What is going on with this game?

Zealous

Gooooo This episode smells of over modulation with the speed Trent locked down the other tread.

Agreed. And this is the whole point summed up.

We can and should see more open dialog encouraged despite the devs opinions. Lile right not how Lich is basically trolling hard, it almost seems the devs or moderators give that a pass because they view OP as complaining instead of taking it into consideration.

Hells bells! Im all for the devs taking no feedback and saying they aren't, but pretending to be supportive of ideas but letting their strangest angry irl EQ nerd horde talk a bunch of crap unchecked but ready to ban or even rip away beta access for the suggestion makers is truly strange.

Discord is just full of these purists who dont provide any feedback at all, and attack those that do and GMs rush in and swing ban hammers because they seem to be tired of hearing feedback..

Its a bummer the EA is just 1 month away and we have to tell them our feedback that might be hard to swallow, but only those who are concerned and really want to see the game succeed are willing to risk their account being attacked by the hive mind and potentially the moderators themselves

Gms and Mods who have now begun to swing ban hammers and revoke beta access for differing views.. And respond to their own complaints that are about them..

Sad to see such a potentially great project showing all these red flags..

lich

Zealous You can say im "trolling hard" or whatever but honestly, theres constantly people who have played for a a couple of months, and think their "feedback(opinion)" is the make or break of the game, if it doesnt get fixed "the future of the game is doomed" or the complaining about the "purists who ruin all my fun complaints"

the reality is, this has been happening for years, the Devs are making their game, they let you post your "fun ideas" and "the game will fail if it doesnt include X in day Y" type stuff... but if you keep nagging and nagging and complaining and throwing shade at the Devs personally (as you guys are very much pointing fingers at a SPECIFIC GM) they are going to ban you. Get used to it?

Briggs

RelaxedZ There is no where on the discord dedicated to leaving feedback. I'm unsure of where you got timed out from, but feedback should be left on the forums and only on the forums at this point. Bug reports and support help are the only things the discord is currently used for besides general discussion and other misc. things. As for the floating combat text stuff, I think a thread on the forums discussing it exist and is not closed, but the guy that got timed out on discord and had his thread closed, had made his thread complaining more about moderation than about the actual gameplay and combat text.

Laskey

How can you get banned/timeout for talking about Floating Combat Text? It seems pretty innocuous.

I believe they considered it at one time but decided that it didn't fit the vision.

Why would questioning that trigger so many?

Makes no sense.

GM_Trent

There were no time outs given for talking about FCT. In fact, there is an entire thread going on about that right now.

May we please keep this thread on the OP's topic?

RHabit

lich That is correct. Sometimes we need help from other to figure things out. Every person is an individual, and taking that into account makes for better game design. You have been the least helpful person in the whole forum. Even the GM_Trent Zealous is complaining about with his particularly short interaction at least tried to pull the conversation back on topic, though after you made the post I'm responding to.
I'm glad your little world is so similar to how the devs think about things that you caught on to their intentions immediately, and for sure, many other people have. I wonder how many people haven't. Unfortunately, issues like this cause people to quit before they even start: both the ambiguity and people like you shutting them out before they have enough experience to get a foothold. A strong starting foundation creates the strong community required to make a long lasting game. Maybe there will be enough people who are like you, and agree with you, that my complaint won't ever be addressed or matter. I will only laugh if the game only sustains a few thousand people and can't pay for their server costs in a year or two though. If they do, good on them, but there are other games attempting to fill this niche as well.
There are certainly more issues than ambiguity going on here. Sometimes what a developer wants from their game doesn't support a large enough audience of people who agree with their design philosophy. Many games have failed for this reason, and by the time they realize it's failing it is already too late. I'm making no claim that this game will fail, because I can't possibly measure the amount of interest there is for it, but it is an important thing for developers to keep in mind. Maybe they'll get lucky, and I hope they do, but I also think they will need a great deal of luck when they can't strike a balance between the people who are already invested and getting in new people to become invested.
If I were to make an analysis: The Discord only has just short of 13,000 people in it. Among those people, statistically, only about 10 to 20% are likely to be "hardcore" fans. Judging by the number of Forum responses: none reaching over 400, and the ones that get close to 400 are rare. I don't know what they pay in server costs, but I do know what other games pay in server costs, game developer salaries, etc. It does make we wonder if they can afford to build such a niche game without some kind of concessions that approach a wider audience. Single minded focus can be good for getting a project like this started, but that same focus can later become the reason for it's failure. Only time will tell.

GM_Trent

I'm doing a little cleaning up in here so, please, don't take offense if I remove your post. It's not that you did anything wrong, I'm just trying to keep it on topic.

