New player experience (ftue)

[dire wigeon]

yeah fair. mage is defintely the one that's just. suffering due to low damage outside of meteor

[floral mica]

playing shaman at level is completely free outside of rymek luke

[fossil citrus]

because you'll get oneshot?

[floral mica]

because you can literally afk with summoner and still complete content faster than your average mage player

[dire wigeon]

rymek luke to me is just the only boss altar that might as well be class locked

and honestly.. i'd love more boss altars like that cater to a specific class

[fossil citrus]

i did it at level with archer

[floral mica]

rymek luke is actually fucked on every class except for archer and assassin (not acro)

[fossil citrus]

i think with mage you could outrange with meteor/ice snake?

[floral mica]

shaman moves too slowly to get out of the way and mage/warrior need to be in range to deal damage

[dire wigeon]

he has combat dodges now so mage might have issues

you send a meteor his way and he just rolls out of the way

[floral mica]

I died like 30 times before figuring out a way to summon puppets and then stand at the border of enemy simulation range and then afk for 2 minutes

that's the only way to get rid of rymek luke if you don't have good movement options

[fossil citrus]

you can get psychokensis at level 40 (+18 meteor range) shockingly so you could outrange him

[dire wigeon]

Honestly though. is there a point to do it as a class that isn't archer? The gear isn't worth it outside of archer

[vivid mural]

sundown poncho iirc

thats it

[dire wigeon]

yeah. But honestly this post. Like i don't have these problems but i can just see the issues new players would have. As yeah the early game is gonna be terrible if you go in blind and want to see all the text dumps on quests or managing inventory

[craggy patio]

empty casings

used it once for a level scaling build

[frail dagger]

So here’s a separate question, how do I pick Arcanist? I couldn’t find a way to select that or info on how. It sounds like there’s just ability point choices that are tied to it but no formal selection

[vivid mural]

ability skill tree

[ember crypt]

Wtf no it's not? Ranged attacks + raw melee armor is really common on a normal-fast attack speed wand

[vivid mural]

yeah i basically used haqherphix for like 20-30 levels before replacing

which is like early i think

[mellow mason]

arcanist is part of the archetype system. In the ability tree, each class has tree archetypes, with their own gameplay loops, strengths and weaknesses

[vivid mural]

nvm its level 42

[mellow mason]

arcanist is one of mage's archetype

[frail dagger]

Does it have separate trees or is it just “in general when going through the tree take the ones that say arcanist”

[mellow mason]

most of the abilities on the right of mage's tree is part of the arcanist archetype

[vivid mural]

the latter

[craggy patio]

every archetypes are created equal, but some are more equal than others

[vivid mural]

to simulate different playstyles of the same class

[dire wigeon]

surprise animal farm

[frail dagger]

Got it. They way folks were talking about it in videos I assumed it was a formal choice made like a specialization

[mellow mason]

all three archetypes are on the same tree and you can take any ability you want, but you'll need a minimum amount of used points in an archetype to take the more powerful abilities of this archetype

[solar fog]

this way you can also create hybrid archetype playstyles!

[ember crypt]

The ability tree is split up into 3 categories. You don't "pick arcanist" but you pick arcanist abilities. You can multiclass and split up your gameplay however you feel you want to play, which is the super awesome part about this game. If you don't want to fully commit to Arcanist you don't have to.

Some abilities will lock each other out though, and you have limited points, so you still need to exercise some actual decision making

[vivid mural]

dont do this on mage early game

generally unadvised to spec hybrid early on most classes unfortunately

[ember crypt]

@frail dagger Arcanist is easy mode because it prints mana, and allows you to build for more tanky or damaging armor without worrying about your mana sustain. But, you are sacrificing your heal spell in order to do so. It's a trade-off of what you want to sacrifice and prioritize

[craggy patio]

hybrids are terrible addition to the game

[ember crypt]

Disagree, but hybrids are only good if you have background spells a-la shaman sorrow. Otherwise why would you waste your time with melee when you can meteor spam

[mellow mason]

@frail dagger the three mage archetypes:

Arcanist, on the right, is all about generating tons of mana and spamming spells as fast as possible

Lightbender, in the middle, is about healing, as well as some neat support abilities

Riftwalker, on the left, is all about getting better overtime, until unleashing one powerful attack at the end (although this powerful attack is unlocked at the end of the tree)

[vivid mural]

crazy how actual hybrid implementation on mage in the form of riftwalker isnt in the middle path for whatever reason

what were they thinking

by actual its really just winded tho

[craggy patio]

the world if winded affects melee dmg

[ember crypt]

I think to limit shared nodes so that arcanist wouldn't be OP, and so that Lightbender had access to both for some moderate damage boosts

[ember crypt]

early game you can build winded and just ice snake, but like, it's not fun lol

You basically have to guess/intuit how much winded before you can start committing to spells

[craggy patio]

ice snake is mid game if you rush to timelock

but yeah totally there are flaws about mage in terms of progression wise

[ember crypt]

no im saying like level 30, Almuj area. Melee a bunch, then ice snake for big damage boost if you're pure Rift

[mellow mason]

more like there's flaws with riftwalker (no way )

[ember crypt]

🙏 that rift walker gets a healthy melee integration

[mellow mason]

real

[vivid mural]

twains arc now added to riftwalker

thats the rework

[mellow mason]

[vivid mural]

addition of ghost trigger for a later major rework

[craggy patio]

no way fly hacking implemented in mage

[vivid mural]

ikr that would go crazy if they added flying to rw

[hot laurel]

suspended soliloquy

[craggy patio]

would be a crazy world if it doesnt consume any mana at all!

[mellow mason]

would be crazy if they made it walk through rifts...

[frail dagger]

It’s interesting to note the teleport spell only becomes available at level 8 I think, so the first 7 levels you can’t teleport on top of a tree even if you think that will work and the game will allow it

[vivid mural]

no the game very well allows you to have omnidirectional movement most of the time

thats like the thing with minecraft mmos pretty much

[frail dagger]

I’m just talking about there being an extra layer of assumptions here. Every time you add another layer of assumptions the funnel shrinks by some amount

The first 6 levels (level 2 happens during tutorial I think so it’s not relevant) is when players are still most likely to worry about inventory and quest management. The fact quests in content book need to be moused over to read them is relevant too.

[vivid mural]

im curious to how you even discovered wynncraft in the first place

[brave estuary]

Having to mouse over stuff is the only way to do it. Minecraft limitation

[vivid mural]

cuz i used to play hypixel skyblock so my expectations are limited around vanilla minecraft systems

[frail dagger]

There are automatically popping objectives and quests in the right side quest tracker too.

[frail dagger]

It’s part of my current research deep dive into UGC driven mods.

Several times a year I play every popular or high rated game in a genre I have low experience with

[brave estuary]

The right side score board can only show about 15 lines. It's also quite intrusive because it's permaently on the screen

[vivid mural]

im willing to bet a sizeable playerbase originated from hypixel who are more acclimated to these systems and limitations which is where you get the contention of friction between players with different experiences to mcmmos and minecraft servers as a whole

[frail dagger]

Can those be made scrollable? I don’t to do that necessarily, just curious. If I was designing from scratch (which is not the case here) I try to limit info to what can be comfortably displayed on screen at appropriate times. One reason I praise the item identification system here, because it encourages you to go back to town and leads to you naturally sorting through inventory in a safe area

[brave estuary]

Not really no

[frail dagger]

I’m 100% confident we’d have had a much better first experience if we had no quests in the content book at all, or maybe 2-3 max. When I decided to test ignoring the content book and just go exploring we had more fun.

[brave estuary]

it's just a display, you can't interact with it

[vivid mural]

uhhhhhh

[craggy patio]

free will

[frail dagger]

The caves and enemies already had good signposting for level ranges, names, etc.

It was really well done and kept the eyes on the world, which naturally avoided issues of navigating menus

[frail dagger]

It seemed inefficient at first to do it this way, because we assumed the game was directing us to the content book for a reason and also because we didn’t know where to go - so surely following quests would lead us to good places

[pine falcon]

yeah unfortunately the early game is filled with quite a few irrelevant fetch quests made with the purpose of familiarizing the player with the quest system but i guess that could lead to a lot of bloat and slow the player down

as you progress you get bombarded with much fewer quests and the quests you do receive are much higher quality and more interesting

[craggy patio]

theres some filler quests and “main story line” quests for early game. they are labelled at the bottom of the quests name in the content book

i get it if the content book shows like a pathway (like minecraft vanilla achievements menu) to show whats good for new players to progress instead of “hey you unlocked this at this level, do it now” (sensory overload)

[craggy patio]

yes what he said^

[brave estuary]

An issue with earlygame is that you level up too fast, resulting in you getting crammed with all the really low level stuff you didn't do

[frail dagger]

If that was the new player experience that’d be cool. There’s merit to the “holy shit there’s so much to do” initial player experience but usually when other games hit you with that they make it easier to consider the new content without breaking your flow

I really like the pace of new player level ups, it was very motivating and I didn’t get new abilities too fast to enjoy them or feel comfortable with the old ones. It was the quest overload and how they related to various inventory items that was most of the issue.

[vivid mural]

yea they could do some more distinction between which quests are major or optional

[craggy patio]

basically other modpacks like gtnh have a guide for how to progress, since this is an mmorpg it would likely for early game levels (1-20)

[vivid mural]

like color coding

atm its just your typical blue quests and green questline series

[craggy patio]

ngl showing world event in one of the quests in nivla forest is kinda ehh, rather introduce it to tutorial

[frail dagger]

Also not all items were unidentified in the wild which did make me want to read when I got a new wand to quickly see if it was better and swap to it if so, but often it was quest gated or skill gated and that led me to other menus. Normally I praise this kind of design because it helps the player form goals. “I want to use this item, I should do the cooks assistant quest!” Worked great, but trying to navigate that in the wild areas is frustrating.

[craggy patio]

cuz every 2 minutes or so you will get bombarded with messgae like “This world event starts in this many minutes”

[frail dagger]

Yeah we saw that and tried to figure out if we should abandon our quests to take part or not etc

[vivid mural]

items that have quest requirements only typically are shown as quest rewards with the occasional merchant vendor

the latter being way later in the game as well

[frail dagger]

We got like 3 or 4 in the first hour of play

[pine falcon]

only identified items you will be finding in the wild are the normal rarity items which are usually only an upgrade if you had nothing equiped in that slot

[craggy patio]

however some of the items that the world event give are decent, it is just not shown to be incentivised enough for early game players as it is easy be get confused because there isnt a clear correlation between world events = good loot early on

[pine falcon]

sometimes you get items that are revealed, they show what the item is and how the stats can roll but you still have to identify them

[vivid mural]

items that drop from mobs dont have requirements other than the specified level and skill point reqs (skill points as in the ones seen directly through compass menu, not the ability tree)

you should never be using normal white items they are always trash

[mellow mason]

depressing weapons my beloved

[vivid mural]

^

you probably shouldnt worry about it now cuz its for a later quest but if you ever find a "depressing" weapon do not ever trash it

[craggy patio]

lowkey kinda worrying too much for inv management

[vivid mural]

lowkey you can get by with merchant weapons and armor

[mellow mason]

aren't you backsitting a lil' too much

[vivid mural]

yea 💀

but dont suffer with having to buy it later

[frail dagger]

Good to know, and for a new player the only way to figure that out is to read and compare enough items to understand the statistical deviation

[craggy patio]

the game does not encourage players to buy them to an extent comparing to exploring caves and do world events

wished the game does

[mellow mason]

that's kinda logical for weapons you find yourself to be better than weapons NPCs sell you

[vivid mural]

theres still some good shit you can find there

[vivid mural]

its just a fallback if for some reason you dont have anything good on tier yet

which is handy for less rng reliance

[mellow mason]

it can work like that yeah

[craggy patio]

yes but in early level, merchants should be a stepping stone

[mellow mason]

meh

[craggy patio]

in level 60-80 you dont need them that much anymore

[tardy belfry]

the quests serve no purpose other than unlocking fast travel and being stories im pretty sure

the first questline does kind of act like a tutorial

(dark green quests)

[charred ice]

i'd chalk it up to people still being on edge from the kinda snobby guy and his thread about early game a couple of days ago

[keen delta]

if you’re talking about this post specifically, you are proving terms point

[dire wigeon]

this is literally the only post about earlygame i can see this week. OP's not even being snobby. It's a valid point the game throws a LOT at you especially in open areas

[livid anvil]

I didnt even get to read that other post because they deleted the original message and i dont blame them by reading the comments 😭

nah there was another thread ^^

[charred ice]

not this thread, the shadowcloud guy

[dire wigeon]

aww i missed that ;-;

[keen delta]

I see

[charred ice]

op here seems like chill guy

[keen delta]

I still do believe that some people always want to oppose any idea that is suggested from reading the title alone, even if there is no downside at all to the suggestion/feedback though which is unfortunate

[mellow mason]

what was the other thread about?

