{"id":436,"date":"2008-11-02T16:54:37","date_gmt":"2008-11-02T22:54:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.zephyrusanemoi.com\/blog\/?p=436"},"modified":"2020-02-06T20:19:18","modified_gmt":"2020-02-07T02:19:18","slug":"an-open-letter-to-the-creators-of-parallel-kingdom","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/zepfhyr.com\/blog\/2008\/11\/an-open-letter-to-the-creators-of-parallel-kingdom\/","title":{"rendered":"An open letter to the creators of Parallel Kingdom"},"content":{"rendered":"

UPDATE:<\/strong> Parallel Kingdoms has received several updates since the writing of this post. Many (if not all) of the issues listed below have been resolved.<\/p>\n

I’ve been playing with PK<\/a> the last couple days and have to admit I like the idea, though I am unable to do much with it so far. I thought I’d give you a list of things that might make it more accessible to more people. All of these suggestions are based on my experience playing the game on an iPhone 3G. Mileage will, of course, vary on an iPod touch, original iPhone, or Android OS.<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Don’t drop all items upon death. Perhaps have 3-5 items that can be equipped or stored in a backpack so that they are not lost on death. This is especially frustrating due to\u00c2\u00a0sometimes\u00c2\u00a0respawning nowhere near your last location.<\/li>\n
  2. Use location services to find the player initially, then allow them to walk around a section or “cell” of the game world by tapping. This will resolve issues where a player is in the middle of a fight, receives a phone call, goes back to the game and is now too far from their original location to fight the same enemy as before. This will also allow them to go back to pick up stuff they may have dropped on accident or due to death, but were respawned a great distance away. This could also be used as a method of balance by making the respawn rate of enemies in a given cell great enough that players would still be encouraged to travel to play the game if they wish to continue fighting. Perhaps an area of 3 city blocks would be sufficient. This would be especially helpful to those that do not live in an area where public transportation is a viable option and cannot play while driving to and from work\/school\/etc. Furthermore, the respawn rate for their cell could be increased if they log in located in a different cell than before, indicating that they are indeed traveling to new locations, and not just spawn-camping a specific cell.<\/li>\n
  3. If 2 is not an option, then (more accurate) auto-updating of players location as they move around the real world, so that they can run away from enemies in bad situations. Currently, the only viable alternative is to return to the Home screen and reload the app, hopefully far enough from an enemy not to die. Most frustrating because death results in number 1. This would also allow a player that spawns too far from anything useful to quickly and easily travel to something on the map without reloading the app and hoping for a beneficial change in location.<\/li>\n
  4. Always using GPS to locate, if possible, for more accurate placement. As it stands, the player bounces around the map if they leave the game and come back unless they re-locate using Google Maps every time they reopen the game.<\/li>\n
  5. Auto-attacking currently appears buggy, or not supported, making the game very frustrating as monsters will continue to attack the player, but the player only intermittently seems to continue attacking the monsters unless the Attack button is spammed. This can get very tiring very quickly, and requires a great deal more concentration than is necessary for a game with MMORPG sensibilities.<\/li>\n
  6. The ability to purchase healing spells, items, potions, etc. from anywhere on the map via the menu would be very helpful. Also, being able to either pause the game by bringing up the Menu, or quickly selecting healing items by storing one or two on the map screen in the corners would reduce the chances of being killed while attempting to heal a character (thus resulting in losing all your items and often respawning too far from them to recover them). Another alternative would be a two-finger tap, a double tap, or a two-finger swipe across the screen to activate an item (healing, magic spell, weapon) designated using the Inventory screen as a “quick use” item.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    That is all I have for now. I hope that some of these are interesting enough to you that they make it in some fashion into the game. I know that some day this game may require purchasing in order to play it, but as it stands, it is too limited for those that live in rural or sprawling metropolitan areas with poor public transportation to be worth purchasing, as well as very difficult in the early stages of the game due to the excessively high death-rate and loss of inventory items with very small chances of recovery. I look forward to seeing updates that improve the accessibility of this game for everyone soon!<\/p>\n

