Ember Online

I'll preface this by saying that it could be a non-issue given the stage of development, but I'd rather stop the trend early if possible.

Thus far the areas in the game lack story, flow, and coherency. There's no feeling of an overarching story leading us anywhere. Right now since NiteHawk is focused on developing the core game play systems, I can understand the reasoning to just get areas in game for testing purposes, buttttt... You could be doing this while creating an engaging story/world. Hell, you don't even need huge backstory to the current areas. Simple flavor texts/NPCs that slowly reveal backstory of what is going on in the World goes along way.

I have no clue how the current builders are organizing their team/plan for the game, but I can tell just from playing that it's fragmented and you aren't teaming up to create a narrative.

Please make me a World worth exploring.
Thanks.

I'm still early in, but you are correct. I assumed that the cracks would be filled in as development progresses, but it is true that it would probably be easier to fill in some additional content as you move forward...however I do think there is something to be said for creating the bones of the game and making sure that they work, then adding in the meat and content that makes the world glow.

My first reaction was that I didn't really even know what the name of the starting town was, had to go look. It would be nice for a brief prompt after character creation as to why you are in Seamoor, a poke in the side as to what to do, the point of life, the universe, and everything, etc.

I think that, after hitting your main character class, it might be interesting for you to be "kicked out" of seamoor and forced to move to a different town until a later level or until you could supply a certain something. I know in ROK you could move toward Trollheim, but what if that path diverged? At the gate you could be told "east or south" or something similar, with two cities as destinations with different flavors.

Anyways, this is all spitballing. Like I said, I think bones first, then the meat.

Drasp wrote:I'm still early in, but you are correct. I assumed that the cracks would be filled in as development progresses, but it is true that it would probably be easier to fill in some additional content as you move forward...however I do think there is something to be said for creating the bones of the game and making sure that they work, then adding in the meat and content that makes the world glow.

My first reaction was that I didn't really even know what the name of the starting town was, had to go look. It would be nice for a brief prompt after character creation as to why you are in Seamoor, a poke in the side as to what to do, the point of life, the universe, and everything, etc.

I think that, after hitting your main character class, it might be interesting for you to be "kicked out" of seamoor and forced to move to a different town until a later level or until you could supply a certain something. I know in ROK you could move toward Trollheim, but what if that path diverged? At the gate you could be told "east or south" or something similar, with two cities as destinations with different flavors.

Anyways, this is all spitballing. Like I said, I think bones first, then the meat.

Yeah, I agree with that sentiment. There are things that require development work from NiteHawk to improve on this (Tutorial/Quest system), but a lot of storytelling / development of the World's story can be created with current build tools.

Please have my babies. Word for word this is been on Sat's and my tongue since this all began.

Thoth wrote:

Aieron wrote:I'll preface this by saying that it could be a non-issue given the stage of development, but I'd rather stop the trend early if possible.

Thus far the areas in the game lack story, flow, and coherency. There's no feeling of an overarching story leading us anywhere. Right now since NiteHawk is focused on developing the core game play systems, I can understand the reasoning to just get areas in game for testing purposes, buttttt... You could be doing this while creating an engaging story/world. Hell, you don't even need huge backstory to the current areas. Simple flavor texts/NPCs that slowly reveal backstory of what is going on in the World goes along way.

I have no clue how the current builders are organizing their team/plan for the game, but I can tell just from playing that it's fragmented and you aren't teaming up to create a narrative.

Please make me a World worth exploring.
Thanks.

Please have my babies. Word for word this is been on Sat's and my tongue since this all began.

Kawasaki is offended he has too

Yea I'm probably the main culprit here since a good share of the content in game atm came from me. While there is some backstory I'm really just focused on getting good content out there so we can test. Now that skills are being rapidly produced and the game is moving along I didn't really want content being the bottleneck to overall development progress.

That said I understand "lore" is important to you guys so it will be there it's just not a hindering factor for progress so wasn't at the top of my list.

Lateralus wrote:Yea I'm probably the main culprit here since a good share of the content in game atm came from me. While there is some backstory I'm really just focused on getting good content out there so we can test. Now that skills are being rapidly produced and the game is moving along I didn't really want content being the bottleneck to overall development progress.

That said I understand "lore" is important to you guys so it will be there it's just not a hindering factor for progress so wasn't at the top of my list.