[charred ice]

#1384404072819458150 message see for yourself

[mellow mason]

jeez 😭

[tardy belfry]

oh prolly that yea

[ember crypt]

Funny thing about this, I accidentally gave myself creative flight in a lootrun and couldn't turn it off

[vivid mural]

crazy but how does this make timelocked useable

[ember crypt]

You would have liked it back when the quest book was just quests

[vivid mural]

Big Slash S BTW for The 2 Riftwalker Fans

[ember crypt]

Like, permanent flight. I couldn't turn it off

[vivid mural]

yes i am simply downplaying the effect for comedic effect

[wild solstice]

idol would still be faster

@grok what is going on in this thread till now

[frail dagger]

Room temp at most :)

[frail dagger]

This was something I intuited. The pacing of the game makes way more sense if there are minimal UI elements to consider or quest activities to juggle. Layering on the quest complexity for experienced players works fine because they are familiar with pacing and expectations already. If implemented simultaneously, there's a conflict in expected gameplay flow.

[dire wigeon]

reading that thread jesus christ.

[frail dagger]

Explains why we had people insisting in this thread that they've never seen any new player feedback like this before, because people try to bully them into silence. Like, even this thread has more dislikes than likes and a weird "pregnant man" reaction spammed at the top. And this is pretty mild negative feedback. Not saying the game sucks or anything.

Frankly I've left feedback in lots of game discords and this is definitely one of the most hostile reactions I've seen. If I'd known I was in for a 1000-reply thread to a post on one frustration, I wouldn't have posted in the first place.

[scenic sigil]

Its cuz people A: lemmingtrain and just agree with the majority or B: think that you are wrong

I think that you are wrong in that mob spawning should be toned down globally, and part of your issue was just not having the minecraft instinct of high place = safe. And yeah, some areas are stupid and need to be toned down, like the spider area

[frail dagger]

Thinking someone's wrong doesn't mean you should insult them or yell at them about it. Like we had people highly motivated to discredit me however possible, including the weird self-own thinking art from a cardgame released in 2020 was made by AI.

[frail dagger]

Clarification: I didn't say it should be tuned down globaly. I've only been to 2-3 zones.

[scenic sigil]

Ah ok then i misinterpreted something lol

Oh and there needs to be something explaining that you can actually filter the quest book? And make it clear

And what everything means cuz i can see how the content book can be overwhelming

[frail dagger]

I actually only advocated for changes in new player areas, partly because I've only seen new player areas and because I think a lot of the issues I ran into vanish when you don't go to menus often

[ember crypt]

But you see, this is also a kids game and kids are uh

Not nice

[mellow mason]

nah what should be done is for the book's main menu to only show quests, and the filter having the possibility to show everything

[scenic sigil]

If you made a thread like this i think most ppl would agree yeah

[frail dagger]

I've given lots of feedback on kids games before. Kids can be wild but it's usually a server-by-server thing. More hostile communities make people think it's okay to be hostile and make people that don't want to be hostile or deal with hostility leave.

[mellow mason]

I have a feeling some may have already been done in the past, like the character/account bank problems

[frail dagger]

That's not as useful for dev feedback.

[mellow mason]

I'll check tomorrow

[scenic sigil]

Also i will say most of wynn is pretty nice, just not suggestions specifically. Like this is the only horrid area, even in the discord

[dire wigeon]

holy hell this, that quest book is a nightmare with it defaulting on everything

[mellow mason]

debatable

[mellow mason]

I'll probably make a thread about it tomorrow

[fallow hound]

it could be that the most active people are also the people who play the most and the people who are the most out of touch with new players...

[frail dagger]

For game devs, it's most useful to give feedback like this: “Describe your experience the way you might explain how you're feeling to a doctor.” A lot of us jump past this and go straight to solutions, such as calling for specific changes in the game. This would be akin to a patient walking into a doctor's office and saying "Please schedule me for an MRI on my left leg, and prescribe me X medication for 14 days." Even if the patient is 100% right about what should be done, the doc can't know that until they've learned what the patient's symptoms are.

Doctors diagnose patients by matching their symptoms to a list of possible conditions and performing tests to narrow things down. If someone sent the message above to a doctor, the doctor would have to guess what the person has diagnosed themselves with, and what underlying symptoms might have caused that. It takes a lot of untangling.

[fallow hound]

active on this forum*

[scenic sigil]

Nah suggestions is kinda toxic to everyone tho. Like on 99% of downvoted threads

[frail dagger]

That's also why I emphasized my level and minecraft experience, even though it only lowers my "credibility", because it's important context for devs to have.

A few years ago, a friend at another company got a bunch of negative player feedback during an early beta for an MMO they were working on. Players overwhelmingly complained that the distance between [Zone A] and [Zone B] was way too far. Naturally, the lead producer told the team they should reduce the distance between those zones.

But wait, ripping out a chunk of the world map would have been a huge amount of work. It would take weeks to rebuild the world so the edges of the removed zone looked like they naturally connected. Plus, it would remove a lot of cool terrain that was already built. It’d basically be setting fire to free real estate. Was it necessary?

After digging into the feedback the designers concluded, "The players are probably calling for a shorter distance as a solution to their actual problem: they're bored. The players complaining about this are very quest-focused, so they're running through the area after getting the quest to go from Zone A to Zone B, and are ignoring anything that isn't part of that quest until it's done. This area has a lot of cool monsters and hidden treasure, but these quest-focused players aren’t doing anything that isn’t part of a quest so.... Let's put a few quests in there. It'll take one designer just a few days."

This ended up working great. The complaints disappeared during the next playtest. Instead of spending weeks ripping out a chunk of the world, the designers spent a few days adding to the world instead. Players now had new quests that encouraged them to explore the area and discover the cool stuff that was already there. In fact, there was even some new feedback that the area should be bigger.

[fallow hound]

great example

[mellow mason]

really nice thing to talk about lol, I'm aware of this concept as well but don't speak up about it because I feel like the wynn devs already know about that

[scenic sigil]

I like reasons and suggestions both, but whatevs, as long as it gets understood

[mellow mason]

although lootrun still needs a RELIC SYSTEM GRAAAAAAAAH

[scenic sigil]

No imagine like a lootrun thing where you start with full basic gear and actually have to use the loot you get from chests n stuff

I would love that. Making a build on the fly

[mellow mason]

that'd be absolutely amazing and I'd play that all day long

[fossil citrus]

wouldn't it be funny if you got a mythic

[frail dagger]

You can give suggestions at the end, I gave various ones in my OP, but people often leap to suggestions. Like saying, "Schedule me for a biopsy on my left thigh" is baffling to a doctor, but saying "I felt symptom X in my left thigh which I've heard is a symptom for cancer... I might need a biopsy there to find out if it's cancer." That the doctor can follow.

[mellow mason]

that's what I did for the very few threads I've made in the past yeah

useful stuff

[scenic sigil]

Problem is pivoting your build to fit that mythic, but yeah it would be funny

[fallow hound]

it would be interesting if the wynn devs ran a test where a player who hasn't heard anything about the game played through the entire thing and record the gameplay. then they could use info from this to locate buggy quests and know what to focus on to fix new player problems like you described here throughout the whole game

[mellow mason]

so a playtest?

[fallow hound]

basically

[mellow mason]

massive playtest if they gotta play through the entire game lol

[fallow hound]

probably a bad idea but idk

[frail dagger]

@mellow mason That's a specific kind of user testing called "Blind Funnel" usually. Playtesting is rarely just "play the game", it's structured like science experiments testing specific hypothesis.

[mellow mason]

ofc yeah, but in general you'd still want the player to know minimum informations so that it's not actually biased

[frail dagger]

The nice thing about blind funnel testing is that it's really easy to organize. I do it all the time on various games. I released a side-project with some other industry friends for fun, a game jam prompt that got WAY out of hand with the premise "Fromsoft made a pokemon game" and we've had at least 60 blind funnel tests over the last few years - 80% of them just finding twitch or youtube vods of people who tried it without us knowing them at all ahead of time.

[fallow hound]

because the game is so big, there are tons of small problems thoughout all contentthat could be fixed by doing this to polish the whole game

[frail dagger]

It's a good idea, assuming they aren't already doing it or watching new players try the game out on twitch anyway. A lot probably are, people like seeing new players try their games.

[fallow hound]

I literally did this over the last month but didn't mark any down 💀

[mellow mason]

damn, what a shame

[frail dagger]

A shame?

[mellow mason]

that a majority of the tests were biased (if I understood correctly)

[frail dagger]

Biased how?

[mellow mason]

they already knew how the game works from watching YT or twitch

oh wait no I misunderstood

[frail dagger]

Yeah, we found vods of them playing.

[mellow mason]

my bad 🥴

[fallow hound]

o7

[frail dagger]

No problem. Also, knowing something about the game upfront isn't necessarily bias either - many people learn something about a game before playing it. It rarely affects the moment to moment issues. Only if someone has told them "do X specifically", and if a LOT of players are getting that info before playing that's useful context anyway.

If it wasn't for all that testing we likely wouldn't have released pokemon salt & shadow in the first place, because once you see players struggling in footage it becomes highly motivating to fix it. And if you see thme having fun it becomes highly motivating to make more. :)

[ember crypt]

@frail dagger I think the biggest thing is that a lot of people misinterpreted what you were trying to say. My knee jerk reaction was thinking "Oh this person is like that cup head reviewer" because of what it seemed like. I think the dislikes and mpreg reactions reflect that it was a lot of other people's first impression too.

Like, I'm glad that I kept pursuing the conversation and figured out what the post actually meant, but I don't think most people will go beyond that first impression

[mellow mason]

same tbh

[frail dagger]

In general, it's better to start curious rather than judgmental. The first reaction most people have to a study on "18 out of 20 users stuggled with this functionality for an hour" is "wow, where did you find 18 stupid people?"

[mellow mason]

glad to be one of the first person that actually tried to understand your reasoning

[frail dagger]

Regarding the "like a cuphead reviewer" - my OP was not saying "I didn't try to read the instructions". My complaint was the opposite. I was trying very hard to read the instructions. ;)

[ember crypt]

I also wanted to be understanding but I tend to come off as abrasive in text when I don't mean to. It's a lot harder to convey tone over text ..

[mellow mason]

indeed

[frail dagger]

As a sidenote, the cuphead reviewer was not reviewing the game. He was writing a post mocking himself (a post that led with "I suck at cuphead") and was just casually trying the demo while at a games convention, while other people are milling around and chatting with him occasionally.

People usually do terribly at these conventions because they don't really try or don't play those games regularly. I legit shocked the people running the demo of shovelknight for the switch when I picked it up and beat the demo. Hadn't played shovel knight before, but it was not a hard level and I have played harder platformers before like many gamers - but the people running it were legitimately shocked. I didn't even think I was playing well. Most people just aren't really trying and there's a lot going on.

The internet just decided it was time to mock a games journalist.

[simple sphinx]

I mean its not hard to understand that mobs hitting you when trying to read or menu is annoying, but also I dunno what to do about it other than fix the guards and add some more safe areas. Seems like something low priority though. The mpregs and dislike probably come from the introduction as game designer, the long text and the quitting at lvl 9 and little minecraft experience... Doesnt make it wrong though

[ember crypt]

Ok true. I remember 4 stocking this random guy on a smash Ultimate display switch. It really made me realize "Oh wow. My skills in this are wildly disproportionate to how people normally experience the game"

[fallow hound]

this could just be me, but I feel like just adding more safe zones is kind of a band aid fix, when the real problem is lots of information and no knowledge to read it in ragni before you go out to where there are monsters

[ember crypt]

I like the idea of thematic "soldier camps" where there's other soldiers NPCs and monsters naturally avoid the camp because it's a clear and obvious danger to them. Hell, even a potion merchant or two in the camp would be really cool

[frail dagger]

I accidentally killed Towerfall Tuesday at my first game studio because they told me they'd been playing it for a year weekly, and they had an in office leaderboard. I hadn't played the game before and didn't want to embarass myself. So I bought it and practiced all weekend and monday night. Showed up on tuesday and I won almost every game. Next tuesday it was more extreme. There was no third tuesday.

[fallow hound]

lol

[frail dagger]

I"m not an amazing gamer on any major scale, I'm good at figuring games out and have played a lot of different genres. That's enough to outperform folks playing casually by big margins.

Even though I'm also playing casually by most peoples' measurs of course.

[fallow hound]

i play fortnite occasionally; when I first was getting into the game I spent some time practicing building because (imo) I was terrible. my friends who don't really try act like I'm a tier 1 pro...