If he comes back in here, do me a favor and flag it without responding to it.

Foojack

RHabit There have been many concessions, already, to make the game more palatable to a wider audience.

Growlron

Foojack @RHabit

And the devs have been clear. They arent here to make a game for a wide audience. They named their company "NICHE worlds cult" because they know and accept that not everyone will like this game or the design choices they make. And they are ok with that.

Laskey

I played MUDs back in the 90s and I find it rather endearing to have a callback to that in the game.

In MUDs you often had to work out the exact words to get past a certain room or to trigger a certain response from an NPC.

It won't be for everyone - like the puzzles in WOW - some will enjoy it and the rest will search for guides.

Tpoon

The devs and GMs have been rather chill, especially with feedback and criticism. I've been critical at times, but I've never received warnings/bans.

Now are there purists on the discord that have lost their shit at people for suggestions? For sure! But they're best to be ignored since they're not apart of the team.

RHabit

Growlron I just want to be super clear, since you are making it sound like I'm saying they need to "change the game" which I certainly did not suggest. What I suggested very specifically is making instructions on how to play the game MUCH more CLEAR in the early start up of the game. Provide better descriptions of what needs to happen, and don't assume that everyone will just figure it out, especially on the starting quests. There needs to be a better tutorial. The actual game development seems pretty good, but not everyone is 50 years old. If anything the concept was probably ahead of it's time in the 90's. Yay nostalgia... and such. Nostalgia alone will not make this game profitable, and the more profitable the game is the better they can develop it further. I did not play any MUD games, and this is a new experience for me, and it might be my last experience with it if it is developed with the sole intent of catering to the nostalgia crowd without better explaining how things work to someone who has never interacted with this before. They do not need to change the mechanics of anything (though full drops on death is a terrible mechanic in any game). The only suggestions are to hold new player's hands a little more by describing things more thoroughly, at least through the first couple quests. Over describe, over example everything for the first little bit of the game. The starting guide is pretty terrible in the sense that it is super vague, and created an applied description attached to the journal (not even the chat window, you'd have to open the journal), would be a huge improvement without having to change any game play mechanics what so ever. Want your friends to join you, but they've never played before? Trust that this will help without changing anything you enjoy about the game already. It's an information war, not a mechanical change.
The only other suggestion I would have at this point would be making the economy less brutal, but that would just help with retention, not necessarily game play itself. I mean... less people playing is just less funds to put into making more content. I have a group of friends I've been trying to get into the beta to play this, but after getting a feel for the community here, especially in the forums, I think we might just wait for a few of our other prospects instead of investing any more time here. I like the game well enough, so I won't let this be the absolute decider on this, but the community here reminds me of the most toxic components of other MMO communities I've been involved with. People can be so short sighted and selfish, and the nostalgia probably doesn't land the same for me as it does for you and many of the other "hard-core" players here.
I just can't imagine there being enough hardcore players of this to encourage any amount of speedy development without making it more accessible to people who have never experienced something like this. I can already see most people will give up on this long before level 8, or even 4, especially if they aren't playing as a part of a group. It's just over whelming, tedious, and extremely difficulty to accomplish anything of note, even taken at a "small victories" level. I guess I'm just going to take a few more weeks playing other things and check back in later to see if anything, even something small, has improved. With such a small community though I doubt anything substantial will happen in any reasonable time frame. Best of luck gamers. With this game you'll need it.

Waffle_Goblin

What I suggested very specifically is making instructions on how to play the game MUCH more CLEAR in the early start up of the game. Provide better descriptions of what needs to happen, and don't assume that everyone will just figure it out, especially on the starting quests. There needs to be a better tutorial.

The entire point is for people to explore options and learn. Early MUD tutorials were laughably bad if they existed at all, and that is what they want to recreate. Players can create guides and tutorials, and they have. Look for one or don't, but it's not up to the devs to hold your hand.

NWC is not chasing subs, they are making a game THEY want to play and are sharing it. It's a niche game. Not everyone will like it, some that didn't expect to like it will. It'll be enough for NWC, or it won't, but that is our problem, not theirs.

RHabit

Waffle_Goblin I understand what you are saying, but I also don't think your argument is a helpful one to the player base, nor the developers.

CalBearGuy

RHabit His argument is helpful to both, when the context is the focus.

The game was created as a niche environment for a specific subset of gamers. Some people like running around Retail WoW and having their RestedXP tell them where to go and blindly follow the arrow. Then, on the opposite end of the spectrum, other people enjoy investigating and exploring without any guidance.

