Spoilers: Path of Rage Quitting

@Lum the Mad

I know this is going to be painful for you to read. I hope you read it (and the other feedback I provided) though. I spent time writing this up for a well intended reason, because I want this game to be better.

Spoiler

I started the Path of the Oracle last night. It stressed me out, a lot.

After 4 years, after waiting for the main quest line to be completed, I was not impressed with the paths of Love, Truth, and Courage. Too linear, too distracting from the story you guys were attempting to tell. But when I began the Path of the Oracle I was excited to visit some of the newer scenes, figure out some of the puzzles I'd heard about, and piece together the main story line.

That excitement would be rewarded in some ways almost immediately, but the overall experience (thus far) would also challenge my want to continue playing the game at all. And before I spend the next few weeks trying to complete the Path of the Oracle, I wanted to provide this feedback to you sooner rather than later (so you might have more time to fix it).

1. The first thing that I want you to know is that the only reason I'm not ignoring the quest line entirely at this point is because I'm stubborn. After over 4 years of waiting and being unable to complete quests previously because of development and bugs, I'm making myself keep going.

It's not because it's fun. Although there are some fun parts that I appreciate and will call out here as much as I can.

It's not because the quests are good, they're not. It's a giant scavenger hunt, the hints are questionable, and performing these quests has infuriated me multiple times in just the first day.

Here's a list of what's pissing me off: (language used to show emphasis)
1. I'm not really sure why I should care about the Oracle. It's a machine. Who gives a flying femig why it does anything? Not me. There has been no establishment of why the Avatar should care. This is REALLY important, because if you don't care as a character it means the whole damn thing is just a game. It means the whole reason you're doing any of this is because you want to "finish" it, or you want "phat lootz".

From the time I enter the world to the time I get to the Path of the Oracle, everything I'm told is that "this is my destiny". Well says who you stupid robot? I don't take orders from you. You don't pay my bills.

You don't even put fear into me, or give me a good reason to listen to your dumb ass. So STFU and go on ignore. Because not once have you given me a reason to do any of this stuff. Virtues? Who cares?! What are you even talking about? Until I reached the Path of the Oracle you didn't even make sense and were talking in riddles. Now I get past the LOVE, TRUTH, and COURAGE paths and you're speaking so I can understand you but I still don't care! And I'd make the argument that no one should care beyond morbid curiosity.

But I do care about the game, Lum. I'm an investor, I'm a large backer, I participate, I'm active. I want this to be successful. And this feedback, all of it, even the parts where it might feel like I'm just ranting and being immature has the same purpose - to make this quest line better.

And it would be much better (imo) if the Oracle had some kind of leverage over the Avatar. It feels like the main quest line is secondary to everything else in the world. It's detached and has no real meaning or consequences, it's just a regurgitation of the virtues. I get it. There were virtues. So what? You've got kids being smashed in a trash compactor that can be accidentally stepped on, it doesn't mean anything. The virtue score doesn't mean anything. There's no consequences for not completing or participating in the quest. It's as if I'm being pulled through a long sermon that uses weak morality tales, but there's no real pay off and there's no real reason to stay and hear more.

Make me care!

2. When I read all the places I would have to go to in the Path of the Oracle, my first thought was pure rage. Are you seriously going to make me go find random chests in 8 different scenes? Really? What value does that serve? How does that help advance the story?

It reminded me of the story of St. Ives.

As I was going to St. Ives,
I met a man with seven wives,
Each wife had seven sacks,
Each sack had seven cats,
Each cat had seven kits:
Kits, cats, sacks, and wives,
How many were there going to St. Ives?

Answer: Only the one Avatar stupid enough to waste 40 hours of time looking for 8 random chests.

I mean when someone plays the Legend of Zelda, sure you have to go get the sword and the boomerang and multiple pieces of the tri-force. But at least you get the cool sword and the boomarang each step of the way! Here we get quest items that we can't really use, they just take up spots in our inventory. It's really lame in comparison.