[frail dagger]

Good example. It is... Very easy to get into the top 10% of skill level of something.

Meanwhile, the top players will often have insane differences between them and see things as obvious that other people don't even think to look at.

[fossil citrus]

then here comes top 1%, then 0.1%...

[ember crypt]

@frail dagger can you remind me tomorrow to buy more body wash I'm running out

[frail dagger]

No

[fossil citrus]

and then people start making hyper-optimized setups where dps i.e, the part where you kill stuff fast is prioritzed over mostly everything else

[frail dagger]

You can fix guards and add more safe areas. Changing how spawns work in early areas could help too (make it possible to clear an area for brief periods of time rather than monsters respawning within seconds of killing them in many cases), or use tethered "yellow mob" aggro. Having enemies not aggro on you if you're in a menu screen COULD work too, but may have odd ripple effects and be abusable in certain modes. That'd be trickier.

[fallow hound]

it's almost logarithmic in a way, the skill curve of some games

[frail dagger]

that's what makes gw2 raiding so fun. The skill ceiling is ridiculous and the skill impact is ridiculous too, so good players look like gods to casuals and great players look like goods to good players and world-class... Etc.

What's interesting is that 99% of the game's content is tuned for casuals, and a small amount is tuned for good players, and a VANISHINGLY small amount is tuned for great players. So you don't have to get good. You just get to look like a god if you do decide to dot hat.

For context, in the same gear and at the same level, a great player can out-do 12 casual players. A team of 5 great players can take on like 30 easily.

The community is funny about it too though. I have friends on the dev team and reddit often begs for actually challenging open world content and the devs keep having to explain "like 50% of players are running around at max level with NO trinkets and NEVER selecting stats for some of their armor. They're basically naked!"

[fallow hound]

I don't know if you know this, but (maybe not relevant) wynn actually has an interesting dynamic with builds once you reach the level cap (105)

[frail dagger]

(counter-intuitively, trinkets are by far the most important stat contributors of your gear)

[fallow hound]

huh

[frail dagger]

Nope, how's it work?

[scenic sigil]

I can yap so much about wynn building omg

Ok ok ok i can explain cuz i love builds n stuff but its hard here

Cuz theres a 10 sec delay timer (and i gotta eat gimmie a min)

[charred ice]

i think this is the most evenly divided thread i've seen in a while
i haven't been a new player in like 4 years so i honestly cant weigh in

[ember crypt]

Mfw I started 10 years ago

[scenic sigil]

I can explain on vc gimmie a min

[ember crypt]

Over text too I wanna hear you yap :(

[scenic sigil]

(I just wanna yap abt builds ok)

[ember crypt]

I love end game build crafting

[scenic sigil]

I wanna use wynnbuilder to explain tho 😭

[frail dagger]

Sidenote, if anyone plays GW2 and wants to get into raiding the end game content, a guild I help out is doing a training run in 2 hours. New raiders get preference over experienced raiders in general, it's very much supposed to be a welcoming-new-players/raiders thing.

[scenic sigil]

I was thinking abt starting to play gw2 since i heard it isnt too grindy

I hate grinds a lot

[fallow hound]

professions 💀

[scenic sigil]

I still have trauma from that

Mining 100 😭

[tardy belfry]

the mpreg reaction might be my own fault bc ever since i convinced everybody to mpreg react that one antikythera post everybody just mpreg reacts a post they slightly disagree with 😔

[mellow mason]

😭

[tardy belfry]

so um oops

[scenic sigil]

For context, antikythera is a robot computer. Someone wanted them to make a human skin for it for… “reasons”

[frail dagger]

GW2 is not grindy at all. Legendaries are massively grindy timesinks but they offer no stat advantage at all and most players ignore them

[scenic sigil]

Wynncraft was really my first rpg and im a movement junky because of it now

[frail dagger]

As a fresh max level, you can buy endgame-worthy gear immediately from the trading post or a vendor, and the only gear better is only about 10% better. That you can get in a few weeks too, but it's not necessary for 95% of content.

[scenic sigil]

Thats like how wynncraft works

[tardy belfry]

same

[frail dagger]

Also, your gear doesn't get outdated. The stat cap for geat 10 years ago is the same as now

It's one reason I can be helping out with training raids while playing multiple other mmos

[fallow hound]

because of the roll mechanic in wynncraft, you can get a good build for cheap but the very best version of the build is super expensive and grindy

[frail dagger]

Skill and knowledge are by far the most important

yeah gw2 has 0 rng on items

[fallow hound]

there's a joke that the best part of the wynncraft endgame is gambling...

[frail dagger]

all exotic items have the same stats, same with ascended. Loot is a thing you work hard to get ascended gear farms for, and then you never really worry about it again. Even legendaries in that game are just "this item can be equipped to all your characters at once and change its stats to any stat combo at will... So once you have a legendary ring you never need another ring."

Well, you do because 2 ring slots but you get what I'm saying ;)

[scenic sigil]

ok i can get on vc and explain class building if you would like

[frail dagger]

sure why not?

[ember crypt]

https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/262010576295821312/1319628995813445652/image0.gif

[scenic sigil]

room 2 its time to yap

[tardy belfry]

https://tenor.com/view/conquest-conquest-invincible-conquest-invincible-heart-conquest-heart-conquest-i-love-you-gif-5006702512935813345

[fallow hound]

annihilation = big hard boss btw

@scenic sigil don't forget abt crafted builds

you don't unlock raiding until a high level though...

also, raids scale to your level so you don't need to have a level 105 class to play

[frail dagger]

We're talking about raids in discord, posting video I'm about to mention here for reference: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WIBTTAPd3ME

[fallow hound]

is my notg stream working

[coral totem]

holy shit the whole time i was so confused cause the only gw2 i knew was the fuckin pvz shooter game 😭

[lean plinth]

pvz gw2 goated fr

[dire wigeon]

those games should not of been as fun as they were. Weren't even that P2W for an EA game

[pine falcon]

if you're used to any MMOs raid bosses the stuff you will find in wynncraft looks like cookie clicker

[mellow mason]

really fun and genre-defining? True...

[vivid mural]

raid bosses in other mmos are use the glup shitto spell at the specific pixel on the map at the correct time with all other 29 guild members to not get wiped at the mid boss

you know to make it more difficult then relying on the good old healer dps tank trifecta

[patent widget]

🫃

[mellow mason]

bro's late

[frail dagger]

^ definitely no toxicity here, lol

[craggy patio]

thats why warring best content

[lean plinth]

True and real

[ember crypt]

Let us know the next time you hop on, we'll all play together 🔥

[tardy belfry]

that'd be peak

[frail dagger]

That does sound fun

[gleaming lily]

Yup ur banned 😤

[stray crane]

Hey freakcrow can i get some le

[gleaming lily]

Yea ofc

[stray crane]

Thanks send it through skype

[tardy belfry]

freakcrow are you a crow thats freaky or a lari lover theres no other option

[gleaming lily]

Larry is a cool guy she kills grootslangs and doesn’t afraid of anything

[stray crane]

Can you do a parody of somebody that i used to know

[gleaming lily]

Yea that’s after next video actually no joke

[stray crane]

Lmaooo

[gleaming lily]

I’ll spoil it a little it’s gonna be called “mythic that I used to own”

[stray crane]

peak

@craggy patio what mythics fell off

[stray crane]

Thrundacrack

[craggy patio]

hana

[stray crane]

hmm

[tardy belfry]

SELLING HERO FOR MONEY???

[lean plinth]

This but unironically

Still working on my Drake cover idk if I wanna release it though

Can't sing/rap for shit

[gleaming lily]

Ah I knew I remembered u

[tardy belfry]

did you get banned bc the #freesonder looks concerning

[lean plinth]

https://tenor.com/view/cat-scared-gif-27466237

Coming up on my 3 month banniversary

[gleaming lily]

Wanna be free? Call SirCMT!

[tardy belfry]

oh rip 😔

wynncraft is the only good game i keep going back to and love, if i get banned i'd probably idk, get a life xD

[lean plinth]

I'm still holding out hope

[tardy belfry]

praying you get unbanned soon bestie 🙏

[lean plinth]

[tardy belfry]

https://tenor.com/view/please7tv-please-beg-pray-hope-gif-3860103425950934673

btw what got you banned

[gleaming lily]

Free my boy he dindu nuffin!

[prisma hedge]

As someone who loves helping out new players, ping me if you ever wanna get on again. Reliving the early game is a personal favorite of mine, for Wynn.

[frail dagger]

Cool, I might try it again this week

[stray crane]

“Only good game” buddy buddy buddy

Ignorance is bliss

[stray crane]

This man is here to meet a level 13 mage

[lean plinth]

duping

[gleaming lily]

I deleted that meme 😢 it’s gotta be somewhere 😏

[stray crane]

Here you go take it back

[lean plinth]

LOL

[gleaming lily]

Gracias 🙏

The child in maltic’s well is level 15 I think which is funny

[tardy belfry]

duping what exactly?? >:))

[lean plinth]

I shouldn't share that

But it was much more serious than Mr freakycrow

[gleaming lily]

I cannot confirm or deny

[lean plinth]

Also i have a record so, not my first ban

Still holding out hope tho

[stray crane]

Why is brother duping in big 25

You shouldve bought out tm

[lean plinth]

I wasn't trying to tank the economy lmao

Believe it or not i don't want to ruin the game for others

[solemn hemlock]

whats up tony lc sign

[gleaming lily]

What’s up homies it’s Tony

[tardy belfry]

🤯

[lean plinth]

Listen with the prices rising every day...

I covered this in my song though

[tardy belfry]

was it void duping?...

[lean plinth]

What's that

In TNA?

[tardy belfry]

idk there used to be a bug hat allowed players to dupe in outer void

[lean plinth]

Oh nah, I found my own method

[tardy belfry]

aight

[lean plinth]

This was before the bug bounty thing though

[solemn hemlock]

my favorite saying in english is never bite the hand

[frail dagger]

Went in for another session and gained another 9 levels, trying a play pattern of ignoring the content book entirely. The slower progression and lack of quest management made the gameplay much smoother (no need to open menus often, just for the level-ups once every 15 minutes or so). Still found some quests in the open world and did a few that way.

biggest confusion point is on the XP-for-mob-kills formula so far. No idea why some mobs of lower level are giving similar or greater xp to mobs 10 levels higher in many cases. Guessing it's some sort of disincentive for fighting overleveled guys, or a secret bonus xp I'm unaware of, or some enemies being listed as "elites" or "minions" that I'm unaware of, eetc

[fallow hound]

yeah mobs near your level give more xp so you can't go kill share 1 level 100 mob and get like 20 levels

[thorny hull]

theres a system in place called xp decay, where the level difference between you and an enemy results in you gaining less experience. In general its to prevent just going to a level 100 area to speed level, at least thats the best way to put it.

[frail dagger]

That's interesting. I was kinda bored by fighting enemies near my level so i decided to challenge myself and fight enemies significantly above my level, and noticed it was mcuh more exciting but giving me much less XP overall because of how much longer they were taking to kill (enemies at my level died in 2-3 hits, enemies 10 levels above me were taking like 3x as long or more and giving only 50% more xp).

So I ultimately went back to fighting enemies at my level

[charred ice]

If you like tougher at level fights, check out boss altars
Bovine barn is like, level 25 i think, and somewhat tough at level

[frail dagger]

I'll look into it. I'm level 18 currently

[ember crypt]

it's to disencourage power leveling/getting carried by teammates.

Imagine if you went to a lvl 100 area, stay back in the party, and instantly jumped from lvl 10 to 41

[ember crypt]

@frail dagger also try dungeons!

[fallow hound]

yeah, dungeon bosses are harder than the typical enemy

[frail dagger]

I get that goal, but it's a shame it has the side-effect of disincentivizing playing at optimal challenge for skill. I'd probably consider the XP party issue as a separate thing, penalizing based on contribution/relative party level for overleveled areas or similar

[keen delta]

early game dungeons, when you complete them at the lowest possible level (5 levels below recommended level) reward a ton of experience if you want to level a bit quicker alone or with the friend that you started with

[frail dagger]

Friend isn't playing anymore but I might do some solo if that's feasible

[ember crypt]

I strongly suggest trying to make friends in the community! most of us are pretty chill people

Except me ofc

[cunning oxide]

maybe they could make it so a few levels above your level is not yet penalized, and then collapse the 3% less xp per level algorithm into something like 4% less xp per level, but starting a few levels above your level. While keeping the 3% less xp for mobs below your level, starting from your level.

but if the xp penalty is not there, some players (khm me) might just go for mobs 20-40 levels above my own level

[woven mist]

Currently it is +/-4 levels if im not mistaken

Maybe make it +/-10
Idk how this would impact big grind parties tho, you'd get way more xp in scrap starting with level 70 already. Maybe thats not wanted

Or maybe factor level aswell. So in low levels you have more leanway (+/-10) and by level 80 it ends up with the +/-4 again.

