Beginning Game Goals

Discussion in 'New Player Welcome' started by moxiepilot, Jan 7, 2018.

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  1. moxiepilot

    moxiepilot Avatar

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    So I try to get in the forums while my Avatar is collecting stuff, forgive me if I lose train of thought here.

    I want to continue to give feedback as I delve more into the game, but continue to do it with a fresh perpective of a new player. I have maybe 100 hours under my belt now. (!) Which all things considered is a bit of time when I look back at when I started playing - Christmas week.

    Anyway...with a bit of time under my belt I am still heavily reliant on the forums and the in game players I meet (plus discord and Teamspeak) to fill in blanks, because let's face it - I'm pretty dumb. So let's say I'm an slightly sub-average player for the target demographic.

    Trust me when I say that I do understand a open-world concept and that there isn't always a bunch of handholding for this game. But what I do want to emphasize is that I do not feel as if a true purpose driving the game forward was ever really established, which leads me to flounder around without reason as I chop trees and skin wolves.

    So if the devs and PM are looking for constructive feedback for the game, my recommendation would be that the opening training activities need to incorporate more of a direct feedback goal so that the user understands what the end goal is.

    What I mean to say is that during the first campaign or two, for the tutorials, make Annabelle say, "Hey buddy, you're here to accomplish this, and the first few steps you need to take are such and such. Then I'll touch base with you along the journey - so talk to various people in this town and don't get too distracted trying to do this at the beginning."

    It's helpful to have a guide that is *a guide* :)

    I'm still having a blast; taking tomorrow off in the afternoon to hit the Telethon.
     
  2. Stundorn

    Stundorn Avatar

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    What is the Endgoal.
    I recently thought of a thread to ask what endgame is about?:eek:
    o_O

    One Problem imo is that you can come across players who drive you to do things to get stronger and bypass a natural process of slowly growing into the game.
    That's because of a small population and mostly Highlevels here on the forum who tend to play very much, very effective with less interest in immersing the game but just play effective in the meaning of min maxing things.
    You and we all compare to that more or less, if all that talk about killing Dragons, Trolls and other Bosses, grind the obscourous Mage or Monkey Room in the Rise or K'rul or whatever is established as endgame content in your mind you forget about what playing a RPG is also about.
    Immersing, digging deeper into it...
    But the Game also lacks content to do that or presents it's content not allways very well and less rewarding.
    I constantly need to separate myself from the "Standards" here to have fun.
    Reading the forum often is frustrating to me, i feel locked off in some way.
    1st because of the wide gap between players power.
    2nd because there is no germanspeaking community. (there are germanspeaking players, but no community) and to get in touch with the US /english community is hard because of language, especially for some "older" players and timezone of course.
     
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  3. Numa

    Numa Avatar

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    Ideally speaking, the Outskirts areas are supposed to give the new player enough training, exp and gold to start taking on the T1 & T2 adventure areas and progress along the quest storyline (Courage, Love or Truth) of his/her choice. All this should lead to the main avatar quest at the end of which your alignment (white, grey or black) is determined and is reflected in the reward quest item once that's completed. Ideally the real sandbox stage starts at this point.

    At this point not all the storyline threads are fully connected which is why the driving purpose seems vague. Please keep giving feedback since most of the players here started a long way back and fresh perspectives from new players are valuable.
     
    Last edited: Jan 8, 2018
  4. Echondas

    Echondas Bug Hunter Bug Moderator

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  5. Sorthious

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    I never think of this type of game as having an end-game. There are tons of things to do; crafting, hunting, puzzling, questing, creating music, writing stories, socializing, collecting emotes, etc. You may focus on one aspect of the game for the duration of your time here, or you may get bored and try another facet of the game. There is an end-game to the story line I guess, but, as I said, that is only one aspect of the game. I agree there should be a better guide to get you started on whichever path you start on; Love, Courage, or Truth.
     
  6. moxiepilot

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    Thanks for stating my thoughts in a more understandable and eloquent manner
     
  7. Cora Cuz'avich

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    What I find a little... odd? is that the story seems so divorced from the world. To be fair, I have mostly avoided the story. Right after I started playing (r44) the devs mentioned doing a lot of story polish over the next few releases, so I held off on getting too far in, as I wanted to experience it after all that. But what seems weird is that if you don't pursue it purposely, there seem to be few hooks to pull you into it.

    Skyrim, for example, doesn't force you into the path of defeating Alduin or participating in the civil war, but there are signs of it everywhere. Every town has people who are commenting on the return of the dragons and the civil war. You encounter Imperial/Stormcloak patrols on roads. You get ambushed by dragons. Even if you avoid the main stories, you're very aware they're happening. I've been playing SotA for several months now... and I have no idea what the story is. The game started me on the path of Truth. There was a massacre of elves, you find a dagger you need to investigate. Before you even leave the opening scenes, you've dealt with the guy behind the massacre, and to be honest, I'm not even sure why the dagger is important or means anything. And if you don't pursue it directly, you don't really ever hear about it again. A couple people in Aerie have mentioned the massacre in conversations, but that's about it. I'm sure if I pursued the story, I would learn a lot more. But I feel like the game needs much more evidence that a story is actually happening, whether you choose to participate or not. There are no hooks trying to pull me into it.