Plus you "care" because you're Link and Zelda was kidnapped, and you have to go rescue her. But I'm just some dude that fell into the world, I have a house here (and a town) and the Oracle is a machine that says all kinds of stuff that I don't really care about. And going to 8 different places to find 8 random things that don't seem to do anything special seems like a lot of work. It doesn't sound fun to me at all. (Read: It's NOT FUN)

I went to Libris Ruins last night, I probably spent 2 hours looking for "the hatch" that would allow me to go into the Libris Vault. I'm not joking about that, 2 hours. Never found it. I watched youtube videos, I read forum posts, I asked other players. The most information I got was that it was "in the hall of justice".

The buildings aren't named there. I didn't see any street signs at least. And so I must have just been blind and missed it. Which could be because there are mobs EVERYWHERE. At some point there was a developer that just mob barfed all over that scene because I really couldn't take more than a few steps before being attacked by 3 different kinds of mobs (most of which had near immunity to magic). Oh and btw, it's a PVP zone! So my head is on a swivel the whole time looking for players. I'm trying to stay moving, trying to keep from engaging mobs, trying to avoid traps and looking for "the hatch" simultaneously while also mentally noting the absurd cluster that is this scene.

Libris Ruins is BEAUTIFUL, and @SorcerousSteve did an amazing job building the environment. But the idea that the act of looking for "the hatch" in worth being killed by players over, or spending hours searching for is flat out wrong. It's not fun. It's not how you would spend your time. It's not something that if you describe it to someone they would say "wow, let me play that game!"

There are too many mobs (I'd vote for ZERO since it's a pvp zone), too many traps (although I believe this was recently reduced already based on previous feedback), and "the hatch" is not something I could find. Again, I was told it was in the "halls of justice" and I actually read a post on these forums that said "just like in Ultima 4" which is hilarious because I've never played an Ultima in my life so that doesn't help me! I can only imagine people wandering around constantly being attacked by mobs while endlessly trying to find the entrance to the place they knew they had to go to. (what fun those games must have been!)

I also tried SOTA MAP, despite my many problems with using 3rd party apps. The map there appears to be incorrect and it looks like it's pointing to Opalis Ruins, which is of no help to me in Libris Ruins. But even if it showed me the exact location that would only sugar coat the overall problem. It's not fun to look for random crap that you don't care about while being constantly interrupted by mobs you don't want to fight in the middle of a pvp zone you don't want to be in because you're only there for the QUEST!

Of course I know that there is another way into Libris Vault that does not require you to go through the PVP area of Libris Ruins, but being unfamiliar with that area I decided that it should be easy enough to find "the hatch" since I'm fairly certain I know what the Halls of Justice is based on the process of elimination. As I continue my march through this quest line, there's no doubt I will be going the underground route next.

3. Prior to going to Libris, I decided that the page in Brittany should be the first place I looked since I was already in Brittany.

I remember hearing or reading an exchange between you and another player that was complaining about having to run around and look for a random page in a giant city. I believe you told him it would help if he talked to people in the city.

Well that's not very much fun either. Most of the NPC's are not fun to talk to. In fact they're very repetitive and boring. So I decided to ask real people for the answer and immediately found help from players that had already finished the quest. This was much more satisfying, quicker, and prevented me from walking to every NPC in a "Have you seen my mother?" type of experience.

The first clues I got though came from the forums that told me to talk with Spoony. I did that but didn't find any hints. I was then given more hints by a player that finished the quest and had found the page without any help. He explained that he had found the page just by exploring and that it was deductive logic that got him in the ballpark, but semi-luck that got him where he wanted to be.

When I found the page I was AMAZED! And almost euphoric, with the events that led to the pages discovery. It was COOL! It was FUN! It was everything that all the other quests had not been. I suddenly wanted to go discover more! I cared about it for the challenge and I thought why couldn't the rest of the quest line have been this interesting?

Then I realized that for all the coolness of this event, it was delivered in a way that made no sense. It wasn't that I or anyone else had been given clues of where to go. The oracle didn't say anything of value. It was that somewhere a random NPC said something and some players eventually figured it out months ago, told their friends, who told guilds, who helped friends, and who would later put pieces of information in the forums and online. Sure, there were some that would figure it out, but not because the design intended it to work that way, but because if you interact with enough crap long enough it will do what it's supposed to do.

And the bottom line was that despite the cool factor, the quest itself was just another scavenger hunt. Or better yet just another welcome quest only instead of a hat players got a piece of paper. And that's one of the things that makes me the most angry about this. I specifically gave feedback years ago that the hat quests were boring horrible wastes of time. Even when you tied them to difficult locations and challenging environments like the hat that required you to kill the phoenix, they were still painful and a poor way to tell a story.

