantity produced, it would make this technology useful again. This would be a HUGE help! Currently, we either use NUTS to randomly crossbreed, or we use mutagens to slowly manipulate from a known starting plant. If solvents were more available, we could use NUTS first to get close (much cheaper), then map out the genome we've arrived at with solvents, and then finally use mutagens to perfect it. We need the solvents to bridge the gap between our two ways of genetic manipulation, and right now its just not feasible.

([Revelation Solvents])

• Revelation solvents are a fantastic tool, but the mushrooms that are used to make them HAVE to be sure to be the MOST common mushrooms so the whole population can have the fun of using them. I think that would solve the problem. Revelation solvents can be used for far more than mapping genomes. Please make sure to keep all the different solvents (even the short ones) as they are invaluable for certain applications. (Ariella)

2. Molecular Balance

Again, a tool that is useful in theory, but toooo expensive to be practical. I originally thought it was proposed (end of tale 4 technology) to determine the length of the genome. Right now, it just compares the lengths of two different genomes. Still useful, but less so. However, it requires an EXPENSIVE revelation solvent (see above paragraph) and a pretty rare herb -- King's Coin, just for one comparison. This will be a lot more useful if we fix the solvent issue, but also make the herb required something a little more accessible and common. (Ariella) I second the above.

3. Research Costs / Duplicate grapevines and flower types

In order to open all the fancy genetics, we have a lot of techs to research, and we need to open them in as many regions as we can. After working really hard to open a new plant strain, it is SOOO infuriating and frustrating when the university just offers a duplicate of a strain that is already available. This happens more than once, and the more expensive and involved the tech, the more the researchers are deflated (and sometimes quit). Is there not a way to make sure a new released plant is NOT one previously opened? This small change would make a HUGE difference.

Even with that change, the research costs are all still reflective of a population in the thousands. I'd love to see Egypt get back to that, but as it stands, these costs are very rough on the people that work towards these goals. Teppy had agreed to compromise and lower some of the particularly tough requirements, like mushrooms, herb seeds, and fish (now that we have so many types of fish, the "old type" ones can be slower to catch!), but of course those changes never came. These requirements can really bottle up research for months...and adjusting them somewhat could really help! (I"m not saying make it easy, just make it feasible). I'd be happy to give suggestions for which techs and requirements in particular have been painful in the past and would be great to be adjusted.

• Again, I second the motion to NEVER EVER have a duplicate flower or grape vine given by universities. In general for fulfilling research costs, why not program the software to have fulfillment amounts vary according to population stats. (Ariella)

• • Agree totally. Simplest way to solve is to have 7 types of vine/flower/whatever and have the game randomly pick from 1 of the 7 for each university but once it's been given, it is struck from the list. Seems very easy to add to the code.

4. Flower Reproduction

We need to make a lot of flower bulbs, both for donation for techs, but also for use for testing and for the Test of Festivals. There is one technology promised to the players from the end of Tale 4 that is still not implemented, and would help the flower community greatly -- a one dose, long acting fertilizer. Obviously, it would need to be costly, but it would be a great value to fertilize a flower, and then know in x number of days, you will have a bulb. This is especially a nice way to enable players with less time to contribute to this research. (Not everyone can log in every two hours to fertilize their flowers!)

There was also talk of having a new system implemented to spread flower fertilizer in an area--a fertilizer sprinkler system if you will. There was a lot of excitement about that possibility, but it too never came about.

• Auto Flower Nursery for Multiplying in Batches (Ariella) I think this was the proposal.

Please grant us the ability to build a new type of pretty and colorful greenhouse or nursery for multiplying a specific flower by an automated process of fertilization, checking for splits and replanting.

Sometimes we need to split a certain flower in batches to complete a Tech like Crossbreeding or Xenobotany or Test of Festivals. To crossbreed effectively we often need quite a few of the same bulbs to get the desired flower we want. When mutagens are usable we need large amounts of base bulbs to 'build' with. Often we would like to multiply certain of our favorite flowers to give to friends and neighbours or when new Event flowers or University flowers come out.

It seems most useful to have this new nursery not a costly building as we could need many. Perhaps being able to choose this new nursery to hold either 4, 8 or 16 of the same flower might be best? (powers of 2).

Visualize a system of feeder tubes where we could click one batch of fertilizer in at once. And we could check all bulbs at once for splits.

Put the desired bulb/s in, a new menu choice appears to replant maximum when it/they all split until it hits the maximum container amount.

