Progression Remove the ID system (among other things).

Yeah, making it on the island is just bringing attention to an otherwise abandoned spot. All durum isles have for professions is a handful of resources and a small boss altar. It's not nothing, but it's certainly not as social an experience as having it be that one place everyone goes to when they want to do profession-related stuff.

Ok. Even dropping the "optimization" thing for the moment: How many people does that describe? I like exploring the secrets of the game so much I literally give out tours of the Wynn province. My experience is not typical. I've been to most of the places I've been talking about dozens to hundreds of times. I don't see a soul there. Maybe I'd run into one or two people if I had ghosts on, I suppose, but if I need to expand my search range to (presumable) dozens of servers simultaneously, I feel like even finding someone wouldn't make a very compelling case. Guess I'll try it some day anyway.

I doubt the experience of a forum poster is typical, first of all. Second of all, just generally mentioning "posts" doesn't help me understand these people's supposed experiences (There's a reason hearsay isn't allowed in court; you can't ask the people any questions). Third of all, I don't see why we're turning to forum posts when we can look at the game proper to see who's actually doing anything. The only real limitation there is that since the servers only host up to 40 people, the map's pretty empty in general, so you'd have to keep watching over time to see if anyone shows up.

My biggest issue is a sampling error here. You're taking people who are the most invested in the game, then telling me that they're not optimizing their game. For all I know, these people sat at a grinding spot for a few hours, made it to 103, then opened an account to talk to people about lore. And sure, you say other people say they like lore and exploration, but do they mean they like reading some NPC dialogue, or do they sit around pouring through all the books and secrets? I don't know. All I have is your word about theirs.

 

epic 57 vote ratio

 

Yes, you are heavily focused on it. Some people might not spend hours, but minutes, just going offroad when travelling. That still counts though.

Statistically, most people will be centered at cities, big roads or quest locations because they are doing something. That is a fact. But that doesn't mean they do not go offroad. Also there are people who are actively avoiding this, but that is something else.

They are players who persisted, yes. But that doesn't invalidate the point. They are a few you see.

@Guidouwars made a thread few days ago. Upon my inquiry they sent me a video of them exploring the old Nether. They could have stayed at the center where other players (content) are, but they decided to go and explore.

Because you can't look ingame, that is the problem. But more on that later.

I am aware of this. I am not saying they all did it (or at least before reaching endgame), I am saying there are people who genuinely care about it. It is more of an illustration than proof. Also, why is bad? Is it bad that people do not explore the map at all or that they don't explore it at level?


Also, let me point some biases of your own. You think that what you see is what there is to see, but that is not true. First, you are playing on one world out of many (depending on the day) with ghosts off. Second, you are not always online. You can play what, an hour a day, two on average? Depending on your timezone that can be even more or less distorting. And last, the map is gigantic. Even if two hundred players would go into abandoned places at once, you could still see no one.

I have bias against this, I think that many people explore just for the sake of it. On the other hand, I believe I am realistic enough know that a lot of players do not and some actively avoid it.

In the end, we need an actual heatmap of players on the server over time. I found this one, though that one is only one day if I got it correctly. (and haven't had the time to study it closely yet)
Or you can make Salted do a questionnaire and post it on all media and ingame to get the most "unbiased" results.

 

hey can we stop talking about this

 

nice you barely managed to pass the character limit

 

Yeah, lots of people wondering where exactly they'd get items.

Right, which is why I'm saying they should be incentivized to go somewhere new. Hence the whole "cull/move resource points", and "Remove mob drops". Even a few minutes of exploring in a totally new area would get you more than a few minutes in a place you've already been to.

A cool thing to see would be some rough count of how many people actually go to these supposedly abandoned sites in a given week. Because I say most people don't, and you say some people do. This is probably a half-glass-full-type situation.

That's pretty cool. I should check it out.

That's another issue. I don't count people exploring after endgame. Obviously the most bored among the player base will do the least rewarding things to pass the time.
I even pointed out making the discoveries long after they were useful. Why wait until you're 50 levels past the mark when you can be nudged to the area at the appropriate time?

I assume this is for all players on all the servers. With that in mind, three to four people actually went to, say, half moon island, two went to bear zoo island, about as many went to the island to the north, admittedly more people passed through the barley farm and durum isles than I expected , so that's nice. But this is out of literal thousands. I understand Pareto distributions are a thing, but some of these places are just hideously ignored considering how much goes into them. It's not like they're those random camps along the outskirts of the map.

I can make him do stuff? You heard the man! Chop chop, Salted!

 

No.