[mellow mason]

I don't think that's a problem, it helps dictates progression, and as said before, you have a few ways to fight stronger mobs without having to go to higher-level areas

altars, dungeons, world events...

and, if you still want more of a challenge during your progression, you can always handicap yourself by using worse gear

[woven mist]

My reasoning would be totally different. Not to give players a challenge, they can fight those mobs anyways. Nothing is stopping them. Just feels weird for a beginner, that those dont give you anything for your effort

That is frustrating for a new player

[frail dagger]

If "just voluntarily make it harder but slower" was fine, there'd be no issue in the first place with fighting harder content that gave much slower progression overall.

I was thinking "This is pretty easy, I could go take on a higher level area for more rewards and more fun" and it didn't work out. Didn't discover other harder content organically, and open world mob farming seems wildly xp-efficient. Also everyone says the best stuff is at higher levels anyway so I want to level fast.

[woven mist]

It needs to be balanced in grindspots so experienced player can not abuse it, but it being somewhat rewarding for a new player should be done

[mellow mason]

someone post the olinus xp grind vid

[ember crypt]

Yeah, mob grinding has been generally toned down a lot for quite a few reasons:

[frail dagger]

Generally balancing XP share by some amount of contribution to disincentivize players hitting high level enemies once in a party and getting full credit works well, and it wouldn't have affected my solo play. There's also solutions where XP works differently in parties.

[woven mist]

Wasnt this made before all those changes to grindparties made it way slower?

[frail dagger]

I did do one world event that told me in chat "join a party for this!" I was immediately swarmed from all sides and killed before I had much time to react, then kicked out of the event without a chance to try again so figured "okay these are clearly for parties or just generally not worth doing right now"

[mellow mason]

were these changed again? He made a new one fairly recently

[woven mist]

This is already in effect currently. Before there were literal afk grind parties where just 1 person farmed

[mellow mason]

tbh he pretty much just says effective grind spots and shit

[woven mist]

We not talking efficient grindspots with top level gear and k owledge tho.

We talking about beginner experience player on level 10 running to random ass lvl 20 mobs to get better stuff and for fun

[frail dagger]

This has to be incorrect right?

[woven mist]

Man im getting frustrated people always reasoning about totally missplaced stuff because they havent read anything before posting

[mellow mason]

what

[woven mist]

Oh they made a mistake. Around your level its more

[thorny hull]

Is that Fandom wiki

[frail dagger]

Also the "chance of getting 0 xp" seems wild.

[mellow mason]

I'd be lying if I said I perfectly knew this stuff, but did you get this from the wiki or the fandom?

[thorny hull]

Might be why

[frail dagger]

yeah it's fandom wiki.

[mellow mason]

fandom is not used anymore and old

[frail dagger]

Cool, it looked completely wild at a glance

[thorny hull]

Fandom was intentionally griefed by the maintainers

[mellow mason]

(and griefed in quite a few places )

[thorny hull]

https://wynncraft.wiki.gg/wiki/Wynncraft_Wiki

[mellow mason]

oh that was intentional?

lol

[thorny hull]

I know a good amount of stuff was intentional

Idk about that specifically

[ember crypt]

@frail dagger

1.) Grinding XP means you miss out on good items, leaving you woefully unprepared in higher level content.
2.) Grinding XP means you don't get to enjoy the story quests and amazing lore. You don't explore the map, world, or narrative, and you also miss out on Quest exclusive items that can be extremely valuable too cough cough Renda Langit.
3.) Mob grinding means you don't actually enjoy the World Events, amazingly animated bosses, or the fun dungeons that have genuniely unique mechanics behind them
4.) The biggest reason of them all, power leveling your character will leave you extremely unfamiliar with your archetype and abilities. For experienced players it doesn't matter, we have hundreds of hours getting to know our class intimately, but it's not uncommon to find a lvl 75 mage who doesn't know they're supposed to take Divination on their lightbender class either because of lack of experience, or gaining levels too quickly before they can acclimate to the ones they already have and learn the nuance in using them.

Anecdotally, I power leveled an archer class because I wanted to get to the end game and try out a funny build with it, and I realized that by the time I got to level 105.. I really didn't know how to play archer for shit. All of my experience was spent grinding mobs with huge parties. None of it was in any actual challenging content. I never allowed myself the time to get familiar with my abilities I would just spend them and go down the tree as soon as I got them

[thorny hull]

yea thats more correct

[frail dagger]

This is the wynncraft wiki version. This squares with what I saw in game. Definitely not a fan of this formula

[ember crypt]

I do agree though that the range is to restrictive

[frail dagger]

Punishing players for fighting underleveled mobs is good but disincentivizing fighting overleveled mobs is not good. Encouraging players to fight the hardest content that they can meaningfully engage with for bigger rewards, or fight chill content for less rewards but less stress, is much more organic and works much better.

[ember crypt]

The particular execution I think could be better, but the overall goal I think is good. Discourages newer players from trying to speed run the game and ruin it for themselves

[frail dagger]

The result for me is that I feel less motivated to explore and more locked to grind in the prescribed areas until I'm allowed up. Feels demotivating and reduces the sense of adventure.

[vivid mural]

quests shit out xp out of the wazoo

[woven mist]

But needs to be balanced with big grind parties aswell.

I just think, back in the day when those changes were made, they didnt think about lower level beginners

[vivid mural]

and so does dungeons

its one of those server tips you see come up once in a while in chat

[frail dagger]

Other systems can address party dynamics and farm locations without tinkering with the level formula itself

[vivid mural]

ofc grinding at specified spots with "double xp" parties you see occasionally in party finder can get you max level in like a day but those are typically used by experienced players who have already did their first class playthrough normally

[solar fog]

if it'd be possible to only nerf shared xp on overleveled content that'd be cool

[woven mist]

Oh no, there is a kid drowning in the river. Should be try and get it?

• nah bro, the kid can swim in the pool aswell.

[vivid mural]

???

how is that comparable exactly

[woven mist]

"Why fix mob rewards for beginners when they can just do dungeons and quests."

[vivid mural]

quests are also easy?

[woven mist]

Swimming in the pool is easy

[mellow mason]

well I mean, yeah, they can play normally

[vivid mural]

dude you cannot be fucking serious

[woven mist]

The kid cant be serious anymore

[vivid mural]

not even going to entertain this argument

[thorny hull]

Bad faith argument

[woven mist]

Its the god damn same reasoning tho

[mellow mason]

except the game teaches you about quests, like how you get taught about swimming, so what about it

[frail dagger]

Some systems other games use for preventing farm abuse in one area:

1. Respawning mobs do not give full XP on spawn. They give only a small portion of their XP and regain their full amount over time. Discourages farming same mobs repeatedly.
2. When you kill a mob, you get an XP reduction from killing the same mob type that is not noticeable in normal questing but is very noticeable if you farm the same content for extended periods of time.

As for parties power levelling, it's usually simpler:
Distribute XP based on contribution thresholds (like the GW2 Bronze/Silver/Gold event contribution, only for basic kills - you need to do at least X% of damage to get normal rewards and get sharply deflated rewards otherwise)

[frail dagger]

I specifically learned to ignore the quest book in my playthrough so far.

[mellow mason]

while I agree the content book is bloated, that's honestly a you issue on this one

[woven mist]

Dont forget that we talking minecraft, there are many limitations within it. Also some easy stuff for other games sometimes needs weeks to implement in such a minecraft server

[frail dagger]

Farming random mobs at my level was producing bigger rewards for less annoyance and less menu-opening which was the main annoyance in zones having to continually scan bloated menus in often-hostile areas, plus was more fun to look around the world.

[vivid mural]

there isnt really a reason to warrant a drastic rework on current xp sharing

[woven mist]

New players wont ever do the most optimized thing. Maybe they even stay in the tutorial area untill they have a full inventory of emeralds, who knows.

[frail dagger]

shrugs not saying there is, just saying there are better systems for accomplishing the stated goals with fewer negative side-effects. The game is telling me "the most efficient way to play is to stay in areas dedicated for your level range despite the fact you find them boring" based on my playthrough so far, and the underlying XP math has that exact efffect fo incentivizing.

[woven mist]

Core point is: make the game fun and playable even when not choosing the most optimal path. That way you have way more players getting invested into the game, therefore higher playerbase, therefore more money

[vivid mural]

it seems you are suggesting for the game to work more like a mechanic from a game youre more experienced in rather than if its actually a tangible improvement for the current playerbase

[frail dagger]

If the goal is "punish players for exploring instead of staying to areas in their level range, regardless of whether they can handle the content" then yes, it's doing a good job

If the goal is "prevent farming abuse with minimal impact to players playing honestly" then the systems I referenced are better.

[vivid mural]

yes i would say level gating is a big elephant in the room though this isnt exactly different to other mmos like runescape or smthn

[frail dagger]

I had an experience outside a city where I saw some level 25ish mobs while I was level 13ish and thought "I wonder how hard those are, those enemies look cool". I fought them and was happy to discover I could take them on and had to actually use more of my abilities in the process to stay alive. I was having fun. Then some random level 14 minions showed up in a group and I nuked them with like one meteor and got like 2/3s of the XP each the level 25 enemies were giving me for way more effort. This went on for like 10 more minutes before I accepted "I'm being an idiot fighting harder content, I guess I should just kill mushroom cows"

Did this for a while, leaving the more interesting areas I ahd been working through alone.

[vivid mural]

however xp sharing rework just isnt worth spending dev time on for a sub section of the playerbase rn

so you'd much rather do quests until then

[frail dagger]

I'd agree with that, the system is not well designed but any system-wide changes like that without someone that knows exactly what they're doing is going to be a potential disaster.

They could copy/paste the solutions from better-designed systems but that will often have really weird ripple effects you'd need to test extensively

Identifying issues is a separate process from triaging them. This is the kind of thing that never gets fixed until a massive new player rework patch happens, or some system designer has too much time on their hands with no role in new content otherwise.

[vivid mural]

iirc the dev team are trying to rework some of the earlier older quests iirc due to not being up to their current standards

so yeah you could probably notice some old quests with dated design

[frail dagger]

That's good to hear. I've been uninvested in quests so far. I even did a dungeon without realizing it, the sewer one, and wasn't a fan

[mellow mason]

why weren't you?

[frail dagger]

Before being negative on something else, want to be clear that exploring the beautifully crafted open world and getting rapid dopamine hits from XP gain has been a lot of fun. I've enjoyed seeing something cool in the distance and going to explore it, fighting stuff there, and escaping with my life.

[vivid mural]

this server is like over a decade old and mostly held up by volunteer work

not to undermine their achievements however

[frail dagger]

As for why I wasn't a fan of the sewer dungeon, it seemed like minorly annoying platforming mixed with running past some enemies and then running from a flood. I was overleveled for the dungeon by then - like level 18 for it - so I didn't get the intended experience. I just stumbled across it while exploring after stumbling across the crab area.

[mellow mason]

ah, ofc yeah xd

[vivid mural]

its miraculous with some of the shit they pulled in minecraft here like rekindled raids and whatnot, though such shiny content tends to show up way later in the game

[mellow mason]

dungeons don't have level scaling

ig it'd be nice if there was a way for them to have it

[vivid mural]

all dungeons also suck ass except maybe sandswept tomb but dont take my word for it without your own experience

[frail dagger]

This shouldn't affect system design, but regardless wynncraft's devs are surely impressive. They've pulled off an mmo in a mod and kept it relevant for like a decade.

Mainly out of respect for that that I'm taking it seriously enough to give feedback. Like... Normally companies pay me for feedback at a few hundred dollars an hour for consulting.

[vivid mural]

actually it very well affects system design with minecraft network stack shenanigans

[frail dagger]

I'm just a fan of this kind of hustle and wanted to give some thoughts in case they were interested.

