Game Mechanics: Spellboook button

[Bigcountry23]

It's not about ease or difficulty of access. It's about something removed from the current UI availability that should be there legitimately and that should be a "seemingly" simple fix.

[loramin]

I agree that /book isn't hard, but I feel like everyone is missing the point: Green is not about "lets make things arbitrarily hard", it's about "lets make things classically hard". And I think that's important, because there will already be enough classically hard stuff that we don't need to make more things unclassicaly difficult.

Also, keep in mind that we're going to have many new players on Green. Most won't remember many details of EQ (eg. that /book exists), and some won't even have played EQ before. And if it's anything like Blue, the majority of players won't read the forums, or at least not diligently.

So my point is, if a new player in '99-'01 didn't have to worry about using up a slot, and didn't have to know (from reading a forum) about keybindings and /book and macros ... then it seems to me a new player on Green shouldn't either.

It seems to me the more classic option would just be to show the (unclassic) Titanium spellbook icon (below the spell gems): that specific icon didn't exist in the classic UI, but there was a similar "book button" right? Or at the very least you could get one by switching UI modes, which you could do in classic and can't here?

EDIT: Actually, on re-reading Wenai's post I guess it wasn't possible to open the book without an explicit "hotkey" button, in this specific (ie. between Classic and Titanium) UI? I didn't play back then so I'm unsure of the details, but if that's the case I guess it is classic/proper to make people waste a slot (or have to learn about key bindings to avoid doing so).

[Bigcountry23]

Originally Posted by loramin [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

EDIT: Actually, on re-reading Wenai's post I guess it wasn't possible to open the book without an explicit "hotkey" button, in this specific (ie. between Classic and Titanium) UI? I didn't play back then so I'm unsure of the details, but if that's the case I guess it is classic/proper to make people waste a slot (or have to learn about key bindings to avoid doing so).

Watch the video of the tutorial in my original post (that is the how the game UI looked and acted at launch) and you will see that there is a spellbook button on the first/original/classic UI.

[Wenai]

Originally Posted by Bigcountry23 [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

Watch the video of the tutorial in my original post (that is the how the game UI looked and acted at launch) and you will see that there is a spellbook button on the first/original/classic UI.

There is not going to be a stone UI. It is the closer to the classic full screen/velious UI.

[loramin]

Originally Posted by Bigcountry23 [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

Watch the video of the tutorial in my original post (that is the how the game UI looked and acted at launch) and you will see that there is a spellbook button on the first/original/classic UI.

Right, but for technical reasons (Titanium just can't re-make classic) they aren't actually trying to re-create that classic UI. Instead, they're trying to re-create the UI that came after classic, but before custom UIs.

So it would be 100% consistent for the devs to say "Kunark UI had no book button, so P99 own't either." They could decide "we're not trying to re-create Kunark UI, we're trying to get as close as we can to Classic", and if that was the case I think leaving the button in would make sense, as a sort of "1.1" UI between classic and Kunark.

But thus far it sounds like they're just giving up on the classic UI 100%, and starting everyone with Kunark UI ... which (classically) had no book button.

[feniin]

CTRL+B

[Wenai]

Originally Posted by Wenai [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

...

No matter what we do it will become "custom content". As the button was never available in the Velious UI to begin with. We are currently working on updates to the Velious UI that is being distributed in the patch notes. We have been having discussions internally about what we can do to alleviate this. In the meantime, a /book social macro is really not too much to ask of people.

I am really not sure what part of the language I used was not clear to Loramin and Bigcountry23. I am saying we are aware of the issue, it is caused by the fact that there was NO spellbook button on the Velious UI, and players were forced to go back to the stone UI to actually get it. We have been discussing which custom and non-classic approach we want to take. I said in the meantime, players have other available options such as /book, or even keybinding.

Unfortunately the actual UI we have been working on is NOT part of the distributed files yet. Nilbog and Rogean are working closely with us to get things ready.

[loramin]

Originally Posted by Wenai [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

I am really not sure what part of the language I used was not clear to Loramin and Bigcountry23. I am saying we are aware of the issue, it is caused by the fact that there was NO spellbook button on the Velious UI, and players were forced to go back to the stone UI to actually get it. We have been discussing which custom and non-classic approach we want to take. I said in the meantime, players have other available options such as /book, or even keybinding.

Unfortunately the actual UI we have been working on is NOT part of the distributed files yet. Nilbog and Rogean are working closely with us to get things ready.

I don't think the question is "did the Kunark UI (or what I'm calling 'Kunark UI') have a spellbook button?" (You seemed to clarify that it didn't, and I edited my post to say as much after I re-read your post.)

I think the question is, does the staff want a perfect re-creation of "Kunark UI", or are you just aiming for "as classic as possible UI?" To my knowledge no one on the staff has explicitly answered that, but it seems like that decision is the key to deciding whether a spellbook button belongs (since the pre-Kunark UI did have one).

My guess, based on what I've read, is that y'all are aiming for a re-creation of "Kunark UI", not some kind of "Kunark-like, but with classic bits" UI ... and such a decision would be 100% consistent with having no (built-in) book button.

P.S. In case anyone wonders why I call it "Kunark UI", I'm assuming it's the UI talked about in this patch (which is in the Kunark era).

[Danth]

Originally Posted by loramin [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

"Kunark UI"

They're actually talking about the Velious UI. Here's a quick rundown:

The game always had a fullscreen mode available. Not many folks necessarily used it, but it was there from the start. It had only limited functionality. Over time some additional functions were added to that fullscreen mode, including the patch you linked above. With the launch of the Velious expansion, the old fullscreen UI was hugely increased in its capabilities to become something players could use full-time if they wanted, as well as offering support for larger resolutions. It is this velious-era UI that P99 seeks to simulate, hence why it's called "velious" in the UI dropdown list. This UI nonetheless still allowed users to switch back to the periscope-screen "stone" UI whenever they wished, and automatically reverted when certain screens such as spellbook or trainer window were opened. Obviously this functionality cannot be replicated on Titanium. The "Velious" UI (along with the old 'stone' UI) remained the primary game interface well into the Luclin era, when a completely new UI system based on XML was patched in during spring/summer 2002. The old-style UI's fell out of use quite rapidly thereafter, and were patched out of the game entirely a bit later, around early 2003.

Because the spellbook button in the original game was only available in the "stone" UI and not the fullscreen "Velious" UI, a P99-specific solution is going to be slightly custom no matter which option is selected.

Danth

[Bigcountry23]

Thank you Wenai.