• Long acting fertilizer was voted and promised to be made. Can look that up in Tale IV. Basically it did a 24 hour fert at once. Many people were in game to play with flowers but they could log in only in the evening. It took them forever to split flowers. (Ariella)

5. New Technology Idea: Microscopy

I think a new technology would add a fun new dimension to the puzzling out of the genetics system. Specifically, something that lets us get a different piece of data to help us resolve a genome. I've nicknamed it Microscopy.

• It would be an upgrade to a chemistry lab (add a few cut gem lenses and other assorted bits)
• it would require using glass slides (maybe break one glass sheet into 50 slides at the lab)
• It would use Dyes that would be made at the chem lab in bulk (maybe from certain fish scale colors)
• Different dyes would highlight different gene types, and the result of a test would be to determine how many of a specific gene are present in a genome. For example, a test for the Red gene on a Silken sea lily would tell us that there are 3 genes of that type total in the genome.

This would work well in conjunction with Revelation Solvents. It would be a great tool to determine genome length (just test for all gene types and sum the result), and also be helpful to determine if genes were eliminated or added in a NUTS cross (a great way to track changes!). I really think its important to NOT consume the plant that you are testing on in the process. I also think its a straightforward tool that the genetics community could make great use of.

I know I'm asking for a lot of changes (most of them small), but they would add up to be a major help for this aspect of the game. Thanks. --Avanya 17 April 2014

I agree that it is pretty complicated to get into genetics and especially the research of mutagens costs too many mushrooms - at least too many rare ones. However I don't agree that we should bridge the gap between those 2 ways of crossbreeding easily. It shouldn't be easy to determine length and all genes and its order. Same for molecular balance, it was a very very useful skill and you should be thinking twice about using it.

About the bridge: Right now this is like the only restriction you have for using other seeds you don't crossbred and kept track of the genome itself. This tale i started to work myself into genetics and 'Java Taverns' actual provided almost all mutagens. I started to crossbreed using mutagens to keep track of the genomes length and its genes, after a whole weekend working on an all new flax strain (started with OE and NG ofc) my strain was the best in egypt and I felt kinda proud about it. ;-P I named it 'Java Taverns Fertility' and gave them out. Like a week later a better flax strain were made. I don't know this for sure but I really think they used my flax seeds and used them for random crossbreeding. Ofc the name didn't show anything about this... I know it's stupid but that actual made me kinda angry I gave my flax seeds out but anyway I knew I could easily do better because I know its genome.

So if we bridge that gap I would like to see an option if we want others be able to use those seeds theirself when naming it. I know this thought is kinda selfish and might cause some drama. Anyway it really is depressing working all that hard and then someone just get all your work for nothing - and I think everyone would like to see a bit drama in egypt ;P --Xerath 18 April 2014

Responding to Xerath-- Just a few things I want to point out. First of all, I can totally understand the disappointment when you work very hard with this system, usually for full days on end, and make something useful, and everyone takes it and uses it. It can feel thankless. But please remember that this system is purposefully so complicated, it relies on lots of people working hard together. Those mutagens you used? They were only available because of the months hard work of not just Orchid and her crew building the mutagen labs, but Renard's work (and other's) all tale long collecting mushrooms and unlocking recipes. And of course, lots more people had to tirelessly characterize those mutagens, so we'd all know what part of the genome they acted on. Imagine if they didn't share THAT data! Also, a good handful of people did nothing but donate to unlock all the techs to make it possible. And even before mutagenics opened, lots of people in egypt worked very hard to NUTS cross flax seeds for everyone to have. Its always fair game that they use each other's strains. If they get "beat", then they can use the new winning strain to regain the title, if you will. All the while, Egypt benefits. Its a competition that is good for everyone! And the personal reward lies in naming your own champion seed.

If we had a bridge to bring together our two ways of crossing things, it would greatly reduce the time and energy and materials needed to make a prize winning flax seed. Isn't that a win for everyone? And if you aren't the first to do it off a known base, you can always NUTS cross until you have a longer genome base, determine the new genome sequence, and then mutate further to get the new best seed.

