Spoilers: Path of Rage Quitting

Discussion in 'Quests & Lore' started by Poor game design, Sep 7, 2017.

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  1. Vyrin

    Vyrin Avatar

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    Thanks LD for reminding everyone. There were so many invalid reasons as to why we couldn't discuss the story from the beginning...

    1) Spoilers! Seriously, they have been coming out since Day 1. And now that the story is in and spoilers ABOUND - it has simply RUINED the game for everyone as we force them to see things they wanted to experience at release. :rolleyes: But still people would cry, spoilers!
    2) Core tech systems/sandbox elements need to be designed first! But look at where we are with the phasing decision which could have been made a lot easier a long time ago. Anyone who can't see how story/lore influences game design from the very beginning needs to go talk to an expert. But still people would cry, core tech/sandbox elements!
    3) Still in development! The universal dismissal of concerns: wait. But the assumption was that the story would be fantastic as is without feedback, even though in every other way, we see that is not how development has gone. But still people would cry, still in development!
    4) Small team! Community involvement must be a net positive to leverage the work of a small team or why would it have continued? Detailed and complex game mechanics have been discussed with the community, but somehow story can't benefit from the same process. If a small story team can't handle the overall ethos of the project, it's too small. But still people would cry, small team!
    5) DLMB! Kickstarter promises changed - how could they not over four years? But to see the writing on the wall that the questing would not live up to a "primary objective" i.e. "Our primary objectives are to tell a story even more compelling than Ultimas IV-VII..." was disheartening. If a primary objective can be missed, well what can you say? But still people would say, DLMB!

    Because of this, a lot of people lost interest in this aspect of the game. Those of us who stayed interested and spoke up at key moments are not surprised to see the comments come in. Maybe more will add their voices and give up 1-5 in the interests of helping things along. A lot could happen still between now and release (which won't be for a while yet...).
     
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  2. Solazur

    Solazur Avatar

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    you should get a "King of the Posts" title :)

    Oh just one thing though.. re: Mobs in a PvP zone (oh and don't shoot me over punctuation.. I just toss that **** in randomly) .. but I digress

    how can you have good PvP if you can't stealth and wait for some poor sob to kill the mob (preferably a dragon so you can loot their kill) and gank em at low health?
     
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  3. eli

    eli Avatar

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    quests being complete provides a nascent hope that there's something more compelling in this game than endless grinding.
    this one is easy, make mobs spawn when you harvest resources in these zones.
    I don't care about the text. I think there should be be a meaningful incentive/disincentive, one that affects mechanics in some way. Like BDF's zelda example, a hook shot lets you go through areas easier, range attack without using ammo, cross unpassable chasms, etc. a flying mount lets you travel through new zones, skip some mobs, and go faster in general. stuff like that is what an incentive would be.
     
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  4. Solazur

    Solazur Avatar

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    lol thanks...I actually have that recipe.. What I'd like to see is something NEW! Maybe CRAFTABLE shiny white clockwork plate. They could put a new baby clockwork dragon in a 2 or 3 skull zone .. something pair of newbs could kill and make the recipe a drop from it. That way it wouldn't just be farmed to death and sold to the L33T's
     
    Last edited: Sep 8, 2017
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  5. redfish

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    Baron of the Posts.

    Don't promote him !
     
  6. Solazur

    Solazur Avatar

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    oh, ya

    Mea Culpa

    @Baron Drocis Fondorlatos sorry.. Fish is right (gawd I hate that!) Baron it is
     
  7. Drocis the Devious

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    Yep, that's the question. What's my motivation?

