Glorious Alpha Two Testers!
Phase I of Alpha Two testing will occur on weekends. Each weekend is scheduled to start on Fridays at 10 AM PT and end on Sundays at 10 PM PT. Find out more here.
Check out Alpha Two Announcements here to see the latest Alpha Two news and update notes.
Our quickest Alpha Two updates are in Discord. Testers with Alpha Two access can chat in Alpha Two channels by connecting your Discord and Intrepid accounts here.
Phase I of Alpha Two testing will occur on weekends. Each weekend is scheduled to start on Fridays at 10 AM PT and end on Sundays at 10 PM PT. Find out more here.
Check out Alpha Two Announcements here to see the latest Alpha Two news and update notes.
Our quickest Alpha Two updates are in Discord. Testers with Alpha Two access can chat in Alpha Two channels by connecting your Discord and Intrepid accounts here.
Comments
The reason people are excited by this game is exactly because it does not aim at the LCD crowd. They're going for quality over quantity and they believe, as do I, if they hold true to their vision the player base will grow and develop and the game will flourish and thrive. If you watch the Twitch live streams, Steven has said repeatedly that this is a passion project for him. It is not about the money. It is about creating the MMORPG that will hopefully grab the attention of the genre and change the direction it has been going to a more positive and healthy status.
I'd bet quest markers will not be present. They've already said they're NOT going to have a big ! over a quest giver's head. If they won't do that, I'd say it's certain they won't give you an option to have an arrow telling you which way to go.
This game is being designed for people who crave story and immersion, as well as meaningful PvP that leads to changes in the world. It is not being designed for people who want what all the other games already have. Doing that would negate the primary reason Steven decided to create the game. If people want those sort of game "features" that already exist in other games, they know where to find them.
Consider also that every server will be on a different path.
People looking at this game need to just get it out of their heads that it has to appeal to everyone. They're not out to make a game that "appeals to the masses". They're out to create the game they want to make and it will attract plenty of people who want to play that kind of game. They're operating on the "Field of Dreams" premise that "If you build it, they will come.".
This specific link refers to exclamation points and question marks over quest givers, but I think it is safe to assume this negative statement includes arrows.
Say you arrive at your village with some time to burn, and there's someone dressed as a trader standing near the town square. You interact with the trader and she tells you that she's worried about a late shipment of goods bound from Catfoobar. She offers a reward for finding the shipment and reporting back to her.
You accept and you go down the road to Catfoobar looking for the wagon. Here is where the questline could take its first branch:
These kinds of dynamic variations could be created by combining simple plot elements together in unique ways, based on the player's choices (and some RNG) to create experiences that feel unique, even though the underlying goal of the quest may not vary.
I'm not a PvPer but the ever present threat of player combat will make this type of dynamic content even more unpredictable and exciting. Here's hoping!
Currently, there are 321.4 million people, in the United States. Give or take a few hundred. Anyway, let's take politics for a second. So, we have Group A, and Group B. Group A and Group B both have "noisy" folk; those who're certain that the world relies on their statement of their opinion, on their goodwill, on their money being thrown at them. We won't even talk about what percentage of Group A and Group B these noisy ones are; let's talk, instead, about the rest of the population.
You know, the population who quietly get up and go to work, every day. The ones who quietly go about their business, do what good they can do, and rest each night only to look forward to the next day. Are they unaware of what's going on around them? Having talked to a lot of "Everyday Joe's," I can assure you they're not. So why don't we hear from them?
We don't hear from many of them for many reasons. Perhaps they feel their opinions are private. Perhaps they feel that speaking up will only get them noticed, and they don't wish to be noticed. So many possible reasons for this! Yet, what we don't ever sit back and realize is that these quiet ones are actually the majority of the population.
I think the same is true in games. You have the noisy ones, those who insist "This must be this way!" and "This must be that way!" and "You should always have such-and-such!" They'll always be there. But like mayflies, they'll also be gone soon, to the next big thing, so they can rant and rave some more, screaming about balance inequality and how this game sucks, man, cuz it doesn't even have quest markers!
I think the lazy ones will be a minority, to be honest, but I also think they'll be the noisy ones. This is really difficult, from a publisher's perspective, to manage; how do you please every person who wants something?
Simple answer is, of course, that you can't. You have to pick a direction, then keep to it. In establishing my business (which is still new and very small, but that's ok!), I made some deals with myself. The first was that I would start out as I mean to go on. That means I won't compromise my beliefs in what my business can be in order to please the masses. There will be folk who think I charge too much, or I should offer such-and-such service, so on and so forth. To them, I'll reply "that's offered over there, at that other business," and I'll go on with my chosen path. The other thing I decided was to let things grow slowly, but organically. I will rely greatly on word-of-mouth.
I can tell you right now that our gaming group, which has ... oh, last count, I think 42 people in it, is largely hesitant. They're sitting back, waiting to see what we few (six, maybe?) say about the game, when it launches. Then, based on what we tell them (either that our hopes were well-founded, or were poorly-founded) they will decide whether or not to play.
I get a sense that @Intrepid has much the same sense of things. I don't offer that to say they won't change anything they've said; rather, I offer it to say, if they don't? They'll still have my unwavering support.
P.S. I hope we have some key voice acting to help us out, too, but that's just a quality of life ask.
It will probably be much easier to just use quest arrows.
Perhaps make it optional so players can choose whether they want to activate it or not.
Realistically though, the reason why so many MMOs make the same design choices is because they couldn't make whatever else they had in mind fun, rewarding, or work better. If the majority of quests turn out to be just as meaningless as they are in most games, hunting around becomes a waste of time; sometimes to the point that people would rather grind mass monsters (which the quests were having them do most of the time anyway) than complete them. This is why quest helpers were born in the first place.