Mutagenics is very much a community based research field. I've done my fair share for the past two tales, particularly aiming to unlock the Festivals test. Just trying to get a Giantx3 rose to open the test took weeks and weeks of long days and mutation attempts that were 40 or more swaps long each. Most people don't know that, and all the while there was lots of clammering to have the test open. Its a tale long struggle, honestly. What did I get for all my work? One hell of a sense of satisfaction!! I was proud when we opened the test, and got the flowers mutated for everyone. I guess people can use the genetics system for their own purposes only, and that's a valid choice, but I think that's no reason to NOT want to make it easier for everyone to use it for the good of the community. --Avanya 18 April 2014

At the higher reaches of this game, it definitely becomes a cooperative effort. I never met you, Xerath, but I spent a lot of time and effort working with others to breed the thousands of beetles and gather other mats to unlock mutagenics and crossbreeding and unlock mutagens. I'm glad I was able to contribute in a small way to making the awesome seed that you made. I might try out that part of the game myself next tale. I support Avanya's suggestions and anything else that will make the genetic part of the game more accessible and balanced. Tallow 10:44, 18 April 2014 (EST)

Cartography and Geography

1. The schools and unis within a region are all closer to each other than they are to those in other regions.--merek 30 April 2014 *To clarify, I don't mean they need to all be crammed in together. I'm simply suggesting that it makes more sense to have, for example, the University of Architecture in River Plains be closer to the University of Body in River Plains than to the University of Body in Seven Lakes.merek 2 July 2014

2. Roads within a region, i.e. local roads, actually connect schools and unis and other points of interests, such as Chariot stops and beetle gardens.--merek 30 April 2014

3. Highways connect region hubs, and also run along the Nile.--merek 30 April 2014

4. Remove the roads that zigzag randomly for no apparent reason.--merek 30 April 2014 *Another point of clarification: There's no problem with roads zigzagging to go around hills. I'm suggesting that the roads zigzag with the terrain and turn or curve at logical places, like to go around a valley or a hill. What I object to is some of the roads that are just squiggles back and forth for no reason. merek 2 July 2014

5. Add the ability for players to build roads.--merek 30 April 2014

• I disagree with much of this in general. When schools and Uni's are close together and there's a large population in Egypt (it did happen in the past and maybe will again in the future), the lag was horrendous. With an active population going to and from them all the time it means that area gets hammered. Like when players build at a Chariot Stop everything lags out when you approach. If you put the schools and Uni's together near a chariot stop or other major hub it's worse. -- Zhukuram 10:01, 2 May 2014 (EST)

• Highways and byways are not meant to connect, the roads of Egypt are inaccurate and sometime have failed. Moving from one terrain to another with the speed differences in part of the incentive to complete certain tests that grant speed/dex (cicadas, arcobat). -- Zhukuram 10:01, 2 May 2014 (EST)

• Roads zigzag in RL and they should continue to do so in Egypt. The topography is not flat-earth. There's hills and valleys and dips. -- Zhukuram 10:01, 2 May 2014 (EST)

• Players do not need to option to build roads because roads have in-game benefits. If a player put in a speed road it would change the area. Imagine if I could build my own superhighway to a major stop off like a university and if every player could do the same. Egypt would look like down-town Houston. Also, if I build my super highway and another player builds a dirt road on top of mine, you open this up to "road rage wars". -- Zhukuram 10:01, 2 May 2014 (EST)

• Egypt is one massive time sink. Moving along the roads in remote areas gives you a chance to spot that rare Royal Rosemary growing on the side of the road. If you fast travel everywhere, you might as well shrink Egypt into 1 small region where you don't have to move far. Part of the early game is deciding how far out you will be from the center. Surprisingly, a lot of players do move away from the center. -- Zhukuram 10:01, 2 May 2014 (EST)

• To alleviate some of the time sink, Travel Time is there but maybe double up the number of waypoints you can get at some levels, or if there's a cash store, Wings of Horus (1 time use) and Wings of the Khonsu(reusable) that could augment the way points we have. -- Zhukuram 10:01, 2 May 2014 (EST), +1 Jaylenaeybarre
  • http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khonsu

• Region Obelisks. Add the ability to build a special obelisk that named a place. So when i get close to that obelisk i get a message in main that say "You are entering the XX area" or some other visual indication. It must be a very expensive building that will also require regural maintain. The bigger the obelisk the more area it affects till it enters in some other obe area. Not alot of coding to do it, and it gives some sort of identity to an area. -- Talos

Mineral Map

The relationships between minerals have been the same for multiple tales. Change the patterns to make the early game mineral search more interesting. +1 Blueshift +1 Jaby

+1 - Changes like this are extra-important because if they're going to happen, they have to be ready to go day 1. You can improve UI menus little by little all telling long, but changing the ore map from under everybody midway through isn't reasonable. (Ringer)

Modern Video Options

Since the game originally came out, the capabilities of consumer-level video hardware has increased by orders of magnitude. While many of these capabilities only apply to engines or assets designed with them in mind, many could be added with trivial developer effort.