Now here we are at the end of development and instead of using that feedback we've ignored it. We have a quest line that is built almost entirely around welcome hat quests. I would ask why we did that, but no answer will be acceptable. There's very little story being told, and the bulk of all the time questing is spent traveling and brushing off annoying mobs that respawn almost instantly. It's ignoring beautiful scenes, as you try to break through the walls of mobs long enough to find obscure chests that don't really have a purpose in the world other than to house worthless items required to complete a painful achievement.

When I went to Skreek for the first time it was so I could complete the Path of Courage, and I wrote feedback that included a line where I said I was happy I'd never have to go back there. Not because it didn't look cool, it did! But because everything that I would do there would be a complete waste of my time. I have better things to do that are far more fun and interesting. And that I care about. So completing this quest line will be a labor of stubborn pride.

That's not good motivation or a healthy feeling. I actually feel quite sick about it even though I understand there are parts to this quest line that I'm sure will be cool. I do look forward to some of the puzzles in the Boreas Colossus area. But unfortunately I doubt my levels of entertainment will overcome my levels of pure rage and disappointment.

In closing, I want to say that I have a great deal of respect for the development team. I know that making a game is not easy, and that everyone on the team has the best intentions. I also know that this game is not launched yet, it's not done, there are scenes that require more polish and more love. I know the team worked long hours and will continue to work long hours in an effort to provide the best game possible.

Hopefully, this feedback can help get us to a place that meets that goal.

Here is a quick summary of items I would change in the quest line:

1. Make players care. Don't just provide a quest line that has no up front consequences for non-participation. Reward players for participation beyond gold and items. Reward their RP character development. Show players why they need to care from the beginning.

2. Tell the story. Don't just send players out on random quests that don't advance the story. If I can go to a chest in the middle of nowhere to get these items and the story hasn't advanced (and currently it won't) then it's a waste of time. Don't do that. There has to be a pay off. The story has to advance and require the act of the players to advance. If someone said you could have this cool hat but first you have to go touch a mailbox on the other side of the world, wouldn't you ask why? If the reply was because I said so, you might do it just to get the hat but there's no story there. The story is that you can't get the hat unless you do something stupid and boring for first.

3. For god's sake understand what PVP is and isn't. Having mobs in a PVP scene is just a horrible idea. It creates an environment where you can't enjoy the scene for what it is. You can't PVE and PVP at the same time. You can only be a target or the one doing the targeting. That's your only choices. When you put mobs into a pvp scene, they are essentially part of a large obstacle course. They become annoying pests. They become a distraction from the quest.

Think about it this way too. Risk vs. Reward. Compare the person in the PVP zone to the person in the PVE zone. What's the difference? The person in the PVE zone doesn't have to worry about players killing them. Yet both places can be accessed to complete the quest. Why is one scene higher risk yet the rewards are the same? It's time to lower the risk in pvp zones by taking or strategically reducing out mobs (and lowering respawn rates so that once you kill something it doesn't come back for a LONG time, if at all).

4. Yes of course fun is subjective. Some people might say, "well all RPG's are scavenger hunts, it's just the way they work. Either you're going to meet another NPC to get information or you have to find an item, etc.." And that's partially true.

But what when you create a scavenger hunt, you have to understand that even if the formula is the same, TRAVEL TO SCENE + FIND HINT + LOCATE ITEM + GET ITEM = COMPLETE QUEST, the delivery of that information needs to be changed. You can't expect players to go through 8 welcome hat quests, where the scenes and the landscape are the only real difference. Where there's a chest that you have to find, wash, rinse, repeat. I already feel like I've done this same song and dance a million times. What did we end up with 22 hats?

We need to break the cycle. We need to stop playing the same mini-game (find the chest in the dumbest place possible) and either no have 8 quests or make them more unique and interesting. I don't like the Brittany page execution, but I LOVE the event. I LOVED that no mobs were attacking me over and over again. I absolutely LOVED that this existed in an open world. Dopamine shot through my body and I got a prolonged high off of this! Fantastic job! It just needs to be translated into more of the game and delivered with better reliability.

