Some feedback on Linden Realms game

[Eileen Fellstein]

Rather than add more to the thread that is displayed on the dashboard, I thought I would start a topic here just to comment on my experience with it. If it fits better in some other forum, by all means move it.

My feedback is mostly positive. I've been hoping to see something like this for a while. Meaning some activity put on by folks running the show that gives us a sense that they are an active part of the community and which tells me they understand that people like a little diversion from their day to day whatever they do here.

The negatives 1st since they were very few.

* It suffered from the same lag and problems with sim crossings as any other very active sim on the grid. No suprize really and with a little bit of adjustment to settings, I was able to get through quite a bit of the gtame scenario.

* I was confused at one point. I got to the point of the objective and nothing happened. Is the game incomplete? Just a teaser? Or is it glitching? It was the point after visiting the sunspire when you are instructed to go back to the workshop. I get there and nothing happens.

* green crystals are at a premium, wow! lol, I understand it's giving away money and we're talking a lot of potential people but 3 crystals the entire time...worth 1 linden each? This = what? hmm, I'm afraid my calculator might break if I try to divide that low ;)

(heh, on the good side, no need to worry about people alt farming this for free linden. The game's value is in it's fun factor. Nabbing a couple linden along the way is a bonus at most)

Here is the most concerning negative to me...

* when relogging after a graphic adjustment I came back to "sim unavailable you have been transported to a nearby region" Region in question was adult. Linden Realms is on general. Fortunately it was someone like me that has no issue with seeing adult content and who is a verified adult. But is everyone being rerouted to the nearby adult region when the sim is unavailable?

Lastly, on one visit it took several attempts at entering the portal for it to put the game hud on me. If I'd not already been there to know what to expect, Id have been totally lost.

On the good side, I loved it. Was great fun and makes me hopeful to see more things like this. I was also encouraged that the sim was quite active. Other people were there participating every time I went.

<siderant>That has been probably the single most disappointing thing to me in my SL thus far. Any time I find a really nicely done sim with a good theme and a promising activity, I arrive to find no one there and nothing going on :( Nobody wants to play alone all the time and nobody wants to feel like the owner don't care enough to have someone there. SO so many ghostowns in SL that realy deserve to be thriving attractions while a lot of us just end up 'back at the club' where the dots are. /endrant>

The biggest positive for me is in hoping they not only monitor this and work on improving it for it's own sake but for the benefit it could bring the whole grid. As I pointed out above, it suffers from the same lag based issues as a lot of other sims. If this helps Linden labs finally iron out those issues for good, then halleluja, ya know.

And hopefully the ways and means of how the game interface was done will become knowlege available to developers. It was really nice...no, absolutely fantastic...to go take part in an activity and not have to obtain a hud and read a lengthy note card on how to set it up and use it to do what I wanted to do

[Tari Landar]

I can confirm one thing for you, not everyone gets rerouted to an adult sim. It happened to me a few times(because my system and mesh don't work well together, regardless of what I do, lol) and each time I went to a different sim. Once I went to an adult sim but the others were moderate.

 

I'll come back with the rest of my comments, when I've more time to type it all out (what's with short humans thinking they need to eat all the time anyway? sheesh)

[StewPidmodd]

It isn't just short people I can confirm having just realised how hungry you can get in a short time when you are confined to a chair with a broken ankle with nobody around to get you something from the fridge. I just hope the house doesn't get set on fire. Although I could dial 999. Do you think the Fire Service offer a take out service?

[Karma Avedon]

Great post Eileen!

My experience at Linden Realms was similar in that I came away with both positive and  negatives.  It IS a very fun diversion and the LL team did a good job of showing how a game environment could be built within SL. Some of the aspects of the design, such as the automatic TP gates and the interactive "creatures" show what may be in the future throughout the grid. And, last but not least, it was fun!

What I was not so crazy about was a lack of creativity in creatng the look and storyline of this game. The look and storyline is a direct ripoff of just about  every Final Fantasy game put out over the last 10 years, not to mention the folks who have played Everquest probably fellt as if they where in familiar surroundings. Let's just say this is NOT the first time I have seen those rock creatures running around.

This goes back I think to the common complaint that the talented creators at LL might be great at the nuts and bolts, but they don't really know what life in SL is like and they are not very creative. (They don't get "it" because they don't use it themselves.)  It will be interesting to see what these new tools used in Realms will be like in the hands of some of the creative artist and the folks who have pent a bit of time in wolrd.

I would encourage anyone who hasn'y to give the gamea try and decide for themselves. As I said, it is fun and that is/was really the main goal.

 

[Eileen Fellstein]

I never played EQ. For me, this screamed Spyro the Dragon, lol. Which is not a bad thing. I loved that game and spent many hours playing it with the kids and grandkids. But yes (and probably wisely) the scenery, while lush and vibrant was done very simplistically (it appears), presumably to get the most out of the script load. So, for some it will come off cartoony or kiddish I'm sure.

But consider it a template. Insirt <your graphic theme here> and solve the lag issues, you have whatever kind of scenario you like that people show up and guess what? It works! No fuss no muss, just come play. Easy as clicking on Farmtown.