Some examples that would take minimal effort would include adding video options for things like antialiasing and anisotropic filtering. While these can often be forced with driver settings outside the game, those forced settings apply to everything - without an in-game setting controlling it, this means smoothing the game world also incorrectly blurs the text.

Beyond extremely easy (in terms of dev time) options like those, optional camera control more like what non-ATITD players are used to in modern games would add a lot to new player retention. Even knowing the game, returning after several years playing other games was very jarring as the camera behaves nothing like what other gamers are used to. I have no idea what it feels like to somebody who never played in the first place, but spending the time to implement an optional camera control system similar to most current third-person MMOs would make the first hour of gameplay feel a whole lot smoother to people joining for the first time. -(Ringer)

Another easy change - give an option to increase the (client-side, at least) maximum number of objects displayed. Currently you can easily pass the limit from just half the buildings in a moderately large public works compound. A dozen pottery wheels here, a dozen rock saws there, a dozen or two brick racks there. While an option to keep it low is useful to people on lower-end machines, newer computers can handle a lot more. In this case, the server is sending all of them anyway (as rotating the camera instantly changes which are visible the very next frame), so the higher option wouldn't have any downside for server lag. -(Ringer)

Millions of people play and love Minecraft which in many ways is even less graphically interesting than ATITD. I don't think graphics are the problem beyond the puny max object limit. I'm sitting here with the game open in the background and what I hear are wind, a hawk scream and occasionally insect chatter. It is completely depressing. What the game needs is ambiance music!--ph47f3 18:42, 2 June 2014 (EST)

Long term target, but now there is lots of commercial and open source engines like Ogre3D. Time to start changing the graphics engine. And possibly players can help with some modeling also. There is some great artists in game that can donate some models and get the sattisfaction to be used in the game plus some subscription benefits; -- talos

Cooking Ingredient Potency

I'm sure some people won't want this brought up, but a design flaw in potency adjustment as it is currently implemented has been almost universally applied ever since the first cookpot was cast. Either completely remove it or change it to a tracking system that isn't trivially exploited by the entire playerbase.

Everybody builds two kitchens and eats a crummy meal before eating a real one, and the way the system is currently implemented that means only the throwaway meal's ingredients get rebalanced. My suggestion would be to select a random time each Egypt hour at which point the meal (if any) each player has active gets its ingredients rebalanced: that way, on average, it matches the meals actively being used (rather than those eaten on an empty stomach).

If this were implemented it would be fantastic to (aside from starting values) remove any code distinction between herb and non-herb potency. Some of the rarest non-herb ingredients are orders of magnitude rarer than mid-range herbs, and use-based potency should be able to scale them appropriately.

This would also mean potencies shift much more drastically over time, so the player skill of designing recipes remains valuable over the course of the whole telling rather than becoming much less important once several good recipes have been assembled.

-(Ringer)

• Have to say I disagree with this. The "rebalancing" was a bad design mechanic brought in to the game when it was realised that with so many new cooking ingredients, the amount of stat bonuses would be outrageously high. I dislike this change because it's only changing it for the sake of changing it without any real basis in the sciences. This idea would actually retard research rather than encourage it. These foods are essentially stimulants and there's a science, albeit a made up one, behind it all. Loss of potency over time was a change for the sake of change to fix a perceived design flaw, when in fact there was no design flaw. Evil Teppy is evil... no seriously, that's all it was about.

Avatar Appearance

As stated below (in long-term features) clothing is difficult and expensive. Would it be relatively quick and easy to at least have some darker skin tones for some or all of the avatars? It would be more historically accurate (at least according to most anthropologists) and also more diverse.