[mellow mason]

they definitely are so that's good

[frail dagger]

I know AAA teams with 300x the resources that haven't pulled off keeping a game relevant for this long, lol

[mellow mason]

also yeah, wynn being based in minecraft can hold up quite a lot of stuff (maybe not what you have noted, but yeah)

no attack-holding for left-click main weapons 🥺

[frail dagger]

Wynn being unmodded minecraft will be murder on the UI in particular, but underlying math shouldn't be

[vivid mural]

selvut boiling blood id incident

[frail dagger]

This also bothered me but I assumed it was an engine limitation. No way a dev left-click-spams for this many years without wishing they could change it otherwise

[mellow mason]

yeah, you can't easily detect holding left-click in minecraft from what I've been told

[frail dagger]

that seems like a "yell at mojang until they put it in" thing more than a "wynncraft devs fix it" thing

[vivid mural]

very well this

[mellow mason]

pretty much lol

[vivid mural]

players were screaming at mojang to add packet transfers for years so we'd have regional servers for hypixel and this

[fossil citrus]

except archer

because there's a packet for holding right click, but not left click

[mellow mason]

yeah that's why I said left-click main weapons

[vivid mural]

low ping is everything

[mellow mason]

(archer is the only right-click one due to bows in minecraft using r-click 🥴)

[frail dagger]

The funny thing is that wynncraft is very close to a game I could enjoy by primarily following questing ORjust going out and exploring the open world. The second one was even better and put more emphasis on the beautiful environments and freeform sense of adventure that minecraft does really well, with running across quest npcs in the wild being a novelty rather than a planned path. Level formula got in my way though and made me feel punished from exploring what looked interesting. If I was designing from scratch, which is not feasible for devs in a real live game, I'd be leaning into this playstyle and deepening the metaquests (the ones constantly updating based on general objectives like kill X mobs of a certain kind). The questing-first experience was fine but struggles with the UI and navigating NPC dialogue isn't what minecraft is built for so it's inherently swimming upstream.

I had fun in both methods, but had more fun just exploring and discovering quest content as I came across it. The game seems to be trying to force a prescribed path in its design, which requires more UI guidance and XP punishments for going off the intended path. Managing the quest navigation in the UI is also kind of a pain because minecraft isn't set up well for that, and it has an initial conflict with expectations for a new player (as checking quest text in hostile areas is not encouraged, and you can only track one at a time, so it can't benefit from nested multi-quest progression that makes quest-driven games so hooky in other mmos)

[vivid mural]

yeah a lot of people typically slap in mods like wynntils and whatever for more qol over the vanilla experience

legal mods mind you

[mellow mason]

I love when this kind of stuff is dictated to me so I overall can't really help ya with that 🥴

[woven mist]

Yeah, get wynntils and you will love it alot more

[mellow mason]

maybe I would have been scarred of by the UI if I started playing now, but it's pretty much impossible for me to truly understand how bad it is, so idk

[mellow mason]

one of his first complain was information bloat

[vivid mural]

wynntils is a lot of bloat but allows you to have a mini/world map and see actual item roll qualities without those stupid ass stars

but this isnt about modding ig

[mellow mason]

item rolls is really the only reason I sometimes use it

[woven mist]

You can set up wyntills with very little bloat

[mellow mason]

you still have to pass through tons of options that would really confuse new players even more by talking about stuff they haven't seen yet

[frail dagger]

Quest-driven gameplay often benefits from "nested progression" which involves tracking multiple quests simultaneously that can all be done at the same time by a clever player, but rarely all completed at once. Wynncraft has this already via its meta-quests, with you making progress on metaquests while doing the tracked quest - but that's less effective than something like the spider quests interlocking (Get webs, kill queen, get special herbs). Well done, you'll often have ~3 active quests and make progress on the third while completing the first 2, then when you go to complete the third you make progress on two new ones... And this allows players to have a fun little optimization game of knocking out multiple quests at once while always feeling like they're halfway done with something new.

[wet ether]

i think that may have just veen the quest adjacent to the dungeon, not the dungeon itself - was there a boss fight at the end?

[frail dagger]

This exists in wynncraft already, but requires navigating the content book instead of displaying the objectives simultaneously on the screen, and that's not something wynncraft makes it easy to open and scan mid-exploration

[frail dagger]

I think so? I got a bone of some kind I can exchange for dungeon merchant currency

[mellow mason]

mmh, did you have to talk to the key master at the start of it?

if no, then you actually only did the quest to unlock it and not the actual dungeon

[frail dagger]

Got it, then yeah I didn't do the dungeon, just thought that I did

[mellow mason]

oh oof lol

[wet ether]

maybe give anotger dungeon a go (that you're a closer level to) - it might give you some more of a challenge

[mellow mason]

well I personally enjoy when I can focus on a single quest and not have multiple thrown at me so yeah, man

[vivid mural]

quests are like handstrewn by minecraft's entity system so idk how they would manage multiple questing

[mellow mason]

what

[vivid mural]

like you said

[mellow mason]

they're talking about easily tracking multiple quests at once

[vivid mural]

oh right

[frail dagger]

basically already doing it, they're just tracking one primary and multiple objectives on the side

[vivid mural]

well yea you need to constantly check the content book 💀

[mellow mason]

I've played the kind of MMO with its own window that can track multiple quests, in the end I always focused on the lowest level one without giving a care about the other ones until later xd

[frail dagger]

yeah, having to open the book to manage that and mouse over stuff too is two layers deep of increased cognitive load, and adding the fact you need to avoid hostile mobs to check it is tricky. If it was easy to read on the side of the screen it'd be far more easy to engage with smoothly while playing as a new player (or any player but espescially a new player)

[vivid mural]

yea you'd have to use a mod like wynntils to track quest reqs on the screen

and this is only singular

[frail dagger]

Poorly designed then. A good example is something like:

Quest 1: Defeat the Spider Queen
Quest 2: Collect 20 spider webs
Quest 3: Rescue 10 lost children

And lost children happen to be in the forestt he spider queen's lair is in, as are spider webs. So you make progress on multiple things at once. Wynncraft did this with the spider quests early on, it was just hard to manage the info.

[mellow mason]

oh nah nah nah it was exactly like that, I just don't enjoy this kind of system personally

[frail dagger]

Then you must dislike wynncraft's objective system

I don't understand why you'd dislike finishing one quest and going "oh sweet, I'm 15/20 spider webs and 5/10 lost children already. Maybe I'll do one of those next"

[mellow mason]

this one only allows you to track a single quest without having to see the others

I just track the top left one and I'm done

[vivid mural]

afaik ui options in vanilla are only limited to inventory boxes, item hotbar text, minecraft boss bars. side/tab leaderboard, chat and command block motds (giant text that pop up in the middle)

[mellow mason]

pretty much yeah

[frail dagger]

Early on, not sure about later, wynncraft has multiple objectives it's tracking at the same time as a main quest too so you can have 4 things in your box at once

[vivid mural]

pretty much every vanilla server uses minecraft inventory/chest menus for ui because theres no other option

[mellow mason]

oh as in a single quest that requires you to fetch multiple things?

oh or do you mean daily objective?

[frail dagger]

No as in objectives that say things like "Defeat 5 enemies of X level"

[mellow mason]

ah, these objectives are only at early levels yeah, then they are replaced by the daily objective

(and most of the time I don't care about daily objectives so )

[mellow mason]

yep

[vivid mural]

yeah those are randomly generated

[frail dagger]

Cool, it's the same UI

[mellow mason]

the left ones are a set list only for early levels, the right one is random every day yeah

[frail dagger]

It's much easier to track multiple relevant objectives that way than requiring me opening up a book with this and mousing over them all to figure out if I can make progress on more than one at once, or how close I am to finishing one

[vivid mural]

i think the side leaderboard also tracks quest objectives but i cant remember cuz i disabled it

[mellow mason]

daily objectives don't matter for game progression so you're not punished for not doing them

[vivid mural]

eh they are a source of ability shards for when you need to respec tree

[mellow mason]

yeah that's what I mean by content book bloat, it would be way better if it welcomed you with only the quests

[mellow mason]

yeah

[frail dagger]

Good tracking systems tend to let you just track the quests you want to track, so players that like being efficient and doing more things at once (most players) could do that but other players could only track one at a time if they strongly dislike knowing they're making progress on other things for some reason

[mellow mason]

iirc, someone said minecraft leaderboards are limited in the number of lines in can show

[vivid mural]

if you use those filters below you can filter for quests specifically and sub filters for "recommended"/closest level/closest distance

[mellow mason]

so, while I agree it'd be cool, it would be a lil' more complicated than that unfortunately

[vivid mural]

though you do have to reset the filters you had when rechecking i think 💀

[frail dagger]

That goes back to my original point yeah, I don't know what the barriers are but UI is always a nightmare unless specifically designed with it in mind, so I assume any sophisticated questing UI is going to be a pain and a half. It's one reason my instincts lean toward the "look around and explore" designs, with minor additional guidance - because that's how normal minecraft works and how mojang set up the game. It's just going to be an inherently more compatible approach with the engine based on sharing assumptions.

This is all hypothetical though, in reality the wynncraft devs' priorities are probably all based on retaining existing fans rather than reinventing the level-up experience.

[vivid mural]

well yeah they are banking on the fruma expansion thats supposed to drop this year

which is significant for returning players

idk if it would bundle changes for early game though

[mellow mason]

apart from reworked quests, idk

[frail dagger]

just did the sewers actual dungeon. much better than the quest

fun environment, thematic, actiony, good stuff. Obviously too easy for my current level but I appreciate the simple but satisfying design and it was fun despite the level difference.

was going to do the other dungeon in my quest book but I can't be bothered at this point. It said "go here to do the dungeon" in my content book, so i did, but it needed to be unlocked, which required having to look up the coordinates to find where the quest that unlocks them is, which required travelling back to a city. Then that quest appears gated by a totally different quest which is also a elsewhere... and all of them are progressively lower level than me plus this dungeon is already like 2 levels below me so... maybe just skip it

maybe I'll do the chain just to see if it's worth it, but if not playing partly for research I'd probably just skip it and look towards unlocking the next dungeon

[wet ether]

yeah that second dungeon is at the end of the main earlygame questline, which mainly serves to teach more of the game's mechanics

[tidal mango]

On an irrelevant note... You need a new players guide?

[dire wigeon]

i am responsible for the quests page

[dire wigeon]

scoreboard exists

will say though. i thought dungeon quests were no longer required?

or is it just infested pit that has that.

[mellow mason]

why'd you delete quests....,.,,,,,

[dire wigeon]

on fandom? to incentivise people going for gg

[mellow mason]

what's gg?

oh the wiki?

I was talking in-game. You deleted quests in-game 😔 😔 😔

[dire wigeon]

xD nah best content

[vivid mural]

just fill the fandom wiki with nsfw and hate speech so fandom takes the entire wiki down

[dire wigeon]

honestly if i had admin privellages that main page would get nuked

[fossil citrus]

only 2 dungeons are quest locked

the quests are just there for flavor

[wet ether]

wait actually yeah infested pit isnt questlocked is it

while out and about in that kinda area, you should come across some key guardians for the dungeon - you can kill those to get keys instead of doing the quest

[vivid mural]

and much later

fallen factory lv 80 iirc and eldritch outlook is lv 100

[wet ether]

more or less

[livid anvil]

I can understand this but thats why the leeway is there. Without these limits in place there would be (no offense) much higher skilled players than yourself that are able to kill mobs 50 levels higher and would become the best way to power level instantly and it wouldn't be healthy

with not using the content book you are causing this problem for yourself of being bored in your level range

[mellow mason]

is the content book bloat issue gonna be addressed then?

[fallow hound]

what if the XP you can get from a mob is capped dynamically, based on your level? then you could fight higher level enemies and get more xp, but not too much more. ofc, this could be not addressing the root issue

[solemn hemlock]

You're definitely right that the XP punishments overly harm playing alternative to what Wynn's designed for, but you'll find that Wynn often puts hard limits on what people can and can't do.

[livid anvil]

I think thats whats available and how large each level range is makes this a lot less of a blocker than its made out to be

[solemn hemlock]

I don't know if this is really "good" or not. It's certainly annoying, but also due to the nature of 3d space and free movement that you get in Wynn it's unavoidable to prevent overly oppressive cheese strategies

I also think that despite this it's an enjoyable experience provided you stick to what is set out for you or you just powerlevel and enjoy the endgame lol

the quests are certainly fun and enjoyable but realistically completing most of them at level or above doesn't affect the actual experience too much imo

I wouldn't really do that on your first playthrough though there is plenty to enjoy

i still remember my first playthrough some 11 years ago and even though back then everything was genuinely glorified fetch quests it was still a memorable experience

and you won't really have to actively grind for levels for your next quest until I'd say the mid 80s

[solemn hemlock]

the content book itself is a disorganized mess though, it needs a more user-friendly interface

[vivid mural]

yeah why does it show everything at default

[vapid hemlock]

For the average new player, beating most of the content at level is already a big challenge tbh

[solemn hemlock]

i think theres some merit to keeping all the content in one page (it might encourage exploration), but it needs some filters and categories

[vivid mural]

they have that

[solemn hemlock]

i think groupng quests and activities into regions would help a ton

[vivid mural]

its just that its not on quests only by default for some reason

[solemn hemlock]

i meant to say default filters

[vivid mural]

yea probably this

[solemn hemlock]

but you don't really want to do that since people won't really know whats going on if you filter it out automatically

[livid anvil]

quests are quite standardised to give good at level experience. Other content should 100% also do the same thing which it currently doesn't iirc

the content book has many filters and categories already

[solemn hemlock]

i think making a menu to split the content book into map/regions and further splitting them into miniquests quests and world events would make it easier to use

[vivid mural]

just have submenus like hypixel probably

[solemn hemlock]

sure but it's unintuitive and a TON of information

[livid anvil]

its a hard balance because we want to show off how much sheer content there is to do at any given level and recommend you stuff you could go do and it works really well from that exploration standpoint

but at the same time it is overwhelming when starting for sure

[solemn hemlock]

im not going to lie i would absolutely never use it it is genuinely too annoying scrolling through every single thing at once

theres a reason why wynntils organizes it like that

[fallow hound]

what if when you opened the content book, it showed a list of regions and then clicking one pulled up content for that region? or, by default it could just filter by the region you are in?

