Shattered Kingdoms

I guess that is indeed another way to do it. Wiki seems to be the way most go about it. Seems like forums might be easier to police, but things are harder to organize naturally and may go stale.

This may be one place for me to finally give up my long fight and just bow to the inevitable. I'm more of an explorer mindset, so the idea that the guy next to me can get the same benefit by reading a guide that I managed to discover on my own is a bit anathema. But people will share either way, just in dark corners of the internet instead (no offense Revenger).

I agree with Grep, I would at least like to hear your thought on the topic, with what he has already stated and what I have added to the topic.

I would also like to know your thoughts on the CRS currently in place and your thoughts on what trag and I have mentioned about it.

As far as facebook is concerned, I wasn't talking about a game app for mobile phones or anything of the sort. I was talking about either a direct link to http://www.shatterkingdoms.com to the play now setting, or simply adding the play now function to the facebook page, just like it is on the homepage. (For those work players, it might bypass the games block on the firewall if your company allows you to access facebook. <: ) I figured if people can play it right there without having to leave the page, it might promote more people checking it out to see what it's all about. Again, I would stress that if they become confused or frustrated, speak to another player OOCly (or state that they are new when the ask for aid) with instructions on how to do such: type who, tell name message etc. I don't think trying to gear up for mobile phone play is the best idea, however, I do think that having information for the best ways to play on mobile/ipad would ease the head ache of someone trying to find it on their own if they were so inclined.. but we do have a client forum topic already, perhaps promote that and put the information there if it's not already?

I'm more sympathetic to the ethereal complaint than the AoN complaint and have broken these up into two different categories in my list. I don't agree with some of your premise regarding AoN. It's not a waste of time to get magic weapons simply due to the existence of AoN. Those weapons are still superior against nearly everyone except an AoN trained barbarian. AoN barbarians are designed to be a foil that keep the ultra equipped from being invincible. But not everyone is a barbarian and so having them is still better than not having them. Carry a common bar of iron in your bag for those pesky barbs.

Your reasons are sound, but I just don't know that I'd follow that line of reasoning. It seems to me like you could stand to recapture more forum participants into productively playing the game than you could entice new Facebook users to play SK and not some glittery Skinner box of an app. The derisiveness on my part is directed towards the facebook paradigm (like it seems yours might be) rather than on any part of SK or what you've said in the thread.

With my limited knowledge of what's going on in Facebook, it feels like you're barking up the wrong tree by trying to sell a text-only game to the website that people use prominently to share pictures on and play what are basically Flash games.

Your original post sounded like you were admitting that SK isn't fun to play a lot for some quantity of people and you were trying to figure out how to change that. Getting the same game with no real repackaging up on Facebook seems like a loss of your original goal, or perhaps evidence of my misinterpretation . . . . has the facebook SK content showcased a ton of activity representing a big potential playerbase, or something?

To be a little cynical, if removing grind in terms of reduced levels and NewGame+ is not aligned with your vision of the game, where does providing a user who could click a link on a Facebook page to the fmud client on the main website with a spoon-feeding of access to the game inside Facebook align with that?

Returning to straight talk, I don't think I could recruit a single person to play SK by saying they could log into Facebook (and thereby have their identity revealed to SK) to play it. That's probably why I'm making this reply. The feature would be, from the perspective of my ability to play the game and get people I know excited about the game, a waste of your time.

Maybe I'm in the minority and a lot of people could get a lot more people to play if the game were accessible inside Facebook. I guess I'll have to wait for that poll to see.

This is what I am talking about as well. But I've researched this and it's not as simple as flipping a few FB settings or dropping in a few lines of HTML. An additional server with the proper credentials are required (probably can use Hiroku for free but it's still an additional hassle to set up) as well as some coding. There are multiple companies that exist just to set this up and then charge you a monthly fee for something that is probably not all that hard in the grand scheme of coding but is confusingly documented.

You misinterpreted the original post. I think SK is a great game and most everyone here must believe so as well, despite their gripes, or else we wouldn't still be talking. It's just not the type of game whose virtues are understood in the current age of graphical and/or FB games. The problem for new players is education and promotion.


I'm certain the game won't appeal to the majority of FB users. That's not the point. If we could even interest 0.0001% of FB users into trying SK, that would be significantly more people than have ever played SK in its nearly 20 year history. If you want to market to people, you need to go to where they are and make it easy for them to try. FB is by far the largest english speaking audience that you can address and for very little cost.

I can certainly understand where you're coming from on that point, Dulrik. Every explorer will feel that way in some way. However, they can take pride in the fact that they did it on their own. And if they have the time to deal with that, great. The game will but much more rewarding to them. However, they can also take satisfaction in the fact that people are using information they provide in order to play the game and in that respect, they can feel proud that their hard work has helped the rest of the playerbase.

I would like to put a link to a character ran site for my old mud, if you will allow it. Just to give an example of how detailed something like this can become, especially if we all take the time to add to it and develop it. We had a contest in my old mud to see who could make the best site for the mud and it went fairly well for those who had the ability to create webpages. Give me the okay and I will post the link.

Mountable bugs for all sizes.

Flying beetles. Spiders.

Ants.

I can't argue with your numbers, they make sense. I guess I'm saying that if the retention issue you seemed to acknowledge in your OP isn't dealt with, the idea could stand to backfire and represent the disenchantment and loss of more people than have ever quit SK. As someone who, believe it or not, would love to see a renaissance of the game, that worries me enough to motivate me to continue to talk about it.

At this point though, I know this is getting a little too back-and-forth for what you intended in this thread. Could we perhaps change the subject and get more information as to why you're not open to NewGame+ features?

This is about the only LT reward suggested so far that I wouldn't mind seeing. The key is that it must not raise the maximum potential of the character.