Let’s Make Something

March 19, 2020March 2, 2020 by Ginny O. ♥ 0 Leave a Comment

Now that the player has someplace to live and keep their horses, well, they’re own little farm. They need something to do on their farm. That’s right. Crafting.

In combat MMOs, crafting is now considered one of the basic features of the game. It doesn’t matter that in a combat MMO you’re probably just getting materials to make new armor or put together some potions, crafting is there and part of the experience. In Mystic Riders, crafting is part of what drives the story as the character chases after the question, “What do I want to be when I grow up?”

As the player unlocks camp locations, they can choose to learn new skills. In the beginning, they can learn 3 different skills, one racing, one ‘craft’ skill and one ‘arts’ skill.

The racing skill they choose is determined by their district and the answers they gave to the quiz. (If they don’t like that type of skill, they can always take the quiz again to get a different district.) And then once they are at camp, they can choose two other skills from the different activities offered.

The Craft skills are hiking, running, swimming, gardening, cooking, photography, archery, and fishing. The Art skills are cloth crafts, leather crafts, wood/paper crafts, ceramics, and lastly, metal crafts. As the player uses their skills, they’ll get better at them. The more they craft, the better they’ll be at it. (Exactly the same mechanic used for riding, jumping, or caring for your horse.)

Some of the craft skills and all of the art skills have trees of knowledge that increase in difficulty. When you first start sewing for example, you’ll be learning to make curtains and pillowcases, but when you become more advanced, you can make tailored clothes! As the player increases in skill, new quests to learn more advanced techniques will open up for them to play, and new items will be available for them to make.

After you learn to hike, you can learn orienteering and eventually go onto geocaching and archaeology. Running leads to the skills of yoga, dance, and fencing or martial arts. Once you learn to swim, you can learn to row a boat. After you learn to garden, you can learn how to take care of animals, and mine responsibly. (I’d consider gardening to be the most basic skill to take and strongly urge players to get it started first.) Once you learn to cook, you can learn to bake, make candy, and brew things such as potions, lotions, and perfumes.

After you learn to sew square things, you can learn to make clothes, and then advanced more tailored clothes and knitting. In leather crafts, first you make belts, handbags, and shoes, and then you can learn to make bridles and saddles. In woodcrafts, you first learn to make paper items, and things such as picture frames. Then you can learn to make furniture and musical instruments. In ceramics, first you learn poured ceramics (like plaster) and slab style ceramics, and then you can learn the pottery wheel, and eventually go onto glass making. In metal crafts, you learn to make jewelry and simple things like nails and decorative objects, then later forging.

Some of this obviously is going to need to be worked out and is subject to change.

The crafting system is meant to tie in with the story, the professions, the My Farm/My Stable, and even the factions in Mystic Riders. During the story, the character will be asked to use certain skills. And how easily they manage them is going to depend on how much time they’ve put into that skill.

If you want to take part in a certain profession in the game and get the special items, you’re going to need skill and reputation with the groups related to that profession. The more work you put into your skills, the bigger and better your farm and stable can become. If you want better horse shoes, it’s going to be much cheaper to learn to forge your own than to buy them. And there are certain items you can only make if you’re with one faction or the other.

The items they make and grow can be food for them or their horses, it can be clothing or gear, or jewelry to help with their magic abilities. They can create items to decorate their My Farm/My Stable inside and out.

As the player runs around the world and does the quests and as they level up in their skill levels, they’ll discover, be given, or can buy different crafting recipes or patterns. These they can keep in their library at their My Farm/My Stable for reference later.

They can grow the items they need at the My Farm/My Stable, forage them from the world around them, or be able to buy items in shops if they’re pressed for time. Just because one player is going to want to make their outfit from growing the cotton to finished product, doesn’t mean another player is going to want to do that, and we can accommodate both.

Because crafting is going to be a large part of the game, we have set some limits on how long things will take to grow in the garden for instance. Nothing should take more than fifteen minutes and when the server resets, everything will be instantly ready. We don’t want to frustrate our players or make them babysit the game waiting for things to finish. Certain areas of the game will have items the player can forage. The items will be refreshed when the player leaves that area and returns. And so it’s not all drag and drop mechanics, we hope to use different mini games to liven up the experience.