    Currently, as stated, I don't have a lot.
    • I'm attracted to the shroud, looks cool! It would go well with my cabalist robes!
      • However you can't enchant either the shroud or the cabalist robes. (lowers attraction to completing current quests)
      • And honestly if there were more robes in the game that I could craft or buy from the add-on store, I wouldn't really care about the shroud at all. (would also lower attraction to completing the current quests)
    • I'm also attracted to the Dread Weapons.
      • But they come at a high price. XP Decay.
      • They also come with a lot of baggage and weight. My character has eyes. He can see that giant titans used these weapons and didn't fair very well for them. So when I get them for completing a quest I'm kind of like "uh...thank you?" :confused:
    • I like some of the puzzles and would like to work through those for the challenge.
      • But not at the expense of my character backstory development. If the puzzle is just a puzzle disconnected to anything of value or of interest (for example in my case, deep Obsidian Lore and Magical Power) then my character probably isn't going to want to do that. I realize this would be an impossible on a player by player level. I also realize that there are dread artifacts related to "deep obsidian lore" in the finale. You have to take all of the bullet points collectively though to see the full picture of my motivation.
      • Likewise, if the puzzle is connected to boring or repetitive actives (scavenger hunts, you're getting warmer!) then that makes me weigh the idea of just giving up and not doing it. If the activity connected to the puzzle is fun in an of itself, then the sales job is done! I'm much more likely to participate even if it might be out of place for my character to do so.
    Right, I'm not looking for people to farm these PVP scenes and exploit them. I've actually been very hard on the Shardfall designs because in the past the mobs were too easily allowing them to be exploited and farmed! :eek:

    But as Darkstarr recently explained in a developer hangout, "Why would anyone go there if they couldn't gather resources or kill mobs?" Which is exactly how I feel about my PVP POT? :(

    It seems to me what we really need in PVP areas is an incentive that is tied to PVP and not PVE. Sure we have indirect benefit in PVP when we get a higher concentration of rare-ish resources. But there are yet to be any meaningful reasons to PVP. (which is a much larger problem/topic that I feel deeply passionate about) I think having a quest to complete could justify the added risk of PVP (so long as there's no PVE getting in the way). In an alternate route to the quest zone where there is no PVP, load on the traps and the mobs (but don't have them respawn)! That helps balance out the reward of not having to pvp. (but probably leave the resources out of these scenes completely, quests should be about achievement and not farming the same mob or resource over and over again).

    In PVP zones where the main purpose is to complete a quest, I'd recommend no mobs and no resources. This makes it impossible to farm, but also gives the benefit of the quest line being integrated with PVP (which I still think is an important goal). In PVP zones where there are no quests (like Shardfalls and PVP POTs) there needs to be an incentive that will drive traffic there so PVP can occur, but also in an effort to justify the added risks. PVE type incentives don't work, and in many use cases actually makes the PVP worse because the person farming mobs and resources becomes a very easy target (and who wants to die that way? how is that meaningful?).

    I will spare you the half-baked ideas I have about how to provide incentive for players to go to a pvp zone. I just hope you recognize it as a problem in need of a solution. I'm confident if you agree with me on at least that much, we will eventually come to make PVP better.

    Thanks!

    Thank you!
     
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  8. LiquidBlaze

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    I think if we could just extend the borders of Colorado from the Atlantic to the Pacific....
     
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  9. Moiseyev Trueden

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    @Lum the Mad
    Thanks for the break down of concerns and current development directly addressing them.
     
  10. Moiseyev Trueden

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    That's why they mark them. The heavy marking of the trees they like most, tend to turn the leaves brown due to chemical content in the urine. Avoid those trees and just chop down the ones they don't want.
     
  11. Lord_Darkmoon

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    Really? Is gathering resources and killing mobs the only reasons why people want to explore scenes? How about interesting stories taking place there? Mysteries to solve? Digging up treasures etc.

    Why does everything have to revolve around killing and gathering resources?
     
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  12. Drocis the Devious

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    I couldn't agree more.

    I've tried to make my POT attractive for players to visit and perform trade in. I've created a rich backstory, commissioned custom music, and worked hard to give it a unique style and theme. It's directly attached to Verdantis Shardfall, but that PVP scene also has very low traffic (at least I rarely see anyone there) and it actually has mobs and resources.

    Certainly PVP changes the equation in a significant way, and players over the years have voiced rather loudly (imo) that just going there for PVP or to farm is not worth the overall risk of being killed by other players (there has to be a rebalancing of risk vs. reward for this to work).

    Quests on the other hand seem like a great incentive, but the mixture of PVP and PVE elements does not. I think once we decouple PVP and PVE in some of these scenes we'll see greater use of them.
     
  13. E n v y

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    See this is why people shouldn't do the quest until it's finished. We are still early access remember......the game isn't for everyone.