[livid anvil]

its really not that bad to do the first recommended piece of content in the menu

[solemn hemlock]

no it's not but that doesnt mean the system is good

its a content book not a task list

[fallow hound]

do new players know this though?

[livid anvil]

its not the best it could be but its by no means bad, it gives many pieces of content that historically would never be found by anyone and never completed the chance to shine

the wynntils book is so awful i can't lie it also never loads correctly for other things like caves (or at least didnt used to)

[solemn hemlock]

this is because theres no true support for wynntils and it has to jump through hoops to access things

[fallow hound]

I turned off the wynntils book the first time I saw it lol

[slow yarrow]

Dw, hopefully this weekend it's getting replaced

[livid anvil]

cameo

[solemn hemlock]

its not because its innately poorly implemented its that it has to scan through every single thing

[fallow hound]

imagine: wynncraft api like hypixel skyblock api?!?!!

[solemn hemlock]

i mean it kinda is but i think its telling that most of the wynntils-using playerbase is using it over the default menu despite it being janky and slow and often incorrect

[livid anvil]

I dont think it shows things in an effective way. The content book does a far better job of raising the vibility of otherwise forgotten content and distinguishing content that are part of different types

[slow yarrow]

I think most people use it because they can't figure out how to turn it off lol

[livid anvil]

with some improvements to the clutter the content book would always be better imo

[solemn hemlock]

you aren't wrong that wynntils categorization completely hides other activities other than quests

but thats why I think in order to promote it you would make a submenu with content that visually seems just as accessible as quests

within region submenus

[livid anvil]

there is importance to having types of content that are different mixed in the same menu. It helps to avoid players burning out doing only quests or only caves etc

[solemn hemlock]

and im not saying the current system has to be thrown out there could just be another menu for a more focused and specific menu

[livid anvil]

but yeah splitting things by regions is not something we're against or anything

[vivid mural]

also have percentage completion trackers at a glance

[fallow hound]

if there is a rework, there should still be a way to view everything, but also it should be more intuitive to filter just by stuff you can reasonably do (same region, similar level, etc.)

[vivid mural]

rather than in the class select screen

[livid anvil]

hover over the info item at the bottom

[slow yarrow]

Make the hotbar item tooltip display all content so we don't have to check the content book on join 🙂

[vivid mural]

https://tenor.com/view/drake-yachty-censored-not-drake-tech-support-gif-8658410013845332703

[livid anvil]

well at least it shows the correct total of quests now

[slow yarrow]

True

[livid anvil]

it was hallucinating all the mini quests as real quests before

[solemn hemlock]

idk theres only so much you can do on minecraft for at a glance things other than like literally hover over shit

[livid anvil]

i did suggest expanding the item lore but It is pretty messy

[vivid mural]

red yellow green glass planes 🤯

[solemn hemlock]

i guess you could like use the space next to the chest gui but its darkened

and display like name tags or whatever

[livid anvil]

this item does exist

[tardy belfry]

imo thats not an issue i like that theres alot of content...

[wet ether]

i think it'd be pretty neat if, rather than the xp going down to lower than at-level enemies when killing overlevelled stuff, it instead ramped down to be more or less inline with what'd be at your level, or slightly more

so like lets say (completely made up unrealistic numbers) im level 10 and the standard kinda xp im getting from killing a mob is 50, if i kill a level 20 mob instead of it giving like 5 it should give maybe 60

[tardy belfry]

thats certianly an interesting idea

[wet ether]

that way by going for that extra challenge you arent punished but you also cant just jump from level 1 to 50 by running over to a level 95 area and killing a single mob

[frail dagger]

I started by trying to be to follow the book but it quickly got overwhelming and navigating the UI being annoying to manage. The rewards also didn’t seem much better at first than just killing a group of mobs with meteor. I assume that changes later but it’s what the numbers seemed to be telling me at first, I also heard from some players that focusing on quests was a mistake and inefficient while others said it was the best thing to do so I figured it was pretty much equal or close enough that it wouldn’t matter. Other people also pointed out I could always find quest npcs in the wild so not to worry about the book too much.

My main issues originally were having it navigate menus so often and the complexity of managing them so I decided to try ignoring the book to see if the game was more fun. It was.

[livid anvil]

Yeah i understand what you mean. I think that an approach in the middle is best

completely ignoring or tunnel visioning on the content book are both extremes really

[frail dagger]

If it had more filters on by default I wouldn’t likely have ignored it. I understand the desire to show all the stuff in the game but if you do that a large number of players go “tldr”

[livid anvil]

yeah I agree with the need to make it less overwhelming

[frail dagger]

And both are very natural. Players start by trying to read something, then ignore it if it seems irrelevant and over complex.

https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/1386076547445690470/1387749953559986236/image.png?ex=685e7a5c&is=685d28dc&hm=9f1ce5591efc242adf4acc2bc258759487ccb47759041f7780d16df4718f2868&

Like, this is my quest book. And I have to learn to ignore most of this. Without players explaining otherwise, it’s easier to conclude you should just ignore all of it.

[wet ether]

yeah i feel like if it just showed quests by default it'd be a lot better

[frail dagger]

Simplifying the amount of content in it would also help with my original issue of having to spend too long in the screen parsing it all.

Also @livid anvil I’ve heard the quests get way better and early ones are being revamped anyway, but in the current experience I’ve had the few I’ve done haven’t been as fun as experiences I’ve had stumbling onto stuff organically, so following quests hasn’t been as desirable. I’ve just had more fun looking at a tower and trying to climb it and discovering it’s haunted and has a boss and treasure at the top, stuff like that. Bringing this up because the reason I’ve been ignoring content book is partly bloat but also it led me to a more fun experience overall so far compared to what I was having before.

[ember crypt]

Wynntils lol

[vivid mural]

i was the one who said early ones were being revamped if i recall correctly i dont actually know if that was the case

this was going off the relatively recent tutorial and chef's assistant reworks

i should have prefaced that as speculation ig

[vivid mural]

point is that you have to modify the client

[frail dagger]

For context the only quests I’ve done are cooks assistant (chase a chicken which was funny), the farmer thing (walk into an area and kill one zombie across two loading screens), the spider lair herbs (do what you do anyway fighting the spider queen but also get the herb after, which was fine but I already found the spider nest since it’s on the main trail so it was just redoing that content that already had a boss reward), and the quest to unlock the first dungeon (some platforming in a poop place). Not sure they count as quests but also did some things like collecting spider webs for a sign.

Best gameplay moments so far were the first dungeon and then various times I saw something that looked cool and explored it, finding really awesome looking stuff I wasn’t expecting after and getting treasure and xp. Not sure they count as quests but also did some things like collecting spider webs for a sign

[vivid mural]

note that you dont have to unlock most dungeons but the relevant quests associated will always give you a key + some dungeon currency

[ember crypt]

@livid anvil what if it automatically sorted by quests first then dungeons, and lastly discoveries? Sorting it by importance

[frail dagger]

How do you get a key otherwise?

[ember crypt]

These are mini quests yeah. The sign board stuff. There's other ones for professions too, so if you want to level up your farming or whatnot, it gives you a noticeable boost

[vivid mural]

thats the neat part 💀

[mellow mason]

some special can spawn which drop dungeon keys

[vivid mural]

key guardians typically found near the dungeon or around the map

[ember crypt]

Key Guardians spawn at their respective spawn areas. Low level areas spawn the Sewers/Infest Pit guardian for example

[mellow mason]

generally [dungeon name] guardians

[vivid mural]

sometimes in absurd places

[mellow mason]

basically random

[ember crypt]

Not necessarily close to the dungeon, just "what is the level range of this area, and does the dungeon fall under that level"

[mellow mason]

you can also get them as rewards from certain activites, such as world events

[ember crypt]

You will find keys to Eldritch Outlook in Ahmsord, Thesead, and Molten Heights. NONE of these places are near the Silent Expanse

[vivid mural]

yeah its much more consistent to do world events that are announced in chat or buying them from trade market

[mellow mason]

amazing spoiler man

[frail dagger]

What’s the purpose of repeatedly farming a non end game dungeon? Skins? Something else?

[ember crypt]

These are area names. The names don't mean anything as spoilers 💀

[mellow mason]

🥴

[vivid mural]

on tier equipment

[mellow mason]

for low-level dungeons, pretty much nothing lol

[vivid mural]

again another way to circumvent loot rng

[ember crypt]

Weapons and gear. Sewers has the best necklace up until lvl 49, and getting an upgraded wand that early in the game makes a huge difference

[coral totem]

equipment but usually gathering items

[mellow mason]

oh yeah équipement

almost forgot that 😭

[vivid mural]

gathering items 💀💀💀

[mellow mason]

[ember crypt]

@frail dagger Spider pit has a really strong armor set too, especially for mage

[frail dagger]

@livid anvil regarding the xp rates, if killing an enemy in 10x hits gave me even 4xp of one that took 2 hits that’d still feel mostly proportional to effort. Right now it’s more like 1.4x in my experience (ball parking, minimal examples). So while I think the level difference formula isn’t great overall, the severity made it extra noticeable to me. Just reporting my experience.

[frail dagger]

Good to know, thanks

@livid anvil another thing about the content book, it misleads occasionally, not sure how frequent it is but when I selected the next dungeon in the book for example it sent me to it but because it was locked behind a quest chain I couldn’t actually do the content in my book that I had selected. I googled which quest unlocked the dungeon and checked the coordinates vs mine with the debug mode and went there, then realized that one too needed an earlier one to unlock and logged out for the night. So that led to me also feeling like it was unpredictable whether the book was actually telling me something useful.

[mellow mason]

doesn't it have a "requirement: [something]" line, or am I misremembering?

[frail dagger]

I’ll check when I get online today. Talking to the npcs in the city produced a “requires mushroom quest” but I didn’t notice if the original guard said it by the dungeon

[mellow mason]

if requirements are not in the content book, then that's definitely a problem

[livid anvil]

its sorted by recommended for a reason and i believe its decent sorting

it genuinly works quite well to do the first item in the list of "recommended" i've done that

[ember crypt]

Are you sure about that? I know there's a level restriction but I don't think the quest is mandatory anymore

[ember crypt]

Like, literally the other day I played with a noobie and they did sewer AND spider pit without doing the quest

[fallow hound]

I think the restriction was removed, but doing the quest gives you a free key, so then you don't have to find a key guardian or buy it off the trade market in Detlas

[livid anvil]

definitely show a screenshot when you're next online but I think you're confusing the actual dungeon with a quest linked to the lore of the dungeon

the dungeon itself (infested pit i believe?) has no requirement and can just be entered from what I just saw

[wet ether]

yeah the only thing required to enter it is a key, which while the quest does give one you can get it without doing the quest too

[thorny hull]

this isnt really doable in this case since the minecraft scoreboard is limited to a certain number of lines. We cant just display quest info there infinitely

[solemn hemlock]

i think wynn should add backend support for wynntils

doesnt need to make wynntils completely necessary but i think it would just be a good thing to allow for mods to not have to jump through hoops and do jank workarounds to get basic info

[frail dagger]

Logged in to provide screenshot. So I moused over this that said the dungeon can be attempted (nothing about a key in the content book description). I went there and it wouldn't let me in. I figured I needed a key but there was no direction on how to get one, so I talk to the nearest NPC and it says "oh if you want to go in here oyu should talk to this other guy first".

\

I then naturally go find the nearest npc that'll talk to me and he tells me this. I google where Admiral Aegis is and then go over there. However he isn't spawned in yet so that creates more confusion. I look around for a long time and finally google the exact coordinates via the debug menu and realize he isn't spawned in 🤷‍♂️

[fallow hound]

maybe it could be changed to can be attempted - requires key?

[frail dagger]

This is what I mean by the content book being actively misleading. Giving players a goal that they discover multiple steps to work towards is one thing, but this just makes me want to say "eh, back to exploring open world, the content book can't be trusted."