For instance, in sewing you could trace the pattern on the screen. For forging, there could be a slide bar mini game where you need to hit the mouse at a certain time. For cooking, you could take the ingredients and make sure each row of ingredients has the right number of them and possibly in the right order.

We want people to have fun and hopefully relax during the game. Farming and crafting and using the items that result to decorate your My Farm/My Stable can be very relaxing activities! Crafting is yet another way we want to give the players more control over their experience to enjoy the game they want to enjoy it without making it a grind or tedious and mind numbing.

A Place to Live

March 12, 2020March 1, 2020 by Ginny O. ♥ 0 Leave a Comment

One of the main buildings in the My Farm/My Stable is the farm house, or, well, in the beginning, the farm cottage. When the player first sets up their My Farm/My Stable after purchasing the game, they receive what is essentially a 1 bedroom cottage. They have a choice over whether or not the cottage is on the ground or is a tree house and what architectural style the cottage is going to be or at least, grow into.

Because as they play through the game and go through quests learning different skills, the player will be able to upgrade and expand their cottage to have more rooms for different crafting skills. They’ll be able to buy or create decorations and plants so that they can choose how their cottage is going to look on the outside.

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They will also have the option of decorating their cottage on the inside. This starts when the player gets a room or a cabin at camp. They are allowed to choose from the district’s basic colors and patterns on how to decorate their room. Once they buy the game, they’ll be able to choose from every districts colors, patterns, and mix and match from the different Victorian style wall paper and furniture themes available. And by learning crafting skills, they can make or buy at stores, drag and drop decorations to personalize their home even more.

The cottage begins as a small one bedroom cottage with a bedroom, living room, kitchen, and bath. Your living room may have a small area for whatever your first crafting specialty that you chose at camp. If you chose clothes, there might be a body form and a sewing machine for example.

As the player learns more about their skill they’ll be able to add onto the cottage by adding an entire room for the skill. They might want to add a wardrobe room to keep all of their clothes. (Like, they’ll want to add on a display tack room for their horse’s equipment in the stable.) They might want a room for paper crafts and wood working or to put in an art room for their pottery wheel and kiln or glass blowing supplies. Maybe, they’ll want to collect books and have a library. Or they need a case for all their findings in archeology. They might want to upgrade their kitchen so they have better ovens or more than one counter in order to do cooking and baking in one area, but making dyes, paint, and spa products (and other inedible things) on another counter.

One of the most useful rooms in the player’s cottage is their bedroom. The bedroom contains several mechanics of the game that deal with their inventory and game progression; the wardrobe, the vanity, the safe, the computer, the bedside table, and the bed. myfarmcloset

The wardrobe is where the player can keep their clothes, hand items outside of pets, and jewelry. The wardrobe will allow them to organize their clothes and to create outfits if they desire. When the player enters the wardrobe, they should be able to see themselves and their clothing inventory. They can either double click on items or drag and drop them to create outfits. There should be an option for them to be able to see their total stats depending on the outfit that they’re wearing.

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The vanity is where the player can keep their hairstyles and makeup options. If they desire, they can play a mini game in order to do their hair, nails, and makeup, after they decide what they want to do, or they can opt out of the mini-game and do a ‘magical’ quick change.

The safe is where the player can keep extra credits and coins that they don’t want to carry around in their inventory. This lets the player save coins and credits beyond the maximum limit. The safe would have an extra password that the player would set as a double protection just in case. This way, if the player doesn’t have anything they want to buy and are almost maxed out on the credit or coin limit, they can store those currencies and keep earning until there is something they do want to buy in an update, or dare I say it, the next expansion.

The computer is similar to the phone user interface for the player. The computer does everything that the phone does, as well as gives the player options to replay story arcs for coins (not experience), keeps track of story progression, allows them to replay story cinematics, and gives them the option to change their My Farm/My Stable/Cottage/Dorm appearance. Here they can keep track of their skills and skill trees, have a database of met NPCs, horses, and district information, see the webpages for different in game riding clubs, and unlock game concept art. And because a computer should also be fun, they can also practice the mini games such as bubble shooter and whack-a-mole, etc.

