I'm all for this broker change as long as there is a drop down catagory for User Books.

Yep, I am for broker category you have to select in order to include books. Heck, even a checkmark near the search button that says "include books" would be awesome. Checked = you see books, not checked = No books will show up.

Rothgar wrote:

I received a PM about books that contained a good question, and rather than answer it in private, I wanted to answer it here.

Authors can change text only. Curious to know since the text is not linked - if I have a book written by Joe in my house and Joe visits my house, can he change the text in the book on the shelf?

I've made it so that books can only be edited while they are in your inventory and not when placed in a house.  So, in the example above, if Joe is a trustee to your house, he could pick up the book, edit it and place it back down.  If he is not a trustee, he would have no way of editing the text.

 

There is a good use for this in guild halls though, a place where you might not want a large number of people to have trustee rights.

One of the things being discussed in our guild is allowing certain book types to become a knowledge transfer system by category. In order to make it work we need multiple people to have permission to edit these books without giving them TRUSTEE rights to the hall itself.

Having a book wirtten by someone, placed in the hall and allowing the originating author continued access to the book for editing rights is pretty interesting for some uses.

Any way to add a lock to the book so you can allow it to be edited or not?

Atan@Unrest wrote:

You still lose me as a contributor if you can't provide some mechanism for the author to prevent the buyer from reselling the book after reading.

I'm not going to publish zone guides and other tomes of knowledge that would have value if I'm going to end up with a marketboard of people reselling my same books against me when they are done with them.

 

 Don't flatter yourself. You're not going to write anything thats not already on the wiki or ZAM. Even if you did, they're not implementing this so you can make some plat. It's for people to exchange stories and flame your enemies.

The only people who are going to make plat off this system are the sages making blank books.

Azzad wrote:

 Don't flatter yourself. You're not going to write anything thats not already on the wiki or ZAM. Even if you did, they're not implementing this so you can make some plat. It's for people to exchange stories and flame your enemies.

The only people who are going to make plat off this system are the sages making blank books.

Funny, I didn't read that was the only intent for the system.  I think it has interesting possibilities outside of just RP fluff, and its really up to SoE and Rothgar if they will provide the functionality to make this more than a fluff feature.

Lastly, I wouldn't pursue the features needed to implement useful game lore into the book system if I wasn't confident I have better detailed information and more exclusive information than is available via any wiki, or even subscription site.

Different people look at books different ways. Some will resell. Those who like to read though will keep them.

How many times have you went to a zone for aa ect that you havent been to in over a year and not been able to remember how to do it.

If I bought guides, they would end up in the guild hall library so that a 18 months from now, I could look up things like the strats on vp nexona or whatever. Sure I could look them up online but my casual guld does not get on line much at all. If it was available, I could muster a 2 or 3 group raid (lvl 90 being the max cap) in the guild hall, and tell the raid to read the book while we are waiting for the last 2 people to zone in, ect.

Knowledge is the greatest treasure in the world but is easily lost when no one passes it on. How many great cities, buildings and monuments were not created in the middle ages because the secrect of concrete was lost when rome fell?

How much further along now would civilization be if people didnt have to relearn everything lost or destroyed when civilizations fell or conguered others and their information was not passed on. Metal working, mechanical mills and pumps built over 2000 years ago and then how they were made was lost for a long time.

The only knowledge that is truly useless and a waste is what is not passed on to those who might need, can enjoy the story, or can learn from later on.

On the flip side, I can understand people wanting to make money on it. Our familys must eat, lol.

Off my soap box now, lol.

One of the uses I've thought of that I'm really looking forward to is for each of my characters to have their own little persistant notebook without having to use the ingame browser and something like Yahoo Notes.  I can note down customer orders, names and addresses of people I'm about to visit to buy from (because I nearly always forget by the time I've made it from the broker to their area), the raws I've calculated that I need for such and such crafting job, etc.  Going to be neat!

