Collectibles - Playing Solo and Exploration

T0p

Super excited for this game, but my only concerns are around the experience for players who often like to go it solo, given focus on metropolises and guilds. With a giant world like this I’ll definitely be out on my own quite often just discovering stuff. It’s been years since I played MMOs but i’ve been through a bunch of older ones, DAoC, SWG, WoW, Rift, etc.
I would be thrilled to see a bunch of collectibles scattered around the world, similar to the Rift system, with 100s of sets of artifacts that can be very difficult to complete/find and may offer titles, cosmetic pets, or lore insights upon set completion. This could even be enhanced such that certain quests are only discovered through piecing something together. I like that it wasn’t just ‘go to these coordinates’ in Rift, there was some randomization of location and rng on the drops so you couldnt just go online for a checklist and find everything.
Anyways, I think this is a reasonably simple thing that can add a lot of excitement and longevity, while also allowing solo players to get something unique and impressive to show off, encouraging exploration of course as well, which would be healthy for the game.
I’m the kind of person that’s all for things like compendiums of monsters, etc. that encourage people to try experiencing everything. And it should be difficult!
Just wanted to share those thoughts. Can’t wait for this game, thanks very much to the team for the great work to date.

CROW3

Agreed.

By nature and just a busy life these days, I tend to solo a lot of content. I've always favored rangers, so I guess that makes sense. I liked the collections content in both EQ2 and Rift. Wow tried with Archaeology, but that feature was so heavy-handed and over-done that it wasn't fun or trivial (which is what collections should feel like).

CaptnChuck

Steven has said that he loves collecting items in game. So I think that its going to exist in AoC.

As for a solo experience, you could technically go solo. But you wouldn't be able to experience the entirety of the game. The highest level PvE content will be contested. So you will need a guild to do that type of content.

If you wanna focus more on your professions/PvP, you could get away with not being part of a guild. You'll prob be able to get away with not being part of a node as well, but it will have much more severe consequences.

If you want to be some sort of exile, you're going to be at a disadvantage. But if you're ok with that, then there's no real problem.

neuroguy

Even if you're not a solo player, I imagine a lot of people's in game experience may be solo for various lengths of time. Without much fast travel, it's hard to meet up with your regular friends (even without scheduling issues) and you may not happen onto people going the same direction as you.

T0p

neuroguy wrote: »

Even if you're not a solo player, I imagine a lot of people's in game experience may be solo for various lengths of time. Without much fast travel, it's hard to meet up with your regular friends (even without scheduling issues) and you may not happen onto people going the same direction as you.

Definitely. I like grouping as much as the next person, but just isn’t always convenient.

Good point about the limited fast travel. All the more reason to have interesting things for all players to pick up and collect out in the wilderness if they want to stray a bit off the path and camera pan to go looking.

baconbread

I think this is a great idea!
Having achievements, cosmetics, special pets and maybe even mounts for finding X amount of them in the world or zone would be nice. Maybe some lore behind every item, even if it’s just a small text about the item, or a small easter egg.

If it’s hard enough to find them all so it’s not something you can do in a month or so, I think this is perfect PvE content for endgame. It doesn’t hurt anyone and it’s easy and fast to implement.

baconbread

And to clarify, I don’t think you should get something from finding one certain item. That would just make people run to get just that one and not the others, it should be rewards for finding a certain amount or a certain collection.

For example, finding all pieces of a map would give you a quest to find a pet or a piece of gear/cosmetic. And the map pieces could be scattered around the entire world or in a certain huge zone so you need to travel a lot.
Maybe one piece have a small chance to drop from a mob In an certain area and another piece you find in a create on top of a huge mountain and so on.

Mygrunt

I have played Rift for years and still play just to find the 10k hidden artifacts. This is a exciting part of MMOs that will keep me playing for a long time

stolyaR

100% agree

Valento92

Love collectibles too! Hope they have it at launch.