I didn't get to play or blog much over the weekend due to an offline vacation that included a trip to an actual real life theme park. How does the theme park MMO compare to the actual theme park?
Newbie Zone Needed
Our party had a hard time actually finding the entrance to a ride as we entered the park. Once we actually found the line for the first event, there was a relatively logical geographic progression - back into line to repeat the same ride, or on to the next ride (usually within sight). It took us a while to get to that first ride, though, and we ended up walking in a big circle around several water slides for no good reason. You might think that this was a ploy to make us walk past various microtransaction vendors in an effort to get us to buy stuff, but there wasn't even anything for sale on the dead end path we wandered down.
Nickle and Diming... er, $5 and $10'ing
The ticket to get into the park for the day cost $30. Parking cost $10. Fair enough, I suppose. Then you go to rent a locker and they want $15 for that. Really, that little locker is deserving of a fee half as high as the entire rest of the park? The other impressive fee was literally $100 to rent a "cabana" tent by the wave pool. I guess they're thinking that it never hurts to ask?
Resist Gear Checks
The lockers in question were somewhat necessary because about half of the encounters in the park required water resist gear, along with towels for drying off afterwards. (Our party opted to use consumable sun resist potions rather than tying up gear slots on suntan resistance.) Fortunately, these encounters were mostly clustered in the "wet side" of the park. We simply declared a bio AFK and hearthed out to change into our normal gear before returning to clear the dry side on a follow-up run.
Non-instanced Content Off-Peak
Because we ran the park on a Monday, we basically never waited more than a minute or two on respawns. The entire park was non-instanced/contested, and the park developers clearly put a lot of time and thought into preparing areas for players to wait while camping for their turn at each encounter during peak times. Obviously, this arrangement worked out well for us, but I feel bad for anyone waiting 30+ minutes in 90 degree heat during the coming holiday weekend.
No Progression, No Problem
Technically speaking, all of the content in the park was rated with a "thrill rating" of 1 to 5. In practical terms, this scale was not very informative, as even the Ferris Wheel somehow rated a 2, almost all of the roller coasters and water slides rated the maximum 5. There also was no apparent progression path, other than going after the next nearest encounter after surviving the current one, as none of the encounters were designed to require gear or experience from previous encounters in the park.
All tongue in cheek aside, this is one area where the Theme Park MMO could learn from the actual Theme Park. Want to repeat the same ride? No problem. Want to do each ride once and call it a day? No problem. Want to split your group or add more people? No problem. It would be nice to have that kind of flexibility in an MMORPG.
Connecting New Players With The World
Motstandet has a post up praising the immersion offered by FFXI's harsh travel system. More than anything else, this system was the reason why my stay in Vanadiel back in 2006 lasted for a mere 5-6 weeks. At the time, soloing was not really an option beyond level 10 or so and you could not get a group if you weren't in the correct zone (which may or may not be the zone in which the group would eventually be leveling). As a newbie, I lacked both the knowledge and the resources needed to pull off this travel successful. The problem was not that travel was hard, or that it was time consuming, but that it literally prevented me from getting where I would need to be in order to play the game.
That said, I look at EQ2's new travel map system, and I'm not sure that they haven't gone too far in the opposite direction.
The New EQ2 map
You could argue that EQ2 travel was in need of a user interface overhaul. If you were in Qeynos and wanted to get to the Enchanted Lands, you needed to know to take the boat bell to Antonica, from Antonica to Thundering Steppes, from Thundering Steps to Nek Forest, and finally from Nek to your destination. (At least, I think that was the order.) The process took about 10 seconds of gaming time but it also triggered a total of four loading screens, and a newbie might legitimately not have known which way to go.
(Another absurd example: I could never remember what subzone of Freeport the Research Assistant lived in, so I would instead ride the carpet to Sinking Sands, carpet to Butcherblock, run to hills and fly to Gorowyn to use the RA there. The lore openly weeps that I'd travel all the way around the world because the Freeport city guards could not tell you where in their own city the Research Assistant lives. Then again, I suppose they might be mean enough to do that on principle.)
In the new interface, you click on any bell anywhere in the world and get the above map. You can pick any zone - including some inland destinations that did not previously have bells - and you'll appear right there. Wizard and Druid portals also use this new UI, but offer slightly different destination (including newly expanded options from the last two patches). If your guild hall has all three travel options, you can teleport instantly to at least one point, and possibly as many as three, in every single zone in the game.