 

And an impossible thing to do.
I wouldn't say this is "half-glass-full-type" situation, because neither of us actually knows the truth (as opposed to us debating am obvious thing).

It is unlisted, but if you ask them they might send the link.

Maybe because then I can explore without being killed/annoyed all the time. I think I remember going into Dernel jungle and being horrified because of all the ranged mobs I couldn't easily kill. If you could, would you rather go into at-level area where you have to fight for your life or a lower level area where you can focus on exploring?

I don't think that people who dislike exploring will magically get into that after reaching endgame, they have raids, builds, guilds and ton of stuff to evade that. But perhaps you are correct in "to pass the time" in a way that they don't have quests screaming into their faces anymore.

Note that it is only one day. If we had, say a month, I would take that as some good data.

and make it quick

... And we are getting somewhere I didn't want to get to... But fine, I will give my few cents.
If you could please update the original post or post your current suggestions/ideas so that I don't have to react to the (outdated) suggestions it would be great.

 

You just shared a heat map showing what we both already know: The places are relatively abandoned, with maybe one person going there for any period of time out of hundreds. And there's a non-zero chance I was one of those dots that went to the places.

I don't know how to answer the question, since you already know I prefer being at-level.

People that hate exploring will actively avoid it no matter what. They'll be sent to a new spot, bee line for the objective, then leave. But there's a healthy buzz of people that'll wander around places they have an incentive to be in. If you just nudge them into the general area of abandoned content, they'll take a look. Again: You sent the heat map. It's not like they don't explore at all. It's just easy to miss some things.

I was so busy telling people they can do dungeons It didn't even cross my mind. Not much to change, though, since most of this post is "HOW WILL I GET ITEMS?!", and me with the usual "By doing literally anything else". Only a handful of people have actually engaged and reached some kind of compromise.

 

I would still like to see a more long-term one.

It was more of a "what would the average player do" question, pointing out a possibility.

Nerfing grinding spots encourages what, dungeons? Raids? You still need to grind them. Eventually, you will get bored of them (source: me doing CSST, CIB and CUR parties). But this is not exploring, this is doing the same thing over and over again. (also you need to grind for keys/runes or buy them)

If the spots were diversified, for example xp or loot propability, it could make some sense. But moving them somewhere else will just make people stand in some random spot in the ocean. Again, you do not explore, you find one spot that is good enough and grind. Click and click and click.

Have you seen the backlash of profession quests when they got out? I have. It was big. If it was symbolic (just level 1) it could work, but to grind professions for a quest is not fun.

Problem is that (if I got it correctly), you are telling people to either explore or do professions and market. This is not incouraging, this is forcing. Professions are one big grind and for market you need money, which might end you up in the same situation. I think that makes it no longer "exploration", but "searching", it takes the fun away. How many people will think "when will I finally find the [insert item or location] so that I can finally beat that boss?" You are not going to go off the road because you "might find something interesting", but because "I need it to progress". If you put Lunar Spine into Half-Moon Island, how many people will go there to see the island and how many to get the wand? Yes, they will see a cool building, but that would not be the think on that place, would it?

One counterpoint is that many, if not most people will just google the "good" locations up, especially if they are well-hidden. People do not usually like going around and thinking "Is that good or is this better?". They will go straight for the best option. Or run around in unique gear because they will think that is what they are supposed to do, like it happened with professions, if I remember correctly (please correct me if I am wrong). I am sure that almost no one had done ??? "correctly" after it got on the wiki. Some actually tried, for the record. Same goes for many quests, I would say. You can't force people to go and enjoy something they do not.

And what would happen to those who like to explore, where would be the reward? Getting good items? You would have to get them either way. Some places are beautiful just because you have no reason to be there. But you are.



On the other hand, I am intrigued by the idea of giving "unique" items to interesting places (e.g. Lunar Spine could be found at your favourite :) Half-Moon Island). Not as a norm for all good items, but a few (and possibly quirky) ones.

I am also fully for incentivising people to explore, but I don't think this is the way. Instead of effectively forcing the player, they could be shown their possibilites.
One idea (which I suggeted before actually) is to revert the tutorial back to 1.17 times. At that time, you weren't told "go here go he and do not go off the road" by Aledar and Tasim, you were left by yourself in much more open area which you could explore. There were houses you could visit and npcs you could talk to, just because you chose to.

