So...what if someone skipped the PoF expansion and jumped to the new campaign? What are they going to do to make sure that a player like that isn't left in the dust? Originally, PoF was playable without purchasing HoT, so is this new expansion following the same idea? Do you get a default mount if you don't have PoF?
Quizzes: I think if the story is remotely interesting, there wouldn't be so much skipping via wiki. I mean, if the developers advertised the narrative as the core engagement, rather than twitch-reflex action combat, then people will bother to sit down and read, or solve the quiz or whatever. Or if they'd designed the map to be more interesting in terms of interacting bits (like secret passageways), rather than just a giant circle with stuff sprinkled over it with zero visual clues and nothing to go on other than "follow the star on the mini-map", it'd feel more immersive.
Heck, I was just thinking that given Shing Jea is now a metropolis, having a grid-based map with houses that you can enter to explore would be far more interesting that more giant turtle battles.
Factions: I brought it up as an example of how to write story that has branching paths that nonetheless comes back to the same ending. This adds a bit more of a personal feel to the story, like the player's choice matters, rather than everything getting reduced to just "smack mobs", which is what GW2's story is becoming.
As I'm playing Another Eden, I'm struck by how different the game experience can be when the developers actually gave two shits about the narrative versus just using rewards to coerce players to stay longer. Like, right now, I'm doing a mining quest that requires going through a series of small maps that chain together in a branching manner, and while I could follow the wiki, I find it much easier to just learn the map myself as I slowly explore. The story is woven into the map exploration and it walks me through each map slowly, and introduces new concepts as if it were a whole new game (which it is, mechanically). It's that kind of care in game design, rather than an obsession with new art assets, that I'm looking for in games.
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branchandroot
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Date: 2022-03-07 08:41 pm (UTC)So...what if someone skipped the PoF expansion and jumped to the new campaign? What are they going to do to make sure that a player like that isn't left in the dust? Originally, PoF was playable without purchasing HoT, so is this new expansion following the same idea? Do you get a default mount if you don't have PoF?
Quizzes: I think if the story is remotely interesting, there wouldn't be so much skipping via wiki. I mean, if the developers advertised the narrative as the core engagement, rather than twitch-reflex action combat, then people will bother to sit down and read, or solve the quiz or whatever. Or if they'd designed the map to be more interesting in terms of interacting bits (like secret passageways), rather than just a giant circle with stuff sprinkled over it with zero visual clues and nothing to go on other than "follow the star on the mini-map", it'd feel more immersive.
Heck, I was just thinking that given Shing Jea is now a metropolis, having a grid-based map with houses that you can enter to explore would be far more interesting that more giant turtle battles.
Factions: I brought it up as an example of how to write story that has branching paths that nonetheless comes back to the same ending. This adds a bit more of a personal feel to the story, like the player's choice matters, rather than everything getting reduced to just "smack mobs", which is what GW2's story is becoming.
As I'm playing Another Eden, I'm struck by how different the game experience can be when the developers actually gave two shits about the narrative versus just using rewards to coerce players to stay longer. Like, right now, I'm doing a mining quest that requires going through a series of small maps that chain together in a branching manner, and while I could follow the wiki, I find it much easier to just learn the map myself as I slowly explore. The story is woven into the map exploration and it walks me through each map slowly, and introduces new concepts as if it were a whole new game (which it is, mechanically). It's that kind of care in game design, rather than an obsession with new art assets, that I'm looking for in games.