Interactivity through sound to reduce gathering boredom

@Moiseyev Trueden think you were right. It was you reporting the replies of the dev, I think - got confused in my head. I do that a lot - details Also the Sims conversation took place there too, it seems

https://www.shroudoftheavatar.com/f...loot-could-take-time.43209/page-2#post-480796

One of the thread discussions around that time?
https://www.shroudoftheavatar.com/f...evs-for-the-love-of-crafting-gathering.41514/

 

Ok, sorry. It seems my understanding is crippled today With that i completely agree, and i went back to look at your advanced mining idea (for any who haven't checked it, third party shameless plug here) and remember it... now i think i understand you even better. The way you're suggesting mining there is like the dreamed mining system. Each node is a different "puzzle", engaging and meaningful. And each node could yield more resources because the time spent per node is higher. But for much i love that, it is something complicated to put in even at the time when it was suggested...

My point is that the only way of fixing the "rinse and repeat" feeling of gathering is to put a complicated system in place for each kind of node, and thats... well, complicated. So for now i'd settle with fixing the waiting time, and remember the excellent ideas to deal with the repetitiveness for further episodes. After all addressing the dead times may seem a minor issue compared to repetitiveness of gathering, but at least it's something!

Oh, also worth saying that while there are games where you just "wait", and they could be fun, that's the way the game is played as a whole. SotA is a game that keeps you active most of the time, and any dead time goes directly against the action flow and feels totally out of place.

 

Eh, well I play UnReal World, where some actions do take time, including taking off or putting on armor. Gathering and crafting can take time -- especially when you want to build a house, which requires a lot of logs. But other aspects of the game are instantaneous, like hitting an enemy with a sword. But, because of the survival elements, there's a routine to the game. You have to eat. You have to sleep. You get ill and need to take care of yourself when you're ill. You have to take care of injuries. You have to wear clothes to protect you from the cold or you'll freeze. If you have frostbite, you have to warm yourself up. In order to hunt, you actually have to track down animals by their footprints. In order to fish, you have to find good fishing spots. You can't carry tons of tree trunks in your backpack.. you have to float them on a boat.

So, the fact that the game isn't oriented around grinding and farming all day, but real life concerns and survival elements, is what gives it a routine and makes it playable.

 

i completely agree with your whole post there - minigames do not have to be detached from the reality of the game. in fact, if they are not detached, it feels a part of the game and the negative connotation is left behind, while player interactivity, player interest, and easily tweakable pieces for devs to combat botters, all come into play here. i know several folks who refuse to play a game with crafting, if crafting doesn't have minigames that are intuitive and at least somewhat based on skill.

plus, the screenshot in the OP, came from fable3 i think it was, or maybe 2.. it was the jobs system and it was my favorite part of the game - bartending, blacksmithing, cutting wood, making pies.. all sorts of awesomesauce there.

 

We moved from auto-attack to free-attack in combat. Now we just need to move from auto-harvest to free-harvest in gathering!!!! It's the same concept in my eyes. ;-) I always disliked games that focus so hard on killing things. Make the other systems fun too! don't just make combat fun, and gathering boring. That's so not cool...

 

And we need to make defense more active too Free-dodge, free-block.

That's off-topic, though. Yes, the point is gathering can be less passive, too, and ways in which it would be seamless in the game rather than disengaging.

 

Point taken, but it's not just having instant elements... it's the fact that in SotA, everything is instant. The things that require time to be completed are minimal... off the top of my head, gathering and deck swapping, and the second one only is only relevant if you're in combat, which is a situation of tension, so it's not the same.

I wouldn't mind to make the game more realistic including times and all those "worry about your character's welfare", but those seem to be out of the question as well, since we're not going to even suffer from hunger (i'd be both surprised and pleased if something like that comes in, but it seems no punishment from that way).

I could agree with those folks of yours but currently we just can dream about that kind of things for future episodes, so...

I think you missed the OP by one scroll up a bit from there!

 

Yes, I agree. Part of my argument for things like hunger is that it makes the game less grindy and less tedious. Sometimes trying to be easy on players actually makes things more tedious in the end.

But, yea, that's all off-topic too... the only reason I was bringing it up is because we're on the subject of "what makes grinding tedious", which I think is important to really understand. And its important to understand why interactivity would make grinding less tedious.

 

doens't count. *grin*

 

So some comment regarding this topic was done around Minute 52 in the Hangout! With some paraphrasing (I apologize but it's hard for me to grasp all the exact words), Darkstarr said:

I'm incredibly happy to hear that, up to the point that it was one of the questions i posed for the Hangout, and even when they didn't addressed it specifically it got answered Now something makes me feel restless... and that's because the events thing is mentioned only as related to crafting. I think it's common sense to make gathering part of it as well, but if @DarkStarr can confirm if we're going to have that kind of reactive events in gathering (and refining!) as well, i'll be the happiest gatherer on New Britannia

 

I haven't read all the posts so sorry if it's already been mentioned.

I'm not deaf myself but removing progress bar all together like OP suggests would be bad for accessibility for deaf people or people who play with sound off for whatever reason.

 

While you and I share violently different opinions in regards to what combat should be on a very fundamental level, I admire your passion and desire to see people flesh out their own visions as well! Personally, I love my hot bar and auto attack and while I do enjoy the deck system... that click attack is giving me carpal tunnel! lol. I would however love to see harvesting and even the crafting get some interactive love. I really enjoyed EQ2's implementation or even Vanguards. (their own glyphs and issues as it were.)

 

Great suggestions here, but I would settle for ANY sound when mining, even chihuahua yapping. Mining is so tedious that you are almost forced to do something else (like read the forums ) while your avatar is hacking away. If there were some audible clue to tell you when to switch back to SotA for another unsuccessful attempt to harvest a node, that would be helpful.

 

Hehe, for me Kara, more often than not, that audible clue is the spider chewing away at my ankle. But yeah, perhaps an irritated 'Damn!' would be fun when an attempt fails.

Cheers

 

The nice thing about this idea for a "minigame" (with the audio cue on mining example) is that you can totally ignore it if you want to and still perform the activity. However if you want to be more efficient, there is a way to do so. I do feel that there should be a visual cue as well (perhaps toggle-able in options) so any deaf players can still join in on the "minigame". Perhaps a glint/small light flash on the gathering tool could work, and not be too immersion breaking. Guess that might not work too well for skinning as sometimes the knife is inside the monsters guts, and I don't want to think what the audio cue for skinning would be!