[fallow hound]

there is a npc called something like "key collector" that you have to give a key to to actually be able to enter the dungeon

[charred ice]

wait you don't have to do dungeon quests anymore right

[fallow hound]

yeah, but the npc he talked to made it seem like he had to do the quest

[charred ice]

@frail dagger keys drop from key guardians in the overworld (as an alternative to quests), if you see a big spider/centaur lookin thing near detlas suburbs, kill it and get a free key

[frail dagger]

This would be fine if there's then either in-client instructions or an integrated wiki to find out where to get a key. My point is just that @livid anvil said things would be fine if I was using the content book, and I'm explaining why I started ignoring the content book - because it was tons of stuff I had to learn to ignore and would sometimes appear unreliable. After you've gone to ~2 locations that were premature or misleading, I just stop trusting the book.

[frail dagger]

cool, good ot know

I literally found a key in less than 50 seconds since you told me that and I started looking

before I just zipped back to detlas, going full speed blinking trying to follow the instructions

sidenote, figuring out I had to select the key and right-click to give them surprised me because other villager style npcs you right-click first and then drag an item to them. I figured it out with basic minecraft knowledge though.

[fallow hound]

here's my guess: when most new players join, they naturally follow the dev intended progression, so that's why the content book seemed unreliable, because it made assumptions that were incorrect?

i could just be yapping, though

[cunning oxide]

all these sound like really bad systems, and also none of these would work for wynncraft.. our current system is much better

[frail dagger]

Not sure if it'd work for wynncraft, but they would definitely do a worse job of forcing me to play easy content if that's the goal

[mellow mason]

these systems would also kill power leveling, which would create one hell of a backlash

[frail dagger]

isn't the stated goal of the current systems to kill power leveling?

[vivid mural]

no

[mellow mason]

is it?

[fallow hound]

not entirely, just to make it less op

[frail dagger]

well that's tuning

[mellow mason]

did a CT say they wanted to kill power leveling?

[cunning oxide]

with the current system, you still get 70% of the full xp from a mob that is 10 levels higher than your level, which is usually still more xp than 100% of the xp of the mobs on your level... so it sounds fair to me

[frail dagger]

Soend 5x as long for 50% more xp. Doesn't sound fair to me

[vivid mural]

it only stops level 20s from skipping to flesh cave or something

[fallow hound]

the way wynncraft works, each class is almost entirely separate. So, once you've played through all the content one one class, it would be very repetitive to have to do it on 4 other classes to reach max level with each.

[vivid mural]

so yeah you get people opting for power levelling strats through grinding parties with different grind spots pertaining to points of level progression

[frail dagger]

Not sure what that is, but my frustration was that I was having fun fighting level 25 content as a level 10 and then realized I was being an idiiot because I was gainign 25xp per kill when I could kill a level 12 in two auto-attacks and gaet 15xp

[vivid mural]

in a coherent manner as opposed to heading straight for the fat mobs

[vivid mural]

well now you know

[cunning oxide]

yes, it is kinda a minecraft limitation, which is why certain macros (only one-spell macro buttons and auto-attack holding macros, with either left or right click in case of archer) are allowed

[vivid mural]

the game bats you on the head repeatedly for you to do quests and dungeons for levelling disregarding party powerlevelling strats

[fallow hound]

there are some lower level challenges, but maybe they are just hidden away by the sheer amount of content. Like, there's a secret boss on the emerald trail. as previously mentioned, the first boss altar isn't till level 25...

[vivid mural]

as well as to gain currency

[frail dagger]

Yes. I don't enjoy being punished for playing at a challenge level I find fun

If that's the design goal, it's working

[vivid mural]

try dungeons ig

i dont find dungeons particularly fun myself but they might be up your alley if you want some challenge

and on tier loot

[fallow hound]

I don't think that's the design goal, it's more likely that most players just don't play this way so the devs didn't think about it

[vivid mural]

^

concessions have to be made

theres also boss altars around the world but the game doesnt even teach you that until like a specific level 50 something quest

with bosses atleast somewhat more challenging than the ones you see in quests

world events are also a relatively recent addition for another avenue of loot and xp

[fallow hound]

yeah, the game doesn't make this obvious, but doing solo world events is pretty difficult at level but also doable

though also, world events scale to your level, so you could still have a challenge if you are level 50 and do a level 10 world event

[vivid mural]

if you want an early game superboss try rymek luke

[cunning oxide]

"The game seems to be trying to force a prescribed path in its design" if this is how wynncraft comes off as, thats concerning, because quests are designed to not be forced onto you for the most part, but instead its meant to be encouraged to explore wynncraft at your own pace in whatever way you want to do so. As for the xp punishments... I just cannot see how the small xp punishment could be a make or break for almost anyone, so they will keep playing regardless. And it is a really good system from preventing more experienced players from just grinding mobs 30 or even more levels above their own level, thus gaining like 20 levels from a single mob, which would be really, really bad. The only compromise here could be to let the xp punishment start say... 5 levels above your own level, and then increase 4% every level, instead of 3% every level. But I'm struggling to see if that is really necessary, or if the problem you have described really a problem for regular players, or if its just a problem for you only because as a game developer, you are trying to analyze the game too much out of habit.

[lean plinth]

Listen man I could walk around blind in wynn and attain a higher level than you atp. The earlygame goes quick because the mid/endgame is where most of the fun is, and you WILL replay the earlygame many many times if you commit yourself to wynn. Don't try to do 100% completion, I would stick to quests but you should at least hit level 40 to see some real content

[vivid mural]

i would probably suggest trying boss altars and world events as well if you want to challenge yourself for loot @frail dagger
you will have to use the wiki to find altars though

[frail dagger]

"Listen man I could walk around blind in wynn and attain a higher level than you atp." I don't doubt it, and don't see how that's relevant

[fallow hound]

this is an interesting take... considering I found levels 40-55 to be the most dry lol

[vivid mural]

some ct said altars were designed for experienced players not on their first playthrough

[vivid mural]

delete maro peaks

nuke that shit off the ocean bro

[lean plinth]

I'm not trying to hate on the way you're playing the game but you really haven't experienced much of wynn at all, almost all of the experiences are level gated and I think you'd really get a better perspective on it if you progressed some more

[cunning oxide]

this system just makes games more dopamine stacking and fast-paced... sure its unavoidable in a game like World of Warcraft, but wynncraft's goal is not to be fast-paced, and the goal of quests are also not to be just collect x, go back to y, but instead most quests are story-driven with small stories or main stories in each quest, with most quests being able to be done without actually reading most of the dialogues of course, in case a player just want to get them done. This is also another reason why it might not be such a bad idea for the game to encourage you to frequently go back to cities and sort out your thoughts and inventory and progression plan in cities, rather than while standing between 3 group of mobs.

[lean plinth]

I mean compared to where they're at rn, that's when you first start visiting Gavel and your atree gets a bit more impactful

[vivid mural]

first playthrough i got to level 50 in like 2 days

[lean plinth]

Pretty big jump imo

[vivid mural]

maybe fast maybe slow idk

[lean plinth]

Or you can stay in wynn, visit nessak and eventually fight the bridge guardian (rlly cool boss fight)

[fallow hound]

sometimes it definitely feels like wynncraft takes it easy on the player at early levels, as they get to know the game...

[frail dagger]

beat the spider dungeon

[vivid mural]

well you are forced to fight the bridge guardian at some point

[fallow hound]

nice

[vivid mural]

gg

[fallow hound]

how did the boss fight feel?

[lean plinth]

Nice! The next one will be in the dessert to the East, the relevant quest is "Kingdom of Sand"

[vivid mural]

did you experience the arikadicus respawn bug

[frail dagger]

""The game seems to be trying to force a prescribed path in its design" if this is how wynncraft comes off as, thats concerning, because quests are designed to not be forced onto you for the most part, but instead its meant to be encouraged to explore wynncraft at your own pace in whatever way you want to do so. As for the xp punishments..."

Other folks here said I should be following quests and the fact I wasn't is why I ran into trouble, including another dev here, so I feel like there's some disconnect

[cunning oxide]

because wynncraft's quests are intentionally not designed this way... generally, if you start a quest, you won't accidentally make progress in other quests while doing this quest

[frail dagger]

This was an example from wynncraft.

Not the lost children one, but the spider queen/spider webs, and the collect herb one was

[frail dagger]

Definitely more challenging but in a way that felt like it was just designed for a party. Very bullet spongey.

[vivid mural]

most quests arent strictly mandatory but you'll need those currency and certain equipment rewards anyway

[lean plinth]

Which class and archetype did you pick?

[frail dagger]

Arcanist

[lean plinth]

W

[cunning oxide]

I can agree that wynncraft's content book is really confusing at first, but yeah, minecraft limitations. The content book is kinda a new thing relative to the lifespan of wynncraft, so I'm sure it will get more refined in the future. As for now, the sorting system in the content book is enough to find things, or at least quests, relatively quickly.

[fallow hound]

I feel like regular quests are intended to be done without leaving during it, but mini-quests, if you do them, are just a side thing (though I don't remember if collect herb is a mini-quest)

[frail dagger]

Most of my feedback on quest UI is not something that can be easily implemented

[lean plinth]

Are you using wynntils btw

[frail dagger]

It's one reason I decided to ignore most of it and justfocus on exploring. Nope, no wynntils

[lean plinth]

Yeah so that's the issue

Don't play this game without wynntils

[fallow hound]

wynntils adds lots of good features, but it also adds lots of clutter that has to be disabled in the settings...

[vivid mural]

the things we have to resort to for qol

[fallow hound]

If you are playing with mods, there is a cool one called Voices of Wynn that adds voice lines to every quest in the game

[vivid mural]

might as well show actual id roll percentages in vanilla atp

[lean plinth]

Most of wynntils' features should be fairly simple to understand by anyone who's spent some time in the game, I wouldn't recommend wynntils to someone just starting out but reaching a few days into the playthrough it should be fine

People will tell you that Wynntils is not needed but they are wrong

[frail dagger]

other than the bullet sponge boss, which involved me kiting for a very long period of time before like 3 other players showed up at once to finish it off, the level of difficulty fo the dungeon was fine. The fact I had to reclear the same room multiple times because the exit closed before I went through was frustrating but seems just like a quirk that you can learn to play around

[mellow mason]

perhaps you have a skill issue then

[frail dagger]

The boss was probably fine for a party, I don't know, it died instantly once other players showed up

[wet ether]

nahh i played through the whole game without wynntils for my first playthrough at a time where the base game hadnt added a load of its features and i found it perfectly fine - i'd say just get a spell macro (and maybe a minimap + worldmap mod) and you're gonna be fine lol (in fact, i still dont play with wynntils)

[mellow mason]

[livid anvil]

Yeah so key guardians spawn everywhere in the world and you can kill them to get a key (or you can do that relevant quest). Mentionning the key requirement on the content book is actually a good shout!

We used to have quest requirements for almost every dungeon but we unlinked them and i guess this is a relic of that where previously we didn't need to provide that info because you had to do this quest and the quest explained these mechanics in it

[vivid mural]

how can i tell if i rolled the most abysmally dogshit warp in the world

[lean plinth]

Just assume

[mellow mason]

look at unidentified warps on the TM and compare the stats

[fallow hound]

not defective, just really-really bad

[mellow mason]

(I agree ID numbers should be in the base game)

[cunning oxide]

you would be half-wrong, wynncraft's priorities yes partly on retaining existing fans, but that is only by a few end-game activities that you can put time into, and by creating cool updates every once in a while when a lot of people come back to the game more actively and play for half a year to a year, before dropping off a bit and waiting for the next big update. this system worked well so far

but the other half of the dev priority is exactly the new player experience, wynncraft would not survive without constant new player influx... in fact, wynncraft makes a good amount of money by a lot of new players buying vip or vip+ rank after a few days, weeks or months of playing. Wynn devs are not scared of reinventing the wheel, if the idea is promising. Especially when it comes to new player experience.

[wet ether]

or look at it on the wiki/wynnbuilder (if you're getting it for a build), which is what i usually do

[frail dagger]

Yeah, my point here isn't that the system is broken - just pointing out that the content book does create misleading directions at enough of a percent that I don't feel "just follow the quest book and everything works out right now" to be reliable. When I run into stuff like that, I feel like "why am I working to puzzle out the quest book when I could be exploring the world?"

[vivid mural]

id stars 🥀🥀🥀🥀🥀

[frail dagger]

If it wasn't for the fact that open-ended exploration was inefficient, I'd have no issues with that. Frankly I'd be having a lot of fun.

[fallow hound]

isn't it underworld crypt? or am I remembering incorrectly...