In some games (e.g. The Sims) players with image editing skills can create and edit texture maps to be applied to existing models. Could this be possible for ATITD avatars? It may be a way to increase the number of available options for avatars without requiring new models and art. There would probably need to be some way for Egyptians to express their displeasure about about an avatar's appearance, since some people might want to upload inappropriate or offensive textures. However it's always been possible for people to do something similar with sculptures, and that has mostly not been a big problem over the years. --VarLetha 01:28, 24 June 2014 (EST)

Sculpture Enhancements

While it is always interesting to see what people can do with all the different objects in the game set within a sculpture base, I always found it to be a bit limited. I'm not proposing that we allow a truly free-form of anything or a new test (though a sculpture making test using blocks of marble that you have to chisel away would be awesome) but instead the ability to not only rotate and move the objects within the sculpture base but also resize them, within reason. Before anyone bothers to mention the laws of physics, remember that many sculptures have "floating" objects inside them.. hehe. -Tribisha 30 August 2014

Neglected Veggies

Leeks, Carrots, Cabbage, and Onions are in high demand throughout the telling for their various uses. But Garlic and the 4 event vegetables (as well as any future vegetables that might be added to the game) get a little left out. These should be given more uses in the game besides just being cooking bases. For example, Garlic could be fed to sheep in addition to Onions. Perhaps the ratio of onions/garlic that you feed sheep would determine the rate at which they reproduce, produce dung, or produce wool. Rabbits could eat cucumbers in addition to carrots perhaps? Also, watermelons and cucumbers could be juiced at a kitchen like carrots and cabbage. The juice could be a cooking ingredient on its own.

Stone Automation

With Carpentry Automation comes the Sawmill. Why not add a new building that produces gravel called Stone Crusher that becomes available with Stone Automation? It can be a new building that works along the same lines as the Sawmill, where it'll run as long as it's fed Medium Stones. If it stops, the player needs to replace X amount of Sledgehammers or Heavy Mallet Heads. Or even easier, add the ability to crush Medium Stones to the Steam Rock Saw (pushing the ability to automate gravel up the tech tree as well). The output can be random like breaking them by hand or a lower set amount. --Darkfyre 7/22/14

• I half agree with this idea. I like that there are Detonation Boxes in the game. If this were added, what would happen to them? I would like that Automated Gravel maker to be an option much later in the game as an additional way to make gravel. So first you start with sledgehammers, then you move to detonation boxes, then you move to auto smashers. However, like many auto buildings they would be much slower until tuned etc.

Long-Term Feature Requests

Hops

I had previously suggested this back in T2-T3 and it seemed to have a favorable response back then. As an avid home-brewer as well as someone who grows their own hops I think it would be quite interesting to be able to utilize them in game for beer and the like. Summarizing what I had suggested before. The 'hops yard' would be a permanent plantation housing the bines and main plant. I would think that up to 7 plants in a yard, allowing for different varieties. With a very tall trellis system made of rope for the bines (not vines!) to grow on. Growth and maintenance wise it would be very similar to grapes. Management of mites, wilt, training the bines, checking for readiness, as well as appropriate pruning of lower leaves to optimize production of the cones. Harvesting would cut down both the rope and bines, requiring it to be restrung before the plants could grow properly again. Manual separation of the cones from the bines would ideally require both focus and dexterity. Perhaps some sort of automated device could also be used, at the cost of overall quality of the cones. The cones would need to be properly dried, and we already have plenty of options for that. Crossbreeding would definitely play a role here, further enhancing the flavor or anti microbial properties of the hops. Likewise issues with cultivation such as contamination from male plants, poor growth management, or pollution could also effect the overall quality of the product. Beer flavor would be greatly enhanced, however there is a herbal/medicinal side that could also be explored. The overall benefit of hops would be a increased microbial resistance and longer storage stability in kegs. --Kartal 04:34, 24 March 2014 (EST)

• Yup, I suggested something similar above in relation to Barley/Wheat. Essentially a permanent field or structure for growing and tending the plants rather than it being a quick minigame. Further to this, what could be a good thing is to have standalone growing (like with current Barley/Flax/etc), which is very manual labour. Then later on, with tech unlocked, a more permanent structure or field could be created for a more Greenhouse/Vinyard-like experience where you can harvest things after tending them for multiple days/weeks.

Candy Making

This idea would use a colorful Candy Maker machine.

Candies could be a substitute for portable food.

Resources we thought of to use:

1) cocoa

2)spices (herbs) like cinnamon, sugar cane, mountain mint, peppermint, honey mint, licorice etc

3) Citrus fruit and Aromatic Honey from Indonesian beehives

4) Wines - wine cordials

Stat boosts from combinations of candies could change or be expanded by making skill levels of Candy Making to buy. Maybe the first skill level allows candies that give single stat boosts and you can use 3 different shaped molds and only use aromatic honey and citrus fruit. Second level might give candies that give a combination of two stat boosts and use 3 more differently shaped molds and use cocoa and spices with a longer duration. Third level would allow candies that have three stat boosts and 1 more shaped mold that adds striping, polka dots, etc depending on the setting of that mold (note that is the magic 7 number of molds) and that use the wines.

