The Shift Feature

I'd be honest, despite the new system having it's merits, the New Dialogue System made me feel more apathy towards Wynncraft. I'm a person who likes to take a lot of screenshots, and I always liked looking back at the conversation with NPCs. That, and you could leave a conversation midway. It didn't slow you down, and you can go back easily to see old text to reread it. Now, dialogues just feel so slow. I get people would want to skip dialogue, but if you were a new player and want to read through everything, Shifting feels slower than clicking. The thing with game design is, the thing players hate the most is being slowed down based on either movement, speed of the world around you, or being stopped. The new dialogue system slows down the world around you, both figuratively by having to use the keyboard instead of mouse to proceed, and literally by giving Slowness. Once you are used to the old system, you feel the bog downed slowness of the new system, and depending on how well/poorly you adjust to it, makes Wynncraft feel almost different to play in its entirety. And, here's the thing, I feel like even other RPG Maker games, games known for having textboxes with locked movement and just reading and pressing a button to progress, are done better than Wynncraft's New Dialogue System. RPG Maker games aren't known for their fast overworld movement, the overall speed of the world around them is slower. That, and text crawl slowly immerses the player to imagine as if the characters were speaking as the text shows up, allowing the player to think more of what they are saying, making it more slowly paced while not at the expense of the player having "empty" time of nothing happening and just reading. That, and pressing one of the main keyboard keys like "Z" is a lot more accessible than pressing "Shift". "Shift" is meant to be a button that's held down, that's why most RPG Maker games have you hold Shift and press "Z" to fast forward text. For Wynncraft, it's all about movement. A 3D platformer with dynamic movement and is fast paced. To be locked in place makes you feel trapped. Now, sometimes, it can be used as a POV, like in cutscenes, and that's okay since you are observing something with movement, animation. But the Slowness in dialogue? Jeevees, you FEEL that feeling of trappedness. You have to read each sentence and progress slowly for each next text dialogue. It would have been better to just give us a paragraph to read, since there's so much "empty" time in having to read with nothing happening, and if you want us to slowly read it, you might as well given it to us all at once so that we have more pieces to think about and how it all coincides with the previous sentences (which you can't as much due to dialogues going one at a time and previous ones being barely visible). That, and Shift to press. You see, the default normally is to have "Shift" to be held down to Sprint for Minecraft. Why? Because it's a side button, that can be easily accessed at the edge of a keyboard that a finger can hold down without limiting how the other letter buttons are pressed. It's meant to be held down, not pressed a bunch of times, as most people use their pinky finger to hold it down, while your other fingers stay in the middle letter keys and do most of the typing. Have you ever tried typing with just your pinky? It's painful, and slower, so you would want to move your entire hand for one of your other fingers over Shift. This small movement surprisingly has an impact in that the player has to go out of their way creates "empty" time of feeling bored or slow downed. The reason why RPG Maker makes use "Z" to advance dialogue is since they'll use it all the time during gameplay. It's used everywhere, and players get used to it. Your left hand is always positioned at the lower left part of the keyboard, and is easy to hold down Shift if you want to skip. You press "Z" all the time with one of your main typing fingers, and it works. That and you move using the Arrow Keys. For Wynncraft, you don't usually press Shift multiple times, and your movement keys are normally on "WASD''. You normally use Click as your primary Pressing button, like with "Z" for RPG Maker. To have your dialogue advancing key be far away, to be a button you rarely use, and not be easily pressed to where your left hand is, makes Shift an uncomfortable button to constantly press, and is a lot more out of the way, than just clicking, or even just clicking another letter key like pulling out menu. Especially when reading dialogue. Now, you might just ask, "If you hate this so much, just reconfigure Shift''. The thing is, this new system is supposed to be for new players. Most new players don't reconfigure keys, like how most people don't edit Gamma settings to see in Low Lighting. Most people don't reconfigure keyboard settings, or are too used to the default settings. While this may seem petty, it does have an effect. Half a second is all it takes to make a person read a few words. Small discomforts makes things feel less accessible. They feel chunky, and make a person drop the system. It makes it feel slow, uncomfortable, and one where you have to think a lot more out of your way rather than just passively flow, in a world where things are supposed to be a lot more dynamic. And that is my major problem with the New Dialogue System, it feels like it wastes the player's time. It both simplifies and makes it complex, while alienating veterans. It makes errors in subconscious Game Design that in turn, makes the experience slow and clashes with the overall environment of the game around them.

(Jeevees, that was 1000+ words and 5000 characters ._.)

 

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