 

Bit of a weird suggestion, but what if you actually got xp from exploring? I know we have xp bonuses from discoveries but the world and territorial ones give almost nothing and you can't rely on secret discoveries for xp (since they're well hidden) unless you look their locations up (which isn't really true exploration). If territorial discoveries were buffed significantly it would not only encourage exploration more but give players another potential leveling option besides just grinding quests, dungeons, and mobs. If you wanted to improve it further you could even add tons of new world discoveries for less important but still cool locations, like the burning town in the rymek mesa cliffs, or the pseudo-dungeon at the back of time valley, as just a couple examples. Basically, if we buff discovery xp instead of nerfing quest xp it will still encourage players to explore while still giving players the freedom to just grind quests if that's how they want to play.

 

Yeah. Where the hell is Salted? We told him about this hours ago!

Oh. Probably a good thing to ask while I'm giving out tours, for reference.

Yeah, once it was pointed out exactly how effective grind spots were compared to questing, I suddenly had no actual plan for slowing down the level gain. There's a bigger problem than just some numbers being too high.

My goal with nerfing xp gains is to encourage people to find alternate sources of XP. I had the ideal experience in this regard when I hit level 100-103. I did a quest the moment I got the requirement, wandered around to some slayer posts, then once I finished them and moved on to the start of the next quest, I was at the appropriate level. Between slayer, gathering, and discoveries, it was just enough of a grind that I actually had to look around the new area for a way to advance, but not such an inconvenience that I can exhaust all my options and still have to sit around killing things.

It's rather inevitable at the start of a game, but it would be nice if somewhere around the halfway mark someone could figure out how to keep the grind at roughly that level.

The very process of going somewhere would encourage anyone to take a look around. Remember: this isn't about that guy that literally couldn't care less what's around him. He'll do everything in his power to go somewhere, then leave immediately. But that guy that gets lost getting there? He'll see something new. That other guy that decides to take a break and look around? He'll see something new.

I was imagining the quests took up most of the grind. The example I had given at one point was Cook Assistant: You don't actually start the quest immediately, but rather are asked to help out by the baker right at the start, in a sort of world event. You help, and since you obviously lack the cooking experience, you burn the cake. You get the experience for trying, then you suddenly meet the requirements to start the quest proper. He's out of ingredients thanks to you, so you get them, bake the cake a second time, get more xp for finishing, and maybe some ingredients to encourage you to keep going. Then the next quest to have cooking requirements would have them close to what the game left you at after the first. Grind? Sure. But logically, if you want to avoid it while also encouraging people to use this system you've spent all this time implementing, you have to actually, you know, encourage them. If you finished Cook Quest, and found out that the next quest needed just another half-level, would you really be so offended by the prospect of sitting down for a minute to get wheat that you'd drop the game?

And, floating the idea here, what if you just got to bake as an alternative to grinding for materials? You can bake fresh bread at Aldorei and make it to level 30 in mere seconds if you buy wheat in bulk. You ever try that? I've tried bringing it up before, but again: Nobody is actually engaging the idea, just winging about crafting.

Don't forget quests, dungeons, merchants, and raids.

What?

Bud, you're the one telling me they don't optimize their gameplay. I push people around with the lack of equipment drops to align this urge to get "better" with exploration. Currently you get everything you need right in place, where you stand, just by killing mobs. If you don't get new stuff just on your way between cities, you suddenly have to take a detour for that. And that detour will inevitably show you something new.

Por que no los dos?

See, that's the kind of thinking I was hoping to get when I posted on this forum.

I'm struggling with the exact incentive you can give people to explore when the areas they're ignoring are lower level, and they could instead spend time at areas that are level appropriate. My assertion is there's none other than some inherent curiosity people have. But at that point, why even have mobs on these abandoned spots if nobody that goes there actually needs them? And according to you, you don't even like them being there in the first place!

________________________________

See, that's actually a good idea. So good I'm stealing it and claiming it as my own. There are plenty of places I've been to that are cool, but don't actually get me anything more than eye candy.

 

I honestly do not know what to say to this.

Didn't work for me when I did profs (in endgame tbf, but still). But I admit it could lure some. Still I do not like it as the ideal solution, returning to cities to repair tools and stuff is annoying enough already sometimes.

That is level 3-5. But at midgame to endgame you either have to give a giant amounts of xp to keep the attention (remember: it does not "take a minute" but over an fifteen minutes to an hour to level up at that point) or make people grind.

But what if there were separate, profession focused quests? They would show up in another tab in the questbook to clearly mark that they are different. They could be "cooking master" or whatever, perhaps not of some great lore importance, but small, potentially making the world alive (e.g. pointing out the need of wheat to feed the city). That would reduce the grind, making professions more enjoyable.

