Replayability and why i think Wynncraft fails at it

Wynncraft is my favorite Minecraft server, but that doesnt mean its the one i think is best. It has a massive, well built world with fun spells and challenging boss fights. But it has issues with story and characters, and with a lack of real characters in general.

But it's worst aspect, and the main reason why i stopped playing it for a while is it's replayability. Once you've hit level 103 once, you've seen 90% of the game. Starting over with a new character has almost nothing new to show you.

Yeah you need to learn how to play the class, but by level 50 you have it completely figured out and the rest of the game is no different from your first run. The closest thing you can get to new content with a different class is by playing with a specific build, like healer mage or tank warrior or heavy melee assassin. But by endgame, all of those builds can be used on different classes (i.e tank archer, heavy melee mage, etc.).

Major IDs help with this slightly and i'll give Wynncraft credit for that, but few items have Major IDs, and even fewer items have Major IDs that only apply to one class. Every item would require a class-specific Major ID to make a rerun feel completely fresh.

Something that i think would help make reruns feel more fresh would be class-specific quests. Like a quest that plays out differently depending on what class you are. Imagine if instead of you just assassinating Takan in the quest "The Mercenary" regardless of your class, you went about it differently.

If you were an archer and did the quests, imagine if it turned into some sort of sniper mission where you need to hit certain targets from far away before they can fire back at you. And Takan's soldiers would reach you and attack you if you didnt complete the tasks fast enough. This would reward Archers for having good aim, something only Archers remotely need.

If you were a mage, you could go into the camp disguised and you needed to make some sort of poison spell to use on Takan, instead of just beating him to death like you do in the quest as it is.

Of course, this would basically require the content team to make 5 different quests instead of one, but the difference between classes wouldnt need to be as large as i just described, even just small minigames in larger quests like ROL or Wynnexcavation would make the game feel a lot fresher on replays.


Your first run in Wynncraft is always interesting, cool new concepts and locations for you to discover. But re-runs just feel like a chore because youre going through the same motions and puzzles for the 2nd/3rd/4th/8th/14th time.

 

mfw ironman exists

e: i do kinda agree though ye

 

also with the small dialouge systems that the new festival has, there may be a option to go along two paths in a quest, leading to more choices to make when leveling a class

 

Even just a real choice during a quest that has nothing to do with your class would add a lot of replayability, the current choices you can make in quests are very minor and just effect your rewards in minor ways.

 

agreed
which was why i took a break from wynn
the goal was to hopefully make me forget some of the quests i did so my arch/shaman playthrough would be more interesting

 

I doubt they could add branching choices like in UnderTale or a Bethesda game. The story is just too linear and basic; I doubt, for example, they would allow the player to join forces with the Darkness. Plus being a MMO prevents large changes of the status quo.

Imo the only way they can meaningfully improve upon replay ability is multiplayer content like guilds and PvP tournaments. Not because I like or even participate in that content on Wynncraft but just bc multiplayer content is just inherently more replayable than single player content in RPGs.

 

I mean they did add dialogue choices recently which is a big plus
I think that if used right could have the potential to add some variety in choices when it comes to quests

 

I agree.
Plus keep in mind Wynncraft also has the ability to have client-side blocks and NPCs, which could easily be used to make the world have some lasting effects.

 

The issue with branching quests is the huge amount of effort it takes to make those.
If the branching is giving players a meaningful decision to make, that's pretty cool in my opinion and those kind of quests can be worth the extra effort. Making the player more involved in the world and the story-telling is always a positive thing :)
But making some of the content in the game class-specific basically means limiting the amount of content the average player will experience.
Most players don't play the game with every single class, and would much rather have 5 different quests added to the game than a single quest with different gameplay for each of the 5 classes.
So I don't think the amount of effort it takes to make class-specific content is worth it, unless it's just a small amount of content which will be very noticeable by the players (like different parkours for different classes, which utilizes the different movement spells).

 

Oh yeah totally; I’m not saying stuff like that is a bad feature or anything. But like Lotem said it’s a lot effort and not easy to create a branching story, let alone make it good.

Two things that make this especially difficult are Wynncraft’s episodic story nature and development. The reason why most quests are disconnected from each other is that it allows for flexibility and creativity. That way individual CT members can focus on specific quests without worrying about consistency or how it works with other quests. And since the CT are part time volunteers one doesn’t have to worry if a CT can’t finish their part because it doesn’t affect other quests. This wouldn’t be the case if say they were making the alternate path of an 8-part quest line, hence why it could be more problematic otherwise.

Stories, even with full time dedicated authors and teams *cough* Supermassive *cough*, can already struggle with consistency. And in branched stories consistency is a necessity; if the story doesn’t acknowledge the player’s actions or outright contradicts the player’s actions then choices become meaningless and the story becomes hollow and cliche.

It’s also extremely hard to balance gameplay with making a branching story; it’s why TellTale and UnderTale and Until Dawn aren’t known for their gameplay. And Deltarune has improved gameplay but has also explicitly cut back on branching story arcs. Plus it’s less than a third of the way released after 4+ years. I just haven’t seen a game that can pull off branching story and have equal quality of gameplay. So that’s why I think it’s just a bit unrealistic to ask of for Wynncraft at this point.

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Well I’m quite sure to what extent they can go with that. An extreme example is what happens if a city gets destroyed? I thought client side blocks only had different textures, so wouldn’t a block still have collision?

 

Oh well in a standpoint of work then yeah that’s not viable to make huge differences or anything
I just means small things even if it’s just extra dialogue options that change one like cause I feel like having even a bit of control over dialogue and actions makes the game a lot more immersive
But like big stuff that changed whole storylines and endings, yeah your prob right about that