The bedside table is important for its large stack of magazines. These magazines form a dress up game for both the player and the horses. These magazines are advertisements for clothing, hair styles, makeup, and horse equipment items that they can either buy in the shops or create themselves. They can use the magazines to plan outfits for them and their horses, and the magazines can tell them where to find the items, if they have restrictions, the stats, and how much the entire outfit is going to cost.

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Lastly, there is the bed. The bed is simply a place for the player to sleep. If they’ve finished the quests for that day, and want to progress to the next day’s quests, then they can pay a fee to sleep and wake up “the next day.” When they wake up the next day, all their items in the garden will be grown, and they’ll be able to proceed in any story or crafting quests. Mystic Riders is going to be designed so the player will spend at most an hour every day doing horse care and quests. If they desire to spend more time in the game foraging or farming or shopping outside of quests, that is on the player and if they desire to do more quests outside of the 45 minutes to an hour, they can sleep in their bed to progress the game.

While the cottage at the My Farm/My Stable isn’t going to be a place where the player spends a huge amount of time, it is designed to let them have as much control over it as possible and assist them in their farming and crafting endeavors.

A Place of Your Own

March 5, 2020March 1, 2020 by Ginny O. ♥ 0 Leave a Comment

A large part of Mystic Riders involves the ability to grow and make your own items. And in order to do that, you need a place of your own to be able to grow your own ingredients or store things that you’ve foraged. Plus, you can’t keep all your horses at the camp forever. You need your own place and that is the My Farm/My Stable.

The My Farm/My Stable is available to players who buy a pass to leave the camp (or in essence, buy the game). Once they have a pass, the mentor of their camp will show them their own Farm and Stable and walk the player through choosing a set up for a Farm and Stable of their own.

The My Farm/My Stable exist in well, magic space. What the player needs to access their farm and stable is their magical key, and a special gate. When they put the key into the special gate, a portal appears to their bit of land in Astranar. They can either keep the key with them, or set it up in one of permanent gates on the map. (Going home to your stable is always a free transportation jump that doesn’t require using a train.)

The key to their farm and stable is a snow globe! (Snow globes are very magical in Astranar.) The player has the opportunity to customize their snow globe key by choosing one of the districts symbols for the middle and a color from the color palette. (These can always be changed later.)

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When the player drags and drops their key onto the gate for the first time, they’ll be prompted to choose a style of farm that they want. While the player won’t be able to choose the placement of the buildings on their farm, they’ll be able to choose whether or not they have a cottage or a tree house and about a half a dozen styles ranging from French Empire, Queen Anne, Modern Eco Victorian, and so on and so forth to choose from, and they can choose if they want stone or stucco or painted clapboard. There will also be decorations to make or buy so they can decorate to their heart’s content.

The player will also be prompted to name their My Farm/My Stable.

The player will start with a small 1 bedroom cottage, a stable with 3 stalls that looks like a country church without a steeple, and a patch of dirt. As they do quests around the districts, they’ll be able to upgrade and add buildings and animal enclosures to their farm. Some of the first quests after the player acquires their farm will be to fill the stalls of their stable with a draft horse and a pony!

For example, as a player does farming quests around the district, they’ll be able to upgrade their patch of dirt so it has less rocks, or they learn how to improve the soil, thus letting plants grow faster or yield more. By learning about animals from farmers and veterinarians, they can build enclosures for bunnies, chickens, and an animal pen for bigger animals like sheep, cows, alpaca, and goats. (This is going to depend on their crafting specialty what animals they find more important. A player that takes up doing clothing is more likely to have an alpaca over say a goat, unless the goat is a cashmere goat.)

Once the player goes to the Diamond District and learns about hot houses, they’ll be able to build a conservatory in their farm if they so desire. When they learn forging, they’ll be able to build a forge on their farm. And if they want a pony cart, they can build a building specifically to hold their pony cart.

