Questions for Simu Dev's

Im new so forgive me for just jumping right in. I have a question about development perspective.

Will there be measures taken to help prevent the game from being lost to the end game pursuit? In the well established games that I have played its so sad to see empty zones and dungeons where fixes and enhancements were abandoned to focus on adding more end game material to those who burn ahead. Its really important to me that the basic game remains a fun and inviting place to be.
 
Hm. I can answer that one. I am quite sure that we will release "end game" material (top level quests and such), but I would also expect that there will be low level and new quests added at the same time. If you max a character out, and then start a new one, not only will the quests be different because your character has a different path, but they should be different because we have been adding new ones the whole time you were working on the other character. :smiley:

On top of new quests and such, I would think that the World team would be continually building new instances for more elaborate quests. That means the amounts of new places you can see is potentially endless.

Besides that, there should be plenty of things to keep you occupied after you have reached a maximum level, even if you do not want to create a new character. Don't forget we'll have the ability to mentor others (hooray roleplaying ;)) of course there will be quests, and also events. Some of those events, if anything like our other games, will last for days if not weeks or months.
 
Re: Questions for Simu Dev's

*runs around in a little circle and ends with hugging Divi*

*plops down and puts her Simu-Fangirl hat back on*

One of the things that makes a game feel stagnant is low/mid level quests which never change, nor get added to. Most people make alts, especially in a game with such an insane number of class combo choices as HJ. Racial starting areas that most games employ now help, but even those get terribly old because they only last until a certain point before you're plopped down into the same old quests that you've done on every other character.

There also seems to be a rush to add nothing but end game content, the idea being of course that you have to push lots of content out for your max level players to have so that they keep giving you their money. This ignores people who might take forever to get to max level (*raises hand*), and would like new content for where they are or for the next time they get a sudden brilliant idea for a character at 2am and end up rolling yet another character. Not that I do that....

Aside from all that, it's probably just me and my weirdness, but when a game company doesn't improve or enhance their starting or mid level quests over the years it makes a player feel like they don't care about your total experience. "You want knew stuff? Well then max your character noob. Till then, you have your dry little quests to push you there, get to work.". The journey gets lost in the destination.
 
Re: Questions for Simu Dev's

*agrees with the Ainilome before gnawing on her hat*

In all seriousness, though, I think some companies have forgotten something important when it comes to these max players.. There are always more people working up to being a max player than there are max players on at a time. You have the new people, and the old people who made new characters and old people will almost always have an alt or two. A change in class, a change in looks, or, if you are a role player, a change of over all personality is wanted at some point or another and so no matter how much end content is put on and how fast the leveling is, people will want to play something else at some point. Diverting all resources to end game content doesn't help anyone, only plugs up a leak in the company ship with some bubble gum.
 
One thing I wish was that not only could a level 5 be mentored by a level 50 (bumping the 5 to 50 for all intents and purposes), but I wish you could swap to level 5 with your buddy and still learn (albiet less) exp as a level 5 would, or an mean (27)...

5 characters - level 2, 10, 10, 20, and 50 should be able to group like this:
Min (all go to level 2)
Mean (all go to level 18)
Median (all go to level 10)
Max (all go to level 50)

If you only have a max feature, all the late-game and end-game stuff will be old after the first guy gets there.
 
I have always felt like a game environment can be measured some what in reverse of a real life ecosystem. You can measure the health of a natural ecosystem by the health of its higher predators, and a game system by the health of its newbie population. A healthy newbie population means word gets out and others want to join in the fun. Greet your newbies with hard to find groups, and thus a lot of quest that must be abandoned resulting in difficult to upgrade gear and there is a good chance they wont stay.
 
Instead of hard to find groups, one (large) group in particular will take over the areas mobs and leave the little groups nothing. Especially in the low level areas. Like locusts and crops. I've read on FFXI forums about certain job linkshells doing this.
What a way to turn new players away when they can't even level up.
 
Re: Questions for Simu Dev's

Instead of hard to find groups, one (large) group in particular will take over the areas mobs and leave the little groups nothing. Especially in the low level areas. Like locusts and crops. I've read on FFXI forums about certain job linkshells doing this.
What a way to turn new players away when they can't even level up.

/agree

This in a nutshell is why I left WoW and went back to EQ2 after a year and a half. They made the newbie camp guards and npc characters soloable and low level , easy kills for the opposing faction. This was right after they disabled the honor system and completely removed dishonorable kills for killing players and npcs alike that were too low or flagged as non-combat types.

The result was newbie camps that were totally disabled by often a single player who was bord and just wanted to have some fun ruining a few dozen other people's game. I spent an entire night before I left on my 63 hunter defending Azure Watch from a single level 49 orc warrior who was one shotting every npc, as in the inn keeper, the trainers, the merchants even the quest givers. He stayed at it all night no matter how many times I blue walled him standing in the middle of camp where he could see me and my pet easily.

Give players the ability to do the wrong thing and many of them will.
 
Re: Questions for Simu Dev's

Will anything be done to avoid centralizing areas? Places that people gather in large numbers, slowing graphics down just because it is convenient to several end-game spots. I understand wanting some cities to be like this, but I don't want to feel penalized for wanting to spend some time out in the boonies.
 
Will either cambrinth or gwethdesuans make an appearance in Hero's Journey?

Cambrinth, being a metal, seems like something that should be just as common in one age of Elanthia as another (much like iron, copper, etc). Gwethdesuans, however, I could understand as being a technology that exists in one age but not another.

~Dune Walker~
 
I've always wanted to see a graphical representation of cambrinth. I'm sure my mental image of it is way off though, hehe.

The gameplay of having cambrinth items would be even -more- awesome though. Specially if they could explode ^^;
 
Re: Questions for Simu Dev's

I've always wanted to see a graphical representation of cambrinth. I'm sure my mental image of it is way off though, hehe.

The gameplay of having cambrinth items would be even -more- awesome though. Specially if they could explode ^^;

Cambrinth spoon! Looks like fluff, but is actually a viable item for a fledgling wizard! That'd be sweet... Also, there's nothing so sweet as using flatware to bring down your foes.
 
From the Elanthipedia..

Cambrinth is a grey-black mineral with reddish highlights.

This is a sort of rusty ashy-silver stuff. If you took silver and mixed it with ashes and them mashed up some rusty-red crayons on the surface so it was all mottled, that's about what cambrinth would look like. You can get it more reddish or more silverish, but those two colors are its "theme", and can't be gotten too far away from. - GM Iocanthe


~Dune Walker~
 
Edit: After reading the other posts by the above account, I've removed my reply as they are clearly not interested in the game itself/and or are a bot.

Second Edit: After the bot's post was nuked, my first edit makes no sense so this edit is to make me seem not crazy.
 
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