Topic
leveling up and missions
today was my first day of play. wow. i played for a lot longer than i should have, but it was very fun and impressive.
my only concern was the fairly large gap between quests. i loved the quests and thought they were amusing and imaginative. i liked there was some puzzle element to figure out how to complete.
I just felt a little lost as to what to do in between the quests. i'm not saying the amount of experience necessary to level up needs to be dropped, that felt about right. it was simple enough at first to keep me interested, but difficult enough i didn't do it all in one sitting. i'm just suggesting maybe having more than one quest for each skill/level. i liked exploring the land, but also started to feel just a bit on edge trying to do something to get my stone to give me a new quest. i liked having a purpose.
Replies
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Once you've finished the quests, it can feel a little like you're lacking a sense of purpose whilst waiting to level up and so you end up wandering around, looking at the scenery. That's not too bad, of course - the scenery is very pretty.
Perhaps there should be some quests that take much longer to complete and are run as essentially background activities - things that might take much longer to achieve (you might level up several times during the process, but the task itself shouldn't be about mindlessly gaining XP). That would help give some structure during the otherwise quiet periods.
Actually, I guess that's what achievements try to do, isn't it. Writing this prompted me to go look and I've just realised there is a list of them at alpha.glitch.com/achievements/
Some of them require you to have certain skills, so we're still tied into having to wait to level up before we can go for them, but there are a few (like the explorer and egg munching ones) that are independent of skills. -
I was going to post about the same topic today. I also felt a bit bored between quests. For me, the most boring part of any such game is when you're just having to repetitively do things to improve your skill and get to the next level. I remember how in Ultima Online which I played years ago, some players had macros to make 100 of something to work on their skill. The achievements are a nice idea (though I'm not seeing any gardening ones yet), but they all require doing x of something, again a lot of repetitiveness.
Aside from adding more quests and areas to explore which I realize is in the works, I have a suggestion on improving the skill tree.
I personally don't like the system of only adding skills when you have a skill point to spend and that only happens at level up. I would do away with spending skill points. Instead, how about you can continuously work towards parts of the tree by just practicing them. You would reach the next part of the tree by doing a variety of tasks.
For example, to get the Soil Appreciation skill in gardening, you'd have to recognize and weed 5 different kinds of weeds from plots. But watch out! Some are actually crops and not weeds and you lose points for weeding those. You could do it by trial and error or get a weed identification book from the gardening vendor and look up the pictures of the weeds in there.
To get light green thumb, for example, you'd have to water one of every tree out there. Again, you could do it by trial and error exploring or you could get a tree book or map from a vendor. That way those who want to do it the hard way can, but those with less time or patience can do it faster, but still have something interesting to do. -
I played for the second time yesterday, and had a really different experience from the last time. Not as positive, although I played for hours and I ended up on a good note. But since yesterday actually felt as much like the first time as the time before, I have to agree with everyone here and add the following:
1. I really think leveling up should happen faster at the start of the game, or there need to be more signposts about what to do for dolts like me. I also had the experience of not knowing what to do with myself after quests were completed and it got really irritating, especially since I didn't seem to have that problem the first time.
2. After thinking about it, I realized I didn't have that problem the first time because global chat was very active, so I could ask questions and read what others were saying. But yesterday the local chat felt like an office building elevator--it was all business, very little talking. When I finally expanded the help channel, I found out where all the chatting was happening. I really wished I could save a setting that would close local chat and keep open the help channel, especially...
3. ...everytime time I had to reload the game from a different browser. I had a lot of trouble last night with lag in IE, it made playing nearly impossible. so I would switch to (windows) Chrome, which had smooth gameplay, but then I couldn't open any other windows (say to look at realty listings or garden) and that was really frustrating too. Probably just a temporary prob, so just sayin'. It was not like that the first time (except for the Chrome thing)
4. During level up time, in between quests, if my pet rock could possibly have a message like "Go pet some trees!" or something pertaining to my current level, that would be nice. Right now, that rock needs a good throw through a window. It either doesn't tell me what I could be doing, or it won't leave me alone about that danged Rainbow Run.
5. OR even better...and maybe this is coming, I really hope so...we need something creative to do and/or a way to nest in our houses in between quests. I got my first house last night, and it was as messy as my own house...but at least I can clean my house. I was waiting for crops to grow, and I was too pooped to pet a piggy, and I was standing in there wishing I could have something creative to do, or that I could organize all the shizz in piles at my feet. Thanks for the shizz, btw, that was a nice surprise. -
Would the problems here be pretty much solved by having more quests? Say, if there were more quests than you would normally do, and you would choose which ones you wanted. Maybe in the future there will be more NPCs/content in the game to help out.
What I mean is, if there were so many people that needed "level 4" help that you couldn't possibly help them all before you were level 5, and you were picking the ones that sounded interesting to you, or related to your favorite things in the game etc, would that solve the problem?
To me, I didn't mind a little grinding, but probably for this type of game grinding is a bad thing. Alternatively you could create a job board type thing. "Make me 10 white gasses please" and when you do you get money or XP. Most games do this with an auction house, but I kinda like the idea of doing things for other players and being rewarded with something other than their money, although who knows what! :) -
oh i found things to do, and the scenery is beautiful. like right now i have a LONG way to go to get to level 9, so i was looking in the help channel for people who needed help with skills i had. i made a bunch of spice for some people because i could. gave me something to do using my skill after i had already passed my skill quest.
and i did want to mention i realize some of this will even out once the game has more players and more stuff. some of my frustration was grinding out the same things in the small world area. that will go away once the world is a little more fleshed out. - Third time playing (today), pretty wonderful.
- agreed i was bummed i fell asleep earlier because i missed some prime game time.
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The idea that anyone feels "lost" between quests means we are failing: the game should be open ended enough and make enough of itself known to you that there is always a next step even without any active quests (indeed, the feeling of needing to prioritize *which* thing to do next is something I enjoy in many games).
This has come up a few times and I've added the latest thinking in this other thread: This general idea of flat spots has come up a few times and I've posted some new information in this other thread: alpha.glitch.com/forum/gene...