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When they complete a quest to make friends or capture one of the fantasy horses in the mirror world, they’ll be able to open a gate to the mirror world from their farm to a magical glade. This magical glade will have a pavilion for them to take care of their magical horses, a garden, and enclosures for magical animals.

The My Farm/My Stable is intended as a place for the player to be able to continually improve as the game progresses. It is “their” space in the game to make it look the way they want. They can use the farm to grow plants in order not to have to buy them at the stores and as a place to keep extra inventory and pets. Lastly, the My Stable is a place for them to house the completely optional horses (outside one draft and one pony) they can collect in the game.

Trains: The Transport System

February 27, 2020February 6, 2020 by Ginny O. ♥ 0 Leave a Comment

Now that we’ve talked about the map (3D with Fog of War/Standard Road Map), let’s talk about the other standard to MMORPGs, map transportation systems. Or the ability to jump from one side of the map to the other in a short amount of time. Guild Wars had the ability to jump anywhere in the map to the nearest city or town. Star Stable Online uses a network of horse transports, ferries, and boats (and one hot air balloon). World of Warcraft had flying mount stations. In Mystic Riders, we have trains.

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Yes. Trains!

The continent of Argentum is cut off from most of the world by a complex system of storms that no one is quite sure of their origin. (They think they may be magical in nature.) And it takes a lot of engineering know-how for planes and boats to make it to the continent. So, the natural resources of petroleum are very limited, while horses are much easier and much more renewable (along with wind, sunlight, and water). All horses require are things that the farmers can grow! (And pets, lots of pets.) So, there aren’t a lot of cars in Argentum or tractors for that matter.

In Argentum, backed up traffic isn’t cars, it’s horses and carts.

So it is much more cost effective for the people of Argentum to put their fuel resources for hauling cargo and people across the continent into trains.

Of course, they don’t have just any old types of trains. They have Victorian style trains that have been updated to be top of the line and comfortable for today’s travelers. Smaller trains with a few cars behind them have been converted into electric trains, while larger trains that haul cargo from one side of the continent to the other have been converted to diesel.

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Scattered across the map in every district there are train platforms that are guarded and proctored by the adorable station master kitties! All the player has to do is “discover” the train station. (They’re marked on the map, the player simply has to go there and find the platform.) The more train platforms they find, the more train stops the player can use. The player can then make friends with the station master kitty by casting a calm animal spell. (That is if the kitty doesn’t come to them first.)

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There are two ways that the player can use the train stations. They can open their map, click on a discovered train station and ‘jump’ to that train station. Or, they can go to the train station, talk to the station master kitty, and ride the train to their desired destination from there.

They also have the option to pet, play, or feed the station master cat as well. (Some riders carry kitty treats in their saddle bags just to feed the station master kitties they befriend.)

Riding the trains in Argentum is free. That’s right. There is no charge to ride around the map quickly in Mystic Riders.

Once the player has found all the train stations in their district, they’ll be granted an achievement. And they’ll get another achievement for finding all the stations in every district. There may also be achievements for feeding all the station master cats or playing with them. One can’t be sure.

All in all, getting from one side of the district to another is easy on an Astranar train… as long as they’ve discovered the platform!

Professions, the Game Mechanic!

February 20, 2020February 6, 2020 by Ginny O. ♥ 0 Leave a Comment

In Mystic Riders, we have to include professions as part of the game. They’re fairly standard in MMOs. In most combat MMOs, professions are the system that determines what weapons you can wield and what spells you can cast. They are things like Knight, Ranger, Mage, Monk and every type of variation of there-of you can think of. (My favorites tend to be the ones where I can populate the battle field by summoning up dead things or ghosts!) However, Mystic Riders isn’t a combat game. So, why should we have professions at all?

Because story.

The story and the focus of Mystic Riders is about the player’s journey through their teen years and growing up. Part of growing up is the ability to put on different styles and personalities like they’re hats and, yes, trying out different jobs to see if they are something that fits your talents to make into a career.

So, obviously, our professions in Mystic Riders are a little different. Outside of not being combat oriented, they work together with the different crafting and farming skills the player can learn in the game. We went over them in general in this post. The professions are jockey, farmer/gardener, archaeologist, fashion stylist, interior decorator, entertainer, chef, and spa owner.

