World The Tower of Accension Feedback

On the 22nd of December 2014 a humbled Wynncraft Community got the Wynnter 2014 update, introduced in it was... a lot i don't have the time to mention. However, Amongst it was an additional that spoke of a new building in the Nesaak Ice Canyon: The Tower of Accension.

The Tower was, and still is, a 70 floor challenge run for players. It has seemingly been largely untouched since its release, at least not having any changes listed in changelogs i'm aware of. This has led to it... becoming slightly dated. If we do a—rather unfair—comparision with The Qira Hive released almost a year after, the 15th of December 2015, we can see some stark differences in the two:

• Personality: The Qira Hive has this entire backstory, and continous interactions with the player throughout. Qira is constantly speaking to the player after every floor along with their servant Yansur. Both of them have a personality and so too do the end fights of each division. The entire Hive is alive and thus makes it a more memeroable experince for the player.
  
• Reason of Existence: The Tower of Accensions has essentially no reason to exist. The little we know about it is that Ankou—who may be a servant of death if the name is anything to go by—may have or may not have created the tower as a challenge. Thats about it. Sure it has a fake death at the top but compared to Qira who does get a lot more lore importance sure but even then Qira and Yansurs dialogue alone gives a reason for the Hives existence. The Tower on the otherhand gives us more info at the end, where we learn about it being 'fueled by [fake] death herself.' and that 'Few can claim this victory as their own. Fewer still have held their mind.' which... ok cool but what the hell? This seems like such an interesting concept that comes out of no where and leads to no where either!
  
• Length: Qira has 5 divisions of 10 rooms; with one reserved for a boss. This is a great length and as each are thematic of the 5 core elements in Wynn. The Tower however... well the tower has 7 floors of 10 rooms; one reserved for a boss... but they only differ in their themeing and the mobs have some varied elemental defences and maybe a spell, but then so did the last floor so... yeah. What i'm getting at is the Tower of Acensions seems to struggle after a few floors of justifying its own length as not much changes bar the actual difficultly of the Tower which to some may be enough, to me it feels rather dull.

These are three i think are core to my quams with ToA; whether or not you agree i'd be happy to hear and discuss on.

I touched on the reason for the Tower to Exist, now by this i mean that the Tower has not much explanation given to the player. Now, we could infer from the use of Ankou as a name for the NPC that gives the quest that the tower may serve a way to harvest the souls of the living in some way but we can also just say it is a challenge for people to face judging by the last bit of dialogue we recieve. Also Ankou seems to be having the time of his life at all times, laughing constantly in dialogue which gives him character sure but... it just kind of happens for not much reason i feel. Not bad but i don't think it really makes sense. Also compared to the recent update in quality for quests like Qira... yeah, even if the tower got a bit of terrible explanation, something is better then nothing.

As for Length, it doesn't always matter; the tower could be 5 floors but just have the scaling be more to do with enemy complexity and leveling rather then solely enemy leveling, but at the same time i woudln't want to see all the mobs that were used in the Tower thrown out. I'm not sure if their is much to be done here other then reworking how progression in the tower works and how to make it feel a bit more unique.

Finally since i decided to go out of order, Personality, the Tower has none. Like, it has a beautiful mytserious building that uses a purple crysta- hold on is that referencing Choas crystal from Gavel? No, loosestrings and just design choices. Moving back swiftly on track. The tower is a really unique design and the actual personality of everything else surrounding is almost non-existent. Some may argue the Tower doesn't need personality, but i think it does, even if it gives Ankou some snarky dialogue after each completion of a floor it would give Ankou and by extension the tower something more to it.


I was orignally going to try give more of a suggestion on the Tower but at the same time, i have no idea what the tower is trying to be. So for me to try rework it feels completely wrong in my opinion. I'm happy to elaborate on anything, and you can also check out the spoiler below which is a copy and paste of a section from a suggestion of mine for a ToA like system but specifically this on a way to break up monotomy with the same room and gameplay loop...