I swear I have seen that suggestion a couple of times, maybe even said it myself. Yes, incorporating professions as an alternative, possibly with slight advantage in rewards (like prof xp, assuming that is possible) would be great. Or just remove the requirement and allow people to get the stuff by other means (looking at you, Shadow of the Beast).

Quests give gear too sparingly to be useful, afaik. Dungeons can get grindy after a bit, though there are some good items there. Merchant items are, if I remember correctly, overpriced and useless. But I heard it has changed, so take it with a bowl of salt (also didn't you go against those at some point? or is it just me). Raids are spaced too much.
But yes, they are alternatives.

I have a dangerous suspicion I had a brain fart. I spent way too much time on it...
The point was that I fear that people might google it, come there, straight in and out, without doing much more. I do not count that as exploring because you are not looking at the world, you are looking for a specific thing.

Unless they are sent to do something they did not want to do.

Except at wildly different magnitudes. I speak in terms of tens of items at maximum, while you speak about over a few hundreds to thousands. Also it might get quite difficult to give them a good and unique place and not just put a drop-mob somewhere random off-road.

Admittedly, mostly. I believe that people who want to explore will do so, and those who do not will not do much more than they have to. Not talking about the extremes, the tryhard and the nerd, but the average person who has their preferences. In my opinion showing them their options and then let them choose is the best thing.

Because they fit the world. And because it would be quite weird to have mobs by all the important places but nothing anywhere else. Also, many interesting things are already in places with mobs.

Porque en este moment no estoy allí solo porque you quiero.
Then the reward is not the exploring itself. It is not a secret only for those who try will find it, but a place people will go to get that one thing they want for their build. Sure, ignoring big areas is not ideal, but giving many places purpose for just the sake of making people visit them is equally bad in my opinion. There are a ton of small locations that would be ruined by that.

Just note that adding too many new discoveries might lead to the issue above. But yeah, sounds reasonable.

 

I'm open to suggestions. A guy just said buff the xp gains for exploration and add more discoveries.

I'm not seeing the issue. Supposedly this feature is antithetical the the entire gameplay experience, such that the implication that you may have to use it a bit more has kids in hysterics. I'd personally dump people just before the next requirement, then have just enough grind left over that the mini quest posts will take you to the next level.

Hell- they could replace these dumb "mini-quests" and give actually reasonable rewards for once.

I'm glad someone finally responded to that instead of doubling down on the complaints. The lack of engagement there was starting to get to me.

A) Yes, they're overpriced and useless... compared to items you get for free on the ground for doing nothing. This is one of the issues I had pointed out. A large number of NPC's sre being ignored after someone went through all the trouble to make them because spending money on equipment is, for the most part, objectively inferior to just running around and getting equipment by chance.

B) The only time I've said anything bad about merchants is in relation to dropped items. Merchants are great! They're how you get gear in basically any MMO alongside crafting, trading, and grinding. They suck only because the alternative is way too easy and way too good.

Again: There's nothing to be done about the guy that desperately hates exploration. But we've seen a decent hum of people exploring little bits off the established trail. I'm sure plenty of them are moving around for quests, but it makes my point: Give people a reason to be somewhere, and they'll take it from there.

Can you believe I forgot to mention caves and other themed spots, like the mini-dungeons in Time Valley? In my mind they're synonymous with "dungeons".

I don't speak in any numbers. This one was all you. Good job!

I give you points for trying, but I'm docking you points for ruining the meme. The sentence was poorly constructed, though. :(

I'm not understanding what the issue is if a cool place is now also useful. Far as I can tell, it's kind of like saying that saving people's lives is good, but it'd be bad if you paid people to do it.

 

I'll admit that I've only ever played three MMOs besides Wynncraft, those being Hypixel Skyblock, which is quite bad and Wizard101/Pirate101, which are both better than Skyblock but also aimed at a younger demographic and probably not representative of MMOs as a whole. Still, in all three, the only merchant that you can get anything usable from is... the one where players sell/auction gear to an npc, where other players can than buy it. Again, this is a small sample size, but I'm fairly sure it is a universal constant in MMOs that random merchants you spend the regular currency on sell bad, overpriced armor and weapons.

Contrary to what you say, Wynncraft actually makes it players work for gear. Practically speaking, you either have to grind dungeons to buy actually good loot from dungeon merchants, craft gear using generally difficult to obtain ingredients, buy from the trade market which can be rather expensive, do boss alters which are at level very difficult, or loot run, which is unreliable and requires a fair amount of time and planning. Opening random chests or defeating random enemies will never be enough to create actually good, well thought-out builds.