It's not hand holding to help the player go down the right path and find this BECAUSE that's what you intended. As a player I feel tortured knowing that I still have 7 more of these things to go, and I will likely never experience the full joy of finding the cool stuff on my own, or feeling like I was on the right path. Instead, I'm certain I'll continue to feel lost, pissed off, and disappointed by what might have been.

Thank you for your time.

Good luck.

 

Great Feedback.

Truly love how you point out the "why should anyone give a crap about what the oracle says"!

I think at its core the Selective Multiplayer System and base concept of the Game World does make it very hard if not impossible to create the Quest Experience you are looking for.
The limitations due to it not being a pure Solo
Game are showing their face.

I truly hope your feedback gets noticed.
And you all still with high spirits get what you are waiting for.

 

This made my eyes bleed. Great post though (I'm still not able to get past Path of Love due to the difficulty of the mobs there and I'm supposedly over the target level). I look forward to seeing if I have the same experience when I eventually get there.

 

I think you may be a bit harsh in places, but overall (having completed this quest-line) there is nothing that I disagree with. I have a couple of other suggestions that I feel would help as well:

1. One thing you mention, but don't really come back to is the mob respawn rate. I don't think the number of mobs would be such an issue if they didn't respawn so quickly. (not that this detracts from what you're saying about PvP zones)
2. An easy solution to bring more 'story' into the quest: remove some of the chests and just make them NPCs. Give them some flavor dialogue.

Thanks for the input @Baron Drocis Fondorlatos, hopefully it will be heard.

 

Special addendum for the Reddit impaired:

• I'm not "opening my eyes". I'm providing actionable feedback just like I always have. I do this all the time.
• The reason I'm doing this now is because the quest line can finally be completed, and we're near launch. It wouldn't make sense to have give this feedback prior to this.

 

I think this is great feedback, the quests need to be more than simple "go here, fetch that, find this chest and then deliver 'item'". I would love it if there were more options, within the quest line, that specifically had consequences impacting our virtues.

 

Great feedback! Our quests have no consequences one way or the other.

 

Thanks Baron for providing good feedback on the quest lines. I haven't summoned the courage to confront the Path of the Oracle yet, but I did comment in much the same way on the first three paths.

I hope there are enough still interested in the story to speak up. I hope that the concerns are being heard. I hope there won't be more half-hearted attempts to proclaim things "complete" or "ready". This is the kind of stuff that will be toxic in release reviews.

Hope is a virtue too! So I will keep hoping with you that there will be dramatic improvemnts.

 

I think that this pretty much mirrors my frustrations in trying to do this questline.

Spoiler: Spoiler

The whole thing felt like a shopping list of running around the PvP scenes to find non-obvious doorways. Exactly like a shopping list, as I was crossing them off a list as I went and plotting the most efficient course to the next ruin to do the same again. By the time I was walking the third guildmate through this quest (as many people just could not be bothered with either the pvp aspect or the shoppinglist aspect or the wandering around searching for a door aspect and just wanted to plow through it as quickly as possible to get it done), I had gotten this down to a fairly efficient art. We spent more time staring at load screens than anything else. I laughed at your thread title because within my group of friends we actually call this quest Path of the Load Screen.

Now I know load screens have to happen, and I know they are trying to make them faster, but here we have a quest which by its very design earns its Path of the Load Screen nickname.
Even making the most efficient course possible you have 4 load screens for every vault (in to zone, in to vault, out of vault, out of zone) if you go the PvP route, and considerably more if you go the PvE route. People in guildchat would laugh and say 'oh look, Shim's helping someone with that quest again' because my constant synchronized log-to-worldmap activity - just to save hassle - made it fairly evident what we were up to.

This was further exacerbated by:
RANDOM ENCOUNTERS, the BANE of my existence, two wasted load screens sometimes 3 or 4 times on the path to where I'm going.
Recall/teleporting to try and avoid random encounters by getting closer to the destination often resulted in having to use 2 load screens zoning in/out of sieges.
More load screens to go through control points!
In a quest that already - by design - has you sitting through a minimum of 20-25 load screens, ending up sitting through 30-40 of them because of other factors or route decisions does not a fun quest make.

And even besides all that, when I ran my alt through the entire questline (love-truth-courage-oracle), granted I knew exactly where to go, I managed to finish the whole thing in about 9-10 hours, and I expect that would have been faster if my alt was levelled up more and wasn't struggling with the mobs in some areas.