Spoiler: Cutout

Movement
Movement floors are your timed parkour, your Galleon's Graveyard falling sand room etc. its all about the players reaction times being put to the test. These floors often rely on gimmicks or difficult design to engage and challenge the player rather than outright length. This could mean incorporating elements from other parts of Wynncraft such as geyser launching or bounce pads. These floors become less common the higher the player ascends in the spire due the relative ease that a player that late on may have and the general small amount of innovation that can realistically be a game changer to introduce to the player.


Interactions
Similar to movement but differing slightly is interaction; a term that is used to define floors that make use of elements that require the player to physically interact with the environment whilst always having to be aware of something—think Hollow Serenity “Collect the evidence”. As this floor type may be hard to fully grasp, I've given a slight example below for an early floor design I came up with quickly to hopefully make it easier to understand…

Spoiler: Example

An example of an interaction floor:- the player, after ascending from their previous floor or first entering the spire, is placed onto a large island. Its design is reminiscent of the Sky Islands with a large drop partially visible, located on the island is a dense cluster of 6 caves in an oval pattern around the centre of the room. A barrier block wall prevents the player from escaping past the cave entrances and above them.


The player is instructed that to complete this floor they must prevent anything from leaving the caves by placing a “barrier” on a cave—only one can be placed at a time—therefore leaving it unable to be passed out of or into. This is a fairly simple idea, so would take place at the start of the Spire but gives you an example of what might be done.

Combat
Combat rooms are your normal Wynncraft experience, the “Collect tokens” or “Kill X mobs Y amount”, the types of mobs encountered in these rooms depends on the theming surrounding those floors but they also will have a variety of void based mobs scattered throughout, most of whom bare some name related to distorting or altering reality. Gimmicks may be added to create a more interesting experience and to break up the monotony of this type of floor, or any of the others for that matter.


Combat rooms however may feature gimmicks to make the fight seem more interesting. These could be the player being able to interact and modify the arena prior to beginning combat. The more outlandish ideas are to have an arena where the player works in 3D space to fight mobs—More effectively described better as being in flight for combat.

I think that after almost 8 years the tower might be in need of some spit-and-polish, even if just a little. It does a good job but i think with the new additions of 2.0 and the big increases in what is capable in Quests and features now, it could be doing a whole lot more to be a memorable experince for the player.

 

Good post! I've done a full play through the last couple of months and I am strongly inclined to agree with your take on this.

One more thing I would like to address is the fact that it is extremely unrewarding to even start ToA. With the Qira Hive, even if you just make some progress, you can get a powerful reward for it. While there might not be a chance of making it to the final floors, you can at least start the quest and clear floors gradually and be rewarded for it.

Comparing this to the ToA is quite a stark contrast. ToA starts at a level on which there is no chance of making it through the entire tower, and because of this starting the quest is rather pointless at lower levels. Then, at some point, when you reach a much higher level and you actually have a chance of beating the final floor, you need to clear all of the floors even when they feature mobs from way below your level, which is just a massive waste of time. This just makes it even less appealing to do the quest, and I believe the armour set you obtain at the end leaves a lot left to be desired for the average player by the time they do actually beat the ToA.

I think having a reward system for clearing all the stages of one floor, similarly to the Qira Hive, would go a long way in actually making this quest worth doing.

 

I agree in most parts. I do feel that doing a reward for every stage may undermine the rewards themsevles, which Qira doesn't have* due to each floor being a different element, so maybe doing it every 2 (Floor 1, 3, 5, 7) may be better. This way they can vary in diversity amongst the others AND they can scale much more when compared to ones of lower tiers giving a better sense of progression.

* Edit: I say this but i know people will disagree. What i should say is that Qira Hive does not suffer from overdilation of the rewards because the first five possible rewards are all designed to impact a certain element thus are themselves going to be unique. The final floor counters this of course as the all general nature of it but as it is the final floor it does not break away the progression of the others instead rewarding the player for going to the end.