To the design team - moving forward

To the design team for game mechanics. Ie the game loop of vaults, thralls, recepies, delving etc. Not the design team for the visual design (looks great imo).

After playing Isle of Siptha now for more than 150+ h I have some reflections.

As already stated by other player the thrall grind is not that rewarding. The delving grind is not that rewarding. As designers I think that your process should be more robust before adding things to the dev team. Anyone who actually did some math or simulated the mechanic would have noticed the unbalanced and boring game flow. It is just not fun. It feels as one persons idea (a George Lucas moment) that no one challenged.

I applaud the idea of playing the map. That the map is a thing in its self and that is great. But having a thrall grind is not fun to play. Grinding vaults is not fun.
Still, I like the vaults since they are fun in themselvs, interresting and much more fun than most of the dungeon in the old map (except wine cellar). But not 20+ times over and over again. That is… a chore. Others have pointed out that the reward is just tooooo low. This could also have been detected by a team who actually simulated their ideas before sending it to the dev team. Do the math of time spent vs reward. I do not mind that it takes time but the reward must match the effort. As now I do not bother with surges or delving. Not really worth my time and also, I do not need to.

Instead of thralls and recepies it would, at least for me, be more fun if the monster in the sky decided to walk the isle of siptha once in a while and the grind was to banish the demon for x days. The monster would only attack tier 2 and 3 bases (really hate being attacked when trying to create a 1st level base as low lvl). One of my favorite moments in siptha was when a elite rhino spawned next to my base, got triggered somehow and attacked my base. The rhino killed all but 2 of my thralls. Amazing fight. Made me remodel the base in order to repel PvE attackers. Superfun. Gave me a direction.

Grinding for a recepie is, for me, really dull. It is nothing exiting or rewarding in that (‘yey, a thing. I put it with my… other things’). A rewarding grind would be for a legenday gear that could destroy the monster in the sky (and the gear itself is destroyed with the monster - making it necessary to grind for a new one. Perhaps several of them is needed). Could be a weapon that add extra damage against the monster but not against other players or other pve. Like triple damage from hallowed weapons.

A grind should be out of necessity and rewarding in the end imop. A feeling of accomplishment. Now it is just like… why should I?

I now there are some changes coming but these elements were there in the first place. That is a bit alarming. I think that the team for the game mechanics should establish a better design process. These design flaw are a bit too big in order to get all the way to the code. Add a quality aspect or ‘fun to play’ aspect in every descision before adding it to the devs. Why is it here? Does it accomplish what it is supposed to do? Is it fun?

Have checklist or something and try the mechanics out yourself first, then apply it to the code. This goes as well in test. Do not use admin panel when testing new mechnics. Play them. Like we play them.
Also, I would like to challenge you to change the end game and stop revolving it around recepies and thralls?

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