Each of these professions will give the player the ability to customize their game, earn some in game cash, and give them access to items, gear, and equipment that are exclusive to that profession either in stores or making them by hand. (You want the really good cooking tools, become a chef.) These professions can also give them outlets for creating fan content for their social media like Instagram and YouTube. (I foresee interior designer, spa owner, entertainer, and fashion stylist being big social media hits.) And there are professions for those who simply want to get through the story as fast as possible (farmer, jockey) or on the other extreme have to know every bit of lore (archaeologist).

During the story of the Diamond District when the player arrives at the Royal Riding Academy, they will be prompted to start thinking about their future and be able to learn about the different professions from their original district’s mentor. From there, they’ll be directed to the appropriate mentor of that profession who will send them on quests to meet experts who will send them on more quests to teach them the skills and give them the tools to hone their crafting abilities.

Like in the training week tutorial, the player should be allowed to try a basic quest of each profession offered once before they decide on what they want to be for this specific play through.

Remember, the more you craft, the better and faster you get at it and the more difficult things you can make.

This may, or may not, encourage the player to play through the district story of their profession’s mentor. Each district they unlock allows the player to learn different crafting and professional skills. (Until they’ve unlocked them all.) If they haven’t learned the core skills to the profession that they want to pursue, the mentor can gently suggest they take up a certain skill or craft. The professions allow the player to go beyond basic skills and earn those elite items.

Professions help us have a use for all those crafting and farming items we’re putting in the game too. And more chances for the players to use our proposed and hopefully fun mini-games.

With having professions in the game, we can add prestige professions later that can expand gameplay and build upon the mechanics of the mini-Games already in place and provide a more real life story progression as they go from apprentice to master of their craft.

Professions are one of the mechanics that makes the most use out of every level of the game’s design. From races, to areas of the map that only archaeologists can unlock, to mini-games and set pieces that are designed to appeal to social media and story subplots that give the players yet again another way to choose their own adventure. Professions are part of the way of making the game a rich, dynamic, and replayable experience.

The Map!

February 13, 2020February 6, 2020 by Ginny O. ♥ 0 Leave a Comment

Let’s face it, MMOs by the very nature of being considered “massive” tend to have huge areas of ‘game land’ for players to walk/run/ride around in. It’s easy to get lost! Especially if the player has never been in the game before. And well, today we have technology that fits in the palms of our hands that can carry maps, our phones. So, why can’t the player of an MMO have a map on their phone too?

And that is exactly what Mystic Riders wants to have, a map, in an in-game phone user interface. (Yes, part of our proposed in game user interface looks like a modern cellphone.)

The thing that I hate the most about many MMO maps is that they are impossible to read. They’re things that are made of pixels that seemingly have been created by the game designers zooming out from the game area and taking a picture. Then, if you’re lucky, they might draw some road squiggles on it.

In Mystic Riders, what we want is a map that is legible and interactive so the player can see how much of it they have left to explore. The closest I’ve seen to this is the interactive 3D map provided by Black Desert Online.

With the BDO map, the player can view the map from above it looks like a Google earth type map and as they zoom in, they can see actual 3D representations of the trees, landscape, and buildings. There’s fog over areas of the map that the player hasn’t explored yet.

Now, another option or ‘layer’ for the map that I’d like to implement into Mystic Riders is a standard cartographer’s road map. The player would be able to see the entire road map that is marked with roads, towns, hiking trails, and train tracks of the entire district that they’re in. Important places would be labelled including castles, stables, shops, overlooks, and forests and so on.

A third option would be being able to take the road section of the road map and overlay it onto the 3D realistic map, much like you can in Google Earth. That way the player can see where the road goes off into the fog of war area that they haven’t explored yet.

The more the player zooms into the map, the more of a specific area and the more labels of shops and lakes and so on they can see. The player should be able to move the map around by clicking on the screen and dragging it to see other areas if they’re too far zoomed in. (Or they can zoom out and click and zoom back in on another area, their choice.)