I personally do not want to see these things become LORE, No-Trade, Attuneable or any of such tagging. Books are a fluid thing. Our guild is thinking of tons of useful mechanisms for them at this point and putting such trivial restrictions on them for reselling is counter productive.

Real books can be sold after you read them. If they couldnt, there would be tons of stores and people out of work. If the material you provide is worthwhile, than it will be kept and treasured, stored on a shelf at the very least. If not, it will find its way into the market again.

Rothgar - in thinking over the permission thing for changing text while a book is in a home or hall. Would it be possible to change that to FRIEND instead of TRUSTEE??

Someone visiting your house would likely have Vistior access, most houses and halls require a relationship to get FRIEND and granting TRUSTEE is pretty much a no no. We are envisioning many ways to use these books but do see need to have multiple authors contributing to the volumes for various topics. Having to open the entire guild hall to TRUSTEE for that many people would be unwise. Thoughts?

Artemiz@The Bazaar wrote:

I personally do not want to see these things become LORE, No-Trade, Attuneable or any of such tagging. Books are a fluid thing. Our guild is thinking of tons of useful mechanisms for them at this point and putting such trivial restrictions on them for reselling is counter productive.

Real books can be sold after you read them. If they couldnt, there would be tons of stores and people out of work. If the material you provide is worthwhile, than it will be kept and treasured, stored on a shelf at the very least. If not, it will find its way into the market again.

Rothgar - in thinking over the permission thing for changing text while a book is in a home or hall. Would it be possible to change that to FRIEND instead of TRUSTEE??

Someone visiting your house would likely have Vistior access, most houses and halls require a relationship to get FRIEND and granting TRUSTEE is pretty much a no no. We are envisioning many ways to use these books but do see need to have multiple authors contributing to the volumes for various topics. Having to open the entire guild hall to TRUSTEE for that many people would be unwise. Thoughts?

1) I wouldn't want all books to be that way, I just want 2 versions of the recipe, one that does, one that does not.

2) As stated in previous threads, you don't get to sell your used book in the same marketplace as the author selling new books.  The potential marketplace here is very small making even a couple dozen copies sufficient to serve the entire market if they can be re-sold after use.

I would like the option to have a book that can be editable by multiple users.

I would like to see an option that would to allow editing while the book is placed if the user desires it, and with that another option to allow the owner of the book to set what access level people need to have before editing a placed book.  I'm imagining these as checkboxes for "Allow Editing By Others" and "Allow Editing While Placed" and a drop down menu for "Access Level:  Visitor, Friend, Trustee".

I've been in a guild before where we'd often imagine a ledger placed at the front of the guild tavern or guild hall, and we'd create this on the guild forums.  It would be great to be able to actually have this physically represented within the game.  I'd also like to be able to put out Vistor-editable comment books for players who visit my homes to leave a short note if they like, to let me know they'd been by to visit and what they liked about the place, etc.

Rothgar wrote:

I've just made a change so you can now specify the language for your user book.  It will of course have to be a language that your character knows.  If the reader understands that language, it will be displayed in their normal font.  If they do not understand the language, it'll be displayed in the appropriate font for that language.

Excellent. I've got at least one story that just has to be written in Ykeshan/Froglok.

Related concern... How does this work on the PvP server? If someone were to get hold of a book from a different faction, but written in a language they understand, could they read it? Or will the PvP servers only be able to write books in one of the "faction" languages?

Zhadowsee@Antonia Bayle wrote:

Or they may make a book slandering another player.  (Or is it libel?  I forget.)

Slander is spoken. In print, it's libel.

Snapdragyn wrote:

What exactly is 'inappropriate'? I see troubled times ahead here.

What if a romance describes holding hands, perhaps even a kiss? What if the characters described are both of the same gender? Now we're into territory where someone somewhere would probably file a /petition if they came across a copy, yet I, as a gay man IRL, will object very strongly to the censorship of having an otherwise unobjectionable story removed simply because the characters were gay.

