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
Was there a specifc part that came across as confusing or that I didn't do a good enough job explaining well?
"There's no problem in constraining player choice lol. If something is flying around and you can't melee it you need to use a ranged weapon"
Yea I understand and agree, thats not neccessarily what I was implying- im not neccessarily saying you should never limit player choice, through having more "optimal" choices in given situations. Doing so would remove all skill required in testing decision making and managing your combat options, since you could just do anything at any time and still be just as effective for the sake of having more "player choice". Indivudual choices need to have risk/reward or a reason to be chosen over another alternative choice to actual make it a meaningful choice worth making.
I am moreso saying that in order to have a diverse combat experience these "best" situational choices have to be accounted for, by designing it in a way that the enemy encounters require the use of the most amount of "best" choices the player could make, through presenting challenges that make each of those situational "best" choices relevant.
This is why giving each combat option a niche is important, to allow the meta to have more variation. You will always have a meta that the player should need to figure out, but you want that meta to then have variation to it- and you want that player to experience that variation- even after the "meta chase" occured
My suggestion would be very different from the approach of having that diverse combat system, but then repeatedly only testing the player in their mastery of one aspect of it. The player is still required to make good decisions in given situations to have that combat depth, but the result of that would have some variation to it based on the nuance of what "meta" situational approach you are requiring them to do at any given moment in order to overcome a challenge.
An example would be having a combat system where you can melee and do ranged attacks, each better in different situations- but you have enemys that only require the use of melee attacks to beat them. Their is more depth to the combat than ehat is being tested but the bad enemy design limits the experience- which could be improved through having enemys require the use of both melee and ranged attacks to defeat them.
TLDR:
So all-in-all its about designing the combat to
1. get the player to experience the depth of chasing the meta (through having meaningful choices between options in combat)
2. experiencing a varied meta (through higher quantity of niche combat tools)
3. The player won't experience all the system has to offer unless they are tested on the cohesive mastery of the system
4. The test of system mastery consists of interactions between both the player and the enemy
5. comprehensive interactions comes through higher quantity of niche challenges the enemy presents simultaneously.
This is why pvp is generally so much more intense than pve, because other players can adapt and change the situational challenges to require a comprehensive mastery over the system, rather than a badly designed A.I. that is limited and exploitable in its ability to present dynamic situational challenge.
I think your grammar logic is off in places lol
It's less work to tie in examples and tl;dr like you did.
+++++Plus most people are pretty bored by exposition.
Im not really sure what you are referring to by my grammar logic.
I did tie in examples at your previous request, and sometimes exposition is neccessary to get the point across
Besides, why is there such a focus on the writing style rather than the content, didn't you just get upset about that too?
AoC is appealing because you can build yiur character for breadth (using your skill points for gaining many abilities) or depth (using your skill points to buy few abilities, but level thise abilities up into more powerful versions)
Ill plan for depth myself
Yea thats the nice thing about the hybrid system to appeal to players that want that more passive approach, hopefully at the cost of some effectiveness, but still be viable.
Yea I agree- A lot of breadth and depth in the customization is very important and adds a lot to the game.
well i agree with the content
Oh okay cool