The player should be able to set waypoints on the map if they like and have either a marker on the ground or a marker in the sky to show where the way point is. The BDO map also has markers for important NPCs. (If it can be done, I don’t see why not.)

The map’s purpose is ultimately to help the player get around and find the fast way between point A and point B that won’t lead them over a cliff!

Because we want the map to have the fog over it, the map could have a completion achievement for players. This would encourage the explorers and not-so explorers to check out every cranny of the map that they can get to. (Possibly only 100% achievable of the entire country if you take the archeologist profession, more on this next week.)

The players would get new sections of the map to explore as they unlock the new districts. They’d only start out with the first district they are in, and then get Diamond District, and from there they can choose any district they want to unlock in whatever order they want to unlock and play the story.

Maps are an important part to me of the MMO game experience and as such, they should be as complete and legible as possible. Especially if your game involves any sort of orienteering whatsoever. Down with pixel maps. Up with road maps and 3D maps!

Can You Hear Me Now? (Main UI)

February 6, 2020February 4, 2020 by Ginny O. ♥ 0 Leave a Comment

Astranar is a rather magical place, so much so that cellphones from out of the country don’t work! When the player arrives at camp, they’re given a cellphone that is connected to Argentum’s cellphone network and works in the magical area. This cellphone is the main user interface for Mystic Riders.

The cellphone looks like your typical smart phone. And it has different icon apps that open up different functions in the game. In short, the cellphone is the game’s main menu. So, what features are in our main menu? A lot.

(Rough Idea of Menu design)

One of the biggest functions of the cellphone is that it contains the game map. The player is going to need this map to be able to orient themselves around Astranar. The map will be a 3D style map they can zoom in and out of, and hopefully, will have a road map overlay. There should be marked locations where there are important NPCs, train stations, and shops and restaurants, etc. As the player explores more of the map, fog will lift on the 3D map for them.

(The Map While Riding Around; Not Full Screen)

The menu also has the Quest Log Book. Here the player can bring up the quests available to them, select which ones they want to do (markers will appear on the map) and the gold calculator will tell them how many coins they’ll earn from doing those quests. (Always helpful if you need to buy something.)

The player can also access their inventory. The player has two saddlebags on their horse. One saddlebag is for their pet, and the other saddlebag is for their inventory. They can keep everything from feed, to different crafting kits, to their brush, pick, and foldable shovel.

There will be the character menu and the horse menu. These open up interfaces that show the character or horse and what they are wearing. These menus also keep track of the player’s level, care status, currency, and statistics. The player can look at their skill menu, track their achievements in the achievement sticker book, and see how each group in the game feels about them with the reputation tab.

They also will have a friends menu to invite and manage their friends. There will be a club management section if they are part of or run a riding club. They can keep track of their competition results in another menu. They can take pictures with the in-game camera, open the chat function, or send private messages in the in-game email. Lastly, they can access their game settings or get their questions answered in the game help with a report function to message customer support.

If there is an in game radio, the player should be able to access and control what channel they want to listen to through the phone. Channels might include things like orchestral epic soundtrack music, Rose Neptuna’s channel, or channels dedicated to her rivals like Hi-Fidelity (or even an Astranar’s Top 40 that’s a mix of them all? Future thought to chew on).

The player would have the options of being able to customize the phone wallpaper background with game art pictures or pictures from they’ve taken on their in-game camera and to be able to customize the phone case with in-game patterns and colors.

We hope that this style of user interface will be easy to understand and flexible enough that things can be added to it with little trouble if needed. (Maybe we need a game news function for updates, or a section for the game credits.) There are a lot of things going on in an MMO and the in-game phone is the hub for a great deal of it without cluttering the player’s view of the game itself!

Light or Shadow: Which Faction Do You Choose?

January 23, 2020January 18, 2020 by Ginny O. ♥ 0 Leave a Comment

One of the issues with MMORPGs is that the story can often feel railroaded or set in stone as a player goes through the game. No matter what type of profession they are or race, they end up playing the same story. MMORPGs aren’t at the point yet of, say, Detroit Become Human, where every option creates a myriad of other options and endings. However, Mystic Riders has a couple ideas in mind to allow the player to have more ‘control’ over their adventure.

