Loftyz
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Thoughts on the game, returned after a few years.
1. Making the camera spin towards an entity when you click on it can be very annoying. I would like it if - between right and left click - one was unchanged, and one targets the entity but doesn't cause the camera to spin & track them. It's strange how this feature is implemented on tab target (the camera won't move if you hold down left or right click while tab targeting), but it isn't implemented on mouse click targeting, like for targeting an ally.
2. Movespeed feels too slow, even on mounts.
3. What's happening with the Nightlocke weapons. Are they going to continue receiving upgrades, or are they gone for good.
4. Warrior deals a lot of damage, ontop of having 2 circle AoE and a cone cleave. I've been trying to rank all classes to 10, but I just can't justify using any other class.
5. There's plenty of post-game content (Ranking classes to 100), but the best training method (Berserker Trial of Fury, Tower of Necromancy Floor 5) is just shockingly awful and not fun. And it compounds the problem in 4., where AoE classes are heavily favoured. Level-appropriate challenge bosses (especially Ryujin) are really fun, and I want to be doing them for levelling my XP and Class Points. I don't really understand why they are not the best method, when they are fun & engaging party content. Even if you have to make Ryujin Challenge drop several thousands of XP.. just do it. Although it might be better to make the XP drop from the Chest that spawns at the end, so that people don't miss out when the boss dies.
6. I don't think that cross-skills should be basic DPS rotation abilities. I think they should buff and debuff primarily.
7. I think tank classes should have damage reduction passives, and enemies should deal more damage. They should be shredding classes like Mage and Rogue, because these classes have slows and Sprint. They don't want to be attacked, because thematically, they should die very fast when they are attacked.
8. If Fishing & other professions aren't contributing to player power or BIS lists.. then they're dead content.
9. I think XP from quests should scale to your current level, even if the difficulty of the mobs doesn't scale to your level. Questing is always going to be the most fun thing in the game, but I haven't done Westmere, and I'm not gonna do it for 600xp per quest when I'm level 28.
10. There's not much music in the game. Especially in places like Dragon's Graveyard or Arcangrove (where you spend 2-3 levels). At least, the major buildings and dungeons should have different songs. the Tower of Magic itself could just have the original AQW soundtrack, right?
Also, some disconnected thoughts.
1. Sooner or later, you're gonna have to answer the question of where AQ3D fits into the lore of all the other games. It can't just 'exist' and have no connection to them. I think it would be neat if this world was the original timeline before the three hourglasses (MechQuest, AdventureQuest, DragonFable) combined and became AQW. That would certainly put Shadowguard into some kind of context.
2. The animation on the void portal in the Arcangrove Tower of Magic was soooo good. Instantly recognizable. The aesthetic was on-point. Hoping for more reasons to go to the void, so we can walk on void walkways, like those in /join void in AQW.
3. Is Vane being the Voidking supposed to mean anything? King of the void? Any kind of connection to the Eternal Dragon of Time? & I think knowing the motives (& ulterior motives) of villains is super important, if not the most important thing in a story. Think of Drakath and Sepulchure in the Dragonfable Orb Saga. They have stated and unstated goals, and changing objectives in each storyline. Sometimes they achieve their objectives and win, sometimes they don't. With the way Vane is set up, we don't know what he wants, but he does 'stuff', and we win in all of our interactions.
4. There was a Seeker in the Ashfall Saga that gave the Dragon Amulet to Talyn. Is this dropped? It seems like an unexplained but important plot point, considering that the greater plot revolves around visiting all the Guardian Towers.
5. Rayst's set is really good catchup gear for people who didn't play for a long time, or aren't going for the huge farm gears. Please keep putting similar catchup gear locked behind reputations every 6-10 levels or so.
6. When I first walked into the Tower of Magic, I could only think of 1 thing.. I want to PvE this tower, as if it were a dungeon. Maybe put Kathool in the game, and make the Tower of Magic and the Guardian Tower into 5-man dungeons, presented as visions of madness given to us by Kathool. I just think it would be so cool.
EDIT more thoughts
I noticed a strange design decision, which is that XP & Class Points don't have a bonus if you're underlevelled. I suppose it makes a bit of sense, because any low level could go to Arcangrove and join the Mote farmers there. But in my head, i'm just imagining that there should be different metas for XP/Class Points (metas, as in, ways of playing the game) to suit the different kinds of people playing.
Solo play: playing by yourself. This is basically just running the MQ, which is enjoyable enough.
Group open-world casual play: Live band events, battleon defender events, arena of souls, killing fang mobs in darkhurst, killing arcangrove mobs for motes. just straight chillin' with the fellas, killing mobs at your own pace and taking on occasional bosses that spawn in. When these were newly released, they were great xp and class point methods. This is honestly the most fun i've had while playing the game, and it enforces the idea that the open-world is full of people. but small game design decisions can make these zones obsolete. e.g.