I don't think anyone would object to an epic quest being epic and taking weeks or months to complete, however:
- The rewards are pretty poor. The items received at the end are pretty decent now that they've got some stats, but the experience/gold rewards are a bit of a laugh for the amount of time you spend running about.
- The story is good, if you can get to it, past all the guess-a-word, running about, finding the right NPC, etc. After doing all of the quests properly the first time, ie, listening and reading what the NPCs said and trying to organically discover what to do next, I hit so many walls where it was either a) broken or b) completely unintuitive I ended up spending more times searching the forums/internet trying to figure out the magic word. The addition of the 'magic word list' at the bottom of the chat window has at least made this somewhat less painful, however it disincentivizes actually reading anything that is said. In a game that is meant to be about the choices we make, I found little choice in any of these dialogues, I had to pick the exact right word in order to get things to progress. In the story arc the only 'choice' that you are really presented with - the Siranto/Khasi affair, tends to result in broken fragments in quest log or not being able to proceed, even doing this questline on a fresh character (alt)in R44 who had previously never even set foot in Ardoris. It was disappointing.
- The fact that one's virtue seems to be determined almost entirely by how many non-buyable, non-craftable,non-obtainable in any other way decorative props one has stolen in one's lifetimee makes most other choices meaningless, and the vague, cloudy irreparability of one's virtue doesn't even let one work on redemption. My shroud shall be black until the end of days because alas, I am an inkwell thief. Its upsetting that this taints my entire destiny particularly when there's just no other way to get an inkwell, or dozens of other items.

 

The Oracle grants us protection in this world. And at the point, sending us on THE path (of the oracle), we receive no protection from her?
At least she could tell us how to find the underground ways, but why shouldn't she grant us protection in the pvp scenes?
This would be a great help: not to flag players while doing an activated quest in these places

Thank you for considering this, too

 

Heh, decorators, I mean thieves, I mean decorators.

 

Her power doesn't reach there, but I think there should be SOME hints about the alternate entrances.

That said, I exclusively went through the PvP zones (mostly with a guildmate), and did not encounter any other players.

 

BDF,

Great feedback. Maybe you are NOW willing to admit all this "hardcore" nonsense you keep preaching leads to a game that is NOT FUN?

 

The reason is a very good point!
After arriving in Novia, may be the Oracle is the only person to tell us how to get BACK to our universe, we came from?
Sounds like Wizard of Oz

Well, beside this it could be, the gate from novia to our world could open wide and evil forces could provide instant death to all of our beloved ...
And - we also could prevent the collapse of the universe of Novia.

I think a lot of reasons could be given to animate us to "running wild" - and each of them could work in another way as it was said ...
Episode 5 will explain the entire truth - hopefully ...

(Remember Arabella and what she says at the end of Episode 1 I don't tell - just enjoy the moment while finishing the last path ...)

 

Is this written or explained somewhere? I mean it serious! Thank you for telling me where we get this information

 

@kaeshiva First off, great feedback and review!

Secondly, OMG THIS:

"The fact that one's virtue seems to be determined almost entirely by how many non-buyable, non-craftable,non-obtainable in any other way decorative props one has stolen in one's lifetimee makes most other choices meaningless, and the vague, cloudy irreparability of one's virtue doesn't even let one work on redemption. My shroud shall be black until the end of days because alas, I am an inkwell thief. Its upsetting that this taints my entire destiny particularly when there's just no other way to get an inkwell, or dozens of other items."

I have given THOUSANDS of gold to beggars, told hundreds of NPC my FULL NAME and I am still persecuted for the hundreds of wooden mugs and ceramic plates I have stolen, lol

 

I have to agree, I started the quests for the first time ever over the past month and just stopped. Im sure it may get more interesting later on but I was so bored out of my wits that I could not continue.

 

There's a story?

 

Hard, but hearty
I don't hope it is painful, but animating ...

Behind the hard facts you write about is a great story, which is worthy to be told more intensive ...
I really hope, all the feedback a lot of us provided will push it in the right way

 

I don't think it's actually written anywhere, and was really half ment as my supposition and half a semi-snarky response. Sorry for any confusion.

That said, it's always been how I rationalized it. something like the shards block her powers.