Time duration of stat boost could vary with the skill levels and ingredients used.

You could have extrusion pieces/molds to add to the candy making machine so candies would be named for the shape or size.

Descriptions of the candy could be shape, size, flavor, aroma (aromatic honeys), etc

And if wanted it could be a Test from this...Test of the Sweet Tooth...a Body test.

A drawback could be an upset stomach if you try to overuse. Use that animation of our avatar holding its stomach. I think it was coughing. If you try to use more than some maximum consumption level (say 3 candies within the last 24 egypt time) you get a negative hit on the stats you boosted. The more you go over it the worse it gets.

Teppy had said he was going to code this idea.

(Ariella)+1 Jaylenaeybarre

Remote Chariot Stop Schedule

Instead of wondering when the next Chariot Stop is going or begging in regional for someone to tell them, why not have a Chariot Stop Schedule box/window popup so you can time when to run to your CS and not wait...and wait...and wait... Ariella 09:43, 10 May 2014 (EST)Ariella

New Chariot Stop building

Build a new Chariot Stop as a group project. Be able to propose a location, each player could put in one vote on one location. When a location gets 25% of the population votes then the building site 'appears' and all other proposed Chariot Stop locations disappear. Only 7? extra chariot stops can be built during the game. After the building location appears then it has a list of mats to complete until it is finished. Then a similar voting system appears to connect it to 3 other chariot stops. The process starts over for the next Chariot Stop up to 7? new ones. Over time players themselves realize good placement for Chariot Stops and connections AriellaAriella

Mead

As a novice mead-maker and beekeeper this is something else I would love to see in game. While my thoughts on this are not as fully fleshed out, the concept still stands. We wind up with such a surplus of honey in game it would be nice to have another use for it. With our already vast and varied herb system, as well as some fruits and veg there we should be able to attain many varieties of mead (There are over 40 variations of mead!) Fermentation and aging usually takes MUCH longer than wines, which may prove to be an issue if we move to a faster pace. But I'm sure a solution could be found. --Kartal 04:34, 24 March 2014 (EST)

• So perhaps something like a liquid lunch box that gets stronger the longer that is on the shelf and generally packs more of a punch? But perhaps at the cost of stronger and stronger stat penalties to other attributes and a much shorter duration. Lunchboxes would be for a wide range of stats that last a long time - mead would be for that fast one-off Herculean effort that requires only a couple specific stats? -Bri
• With so many varieties could make a mead book , like the winebook Jaylenaeybarre

mats that have sofar no use or hardly any use

Wool, wool cloth (except for Clay-Steeped Wool Cloth & upgraded thistle gardens)the wool cloth could be used instead of linen in certain buildings fi: like the welcome banner

Wool cloth, fine glass rods, glass jars, copper wire, and acid could be used to make a primitive battery. This could be used for fun (use it up to get the zap animation), or it could be used for some other purpose. Perhaps a single-use item that reset all of your attribute timers. Or it could reset the requirements at a chemistry lab. Tallow 10:50, 18 April 2014 (EST)

Wool cloth could be required to make a medium construction site. Tallow 10:50, 18 April 2014 (EST)

Wool cloth could be required to expand guild halls beyond a certain point. Tallow 10:50, 18 April 2014 (EST)

Fish scales: could be used for the funeral temple too?

There must be something we can do with them ?

Looking forward to any ideas that might be put here :)Jaylenaeybarre

Fish scales could be ground into colored powder using a wooden pestle and flint. The powder can be mixed into White Raeli Tiles to make colored tiles (an alternate way to get a few of the rarer colors). Or it can be mixed with oil to as an alternative way to make paints. All this can be done at the 'Industrial Kitchen' building. Tallow 10:50, 18 April 2014 (EST)

I add : cobra venom, crushed eggshells, more uses for compost (blondie, march 25, 2014)

Wool or Silk unlocking new clothing outfits or Flag decorations for a camp would be interesting. tehm 3:22, 26 March, 2014 (EST)

Cobra venom, crushed eggshells, and some kind of mushroom can be combined into an alchemical tincture. The tincture allows higher level chemical extracts to be diluted into lower level ones. Two Ra's extract, and 100 tincture could be used to manufacture three Thoth's extract. Something like that. Tallow 10:50, 18 April 2014 (EST)