Darkhurst fang grinding; why it's obsolete for Lv17:
Levels are still really fast at such a low level, so it's easy to skip over farming fangs
There's a lot of other fun content around Lv15-17 (Shadowskull Tower, Spectral South Wing, anything scaled, Ashfall at 15-16, Underworld at 16, Lolosia at 16+)
There's no restriction on the Fang daily quest, anyone can do it from Rank 1 in the rep
Arcangrove mote grinding, why it's not obsolete for Lv24
Since it's later in the game, XP required for levelling is a lot more
Many players get stopped by the Lv24 requirement for Rayst's quests, so they group up
There's not much other content to do at this level
Arcangrove rep is the perfect solution to hitting Lv24
exvidius dailies give 2 mage scrap & 1 grove essence. everyone needs more grove essence from crescent wolf
The mote daily is restricted behind a rep level that requires you to farm 210 motes first
The rep ensures that completionist players who need 210 will always be farming in the zone
Arcangrove rep unlocks great cosmetics, and mote unlocks great consumables
It's Arcangrove.
Group open-world hardcore play: Shatterskull Bridge, Tower of Necromancy Floor 5, repeatedly running Berserker Trial of Fury. If you play these casually, you'll be out of position for respawns, mobs will die before you tag them, or you'll die from red carpet attacks.
dungeon speeding: Getting good-geared players for level-appropriate or scaled dungeons, & just blasting it. I guess people are doing this in Mystcroft Manor right now, and it's decent xp. Pretty fun. Helps complete some decent cosmetic sets. But in Mystcroft, it is a bit of a feelsbadman when you get the "smash the right pumpkin" or "click the right chest" floor, because there's no reward for that floor (due to skipping the mobs). But the floor is designed in a way that enables us to skip the mobs, so you could say that skipping the mobs is the reward, but then it necessarily follows that not getting any XP/Class Points/craft items is a penalty. & that's what I mean by it being a feelsbadman, cause you get a feeling of penalty (& wasted time) from the floor, but no feeling of reward. Unless you need the boss drops, the craft items are the entire reason you're there. More people would be grinding other dungeons, but the problem is that the bosses don't give XP/Class Points equal to the time it takes to kill them (in comparison to the dungeon's mobs). So it feels like a waste of time running the dungeon altogether. So instead, people just run Barrow Drop & Barrow Pass. I really don't think Dungeons should ever be scaled? Like, is there a reason for a greenguard dungeon to be scaled? If the dungeon is in a low level zone, just let it be a low level dungeon. And then if the dungeon is in a scaled zone, it can be a scaled dungeon. I feel like this dungeon is only scaled because all the end-game players were running it for Traveler's Pack. Or is this dungeon just an exception, because AQ3D staff have some vague fantasy that low-level players & max level cosmetic chasers are becoming friends after running a Frogzard dungeon together.
imposed-challenge dungeon running: What I mean by "imposed-challenge" is grouping up with other people and doing dungeons above your level, for extra XP/Class Points. This doesn't exist in AQ3D, cause you don't get extra XP/Class Points for killing mobs that are even 1 level above your own level. It could exist and be incentivised in the Dungeon Finder update (e.g. a sliding scale of: +40% XP bonus if the party's total level for Shadowskull Tower is under 70. +20% XP Bonus if the party's total level is under 72). (Figuring out good numbers for this would require access to data that I don't have, such as knowing the typical levels players arrive at certain dungeons, and how many times they run them)
challenge bosses: Ryujin Challenge, Tengu Challenge, Ashfall Boss Challenges, etc. They don't give enough XP/Class Points, so nobody is running them for that purpose.
dailies: only playing 1hr a day to do high XP dailies. This is personally what I've been doing, since i've been hard-struck at Lv29. Guardian Tower daily, Class daily, underworld 2 dailies, darkhurst fang daily, pet shop daily, lolosia daily, arcangrove exvidius daily + mote daily (+ crescent wolf & derpicorn repeatable quest from Vesta), and akriloth 2 daily. Unfortunately, playing like this gives very little class points, but it's good if you got your rank 10s already. If bosses gave comparable class points to the time it takes to kill them (compared to just grinding mobs), then this would be really good for class points too.
from reading and talking to different people, it seems like the playerbase is constantly looking for some underground method of group open-world hardcore play, especially looking for small areas with lots of mobs that have reduced HP, but not reduced XP, and then doing that until it gets nerfed. And because Tower of Necromancy Floor 5 is scaled to your level, It's gonna be the fastest method until it is nerfed. And then at level 34, some other small area with garbage mobs is going to be the fastest method.
Idk man, but I don't think there should be garbage mobs giving full XP, ever. There's nothing wrong with this training method, and it can be fun and rewarding to many people, but it shouldn't exist in an exploitable manner. If the XP was trimmed down a bit, and the XP for a few other methods raised a little bit, then there'd be something for every kind of player to do.
< Message edited by Loftyz -- 11/13/2020 21:04:42 >
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