And one other thing (merchants don't hate me plz, I'm a workin girl too)... No stores, no adds, no one plugging for tips. Damn it was nice to have none of that for a couple hours.

 

[Rene Erlanger]

I suggested a few years back, when M.Linden was proposing a 70-sim Arts continent...that LL should dedicate a continent for Games and should be part of the tour for new SL residents. I'm glad Linden Realms is kind of what i was envisaging back then.....I also suggested a continent that housed the best of the best of SL sims (Sims that have closed down)...a kind of Second Life Museum of awesome sims! (e.g Nemo Trilogy sims, Greenies, or Lost Gardens of Apollo...and many others)...this too should be part of a new Residents' tour.

I think Rod Gamble is moving in the right direction...hopefully in time retention rates will improve.

[Ceera Murakami]

The quest isn't over until you've fired four flare cannons. The sunspire quest is only halfway to the conclusion.

Many of the LR instances are bugged and glitchy. Many of them have issues that make it impossible to continue, because a cannon won't fire, or a quest won't register as completed. If you leaver LR and return via a different portal, you may end up in a different instance, and be able to continue.

[Eileen Fellstein]

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Ceera Murakami wrote:

The quest isn't over until you've fired four flare cannons. The sunspire quest is only halfway to the conclusion.

Many of the LR instances are bugged and glitchy. Many of them have issues that make it impossible to continue, because a cannon won't fire, or a quest won't register as completed. If you leaver LR and return via a different portal, you may end up in a different instance, and be able to continue.

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Just a different portal or an entirely different portal park? Either way, thanks for the info!

[161488303349]

is  blue crystals as well. they worth 2$ each. they quite hard to get bc is only 1 or 2 on each sim and they only come about 1 time every hour

i think is good that ppl can get some little linden$ off that game. better than special game credits. so ppl can buy stuff in other ppls shops and help make the world go round

is heaps linden$ being given away and must be quite a lot like u say. seems must be a cap overall tho bc the crystals appear on a timer. and the quests is limit to 1 tour and 4 cannons. still is probly way more than resident gamemaker be able to afford i think

i think as well that is better that the game stay really simple and i hope that linden not try make the game play more involved or compelling on the realms. will be quite hard for resident  gamemakers to compete if linden make like that and reward with linden$ as well. most gamemakers will be able to make way more compelling games than realms but probly not be able to compete on the level of linden$ giving that linden able to do

is concerns over permissions and stuff like that but altogether i think will be better for sl than not

[Eileen Fellstein]

I'm sure it does add up to quite a bit over time 16 Still, for people looking to make linden in world there are much faster avenues. Sploders, contests, money trees...a job, lol. I'm not even sure you can start this over when it's finished so it would just be a lot of running all over dodging rocks and fireballs if you are just doing it for linden.

speaking of finishing, I am still stuck at the same point, but I did notice something. Maybe, hopefully someone will see this and be able to glimpse into the problem from the following info...

If you click the objective text on the hud, it marks the location on the map for you. Well, I clicked and discovered that the location was on an entirely different island from the one I was standing on. (there are 15 identical islands situated next to one another, a row of 10 and a row of 5 directly below it)They are coded like LR277 (205,35, 78) the numbers in parenthesis of course being the slurl on the sim itself and the LR227 being the sim name. I saw that and my best guess was that a variable was left out or typed errantly in the code making it necessary to be on the exact sim, not just any of them. That may be the case, but after several tries I did wind up on the same island as the location mark but it still did not trigger a complete to the quest so

scratching my head here

Either way, that bug could use some spray

[161488303349]

when u click the help icon on the quest bar the map open like u say. u also get the red arrow beacon. so just close the map and follow the arrow. when u reach the point the arrow disappear like normal

ok

is 2 kinds quests. the first one is like a tour. it just takes u to dif places and u get messages in the chat telling u how u doing and where to go next. when u done all that it tell u to go back the basecamp and u get 3 linden$ for that part

then in the basecamp building is a machine that give u the cannon quests. so u stand on it. it tells u how many color crystals u have to go out in the fields to get. so u do that and go back to the machine and will give u the cannon quests. when u get to the cannons u have to click on them so they fire. when u do u get paid 5 linden$. then u go back to the base camp and do the other cannons

u can just scoom the crystals anytime and cash the blue and green ones at basecamp on the machines in the yard. the other color cash machines in the workshop on tyrahs island

i just put this all above here for ppl who not know how to do yet

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can make heaps of linden$ off scooming crystals once u know where they grow the most and where is the green and blue ones and big clusters of orange. like i can usual make like 50-80 linden$ in one sweep in about 30-40 mins. cant make that much off camping

+

sometimes it gets borky like u say. but oh well (:  

if i crash on there then i go back to the portal park and start over. i not go to the same sim game tho. go to another one. seems to work better for me when that happens

if the HUD not attach u can still scoom crystals and cash them so sometimes i just do like that. i not really need the HUD bc i done all the quests and u can only do them once seems like

 

[Eileen Fellstein]

No wonder I can't get any crystals. You got em all!

lol just teasin dear. I'm not doing it for the lindens, just wanna finish the game. I'm blessed with some wonderful friends and supporters who tip me well in my SL job and buy I linden from time to time on top of that.