Sawdust: maybe use it as bedding in animal pens, for some benefit, like they reproduce faster. Avanya

Sawdust is an excellent insulator. Create a Beer Cellar which requires a ton of sawdust and keeps beer fresh (pauses beer timer). You have to feed it sawdust constantly in order to keep the beer from spoiling. Tallow 10:50, 18 April 2014 (EST)

Require sawdust as flooring for many large structures like houses. Tallow 10:50, 18 April 2014 (EST)

Provide a way to turn sawdust into coal at some proper ratio (100 sawdust -> 1 coal?). Tallow 10:50, 18 April 2014 (EST)

Sawdust might be used as fuel. Make high-level kilns require sawdust (a high level wood byproduct) instead of wood. Tallow 10:50, 18 April 2014 (EST)

Flint: Useful in the early game but disappears completely from the end game. Add it as an additional requirement for making concrete. Tallow 10:50, 18 April 2014 (EST)

Thorns: Another early game item. Allow it to be crushed into compost (100 thorns -> 1 compost? 1k thorns?). Tallow 10:50, 18 April 2014 (EST)

Compost: Allow it to be added to a greenhouse as a kind of fuel to make grass grow faster Tallow 10:50, 18 April 2014 (EST)

Leather: In the late game, add a lot more requirements for leather gaskets to automation machines. 100 leather to make a steam engine, etc. Tallow 10:50, 18 April 2014 (EST) Oil/Leather: Require linearly increasing oil/leather repair costs for a deep well. Max it out as 500/500 or somesuch. Tallow 10:50, 18 April 2014 (EST)

Medium Stones: Allow them to be shaped into stone blocks. Require stone blocks in all late game structures (where just cut stone/concrete is needed now). Tallow 10:50, 18 April 2014 (EST)

The Benefits of Discipline

Passing body tests increases your stats, passing worship tests increases your Barley growth, passing leadership tests increases the number of petitions you can carry, passing architecture tests let's you build larger compounds, passing art tests makes you a better blacksmith, but harmony and thought are its own reward?

Two issues here. Since we will have more than seven tests available, will it be necessary to rethink the scaling of the other disciplines, or are those just based on your rank (you can't go above Oracle even if you've passed seven).

Second, a little boost to Harmony and Thought? Perhaps those who have passed harmony tests can use the Mechanic skill more frequently than every 20 minutes (being in tune with Egypt helps you to tune machines) and ranks in thought let you repair more frequently? Perhaps other things on a fixed timer which are not affected by stats could get a small bonus from passing tests in these disciplines.

--GHawkins 17:43, 26 March, 2014 (PST) +1 Porthos

Clothing

Would love to see players be able to make clothing, hats, sandels that would show up on the player avatar. This would require alot of artist work and not sure how much strain the engine can take in large gatherings, but being able to customize your look is a big draw!--Porthos 05:33, 27 March 2014 (EST)

Things that should be noted. Avatar creation is THE most expensive piece of artwork in the game (In regards to artist time) The enhancements that you are asking for for require wholesale replacement of the existing avatars, (Existing clothing would have to be removed, the models re-rigged and new clothing created) The engine would need to be modified to add a cloth system to permit the clothing to work right and not cross into the body.... Yes, I realize that some of the models are sub-par already in that aspect, but more pluggable clothing makes the issue worse. (IE - No way to get this done in time for T7.) --Pluribus 11:35, 27 March 2014 (EST)

Thank you, I appreciate that it is a huge request to make, and even more so now as you said that all the avatars have to be retooled for it to be implemented. Hopefully, beyond T7 then --Porthos 05:41, 28 March 2014 (EST)

Clothing has been requested for some time. If this wasn't available until month 3, people would still be excited about it. This doesn't need to be done by tale start. tehm-- March 28, '14

Social Media

I think we're missing out on a huge market of gamers by not using Facebook / Twitter to let players know about goings on in the game. Keeping our current player base in touch with the game, maintaining contact with those who leave/break from the game, and bringing in new players via post sharing would do great things for the game. We really need an official Facebook page (or recover the existing one: https://www.facebook.com/pages/A-Tale-in-the-Desert/112589482087005?rf=114593695223307#) and get the word out. Happy players bring in more new people than any other form of advertising. -- Darkfyre Aug 11 2014