    [​IMG]
     
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  14. Solazur

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    I'm sorry m8 but have you been to the new player zones? I tried Blood River Outskirts and just chucked in the towel... early. I was pleased (maybe not the best word) last night to see a player streaming his experience with a new visitor account playing through that scene. I say pleased because I watched him stumbling at the same place I did. (in other words I felt less st00pid) There were numerous wtf moments. So a newer player doesn't need to come to the forums (if they've even found these yet) to read about challenging content that needs to be worked on. Calling the nanny to shut down a thread because people are expressing their experiences is really rather "off". I too appreciate the amount of time devs have put in but hey: Newsflash...the product isn't ready for prime time.
    Part of the process is flushing out the crap. Until the moment we have a Launch we're not "playing" so much as testing. There IS a difference.
     
  15. E n v y

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    Might have been sarcasm you know..........just might have been.
     
  16. Kambrius

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    This! So much this!

    I play an MMO that most might consider lame: Star Trek Online. Does my exploration usually involve combat? Yes, to a large degree, but there are missions where I unravel compelling story missions that require exploration and diplomacy. And then there are Foundry missions of which are some amazingly crafted player-created missions, some of which with story arcs.

    Speaking of diplomacy, I wish this game allowed the player to parlay with NPC enemies, where enemies were more than just virtual obstacles between the player and a destination.

    As to what @Baron Drocis Fondorlatos mentioned about why should one care about the Oracle and the Virtues, I wholeheartedly agree. I could not find any compelling reason to uphold the Virtues, much less my own personal values. All I found my character to represent was a person whose every step was hampered with combat (I suppose that's the link to Ultima single player games :rolleyes:) where resource gathering was the compensation, and the fun was not bound to a sense of accomplishment or growth of the character but rather something that the player had to evoke and acknowledge for oneself which seems counter to the concept of fun; i.e. if you have to ask yourself if you are having fun, then you are probably not.
     
  17. eli

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    this idea got me thinking about the KoToR quest where you have to converse between a hunter and a birdwatcher and figure out who the murderer was based upon logical deduction and finding inconsistencies in their stories. I would love a quest like that, which made you think and pay attention. It would be great if it had impact too. like if you found in favor of the kobold, they wouldn't attack you unprovoked, if you sided with the elf, they wouldn't attack you unprovoked anymore etc.
     
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  18. Kambrius

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    Qapla'!
     
  19. Elwyn

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    That's how they got the name "timber wolves", right?
     
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  20. Blake Blackstone

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    -This was deleted - Reason " shutting down your post as requested".

    "The overall negativity in this thread is overwhelming. Threads have been deleted for less. @Berek please shut this down. New players dont need to see that the story isnt playable. Plus, @Lum the Mad has worked 4+ long years to bring us this story. He gave his all, for every day of his 40 hour work week, only to be torn down in the end? Over 10,000 hours of his life was dedicated to this and he should be lauded for his success!! Good job Lum!"-

    I think there was a misunderstanding and just wanted to clarify:

    The devs are working on a shoestring budget to get this out and Lum has worked tirelessly on no telling what kind of computer to write this stuff. They dont have the money to throw at state of the art writing software. Cut them some slack.

    Ask yourself if you could write this type of rich NPC interaction over a 45 month period? Probably not. Could you create cutting edge interactions like "Please ask me that in the form of a question?" or "What is your name?" and then have the NPC answer back in the name you've given? I'll answer for you; No, no you couldn't.

    Its the little nuances that drive you to want to speak to every NPC in the game, just to see the witty and well-thought out responses. From the moment you walk into Soltown, you get the feeling that you are about to embark on an epic journey to find out why you have crossed the lunar rift into an unknown world. One of the things that was brought up here is "Why would I want to even speak to the Oracle?" Are you serious? After roaming around and seeing how all the NPCs are tied in together, creating a living and breathing world, why would you not want to talk to the Oracle to see whats in store?

    Anyway, I could go on and give you more examples of why these systems and interactions were cleverly designed but I dont want to write a wall of text(I dont get paid to write!). The reality is that there is not much time left to completely overhaul the story to a few peoples liking. IMHO it is complete and ready to debut for launch. I think players that get a fresh look at it and havent been following development too closely will appreciate these groundbreaking revelations in computer gaming. Again, good job Lum!!
     
    Last edited: Sep 8, 2017
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