    I hate to do the @DarkStarr @Lord British thing, because they both probably get so many that they (rightfully so; I feel like some people overdo it a bit) tune out a lot of it, but I think this is important for the game. But I'm not far enough into the story to be authoritative enough to start my own thread on it.
     
    Last edited: Jan 8, 2018
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  8. Sorthious

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    There is a story connected with the Bonesteel Dagger, which does require you to follow the clues as to it's importance. I won't speak further on it, as it would ruin the experience for those who want to follow the storyline. I agree there could be more to draw a player into the story/lore, but there is a story. I didn't find the story particularly compelling, but, as I said in my earlier post, it is but one aspect of the game. I like to think that the game is only a backdrop in which players create their own stories and lore, and that avatars create the history of New Britannia.
     
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  9. eli

    eli Avatar

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    I know its fashionable to hate on the wow quests to "kill 50 wolves, and bring me back 10 claws"

    but at least those quests force you into combat with a specific mob, which forces you to build your abilities and become familiar with the combat mechanics to a certain level.

    I think perhaps in an overzealous specific effort to avoid those kind of quests, we are left with "click this object" then "click this person" because "reasons you don't have to read."

    I'm sure it's an okay story for people who play games that way. But for those of us who play for mechanics mostly, it ends up even more dumbed down... and we ended up with the ? and ! markers anyway.

    I liked that to get the lich summon I had to die a few times, and to get the phoenix summon I had to form a group. Those are the only 2 times the game has pushed me to a specific combat objective, though.
     
  10. Cora Cuz'avich

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    I'm sure there is. I followed it through Aerie to Vertas to Kiln, before deciding to wait for the reset to do any more or start any of the other paths. And maybe I've literally only played out the intro to the story, and there would be more reminders of it if I had gone further into it.

    I just think the story needs to feel more "there," if that makes any sense. When I walk into Aerie, I should feel like there is something up that I want to be a part of, even if I'm only there to hit up the trainer to unlock a skill and pick up some more mandrake root seeds. Like U7- every town had the Fellowship. Its presence was felt wherever you went. Every magic user except for you was crazy. You knew something was going on, even if you didn't know precisely what until you got further in. In SotA, I don't feel like anything is really going on. The first I'd heard of cabalists was here on the forums. Prior to that, I didn't even know who was behind the sieges. I still don't have any idea why they are attacking cities, and that seems like something everybody in the game should be talking about, since they're so common. I'm not even sure if they have anything at all to do with the story.

    I have a long weekend coming up, I'm thinking I might trigger the reset and start the story proper. My thoughts might change after going further into it.
     
    Last edited: Jan 8, 2018
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  11. Sorthious

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    I did the main story quests, probably about 2-months ago, and there were still lots of issues with the quests. You may want to wait a little longer. I was disappointed in the quests; lots of spelling grammar problems, vague instructions as to what you had to do, some quests didn't work properly, and others didn't seem to make sense. There may have been fixes since I did the quest though, so, take what I say with a grain of salt.
     
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  12. moxiepilot

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    This pretty much sums up what I wanted to verbalize as well
     
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  13. Browncoat Jayson

    Browncoat Jayson Legend of the Hearth

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    The game isn't totally bereft of these types of quests. There are "Kill the Alpha Wolf" types, which while they don't require you to bring back unvendorable items at least get you to go kill a specific creature (not just 10 random wolves). I'd like to see more of those as well. Basically, no "go kill 10 boars", but more "go kill the boar that swallowed my wedding ring!" who only spawns after you kill a few other boars in the area.
     
  14. majoria70

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    So during the telethon Darkstarr made some comments and I missed them. He said Majoria will be happy about that. I did hear that part and then I was like hmmm what will I be happy about? So I replayed this part of the telethon and got my answers. I have been for so long rallying for in an in game achievement system to guide us, reward us, provide us with tasks and goals when we don't know what else to do, to incentivize us to re visit areas when we don't see a need to go to them anymore.

    So I have carried around in my signature an article on making in-game achievements that are not just ho-hum or irritating but that actually give us progress and journal entries and there are different systems depending on what is needed for a particular game. I think we need a tab in the journal that says achievements/tasks/or goals or something and then when we accomplish it we get the reward or the points to a reward and I think different achievements would give different rewards, and perhaps some would give a quest.

    There is so much we could do with this system. It has been missing imo because the game was going to be a game where the players figure out what they should and could do and that is it, but this is not the case and not good for the success of the game to only have the game based on this premise. Sure we can and will do what we want like create player content etc, but there are times when we are just out exploring and adventuring that we want these times to have much more meaning than grind, grind, grind and then grind some more for xp, for resources, for rares etc.

    So this is very good news and I will post the link out of my signature for those who are interested in what we could possibly do with an in game achievement system and really to know how that could best be implemented in this game to be 'one' of the missing pieces to pull it all together.

    Now don't get me wrong I don't say this is the only missing piece and feedback from us should tell of any other missing pieces to the Devs. This is our job here to contribute to the making of this game. If some are not interested in taking that on, that is up to them, but for those who are this is our time and it is more than likely the only time we will have to really impact the game so directly. After release who knows, perhaps somewhat, but not while a lot of basic systems are implemented and fleshed out. So rally with me community to pull it all together in all the ways we need for the success of this game and to have the best launch ever. So here is the link:

    https://gamedevelopment.tutsplus.co...ing-achievements-for-your-games--gamedev-3371
     
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