That's why you have teammates! I'm sure you have someone on build who likes writing (in fact, I know you do lol). While I understand the sentiment of needing content in game to test everything NiteHawk is developing, I'd argue that doing so without an overarching plan for the World is inefficient and just causes more issues in the future.

Thoth wrote:Please have my babies. Word for word this is been on Sat's and my tongue since this all began.

I'm going to speak up this time because I've been seriously trying to get you guys to speak to each other. Right now the world has no structure really, I like the areas, but in terms of storyline, they have none. Sat made a good general post about the lore, but not many (including the public) have posted about it in Lore. It would be great if people posted there about ideas, expanded on Sat's idea, etc.

It's been on your tongues but you guys keep it to yourself until the last minute which bothers me to no end. You guys 'CAN' be leaders if you step up, but I haven't really seen it. I think you guys are worried to step on peoples toes/worried that you might upset them. But hey, if they can't handle it, they can step out.

The reason why I added the 'outlines' area to build is so you guys communicate more as recently there was an issue with stating the area has problems AFTER it was being built, so the outlines was meant to deal with that, but not ONE post from builder to builder has been made there about their area. What do you expect they do then? They will assume their area is fine when clearly none of it is going by lore I feel. And everyone just talks about it quietly from the background.

You guys also wanted to close off the build to builders only. Aka the world will be designed by builders only. I think it's FINE to do because it gives more structure, but you guys don't communicate at all and it seems more that what's happening is everyone is doing what they want to do.

We do need a proper leader in this. Right now there is none. I'm not going to hire some random Joe to scream at people. I'd prefer someone whos passionate about the game and wants to design too, but can lead as well.

A second thing is that we NEED area info of each area that needs to be built. If someone designs a world (Sat) then maybe it would be good for Sat or someone else to make up a gameplan on what area goes where, the name of the area, what the area does, whats in it (general type of npcs, etc.) . Then the builders pick what area they WANT to build. It doesn't NEED to have all the fancy storylines and OADS yet, but if it has the general area plan it can be expanded on in the future very easily. I want this to be public and posted.

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I'm thinking the outlines are going to be posted to everyone to comment soon if it keeps up though. I love you guys, and I think the areas are pretty cool , but they don't follow any lore structure. I'm going to be barring new areas until we figure this out because it's useless to keep going if we're adjusting stuff. We might be able to salvage the current areas, we might not, I don't know yet. Outlines would be posted to the public by builders for general says if we keep it up. I know you guys don't want this in build but its better then 0 comments.


Let's fix this before we continue then. We need a area plan for each area as I said, and a general world map.

Why did you pick Ember for the name?
Work from there?

Canopia Forest/Lumber Mill: Pissed of treants, messing with nature, nature retaliating. Forest witch... im gueessing shes defending nature right?
So Canopia is stripping the wood of trees and exporting it for money. A few possible threads could be started from that alone (how do the people of Seamore feel about that?)

Not really spent much time in the Eastern section.
Is the dark druid also peeved about thie lumber thing or unrelated? Has he been experimenting on the local wildlife (going by some of the interesting beasties there - i really must read the descriptions there...).

Wasteland:
Seems to be some kind of corruption or taint there. Some hidden evil influence tainting flora and fauna (could the Undead commander be one of its minions who is/was away to start gathering an army there or totally unrelated, i think itd be more unrelated it wouldnt really.. but still... why is he there without an army? ;p)? Possible OAD.

Meh.
I stop now. Im better at building from ideas than making them.

PS. Please note ive spent more time running around levelling than anything else, so ive not been reading too much descriptions yet... Its a flaw of mine, I jump then look.

I would suggest that we move this conversation to Lore and encourage more people to check there for updates and contributions. I think there should probably be a few different threads started. It might be best to start from the bottom and build initially. Then we can build stories for each area so that it can be tied together.

Purpose of character/why are you in Seamoor?
What drives you to move out of Seamoor/purpose of exploring?
Is there an over overarching theme of the entire realm?
Are there factions encountered? Daedroth is on the right path here.
Should there be an ultimate goal of defeating certain npcs/spawns? What if ember stones ended up being extremely difficult items to obtain? five rare spawns in different parts of the map. What happens when you get them?

Sorry if I'm adding fog to the fog. I enjoy throwing ideas out to see what sticks. Give me an idea of what you all feel is the culture we are pursuing.