One of these is our faction system.

In Mystic Riders, there are two groups of magical riders; the Light Riders, and the Shadow Riders. They’re at odds with each other and don’t know how to get along. The Light Riders control the mastery of the elements and some say thought itself, while the Shadow Riders control things such as petrification and decay, and they’re rumored to control fear and nightmares.

Why there are two factions is something of a mystery. Once upon a time, there didn’t seem to be Light or Shadow magicians at all. There were simply magicians. No one knows what happened. Now, it is what it is, and the Light Riders and Shadow Riders vie for control of the Mirror World.

Nobody is sure what would happen if one side gained more control of the other, though both sides are determined to try.

During the game, the player will be given choices on what side they want to be part of: the Light or the Shadow. And from that point on in the story, they will experience different story quests as they proceed in the game (until they’re prompted on whether or not they want to switch sides again). The player is allowed to choose and decide their own motivations for doing so. Do they really believe one faction is better than the other? Maybe they’re a spy?

On top of having different story quests, each side will have different areas of the Mirror World that they can enter and exit safely. A Light Rider better be stealthy and quick if they want to enter an area of the Mirror World controlled by the Shadow. If not, they’ll have to hope they can race back home without being caught. The vice versa is also true.

The appearance of the “My Glade,” the Mirror World section of the “My Farm,” will also change depending on whether or not the player is a Light Rider or a Shadow Rider. And when the player has enough experience to open up a gate to a Mirror World town, what town they have will depend on which faction they’re part of.

Of course, it is a horse game so there are different special magical horses for Light Riders and for Shadow Riders. In Astranar, there are whispers of unicorns and pegasi if you can enter the Mirror World and win their trust. However, white unicorns only come to riders of the Light, and dark unicorns are attracted to riders of the Shadow. The same can be said of the pegasi. White, pastels, and true colors love Light Riders. While black, greys, and muted colors adore Shadow Riders.

While there are other magical horses, one doesn’t truly care about alignment and a couple only come around a very special lucky holiday.

There is also one special pet for each faction. Light Riders can keep rabbits of all varities for pets. While Shadow Riders can keep certain species of the weasel family including weasels, stoats, ferrets, mink, and pine martens. These pets ride along in the saddle bag, can be held by the player, or run along after the player while they’re walking. And if the player has more than one pet, they stay at the “My Farm/My Stable.”

Each faction has their own special equipment and gear for horses and humans alike. For those in the know, wearing these special styles can hint what side you’re on or have been on in the past.

Hopefully, by adding factions to the game and giving them different rewards will encourage replayability and give the player more freedom and customization in how they choose the play their story and craft their own adventure.

Statistics! The Game Character Sheet

January 14, 2020January 9, 2020 by Ginny O. ♥ 0 Leave a Comment

Every good RPG has statistics. These statistics are numbers assigned to the player that determines their various levels of expertise in different skills. They’re assigned points when they first create their character from the type of racing they chose in their placement quiz, and are given more as they ‘level up.’

One of Mystic Riders goals is to have as much customizable content as possible and one of the basic customization types that we want to give players over is their own statistics. That way they can choose what type of rider that they’re going to be! They will also have control over the statistics of their horse, and how they want their magic to work.

Statistics are the game version of a character’s player game sheet in a table top RPG. They determine the strengths and weaknesses of the character. But instead of rolling dice, they are applied to how well the character does things in the game.

The player has five basic ability stats: Speed, Stamina, Strength, Command, and Agility.

Speed is how fast can your character move at a walk or a run. Stamina is how long can your character ride without eating, run, or withstand the heat and cold. Strength is how much can your character lift or pull. Command is how well do animals obey them. And Agility is how quickly and how tight does your character turn.

There are three magical ability stats that the player also has control over and can change when they level up; Accuracy, Cast Time, and Power.

Accuracy is how on target the cast spell ends up being and if it works or not. Cast time is how quickly the player can cast the spell. And Power is how much oomph goes into the spell.

The horses also have five basic stats that the player can customize: Speed, Endurance, Strength, Discipline, and Agility.