    Thanks for your time,<\/p>\n

    Jared<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    UPDATE: Parallel Kingdoms has received several updates since the writing of this post. Many (if not all) of the issues listed below have been resolved. I’ve been playing with PK the last couple days and have to admit I like the idea, though I am unable to do much with it so far. I thought […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[3,135,5,136],"tags":[47],"class_list":["post-436","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-apple","category-games","category-iphone-ipad","category-video-games","tag-gaming","post-preview"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_likes_enabled":false,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":430,"url":"https:\/\/zepfhyr.com\/blog\/2008\/10\/parallel-kingdom-is-now-available-for-download\/","url_meta":{"origin":436,"position":0},"title":"Parallel Kingdom is now available for download","author":"Jared Cash","date":"October 31, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"The new location-aware MMO for iPhone, Parallel Kingdom, became available in the iTunes Store late last night. For those that don't already know, this app is designed to allow you to play a large-scale RPG based on where you currently are. Further, the game was simultaneously released for the iPhone\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Apple"","block_context":{"text":"Apple","link":"https:\/\/zepfhyr.com\/blog\/category\/apple\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":2468,"url":"https:\/\/zepfhyr.com\/blog\/2012\/03\/happy-chaos-rings-ii-day-also-the-ides-of-march\/","url_meta":{"origin":436,"position":1},"title":"Happy Chaos Rings II Day! — Also, The Ides of March","author":"Jared Cash","date":"March 15, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"It's the Ides of March, and you know what that means! It's time to open our Ides of March presents! Hey, wait\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6 why did you get me a sharp, stabby thing? Ow! That really hurts! Wait, I get it. You're trying to draw a parallel to the most important Ides\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Apple"","block_context":{"text":"Apple","link":"https:\/\/zepfhyr.com\/blog\/category\/apple\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":432,"url":"https:\/\/zepfhyr.com\/blog\/2008\/10\/parallel-kingdoms-is-incredibly-broken\/","url_meta":{"origin":436,"position":2},"title":"Parallel Kingdoms is (was?) incredibly broken","author":"Jared Cash","date":"October 31, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"UPDATE: Parallel Kingdoms has received several updates since the writing of this post. Many (if not all) of the issues listed below have been resolved. Seriously. It doesn't follow your movements using live GPS updates yet. Enemies auto-attack you and are clustered together, which means if you open the game\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Apple"","block_context":{"text":"Apple","link":"https:\/\/zepfhyr.com\/blog\/category\/apple\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1129,"url":"https:\/\/zepfhyr.com\/blog\/2009\/03\/gowalla-virtual-geocaching-for-the-iphone\/","url_meta":{"origin":436,"position":3},"title":"Gowalla – Virtual geocaching for the iPhone","author":"Jared Cash","date":"March 29, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"A lot of cool things came out of SXSWi this year. Swindlr, LLC announced the name of their awesome new web service, Zappn.com, for starters. Launch day is still a ways off for them, but a friend of mine tipped me off to a brand new (and readily available) iPhone\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Apple"","block_context":{"text":"Apple","link":"https:\/\/zepfhyr.com\/blog\/category\/apple\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":326,"url":"https:\/\/zepfhyr.com\/blog\/2009\/01\/video-game-ringtones\/","url_meta":{"origin":436,"position":4},"title":"Video game ringtones, Updated 1\/29\/09","author":"Jared Cash","date":"January 29, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"A variety of ringtones from various video games. I will likely add more to this list than to any of the others, so if there's one you don't see and want, let me know. Aerith's Theme - Final Fantasy VII - iPhone - NEW!!! Eyes On Me - Final Fantasy\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Apple"","block_context":{"text":"Apple","link":"https:\/\/zepfhyr.com\/blog\/category\/apple\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1453,"url":"https:\/\/zepfhyr.com\/blog\/2009\/10\/my-iphone-home-screen-san\/","url_meta":{"origin":436,"position":5},"title":"My iPhone Home Screen — San","author":"Jared Cash","date":"October 16, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"The third page of my iPhone home screen is devoted entirely to games, and is the absolute most dynamic page on my iPhone. In fact, before I started writing this post, I changed this page two or three times in an attempt to get the best selection from my existing\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Apple"","block_context":{"text":"Apple","link":"https:\/\/zepfhyr.com\/blog\/category\/apple\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/zepfhyr.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/436","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/zepfhyr.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/zepfhyr.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zepfhyr.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zepfhyr.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=436"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/zepfhyr.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/436\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4185,"href":"https:\/\/zepfhyr.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/436\/revisions\/4185"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/zepfhyr.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=436"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zepfhyr.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=436"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zepfhyr.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=436"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}