Messages

I can't think of an island that it won't be sad to go. Each has its own history and flavor, and lots of effort across the years has been put into each one. I just hope the cost eventually makes the game more fun.

The Bloody Handed God awakens?

Yes, and I for one am willing to welcome monster dominion so long as they stay off the grass.

T is obviously meant for Tom. >.>

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7rqsiWmkBpM

^My initial reaction

["Tell me, why did you have such a large bounty placed on your head? There must be an interesting or funny story behind that."]

The Battlemaster players were gathered around a small table, sipping on mead and ciders in a dimly lit tavern in Hamburg. One tall and stalky player with short reddish hair and deeply set eyes puts down his hood and breaks the silence.

"We know why we are all here. We are all wanted men in Battlemaster. I had 50 gold on my head for calling the leader of another realm a weasel-skinned buffoon, but I am hardly the most notorious among us."

The stalky player takes a long gulp from his stein, looks towards you, and then continues,

"Tell me, why did you have such a large bounty placed on your head? There must be an interesting or funny story behind that."

The men and women around the table look to each other dramatically. First at each other, and then at you. You take off your hood, and then tell the story of your notoriety.

One of my characters is this world traveler who has served in every crazy scheme and in every weird capacity at some point, and for a time he served as an infiltrator as well.

I think you are looking at this the wrong way; you become an infiltrator not for slight optimization on your character's abilities or because you gain something totally useful, but because it's just really risky and stupid and fun. I think for my character, it really fit him for a time because he is this insane guy who travels everywhere and does every cracked-out scheme he can. The only reason he stopped is because it drew a lot of unwanted attention to him if he ever changed realms, and he wanted to try out other things.

I say you just go for it for a while and see how much you like it. I think you should think 'is this fun' instead of 'does this really make sense statistically'.

Attached is a really terrible 20 minute redesign, but the key points are:

Less text
consistency in button functions/more variety.
Key concept illustration in the back.
Make 'log in' and 'join' really obvious and easy
give credits their own page
change the in-game image to something slightly more graphical. Who wants a picture of more text?
added a tag line.
added 'donations' to the main bar.

As I said, this is really terrible and done in 20 minutes. The main thing is I think (maybe naively) these are all easy changes to make. You tell me; if you were a new player would you rather play the game on the left, or on the right?

I would spend more time on this, but it's finals week.

Yeah, feasibility is always an issue, so I hope that if even only something about the text was made shorter and the credits were given their own page I think it would be a big improvement. And I think it would be easy to change the screen capture to a slightly more interesting map image. Any simple, cheap solutions that don't require big overhauls would be ideal since I would rather have serious development time spent on the game since I am already a devoted player.

[Update the Main Page to be more attractive to Newcomers]

Update the Main Page to be more attractive to Newcomers:

Summary:

There are just some things about the main page that leaves an impression on newcomers that really undervalues how awesome BM really is. I think some changes to the homepage could make it more interesting to players. I am going to spell out some things I think you could improve design wise.

Details:

1. The main page is a wall of text. While Battlemaster is essentially a glorified wall of text, making something look pedantic and dense on first view isn't sexy. I would move the second paragraph, and the bullets to another page, possibly 'game basics'. While the writing itself is also very clean, it also isn't very short. I think it would be well-to-do to make the text as tight and short as possible while still conveying the same meaning.

2. The 'Join' and 'Login' buttons should be the biggest, and most obvious buttons to click on any page. 'Login' is good, but Join is buried somewhere deeply on the page, and it isn't even the first option to click on. Also the 'sign up' button should really say 'join', to be consistent with the 'join' button on the sidebar.

3. The essential description for BM is good, but it's very fleshed out. You need to begin the webpage with a log line, like 'Battlemaster, an immersive sandbox of Realms and Heroes built by the players.' Maybe not that exactly, but something short and sexy would be good.

4. The amount of space on the page taken up by the credits is almost as big as the 'key points'. Both of these sections could fit better on different pages.