It feels like you don't actually understand how people obtain good gear. More casual players who only use gear they get from random mobs or chests will probably assemble a build that lets them be able to do most or all of the game's quests solo, but in things like raids, dungeons, and challenges like Qira's Hive and Legendary Island, they aren't going to stand a chance at level. As someone who played the game like that until level 102, I speak from experience when I say that random mob drops will not carry you through the games challenging areas. If you are ultra-lucky and randomly got amazing gear that fit together well, or a MLG pro and beat those things with nothing but random gear, congrats, but you must realize you are not most players.

 

My issue with doing this is that it will encourage players to rush through areas just to get the discovery XP

 

It's been a long time now, but Runescape's merchants at least used to sell entirely relevant equipment. You could occasionally farm some early mobs to get weak drops, but if you wanted to stand a chance against anything substantial, you had to either buy it, or make it yourself. No word on what it's like now.

What's the standard? I've already had at least one other guy try to tell me that mob drops aren't going to get you a "good" build, but then was scarce on the details when I accepted his challenge.

It feels like you're confused about what the point of the post is. I don't care about your "good gear". The fact that people can get by just finding items is a problem. Your telling me a lone player probably can't solo legendary island with whatever he's randomly picked up is irrelevant.

 

Not entirely sure what you mean, but although you can get good items from random mobs, the good equipment you get can often not be used together because they are designed for conflicting play styles (spellspam vs melee, tank vs glass cannon). Again, if you want an actually good build, you must look elsewhere than random mob drops.

I really do not see the problem with people managing with random drops. In my playthrough of the game, I found it was a thrill to an extent seeing what armor I got and trying to manage by with mediocre builds. Even though I couldn't do a lot of the game's harder content solo at all, the game was fun the way I was playing with it. If I had to spend more time getting gear that was good enough to complete most quests, my playthrough would have been much less enjoyable and I probably wouldn't have even completed it. One of Wynncraft's strengths is its ability to balance accessibility with challenge, allowing both casual and experienced players to have interesting playthroughs of the game that depending on what they do or don't do, has a challenge that meets the player at their skill/knowledge level.

 

What is an "Actually Good Build"? I'm asking you what the difference between an "Actually Good Build" and a "Not Good" build is. How do I know when I've seen one or the other? Others have told me I can't make "Actually Good Builds" with mob drops and they don't answer when I take them up on their challenge.

That all the alternatives are basically abandoned. Merchants are ignored, caves are the domain of some sweaty loot runners, quest items are rendered potentially useless, and events like time troubles are overlooked save for maybe the first novelty kill.

There's no "balance". You just dart between point A and B and make do with what you get.

 

When I'm talking about an "actually good build", I'm talking about a build that a reasonably skilled player (not just an absolute pro) could use to solo most of the content in the game (including harder things like LI and boss alters), save for raids which are designed for more than one person. To my knowledge, although most of the items in any given build are obtained either through random mob or chest drops, you aren't going to randomly acquire gear that makes a good build by chance. You might get one of of the nine pieces you need for a specific build, but you're going to have to buy from the trade market if you want to get a good, complete build this century.

1. Assuming Wynncraft wants to be like most MMOs (maybe not Runescape), random merchants are always going to useless.
2. Quest items are often useful, but because there are typically only 1-2 quests per level, they can never be a way players get most of their gear. Also, I think most of the people who don't go off the beaten path much are mostly just doing quests to level up, so if a quest item is useful, it will be used.
3. Should there be an early-game quest encouraging players to go into a random cave and showing them just how rewarding tier 3 and 4 chests can be? Probably, but if someone hates exploring at all, no amount of pushing by the game will want to make them explore.
4. I started playing this game too long ago to ever really make use of time troubles, but there is a quest that introduces them to the feature and its rewards. Players should be free to either continue to do time troubles or just ignore them.

By balance, I mean it allows both casual and experienced playing styles to co-exist with few issues. The casual player who just wants to level up can just do quests, use what random mobs drops they obtain, and never go off the beaten path, and still enjoy the game. Meanwhile, the experienced player can do grind dungeons for rewards, go into all the caves with tier 3 and 4 chests, complete boss alters raids, and make ample use of the trade market, all of which helps them create a strong build, and still enjoy the game. Wynncraft is designed in such a way where both playstyles are valid ways to experience the game. Video games shouldn't be about trying to make the player complete the game in as little time as possible or making the player explore every nook and cranny, and instead they should be about letting the playing enjoy and interact with the game in their own way, while still having a start and end destination.

(Also as an aside most features in the game are introduced in some early or mid game quest, so its not like people can easily miss key parts of the game)