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Releasing “Player Made” Dungeons in this early state is pointless

Discussion in 'Release 57 Feedback' started by Greyhaven, Sep 1, 2018.

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  1. Greyhaven

    Greyhaven Avatar

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    Player-made dungeons (PMDs) may be cool in concept but what is the point of introducing them now in such an early state? I crafted the tombstone entrance, dropped in, summoned the ol’ earth elemental, ignited the halberd and got ready for a good scrap. Then spent the next half minute wandering around empty corridors and rooms looking for something.... well, anything!

    In the single large central room was a sad mob of green skeletons to dispatch and... that was it! You would have thought Portalarium would have made the example PMD a bit more interesting with a few more mobs in there, perhaps a trap or two, but no...

    ‘Its just an large empty basement with a few sad undead in the middle of it”

    I have a great new concept for Portalarium: why not finish a game system before introducing it? This way, players can have ‘some fun’ with it. Instead, we have this pointless travesty which just serves to fill up the game with yet another unfinished system. @marjoria made a similar point in her detailed and rather amazing post about SOTA fishing. A post really about the problem of unfinished systems sitting in the game for months and making a bad impression.

    If they had waited a few months, when the dungeons were editable and truly ‘player-made’ then people would have really excited by that and be busy raving about it. I can picture the Youtube videos by the more talented dungeon creators even now...

    Instead, we have what we have. Not so much ‘half-baked’, more like ‘un-baked’.

    I dont know what it is, but for some reason, this afternoon, I feel the pull of Tyria...
     
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  2. Sean Silverfoot

    Sean Silverfoot Avatar

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    Can't disagree more! This allows folks to come up with good suggestions for the future developement of types of rooms and how folks will use them. Enjoy Tyria! Good game.
     
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  3. Sketch_

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    C'mon man you're supposed to strip naked and use pugilism.
     
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  4. Jefe

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    Yes, the larger dungeons give a hint at the variety of themes available. Not to mention 1800 hp shadows, liches, 1k hp skelly mages, and 1k hp obsidian mages.
     
  5. Greyhaven

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    There we go - players deluded enough to be quite happy being presented with incomplete material. How much of this should we take for a game that saw official release over 6 months ago? Might as well have ships & boats now - don’t bother designing them, as we already have logs to float on. Just make them bigger and give them a shape of a ship. Things like steering can “come later”.

    Thank you. I now have all of the collections for the design-a-weapon competition winners completed. Almost about to break through the 240 mastery point mark. Arenanet only release completed material.

    Back to the matter - Portalarium hardly need the community to tell them what sort of rooms can make a dungeon. Anyway, we can only give feedback on something that exists, not on nothing. Much better then to have more functional PMDs. And it would not have taken them much effort to put a bit more into the craftable dungeon even at this stage.

    Compare with Neverwinter where Cryptic provide players with toolsets not only to build dungeons but any sort of environment, populate them with creatures, items & npc’s then include quest chains with rewards, and package the lot up as an adventure modules made available to all. All this working at beta stage and without their community telling them what to do and how to do it. It’s called “game development”. Magic.

    The ones you have to pay for. Different in the fact they have tougher mobs in them. Truly astounding.
     
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  6. Jefe

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    Seen it... crafted a dungeon that started at an inn where I made an NPC shoot jets of fire out from bad food. Also dropped it ages ago.

    Actually, now as I am remembering that game more, I remember they had staged releases of things as well where I had to wait cycles to get to the new basic map sets because they released an incomplete game and gradually added content to it. After going beyond the planar hopping I decided to call it quits as I didn't jive with their growth model.
     
    Last edited: Sep 1, 2018
  7. jutman

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    Make dungeons sizes in relation to the size of the lot you place it on!!! dont have a village lot dungeon the same size as a keep or castle lot dungeon!! come on..... common sense here!
     
  8. Sean Silverfoot

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    Common sense?!?!? Why does a dungeon under the ground need to be limited by the size of the lot someone owns. Common sense says caves aren't limited in size y a small entranceway
     
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  9. Arradin

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    So what you are saying is that 5 row lots next to eachother should each be able to hold castle size dungeons?

    Same with basements?

    Come on, Get a grip :p
     
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  10. Sean Silverfoot

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    I have a grip, Thanks for the response..........
     
  11. Elwyn

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    The point is to get people to play with new stuff to shake down bugs and oopsies that can't be found in a week or two of QA. You may have not noticed that this is basically a standard thing for "big" tech in this game. For instance, the first month of rolling for loot had some usability problems, but they were mostly fixed by the second month.
    That's because they're in the... Dungeon Dimension! Otherwise how could they fit in there with a basement too? Haven't you noticed that most of the entry items are some kind of glowing portal?
    There we go - players who can't understand an incremental development model. If they were to release it all as a single drop we wouldn't see it for a year... and it would still take months to fix it up afterward, since they don't have a AAA QA team to debug it. If you can't handle this, then maybe you should just go back to playing shrinkwrap software.

    You do understand the concept that the dev team plans to never stop working on new stuff every month? Just because other companies in the industry push out a can of assorted crap once every two years as an "expansion" and then barely touch anything in between, doesn't mean that's the only possible development model. This "new stuff every month" model is quite familiar for those of us who played FFXI.
    And if you wait those same few months, there will still be the same videos. Except that people will have had some time with the incomplete version, so they might even be a month or two sooner than if there was nothing until the whole thing was dropped all at once like a bomb. And even better, because there was feedback going on all the time to help the devs make something better as they were working on it, instead of dealing with months of complaints with an already "finished" system.
     
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  12. Bayard

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    To show what the dungeons will look like, how large each of the base sizes are, the variety of rooms, etc., to help us plan our own dungeons. They were never advertised as anything other than example placeholders for the benefit of future dungeon builders.

    However, I might have asked the same question if I hadn't heard announcements on Livestreams, in Chris' forum posts, in a video he made, on the Wake Up New Britannia broadcast and in many player forum threads. If someone hadn't heard any of this, the templates would naturally lead to disappointment. Hopefully it makes more sense now. Cheers!
     
  13. Greyhaven

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    @Elwyn

    OK. I think you are in the majority. There’s just a few thimgs I want to say before I leave this game.

    1) I don’t know what we are trying to test here. The system of clicking on an object and ending up in a subterranean location is the same as what basements are. The current PMDs just have different 3D objects to transport you there. Monsters in a subterranean environment is what many dungeons, mines and sewers akready are, so nothing new there either except the PMDs are much simpler.

    2) Without any editing tools or any new system introduced there is nothing to test or comment upon. Because of this, there is no reason for me to repeatedly enter a PMD. Even the ability to add a mob or place a decoration would have given something to hold my interest.

    3) I thought the intention was to have PMDs fully functional this year Q4. Not much of a wait there.

    4) I thought SOTA had a test server for QA and to test things out on before release to the main game server. And “DEV+” backers paid extra for their pledges for early access to test things out and provide feedback beacuse that is what they wanted (& like) to do.

    5) I dont want to test things - I just want a game to play. I have the Shroud so perhaps I’m done. Kind of you to invite me to “go back to playing shrinkwrap software”. I can’t comment on FFXI but your statement about “other companies pushing out a can of assorted crap every 2 years” is not a shoe thst fits all. GW2 Living World for example.

    All that is required now is a few screenshots of the property for posterity and I’m done.
     
  14. Elwyn

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    @Greyhaven
    Have you done any software development?
     
  15. Sketch_

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    Some people who aren't as technically savvy as you might be probably appreciate the sampling. You get it? ;) You aren't the only demographic playing this game.

    [​IMG]
     
    Last edited: Sep 5, 2018
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