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Titaniatic -> RE: =AQW= Feature and Functionality Suggestions (7/16/2024 10:20:49)
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This is going to be my love letter to this game and to those who put their hours and sanity into making the game work with their technical limitations back in the day, and still supporting it. I have suggestions based on my and several other people's personal opinions for AQ2D, your last shot, your ace in the hole, your chance of redemption among your player base. I have no idea where else to post this for the developers, especially ARTIX to read this, so I am going to post it here, on AQW Suggestions.
I have been playing AdventureQuest Worlds, and have never quit, since 2011 back when I was but a child. This game and Artix Entertainment has influenced me and my views on gaming, art, style, and various topics, so it is really tempting to write such lengthy letter of suggestions to the team. Apologies if some words or sentences seem out of place, English is not my native language.
Animations: Please, make new animations for new conditions. New animations for swords, greatswords, maces, plushies, guns, crossbows, anything! You have a lot of types in your game, and that is only a good thing IF you are able to back them up. Make these enormous range of items worth something, instead of just cosmetics. Make an animation for dying, make it different depending on who killed you, make an animation for resurrection instead of the player just teleporting back to the beginning of the map, anything goes! Just please, make your game feel alive via animations. I promise you, it's not just for us, existing players, but also for new players who will be drawn to AQ2D, especially from Steam, and they will stay if the game feels and looks good on the eye. Make animations for floating armors, make jumping actually jumping and utilize it in certain maps, make environment react to what the player does, make monsters track us with their eyes and head, please, please make your game feel alive.
Art: This is a hot take coming from me, and it's understandable if it doesn't click with everyone, but the game has a lot of very distinct elements from various artists, and it sucks. If the artists tried to stay true to the original art style of the game, it would've been a fantastic thing, but not like this. You have 50 shades of yellow all clashing with eachother, and nothing is in harmony. One armor has gold lining, one helmet has gold lining, but their colour, style, shading, grading and shapes are VERY distinct, and it's hard on the eye. For a game that relies heavily upon cosmetics, this is a huge problem which you can't fix by just making everything colour customizable. Colour customizable gear should be high tier, not accessible easily. Point is, a lot of artists are working on the game, which is great, but also a lot of artists also disregard the visual harmony of the game, which is not great. Each of their works are great on their own, just not with smushed together like a ball of red and green play dough.
Gameplay: We are seeing your efforts at changing the combat, and it is very refreshing and exciting to see. This game relies on three things: Cosmetics, Combat, and Story. Whatever you're doing with combat, especially with adding actual hitboxes and not making it spam 1234 to win, please continue on. As for the other aspects of gameplay, bring mini games back. Mini games have been very, very frustrating, especially if they were forced for progression, but they all had a charm to them. You had a vision, and you worked towards building and enhancing that vision, but you've discarded a lot on the way, that vision is not the same as you had in the beginning, and mini games are just one example of this. Certain parts of the map were clickable, or hoverable for information, with even secret quests. Only Artix and the original development team knows this vision, not us, so I highly suggest them to embrace that vision once more.
Story: You went beyond good vs evil back in the day where good vs evil was the thing. You introduced Chaos, you introduced amazing dialogues and monologues, you introduced excellent cutscenes, and you introduced a unique, unmatched story that is 13 Lords of Chaos, which were made up of all the classic, cliché tropes like vampires vs werewolves, a tyrant ruling over a town etc, and you made it SO DARN FUN. I've kept playing AQW because of how unique the story was, up until some point. The elements were exaggerated to some degree, which was fun in a flash game, but at certain point it just became bland again. There were no more unique storylines and it all became one thing after another, and none of them were memorable. Call me a nostalgic nerd, but I am being honest here. It's very good that you're aiming on tying some loose ends and polishing the old storylines, but you need to improve and be unique again. Parodies and small pokes were fun in moderation, but not when they're the main focus of an entire storyline. Sure it's fun defeating a Vegeta knock-off based on Vegeta-bles, that is funny and innocent, but I don't think players enjoy when the event consists entirely of that and nothing else. Brutalcorn trope was good, even mysterious to some degree, which made it cool, but seeing him on a lot of places made him an unfunny joke, nothing more. What I'm saying is that you need to be unique again, and maybe even not bring up a new storyline just because you need to, players will be fine grinding on end-game items for that week too, instead of playing such monochrome stories where the hero needs to slay x for x amount of time and click x's 8 times over and over again even with the new fun combat system. Please. Also, please objectively compare older cutscenes to newer ones, and see which looks the best. I'm 100% sure everyone is going to choose the older cutscenes, as they're actually worked on, rather than copying and pasting, like Sepulchure vs Alteon fight. It was one of the main reasons why I kept playing the game as a kid, I thought I was going to see more scenes like that, but no I haven't.
Recurring/Seasonal events: The events themselves are good, but if you ask an active player what comes to their mind when they hear the game's name, they're going to think about navals. A lot of navals. Recolor of navals, refit of navals, mashup of navals, navals on navals, naval navals, just navals. Don't get me wrong here, it's good that you actively bring more stuff about seasonal events, but the creativity is not there. At this point, you're only working to satisfy the whales and their never ending hunger for rare navals. Same goes for samurai and ninja cosmetics and black friday items. The main complaint here is that they are almost always recolors, reskins, refits and mashups. Nothing ever new, just a few more brush strokes on the same template over and over again. You see how that sounds excruciatingly BORING?
Bots: I agree that bots are bad. I also agree that bots are, sometimes, a necessity. Do you know why? Because spamming 1234 on the same square block of a map for 72 hours and killing the same enemy for more than 5 million times just to get something (if you're lucky, that is) is not fun. If the bot does this job for you, then you are going to bot almost always. Even the most dedicated player will bot at this point, because the requirements to get the item is realistically impossible to sit through. Some people just use auto clickers for that too, and ask yourself this question: If a simple auto-clicker gets the job done, is it fun, or even remotely normal to do it yourself? No. This will change in AQ2D I believe, at least partially, because the combat is going to be fun again, but I'm hoping the requirements also change to keep things fresh and entertaining for the player.
I know a lot of people will disagree with me, and feel free to say anything to this box of suggestions, but I've been honest, and I've went the length to show that I still care deeply about this game and it's future. I don't know who will read this (probably none of the developers) but in case if you do, and in case you happen to have a way to reach Artix, please just make sure he at least knows that this comment exists. I'm not even writing this for my own personal pleasure, I want to see AQ2D grow beyond its original scope, I want it to become a staple like how AQW did back in the day. I want players to actually enjoy playing this game, rather than botting some item and bragging about it by AFKing. What AQW has become is incomprehensible, and I really want to see AQ2D redeem the wreck of AQW. Thank you.
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