A common trope of similar games, like that of DnD, could have its players inspecting and hypothesizing for 30 minutes before deciding if they want to pass through the door directly in front of them…only to find out it’s just a plain-old-door. To some, that’s a waste of time. To others, it’s far from it.

This game leans mostly toward the the latter.

RHabit

CalBearGuy Well, enjoy your little Niche service game.... I personally like exploring and investigating without any guidance. I am one of those players. Having to fight with this dumbass MUD interface is actually a HINDERANCE to being able to go out exploring. I'm sure I would get used to it, but it would be so much better if they provided a real tutorial instead of some vague overview of how it's "supposed" to work. I don't want to figure out how some programming language works: I already do that with REAL programming languages like C#, Rust, Java, etc. A game shouldn't be about learning a bunch of command lines just to be able to play it. But hey, if that's what you want to waste your time on go for it. There are a hundred other games I could be playing, and after seeing what this community is about, I think that exactly what I'm going to do.
I was really hoping this game would be like D&D, but it's a far cry from it.

Growlron

RHabit Im gonna keep it 100% transparent. I didnt read most of your reply to me.

You might understand the words that are written as a cognitive function of English language comprehension but you clearly do NOT understand what is being said.

This game is a passion project. It has no investors. The devs are going to make the game they want to make REGARDLESS OF PLAYER SENTIMENT. They understand it might fail. They have accepted that reality. MANYYYYY of the devs are working for free. With the understanding and agreement they may NEVER see a dime.

You're ideas are not ridiculous. You're ideas are not even unique. Your opinions are not wrong.

HOWEVER

You have a clear and fundamental ignorance of what this project is, the vision for the game, and the developers' game design philosophies.

The developer has ZERO.. and i mean fucking ZERO interest in QoL for the sake of QoL or for the sake of mass appeal. The friction IS the point. The friction IS by design.

The friction encourages exploration and experimentation. It also encourages community interaction to seek out information and share information.

Waffle isnt making an argument. Waffle is stating a forged in iron, stone cold fact, that is not up for debate.

You can disagree with the devs choices, vision, design, etc... You can voice that disagreement. And you can not play the game because of it.

But to continue beating you head against the forums and discord to drive this point that more people would play if devs do X Y and Z... at a certain point, no one wants to hear you talk anymore.

The community is "hostile" toward people who express your opinions because the community is fucking EXHAUSTED listening to whiners the last 4+ years try to convince the devs to betray their convictions and design vision.

Like the game and play it.
Dont like the game and dont play it.

But take a hint and stop whining about things that you can spend THIRTY SECONDS on the website to KNOW the devs will NEVER EVER EVEN CONSIDER changing.

Hukor

Growlron

The way modern WoW set up Delves as an end-game solo activity is interesting.

Delvers get loot equivalent to mid-range group activities, at a slower pace. Solo and group activities co-exist next to each other, do not really compete, and sometimes cross over.

A delver may choose to group (for better gear), while a group player may sometimes delve for fun.

I understand the vision for Monsters & Memories. And I think there are ways they could accommodate multiple ways to enjoy their world, at no cost to group players.

A slower, yet rewarding way to progress for solo and small group players. Respectful of the general vision for the game (not instanced like Everquest LDoN or WoW Delves). One that wouldn't compete with group rewards.

IF that is something they want to consider, of course. It is their game, as you said.

I often say to my kids: "Choose the profession you like. Just make sure it also makes good money". I think the same about Monsters & Memories. If they can increase their player base by including extra activities for solo players, at no cost to group players, maybe it is worth considering?

Growlron

Hukor This is the missing piece.

The devs arent motivated by money. If they were, this would be a very different project. The are motivated by vision and passion.

Yes, Shawn would love to pay most of these guys for their efforts. And rightfully so. And if the project is profitable.. GREAT!

But it is not the end goal. It is not the driving force. And thus decisions will not revolve around appealing to players.

They might take player sentiment into consideration with decisions and design but it will not be a primary focus or deciding factor.

Gooooo

Growlron

You know what? You speak like you are some authority of NWC and are their spokesman. You are the kind of person that is not being helpful to newer players or even to the developers.

They gave us 20% of the content free as at now. Come Oct 1st , the balance 80% of the content to 1.0 will be funded or partially funded by the EA players. So stop talking as if they are doing everything free. But I'm not against them collecting $$ to further fund the development of the game, People need to get paid, but i don't like people like you attacking other players opinions the way you do and saying as though the game is completed now fully self funded.

Growlron Like the game and play it.
Dont like the game and dont play it.

The Dev will thank you for you for these comments.

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