Feature Requests

Mod Tools

L2PBS, Baazar, etc have literally the worst modding system known to man. Boards can only be modded by one person at a time, and each mod has to go to RP every time to pick up the boards. Mods are unpaid, uncompensated community volunteers, and requiring a commute -- in some cases, a very long commute -- is punitive. Fixing how costly it is to volunteer as a mod would undoubtedly go a long way to increasing mod retention. --Eimear

The mic has to be clicked on to 'grab the boards', can it be added to a player menu option to grab the boards, any mics owned by guilds you are in would show up.--Porthos 04:12, 6 April 2014 (EST)

• This times a billion, ATITD is a communal game. The reason for the change was to foster dissent between regions, but honestly if there's no place for people to argue with each other, you won't get any more dissent. This experiment has simply lead to a breakdown in communication between people and made it really hard to get a main board up. Time to send this change the way of the shard methinks! - Orrin

• Moderated boards should have a visual indication if there is someone manning the callboard. Doesn't need to be complex, if one or more persons have the callboard open, then a green light displays in the chat tab. If nobody has a callboard open, then a red light displays on the chat tab, or a warning triangle which displays "Callboard not manned" when you hover over the icon. Silden 16:11, 14 April 2014 (EST)

/Roll Number Generator

I propose to add function that will return random generated number from 1 to 100. Typing /roll in any chat would return "<Player Name> rolls <number from 1-100>" which would be visible to all members of that chat. To distinguish it from main chat informations and /me command, I propose that text of that function would appear in purple. (Petition by Tyreus, added by Cegaiel) - Would like to see this as a feature; there are times where this feature can really come in handy. +2 Porthos Silden

In Game Macros

I'd like to see macros that we could run within the game. Macros bring an separate challenge to the game, but being able to share them with the community often leads to frustration with different third party tools being used. With an option to run macros within the game, a lot more non-technical people could enjoy the benefits macros have to offer. An extension to this could be to have macros as trade items (maybe scrolls), and offer challenges around these. Ofalot

Storyline Suggestions

Bring Back the Story!

My favorite time in game has been when there's a story that offers am opportunity to do more than play in sandbox mode. Sami and his brother trying to sway Egyptians to their cause was interesting! And they impacted the game dynamically (I fondly remember nuking a region to get better Furnaces). I'd like to see a commitment to a story unfolding and evolving over the months of play. Seriously, a commitment. Like the 1st Day of every Egyptian month Story progresses... tehm 3:38, 26 March, 2014 (EST)

• The VoK event was the most exiting thing the game ever. Sadly it was bugged so Teppy say no to more large scale events. Get a form of Egypt/wide event/story back. -- Talos
• The University of Progress would be fun to see again. -Bri

Monuments

Monuments don't become significant in the game until the very late stages, after all 7 tests are released and most of the game population has drifted away. I propose we change that system and incorporate the building of the monuments into the storyline from the first test release. It would give people a visible goal to work together towards for the entire telling. Each monument would have a predetermined location at the start of the tale (or from the release of the first test in that discipline) possibly at a site like Memphis where players can't build near them. It has an initial build cost for its construction site and 7 stages of development. There is a small cost associated with contributing to each stage of the monument.

To advance the monument to the next stage of development x number of people need to contribute at each level dependant on the number of tests they have passed. You can have unlimited number of people contribute once per stage per title (so everyone can get their named listed and immortalized). Contributions must be made in order and a person is listed at the highest level they contributed at. (Oracles would have to contribute 7 times, once per stage and would be listed once under oracles.) IE it takes 228 Students to open the 2nd stage. 112 Prentices to open the 3rd stage. 56 Journeyman to open 4th. 28 Scribes to open 5th. 14 Masters to open 6th. 7 Sages to open 7th. and 1 Oracle to finish the monument. (In theory it would only take 228 people to build a monument, however thousands may contribute to it, and be listed on it). After the monument is finished there is a period of time that people can continue to contribute to the monument (minimum 60 days). Possibly contributing to a monument (after the initial site is built) gives a stat buff (similar to eating at a banquet?). When each stage is completed an Egypt wide message goes out and Egypt wide stat buff is given.

30 days after all the monuments are built (each has at least 1 oracle), the first 7 oracles in each discipline that contribute (at oracle level) to the monument have the option to make a Test/Tech suggestion. (They can choose to pass on making a suggestion and the next oracle gets a chance.) Those suggestions are voted on by everyone that has contributed to the monument. There is 30 days to vote. Votes are weighted by the level which you have contributed to the monument (ie student gets a weight of 1, oracles 7). Kyline