That's a very valid concern, IMO.

http://www.gamegrene.com/node/41

Granted, that happened back when EQ was still run by Verant, not SOE, but consider the ramifications when folks are allowed to write and publish fanfiction in the actual game, not on third-party websites. Censorship is censorship, but I also understand that SOE has to put SOME limits. The story you describe should be fine (IMO), but perhaps the one mentioned in that article wouldn't be.

Atan@Unrest wrote:

So, I can publish my Atan's guide to plat farming and sell it for an arbitrary price?

Jgok's Guide to Making a Million Platinum

Step 1: Write a guide to making plat.
Step 2: Set the broker price at 200 plat.
Step 3: Sell the guide to 5,000 people.

Congratulations, you're a millionaire!

Artemiz@The Bazaar wrote:

I personally do not want to see these things become LORE, No-Trade, Attuneable or any of such tagging. Books are a fluid thing. Our guild is thinking of tons of useful mechanisms for them at this point and putting such trivial restrictions on them for reselling is counter productive.

Real books can be sold after you read them. If they couldnt, there would be tons of stores and people out of work. If the material you provide is worthwhile, than it will be kept and treasured, stored on a shelf at the very least. If not, it will find its way into the market again.

Rothgar - in thinking over the permission thing for changing text while a book is in a home or hall. Would it be possible to change that to FRIEND instead of TRUSTEE??

Someone visiting your house would likely have Vistior access, most houses and halls require a relationship to get FRIEND and granting TRUSTEE is pretty much a no no. We are envisioning many ways to use these books but do see need to have multiple authors contributing to the volumes for various topics. Having to open the entire guild hall to TRUSTEE for that many people would be unwise. Thoughts?

There is a small error in your assumption.  Multiple players cannot edit a single book and no one can edit a book while its placed in a house.  Only the original author can ever edit the text and this must be done while the book is in their inventory.  I was simply pointing out that an author of a book would need to have TRUSTEE access in order to modify the text of a book in your house.  This is so he could pick the book up, edit it, and put it back down. 

I know that some of you want a lot of options to give multiple people the ability to contribute to a book.  We have talked about doing something like that in the future but it will most likely exist as a different type of object, and not a book.

Oakum wrote:

Different people look at books different ways. Some will resell. Those who like to read though will keep them.

How many times have you went to a zone for aa ect that you havent been to in over a year and not been able to remember how to do it.

Right. So if I found myself in this situation I would have 3 options:

A) Teleport back to my house/guild hall and hover my cursor over dozens of books until I find the right one. (which may be "checked out" in the case of a guild hall). Then run back to the zone I was in.

B) Waste at least one entire bag slot filled with books of zones I might happen to go into someday.

C) Click a button that brings up the wiki.

I just don't see any situation where someone would buy one of these guides but if you enjoy writing them go for it.

Tock@Antonia Bayle wrote:

I'd also like to be able to put out Visitor-editable comment books for players who visit my homes to leave a short note if they like, to let me know they'd been by to visit and what they liked about the place, etc.

From earlier in the thread:

Rothgar wrote:

Bratface wrote:

Is there any possiblility of using this type of mechanic to have a guest book in a house or guild hall? I'd love to be able to add a few words to a guest book in houses or guild halls I see.

This is still something I'd like to add as an amenity or house item.  It would share a lot of the same 'technology' but needs to be a different type of item.

Emphasis mine.

For Multiple Authors, a Bulletin Board would be nice.  I remember EQ1 had one such board, I believe it was in Highkeep.  OMG how cool would it be to have, in your guild hall, your own bulletin board and treat it as if it were some primitive form of an internet forum?  I could see a thread now!

Topic: Training Dummies

Body: 

Pinpoint,

   Please restcok the box of Training dummies.   I have been pounding them all day and there are wood chips and wool all over the floor, yet no more dummies in the box.  Also we need a guild hall maid ammenity, because I'm not cleaning up the mess!

  Sincerely,

   Crabbok