Highvalue Outskirts Feedback

I've been playing since persistence started but have held off on playing the quests until they were more polished. This weekend, my wife and I decided to give them a whirl. Here's my feedback so far:

1) Combat Difficulty - we're both way overpowered for the zone, even when we stripped to +0 gear and grabbed weapons we had never used before. Can't really judge.

2) Quest Clarity - quest clarity was great. I got enough info from the NPCs and journal to know what to do, and the crypt puzzle was pretty obvious once we explored the map a bit.

3) Compass - hate the compass. It gets cluttered too quickly with POIs and quest markers that it become more annoying than useful. I don't like the shiny blue indicators to find quests either. Would rather have the NPCs that have quests use the wave or other emotes to flag us down. Also would like a way to filter out what shows up on the compass so that I can run directly to the POI that I want.

4) Quest completion - this one is frustrating. The quests are not group-friendly. If I had to kill something to get a quest item, my wife would have to wait for the critter to respond to get her item. This was fixed years ago in other games, so I'm hoping that this is just growing pains and will be addressed. It completely breaks the flow of the game to have to wait around for a respawn. In larger groups this becomes even more annoying.

5) Multiplayer quests - I didn't find any quests that supported a multiplayer experience. Each NPC and quest felt like it was for me and me alone. An NPC that I helped out still needed help from my wife 5 seconds later. While this is expected because most games do this, I would like SOTA to raise the bar a bit and include more dynamic quests to make it feel like this zone is alive, rather than just replaying the same script forever. I haven't finished all the quests but so far after everything we've done nothing has changed in the scene. The situation is neither better nor worse. A better experience would be that every time I complete certain quests, the front line soldiers get a bit stronger, push the enemy back further, and if I do every quest in the scene there is a victory. I should feel like I'm having an impact on the world, and so far I do not.

6) Scene scope - the scene itself was great! We spent the better part of an afternoon exploring and questing, and we'd stumble onto new areas each time we went back out. This is a HUGE improvement from the smaller scenes like East Perrenial Trial or Elysium Mines. In those scenes you could explore everything in minutes, in Highvale Outskirts it's hours. In the whole session we never had a loading scene. I cannot stress enough how much of a great improvement this scene is and it really gives me faith that the SotA team can do great stuff with this engine/game. I'm salivating over something similar for the underworld connectors.

Overall this felt like a solid MMO new player experience. There's room for improvement and raising the bar, but when I look at the early smaller scenes and look at this one, the momentum in a positive direction definitely shows.

 

Having the guards take up an offensive stance and charge the enemy as a triggered event would be cool to see.

 

Absolutely. That type of epic event to close the scene out would give me a sense that we did make a difference.

Right now, it feels like an SNL sketch (which is both good and bad). It's entertaining, memorable, but they just don't know how to end it.

 

Seriously ?
Cu-do's to you two for going the extra mile regarding the "New User Experience".... Not many would strip to do it as a newbie...... Good job !

Hmmm.... ok, good.

Agree completely .

Agree completely .

Yes, I agree......

And I agree here as well......
Great feedback, @marthos

 

Hard not to agree. Very valid points. Now that there is a map available I'll replay again with a new character. I love the size of these maps but the way they do the edges and that stupid compass I wind up doing circles without realizing it. Maybe better now.
Thanks for the feedback!

 

Meanwhile... I'm unable to find that Elder Frostgeist.

I mean... I think it has something to do with the time being dusk and finding that camp with the two frozen dead corpses that talk about the guy in full armor without a helmet that is talking with what is described to be a frostgeist, but with horns on its head at the bottom of the hill.

I go to the bottom of the hill, at nighttime and... there's nothing there. I walk all around and there's no trigger. This is a little bit annoying. Any pointers?

 

i found both elder frostgeists and the frostgeist hexen, many of them, behind the walled elf camp.

 

Thank you.

 

Yeah, elf camp has a ton of frostgeists