Location and Context
I will concede that it is more likely that I will correctly identify continents on a map of Norrath now that I actually look at one on a regular basis. Given that zones were already broken up with loading screens that might encompass vastly different distances, the amount of additional harm done by moving to a single map is minimal compared to the previous clunky UI.
At the same time, this approach kind of removes zones from their geographic context. Previously, if you wanted to ignore the breadcrumbs and just go exploring, you knew that Nek and TS were your hubs and you could branch out to there in search of something in the right level range. In a more-connected world like Azeroth or Vanadiel, you would literally walk to the edge of the current zone and the next zone over would be aimed at a higher level. In EQ2 today, if you want to go somewhere new, you'll have to start clicking at random, load up the Wiki, or go to the new "storyteller" window of the quest log (which will flat out tell you where to go).
At the end of the day, I still think that there has to be a system in place so that a player who has somewhere to be - especially because they're looking to join a group - has a way to get there quickly. I'm not opposed to working for that privilege through rep grinds, consumable daily quest rewards, or gold or whatever, and I definitely support making players reach each location at least once on foot before they can insta-port there. (This was part of EQ2's druid rings, and they removed it for the new patch.) However, there are enough other obstacles in the way of group content without also having travel block access.
EQ2's solution may be better than WoW's approach, which is to literally teleport you instantly to a dungeon on a continent that you've never even visited, if that's what the random group finder picks. Still, I'd be happy to give back a little of this arguably excessive access to get a little bit of that sense of zone progression back.
That said, I look at EQ2's new travel map system, and I'm not sure that they haven't gone too far in the opposite direction.
The New EQ2 map
You could argue that EQ2 travel was in need of a user interface overhaul. If you were in Qeynos and wanted to get to the Enchanted Lands, you needed to know to take the boat bell to Antonica, from Antonica to Thundering Steppes, from Thundering Steps to Nek Forest, and finally from Nek to your destination. (At least, I think that was the order.) The process took about 10 seconds of gaming time but it also triggered a total of four loading screens, and a newbie might legitimately not have known which way to go.
(Another absurd example: I could never remember what subzone of Freeport the Research Assistant lived in, so I would instead ride the carpet to Sinking Sands, carpet to Butcherblock, run to hills and fly to Gorowyn to use the RA there. The lore openly weeps that I'd travel all the way around the world because the Freeport city guards could not tell you where in their own city the Research Assistant lives. Then again, I suppose they might be mean enough to do that on principle.)
In the new interface, you click on any bell anywhere in the world and get the above map. You can pick any zone - including some inland destinations that did not previously have bells - and you'll appear right there. Wizard and Druid portals also use this new UI, but offer slightly different destination (including newly expanded options from the last two patches). If your guild hall has all three travel options, you can teleport instantly to at least one point, and possibly as many as three, in every single zone in the game.
Location and Context
I will concede that it is more likely that I will correctly identify continents on a map of Norrath now that I actually look at one on a regular basis. Given that zones were already broken up with loading screens that might encompass vastly different distances, the amount of additional harm done by moving to a single map is minimal compared to the previous clunky UI.
At the same time, this approach kind of removes zones from their geographic context. Previously, if you wanted to ignore the breadcrumbs and just go exploring, you knew that Nek and TS were your hubs and you could branch out to there in search of something in the right level range. In a more-connected world like Azeroth or Vanadiel, you would literally walk to the edge of the current zone and the next zone over would be aimed at a higher level. In EQ2 today, if you want to go somewhere new, you'll have to start clicking at random, load up the Wiki, or go to the new "storyteller" window of the quest log (which will flat out tell you where to go).
At the end of the day, I still think that there has to be a system in place so that a player who has somewhere to be - especially because they're looking to join a group - has a way to get there quickly. I'm not opposed to working for that privilege through rep grinds, consumable daily quest rewards, or gold or whatever, and I definitely support making players reach each location at least once on foot before they can insta-port there. (This was part of EQ2's druid rings, and they removed it for the new patch.) However, there are enough other obstacles in the way of group content without also having travel block access.
EQ2's solution may be better than WoW's approach, which is to literally teleport you instantly to a dungeon on a continent that you've never even visited, if that's what the random group finder picks. Still, I'd be happy to give back a little of this arguably excessive access to get a little bit of that sense of zone progression back.
Re-Capping EQ2
I currently have 173 AA out of a current cap of 250 (69.2% of the max possible), which is actually an improvement over my status when I hit 80 last expansion with 127/200 AA's (63.5%). I can see that being a bit irritating for someone who wants to jump into group content, but that number will improve significantly if I finish out the remaining quests and run each single-group zone at least once. I'm not sure that it really matters anyway. I just unlocked some very powerful abilities, but the difference between 163 AA and 173 is much greater than the difference between, say, 173 and 200.