But 50-80 in 30 minutes? go you, lol. I feel good if I got 3 in a sweep of the whole island, rofl. I am proud of one I got though. It was on that little island in the middle of the toxic water. Had to run past the meanie boulder and make a big leap over the broken pieces of bridge and get the crystal before the rock caught up to me

but yup, I don't know what the deal is. It just will not trigger the quests after returning to Tyrah's following sunspire. I've tried other portals, leaving and removing hud(s), relogging, clearing cache, you name it. Just nothing seems to work and the indicator beam when I click on the map doesn't go to the same spot all the time, and sometimes it way off the map on another instance of the island

I understand some like to get the crystals for the linden but for myself, since I can usually just buy what I want anyhow, I'd much rather that the game or some of the individual quests rewarded something that is exclusive;that you only get from doing this game.

 

 

[Ceera Murakami]

At sunspire, did you see a message after you reached the very top, that told you to return? (Something about her being really good at blowing things up now...) If not, you might not have triggered the right place at sunspure to make your HUD agree the quest is done.

[Eileen Fellstein]

---

Ceera Murakami wrote:

At sunspire, did you see a message after you reached the very top, that told you to return? (Something about her being really good at blowing things up now...) If not, you might not have triggered the right place at sunspure to make your HUD agree the quest is done.

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Sure did, then stayed and got a few crystals till the sunflare broiled me,lol. Hud says return to Tyrah's workshop

 

Wait..Tyrah's a girl? Are we sure? Did we check under the skirt? I never actually saw a Tyrah there, but I pictured a little male gnome Engineer, rofl

[161488303349]

since the realms open to public i not go on there much. when was in beta then i play all the time. is not really fair for person like me to take all the bigger money crystals now when is new ppl still try to learn. the blue and greens harder to get now bc is way more ppl playing now than b4. so they get scoomed up pretty quick when they appear

if i go now then is usual with other person who not been on there b4. i just run the safe paths and they follow and i run past where the green and blues grow and they scoom them and any orange we run past. sometimes if they not very good runners then i stand in a safe place and whistle to them in IM. hunt away away left left ur other left. and get in behind, bc we moving to other place. some my frends go woofwoof when i do like that jejejejjejjeje (: : 

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that one on the little island really hard to get. get ur jump wrong and death. so well done (:

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one thing i have noticed and maybe just maybe is cause your problem. the game is designed so that u can only do each quest once. if the game server has tagged u as completing a quest then u not get any further feedback on that one. so if u crash out or have logged out b4 completing the quest u been given, then is poss that u tagged as complete on that one

also is quite dangerous to use the map to teleport. can crash u bigtime sometimes. some of the ressurection circles not work at all if u try to map teleport to them and kaboom !!!

edit: now i think about it is maybe more simple than that. if server tag u as starting a quest and ur hud or viewer breaks then it wont give u the quest again. and u not able to get feedback bc server thinks u already have it. u cant complete the quest next time bc u on a diff instance of the game when u log back bc u cant relog back onto that same sim and have to go thru the portal park. maybe is something like that 

  

[ChloeElizabethGrace]

I love Linden Realms - a lot of fun - but it's come to a standstill as I can't progress! 

I only came across it when "Chloe" was created, and saw it in the welcome area. 

One thing I'd comment on, is the position of a LR portal, right at the start of the Welcome Area that you are sent to on creating your avatar.  While people familiar with second life, don't need to walk through the different rooms, learning how to do the basics (like chat), a complete newbie to SL is going to miss out on those steps, if they take the portal, as they can't get back to the initial Welcome Area.

I'd suggest putting the LR portal at the end of the "learning" area - doesn't hurt everyone to "run" through the learning rooms!

I like the design, the rock monsters.  It's challenging, but not frustratingly challenging. 

My only problems with it, is that the HUD can take time to load, or i need to go out/come back in again

And the biggest is that I can't progress past  "Return to Tyrah's Workshop to share your findings" -  despite trying different portals, different starting sims.  I also started the "game" with SL Viewer, changed to Firestorm (whether that effected it I don't know), but went back to SL Viewer, and has made no difference.)

So I guess for me the game is "over". 

 

 

 

[Eileen Fellstein]

It finally worked for me tonight and I was able to finish it, yay. Chloe, same spot I was stuck on. I have no idea what I did different. I was even in the same outfit. And I've been using firestorm the whole time too.

Last night when I tried and it didn't work, there was another person there stuck at the same point also, so it's pretty safe to say that point in the questline is glitchy. I guess you just have to keep trying?

[Melita Magic]

We never got past the cave, although we ran around a lot and found some towers but after going up down up down up down in them about a thousand times we began to lose the purpose of the venture...

I did find one blue crystal and got 2 Lindens for it. Woot

 

[Eileen Fellstein]

Yea, the towers would be the sunspire and it's part of the questline. Without the quest, it would be rather pointless and confusing other than being a good place to pick up crystals if someone didn't just come through there. It's also a good place to get broiled by a meteor if you hang out very long