Speed is how fast can the horse go. Endurance is how far can the horse go without care, and how well do they adapt to heat or cold, and how far can they walk through a boggy marsh. Strength is how much can a horse pull or carry, and how high can they jump. Discipline is how well does a horse take commands and how fast do they change their paces or stop. Agility is how quickly and tightly can the horse turn.

Certain breeds of horses will have higher stats in different things depending on if they are good showjumping horses, or good western horses, or good dressage horses, etc.

When the horse levels up, the player will be prompted to put the new points they’ve earned into the different horse statistic slots.

The player will have skill tracks that level up as they do things in the game. For instance, they have three skills that are related to horses. Ride, Jump, and Care. The more they ride, the better they’ll get at it as the more points they’ll accumulate. The more jumps they take, the better they’ll get at jumping with their horse. And Care, the more they clean stables and care for their horses, the faster they’ll get at it. Arts and Crafting skills falls under this kind of leveling.

The player’s statistics and the horse’s statistics will be able to work together to do certain things in the game better than others. A player with a good level of command is going to get better results out of a horse with low discipline and outstanding results with a horse with high discipline for example. Better ride stat, the more balanced you are on the horse and the faster it can go.

Players will be able to create characters with vastly different skill sets and abilities by playing the game in different ways. A player who spends more time in crafting is going to be a lot faster at it and have more items to craft than a player who primarily plays for racing. Creating a more customized and hopefully enjoyable experience that will want to make them play the game again so they can try out doing different styles of play and different story lines.

Let’s Talk Racing!

January 9, 2020January 1, 2020 by Ginny O. ♥ 0 Leave a Comment

As a horse themed game, one of the most prevalent mini-games that we feel should be in Mystic Riders is the different types of races. We don’t want the game to be focused on one type of race. We want to have different types of races to reflect different horse disciplines and give them different mechanics in the mini-games.

To be clear, when the player is out and exploring the world on their own, we don’t really care how well they clear a jump or how fast they get from one area to the other. They are discovering the map of the game and such things shouldn’t matter. When they enter a story race, or a competition race, or a daily race to train their horse, then the mechanics matter.

In Mystic Riders, we have decided on four different racing tracks: Agility, Dressage, Racing, and Show Jumping. Each of these tracks require different stat combinations between the horse and the rider.

The Agility track is Western riding including gymkhana. This is slalom gate racing, pole-bending, and barrel racing with pony flag racing as an experienced skill. The mechanics of these are doing them quickly and not hitting the equipment. The player would be using their standard movement keys. Just because there is no extra mechanics doesn’t mean that it is going to be easy to take those tight turns.

The Dressage track is cavaletti, dressage, reining, and trail riding as an experienced skill. These are skills that require the horse to have discipline. The player would be prompted to go at certain speeds and to follow a mini-game where they have to hit keys in a certain sequence in order to complete the moves. To get from one area to another, there can be arrows on the ground to tell them where to go and the colors could indicate speed.

The Racing track is flat racing, endurance racing, cross country, and steeple chase as an experienced skill. In the racing track, they’d have to learn to conserve their horse’s strength by keeping watch on an endurance meter. In cross country racing where there are jumps, they would have to jump by hitting the space bar in the right spot on gauge meter.

Lastly, the Show Jumping track is about the different types of show jumping: basic, six bar, faults, and for the experienced, faults converted. (We can cover what each of those means later.) In the show jumping mini game, the player would be required to approach the jump at the right angle and the right speed. As they approach the jump, there would be spots on the ground that they’d have to hit with their mouse at the right time. If they don’t, they miss the jump.

Hopefully, these mini-games will be familiar and at the same time, have a balance of being challenging enough to be interesting and easy enough not to be frustrating. Having seen similar mechanics in other games, these mechanics are possible. They’ve simply not been used in a MMORPG setting before.

We want the mechanics of the races to show how these different races take skill to succeed. And at the same time, give the players freedom to explore the world on their own at will. (Getting from point A to point B shouldn’t be a frustrating endeavor.)

Mystic Riders MMO

An RPG Project by Girls for Girls

Category: For the Developer