TSF in hindsight
I am glad to report that quests in the Stonebrunt Highlands, the other half of the leveling content in the current expansion, do not share the first zone's flaws. Quests routinely send players against even-conned mobs, and even the occasional group of mobs. The quests are much less likely to hand out several percent of a level for talking to another NPC right next to the one you just did a quest for (though this does still happen sometimes). There are also fewer trivial factions in the latter half of the expansion - in the first zone, I was capped out on three separate factions before I turned in my first daily quest, just from the initial storylines that everyone has to complete, which kind of defeats the purpose of tracking reputation in the first place.
Unfortunately, the zone also suffers by context. This is the only solo content available for levels 85-90, and I am not convinced that it would have been anywhere near enough if I had actually entered the zone at level 85. Instead, I saved a significant amount of level 80 content from the previous expansion to do this time out, and then also gained a level or so by running dungeons with my guild. As a result, I entered the zone most of the way through level 88. Even with this massive headstart, I'd still managed to use up about half of the content in the area by the time I hit level 90.
Meanwhile, thanks to a new AA buff ability, Lyriana is now capable of hitting the 100% cap on double attack (normally her most valuable stat), wearing quest rewards from early in this expansion. The EQ2 playerbase revolted against a gear scaling plan which would have allowed your crit, DA, and other percentages to degrade naturally as you gained levels (see combat ratings in WoW and LOTRO). As a result, the entry level quests in the expansion's first zone had to hand out massive upgrades across the board for players who did not run raids and/or grind out void shard tokens in dungeons last expansion.
Still, I'm not even wearing single-group quality gear yet, and I'm suddenly in a position of worrying about collecting side-grades for when I'm capped on my most beneficial stat. Or I would be, except that it appears that someone improved the quest rewards in the first zone after they itemized the second zone. The level 78 quests that kicked off the expansion loot run gave me better rewards than some of the level 89 stuff I'm doing now. Overall, itemization could be a pretty huge problem for even the non-raid game going forward.
Was there a plan for the expansion on-ramp ?
In the end, this expansion's first zone was an odd detour. On paper, it makes a lot of sense to have an easy zone that brings players who missed previous expansions up to par. Many of us had a really hard time with the jump from the level 60's to the previous Kunark expansion, and I'm guessing that they did not want to repeat that mistake.
In practice, that zone arrives 78 levels into the game, which means that players who had been somehow gaining levels under the old system will suddenly hit a single super easy zone that rewards overpowered loot, before going back to normal in the expansion's second half. If that normal state was not satisfactory to existing players, they're not going to GET to the current expansion content in the first place.
Unless they're planning a massive revamp of the entire leveling experience - a revamp that would leave the game significant less fun if all solo quests suddenly used underconned mobs, like the Sundered Frontier did - it just doesn't make sense to have the expansion on-ramp be so different from the remaining game. I doubt that they actually have the resources to do such an overhaul anyway, so I'm left wondering where exactly they think they're going with this.
Then again, this was also the expansion that made a somewhat inexplicable decision to add battlegrounds no one asked for that non-PVP'ers now can't get into because they get steam-rolled by the regulars. And, as Ferrel notes, it seems like somehow no one saw this coming in advance. During development of this expansion, the EQ2 was functionally running with an interim producer and supposedly had team members pulled off the game to work on Free Realms. It's sad but possible that no one at SOE really knew where they were going with the end product either.
Bonus Panda Abuse
Yesterday, I wrote:
I hate my life so much right now.
Come on, Lyriana, our faithful readers just want to see the latest incentives in EQ2!
I have no problem with stabbing you repeatedly using this glowing cosmetic katana of idiotic Panda disguising you're so fond of.
Aaaand that's all the time we have for today folks!
There's apparently a cosmetic illusion that lets you turn into a Panda, so that bit of abuse is probably in Lyriana's future at some point down the line.I underestimated the ease of faction grinding in modern EQ2. Lyriana maxxed out her faction with the Pandas, and now gets to disguise herself as one. Lyriana, show the good readers of PVD your new look!
I hate my life so much right now.
Come on, Lyriana, our faithful readers just want to see the latest incentives in EQ2!
I have no problem with stabbing you repeatedly using this glowing cosmetic katana of idiotic Panda disguising you're so fond of.
Aaaand that's all the time we have for today folks!
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)