5. The default picture is super boring and tells me nothing about the game. I know this game isn't very visual, but if you are going to put an image there it should be interesting. At least pick one of the maps or throw in a Battle Report that shows the existence of player realms or something...the Beluaterra Daemon invasion maps look pretty badass!

6. The sidebar is functional, but a little old. I think it would be cool if you had a little modular graphic for all of the bars, and then the overall size of the sidebar would change spaces based on the number of items in that list naturally. At the moment, the 'join' and 'command' buttons look a little squashed in, especially if you have an 'infiltrator' menu.

7. 'Quotes from Players' is a cute section, but it isn't sexy. I would put something like "    It's fairly simple and straitforward yet generates a lot of depth. The name for that is art."
-- Mark Gerdes" on the front page! You are trying to sell (not literally) this community and this game to people who would randomly come across the side, so make it look and sound as exciting as it actually is!

Benefits:

The main page itself says BM isn't a boring grind, and that's the truth. But the main page looks like a boring grind. Make the main page a little more simple, with less text, and make it more obvious how and where you can sign up.

Possible Downsides/Exploits:

BM is trying to attract a very specific kind of player, and players who only care about graphics will obviously not belong here. I am also sure this page have been this way for a long time, and old players will grumble at little changes. The sensible way that Runescape's main page looked in 2007 compared to the colorful salesy mess it is today is a good metaphor for what has happened in the game, and I am sure everyone here is concerned about those same things...and obviously any changes to the look shouldn't be dishonest about how BM is as an experience. Right now, I think the main page is an honest reflection of the game, but it isn't showing off what is good about BM.

Whoa, hearing that I feel like a total newcomer to the BM community. My first account was made in 2009, but I took a break and the account was subsequently deleted by the system I think. My current account/family has only been around since January of this year. That's a crazy lot of history, when did you make Alanna?

Most characters don't reach that age though because the player leaves, or the player gets bored of the character, right? I'm surprised the realms I have played generally aren't just councils of old players sending the younger off to die... maybe it's because I haven''t had a normal character lead a normal life on EC.

I know that extremely old characters have less hours per turn, but is there ever a point at which a character dies of natural causes?

Or, are there a few 150 year olds running around from the time of Battlemaster's conception.

My characters all have an unfortunate habit of dying at ages that would have seemed pretty normal during the 13th century, so I have little experience in playing older characters.

While having one person would have been pretty funny, there was actually something on the order of 15 men.

In light of the recent troubles with peasant mobs stopping major battles, I sort of like to think that 2 peasants made passing comments at the 15 fighting men, so they all gave up their quarrel and went to beat up on two random people.

Unit Status Report (9 minutes ago)
Badly damaged equipment has caused an accident. 1 men were wounded. Unit cohesion drops as the men argue and fight for undamaged armour. Wear and tear causes 4 % damage to your unit's equipment. Morale of your troops rises by 3 points. Your men seem to be getting along better. Unit cohesion rises

This is one of the funniest things I have ever seen in BM. It's a full narrative story with three acts, a clear conflict, a climax, and a resolution.

I don't have time right now to write out a roleplay, but in an odd mechanical way I think this speaks for itself.

Cool! Thanks :)

As a rigger/wrangler/TD for the 3D industry, I really respect and appreciate the BM dev team...considering this is a hobby game you guys are really good about troubleshooting, bug fixing, and feature implementation.

[Embed 'Scout Ahead' to Travel.php?Destination=(number)]

Embed 'Scout Ahead' to Travel.php?Destination=(number):

Summary:
Add the 'scout ahead' option after you have made the decision to travel to a region.

Details:
It just seems natural. It saves you from having to click on your 'travel' tab in order to access this feature. Plus, isn't it sort of logical that you would send a scout once you have made the decision to travel ahead, if not before.

Benefits:
Saves a button click, and a logical inclusion in the interface.

Possible Downsides/Exploits:
Might take 15 minutes to put in.