[lean plinth]

Yeah just skip that one

Actually skip sst too

Just do ice barrows

[wet ether]

hmm do any quests mention key guardians? i think it could be pretty neat if one of the earlygame (either DC or IP) dungeon quests had a key guardian spawn, maybe a bit of dialogue like "bro these guys keep spawning around here can you go and kill him 😭😭" and such

[fallow hound]

bro... that's like level 45

[mellow mason]

not rn no

[vivid mural]

yeah youll eventually have to minmax teleport scrolls and fast travel paths to find the shortest path to your desired destination if you find that fun

[wet ether]

i feel like that could be a good way to introduce new players to the concept of key guardians, because atm its just kinda assumed you'll find them and so if you dont you wont know to seek them out

[lean plinth]

The problem with key guardians is I never find them when I'm looking, but they always find me when I don't need it

[vivid mural]

ice barrows is so dogshit bruh

sst mogs

[wet ether]

although im not sure how to communicate that they're a standard for dungeons and not just a thing for that one

[frail dagger]

Seeing the Key NPCs in future dungeons makes it a pretty recognizable pattern

[lean plinth]

sst is a labyrinth of bad parkour, time gated challenges, trick floors, anti-coop synergy, random barrier block placements, and an easy bossfight

[cunning oxide]

this sounds like a you problem.. I doubt most players would look for dungeons specifically in the content book.. the content book was designed to help you find things in case you cannot find them intuitively, or at least that is my opinion and experience, but most players only look for quests in the content book... and dungeons being locked behind certain quests is not something that would stop many players from playing the game altogether... now could the content book identify that you still need to do other quests before being able to do that dungeon, and tell you this information? sure, its just a case with content book being relatively new, so its not polished yet.. this could be fixed in the future to account for such scenarios

[frail dagger]

"Just use the content book to figure out where to go"
"Why would any player use the content book? that sounds like a you problem" lol

[lean plinth]

Also IB drops Criistal which is busted

[wet ether]

me when UC and TLS

[vivid mural]

true true

[mellow mason]

yeah idk what this guy is on about

[livid anvil]

I do wanna say that it isnt the case that the content book is misleading. You did interact with a quest that in the content book would not show up as available to complete. I understand your logic in doing so but its not a good comparison.

I already said it would be a good addition to mention in the content book key obtaining as a requirement as well as maybe how to obtain it. We dont have the luxury of a good way to display lots of information that would be really useful in many games. We can't do documentation or wikis, we can't display lots of information in a nice way other than through the quests that you did kind of skip lol

[lean plinth]

UC has the same issues, and I pretend TLS doesn't exist

[vivid mural]

tls is neat the first time but you have to rerun it

[frail dagger]

I'm not sure what the differentiation is between "the content book misled me" and "the directions in the content book were incomplete, and following those directions led me to an NPC that said 'hey if you want to go in here you have to do this' and that led me to googling how to find the npc they told me to find who hadn't spawned yet"

[livid anvil]

due to you exploring i would have wagered that you would have seen one of these "key guardian" mobs by now. They are extremely common in low level areas so you must have been extremely unlucky to not encounter one and naturally learn about this behaviour

[vivid mural]

uc is perhaps the worst dungeon in the game by far

[lean plinth]

CGG:

[frail dagger]

I assumed that the fact the content book led me to this place and the place had an NPC telling me to do something to access the dungeon, that this was intended path

[livid anvil]

the npc and the dungeon aren't related as i said

[frail dagger]

A lot of your answers are "if you already know how the systems work you won't be misled"

[vivid mural]

gatekeeping builds from using skibidi boots since forever

[cunning oxide]

this

[livid anvil]

you spoke to an npc for a quest that you dont have access to so yeah you couldn't do the quest

the dungeon you went to is seperate and requires a key to enter

[wet ether]

yes but despite them not being able to access the quest the npc directed them to it anyway

[livid anvil]

the content book directed them to the entrance of the dungeon, not the quest npc

[lean plinth]

Pretty sure most quest givers will articulate the level requirement

[wet ether]

and the npc is stood right outside the dungeon, i think its pretty reasonable to assume its related

[frail dagger]

The book said "go here to do the dungeon" and then I couldn't do the dungeon. The npc at the entrance of the dungeon said "if you want to do this dungeon do X" and I figured "okay, I need to do what the NPC would say".

[vivid mural]

are you level 80

[cunning oxide]

in other games, the content book might not display anything, but the few content that is available at your level at first, just to make it not be overwhelming and so its intuitive which contents you have to or can do... I agree that wynn content book has much to advance in this regard

[livid anvil]

that npc told you that you are too far ahead by telling you to speak to the guy in detlas which i guess was also not unlocked yet because you were completely off course with typical quest progression. A failsafe can surely be added for players in this category to give you dialogue to complete the correct quest

[frail dagger]

If this is not a reasonable assumption terminated, I feel like this just reinforces my point of "stop trying to trust quests, they mislead you"

The only reason I was "off course" was because of the content book displaying the entrance to the dungeon and directing me there, which broke the intended sequence I guess

[livid anvil]

nothing has misled you here, you made a misjudgment! We can add more fail safes to try to prevent this as its a new perspective but it is a very uncommon one that we've not encountered before

that dungeon is available and you could have completed it without talking to that npc (in the same way you did the sewer dungeon)

[frail dagger]

Okay, at this point it seems like my misjudgment was going to the place the book told me to go and listening to the npc telling me how to get in

[cunning oxide]

maybe make it so that the default option once you open the content book is to have only quests displayed, and having everything displayed could be the last option (which would mean that if you used right click, instead of left click, it would go from first to last option, instead of first to second option, so its good either way)

[lean plinth]

What issues exactly did you have while trying to enter the dungeon though

[vivid mural]

he didnt do the massive spoiler in the end of A Journey Further

[frail dagger]

It said I needed a key, and I remembered another quest appeared to unblock the previous dungeon so I figured you needed to both unlock it as content and get a key - or in order to get a key you had to also do that quest first, or it was the easiest way to get a key - and then found an npc saying "oh you want to go inside? do this". That reinforced the idea that you need to do X before doing the dungeon, which makes sense because that was the original design.

[livid anvil]

you went to where the book told you to go and then interacted with something other than what the book told you to interact with is my point.

Where you were told to go: https://gyazo.com/d7a2eddced74d3f3715a7beaaa310b2d

Where you went:
https://gyazo.com/ca1be52adb77f878c30278479990dd19

[frail dagger]

In most games when I go to a location, discover the way is blocked, and that an npc is there telling me "oh if you want to go in here go do X" I trust them.

[lean plinth]

And doesn't the quest give you a key or am I misremembering

[vivid mural]

yes all dungeon associated quests give you a key

[cunning oxide]

early quests are designed to be simple as to not be overwhelming, while showing off what mechanics quests will generally have. In my opinion at least. And most players enjoy them. I did enjoy them on my first playthrough a few years ago.

[vivid mural]

but the dungeons themselves arent questlocked

well none of them except the 2 level 80+ ones

[frail dagger]

Now that I'm in the discord and people are explaining the actual systems to me and that that NPC is outdated and that the dungeons will list the content as accessible because they're no longer quest locked, and all oyu need is the key which is easy to find in the areas near them or can be searched up on the wiki if really not finding it, then it's fine. But that is just the latest example of something unclear from in-game, partly due to how content has changed over the years

[vivid mural]

are you fond of wiki games

[livid anvil]

the npc is almost 100 blocks away from where the book told you to go. I already said that we could add a failsafe for if you haven't dont many quest requirements that we expected you to by this point for that npc to help players like you and maybe even include some information on the content book that a key is required for each dungeon and the key collector could say that you can find "key guardians" nearby or something

BUT although i concede all of that I want to get it clear that the content book didn't mislead you to this unrelated quest npc. You had prior knowledge that dungeons require a key to enter and you must have been incredibly unlucky to not encounter key guardians in the many areas you have explored by now (I can barely exit ragni without finding one of them lmao)

[frail dagger]

Yes, though I'm also fond of non-wiki games. Relying on a wiki is a specific design choice, and minecraft is a wiki game anyway.

[livid anvil]

relying on a wiki is sometimes the only option because we do not have the ability to format text in a nice way within minecraft quite frankly

Holograms are hard to read in certain conditions, chest menus with hover items are terrible to interact with, signs in the world? Bruh

[frail dagger]

And there's nothing wrong with that. Lots of games are complex enough that people need to use the net to navigate them, and that's fine

[cunning oxide]

fair point

[vivid mural]

doesnt wynn use all of these systems anyway

[livid anvil]

it doesn't make them good in all or even those situations though lmao

[lean plinth]

Situationally

[vivid mural]

https://tenor.com/view/yes-orange-gif-19308033

[livid anvil]

but there are some minor improvements we can make that I stated above, I just wanted to clarify the misleading part because i still encourage you to follow the content book

[lean plinth]

I was playing monu and almost all exposition/instruction relied on signs

And vanilla signs suck

[frail dagger]

@livid anvil I agree that this is a simple fix of putting the dungeon key info in the quest descriptions for dungeons, and clarifying the assosciated NPC dialogue to avoid misleads.

[vivid mural]

I agree they should remove Hunger in monumenta

[livid anvil]

[lean plinth]

They should ong

[vivid mural]

And all of the terrible vanilla mechanics

because you definitely need hunger mechanics in a mmorpg

[lean plinth]

Monu's hunger just had me eating 24/7

[frail dagger]

The 100 blocks isn't the biggest issue though. It's the flow

[cunning oxide]

as a regular player, I Just don't see how its punishing that a mob that is 15 levels above your level gives "only" 50% more xp overall than a mob at your level... your point about challenging yourself to fight more difficult enemies, you are free to do that, but 1. the game is right to somewhat discourage you from doing so 2. the satisfaction lies in being able to defeat the mob, and not in gaining 20 levels (or 500% more xp than from at level mobs) at once... I just cannot agree with your point here, this might be a you problem

[frail dagger]

This is actually good level design @livid anvil. The player goes to the cave, hits a dead end, turns around and takes an obvious path back, and then sees a green npc with info for them. It's elegant. I haven't moved in these screenshots btw, just turned my camera.

[frail dagger]

I am not asking to gain 20 levels. I am asking to gain at worst the same rate of XP I would gain for spending the same amount of time in the other content.

[lean plinth]

What gear/weapon are you using

[frail dagger]

If I spend 1 hour in at-level content, and 1 hour at harder content, I would like to be at the same level at the end of the hour as if I did the other (assuming I can participate in the harder content at all of course, if I can't solo the content or just get murderized fast that's fine, it doesn't have to be efficient - and shouldn't be because it isn't fun)

[cunning oxide]

quests are, in my experience, designed to hold your hand, leading a straight path through the levels, in case you are having trouble exploring, but again in my experience, it doesn't stop you from playing by just exploring, nor does it put really any fear of missing out on you if you don't follow most quests

[frail dagger]

This recent discussion started because I said "I'm having fun exploring the world and chasing what's interesting, but I'm realizing I really should avoid any area more than 5ish levels above or below my area because it's really inefficient and that's sad".

[livid anvil]

that would just encourage someone to sit in one spot to power level the whole game though

the current system encourages you to actually engage with your own level of content and thats good and probably will not change

[frail dagger]

I mean, these are solved problems @livid anvil. A lot of other mmos have solved these problesm

[livid anvil]

i dont believe your suggestions were good ones

[vivid mural]

i dont think ct wants the game to be even more faster than a day to powerlevel to 105

[livid anvil]

if it was at least the same xp that you gain from your own level of mobs then you could sit in a level 50 area and gradually earn more and more xp. currently you need to move through the levels

[vivid mural]

not even a day its like 6 hours tops

[frail dagger]

That's okay. I can't see why but they do work well in other games and those games do not have people standing in the same spot farming mobs forever so... The claim "it's this or nothing" is odd

[cunning oxide]

yeah again, the first few quests are designed to be easy, to just let you get a feel for quests... of course there are slaying posts, where you have to collect certain amount of items from the mobs in that area, but although I understand your point here, 1. these are mini-quests 2. this is the only type of quest that is running paralell with normal quests... maybe its just me, but I could 1. identify that these are not a must-do content instantly, and 2. I was able to keep track in my head of roughly how many of those items I needed to get from mobs, and if not, I could just run back to the post to check (there was no content book yet back then I think), once I collected some already, and then just collect the rest from the nearly mobs.

[vivid mural]

predefined xp caps for each level is nasty work how will they even implement this coherently

[livid anvil]

i dont claim that its this or nothing. I just think that the current system serves its purpose well and the claim that its punishing you for taking on a challenge isn't a real concern. I (already said that I) think the reason it felt punishing to you is because you were not engaging with the content book and just exploring, so mob kills were a major source of exp rather than engaging with the content available to you

[frail dagger]

Yes, it did make me feel punished for exploring instead of following the rails

If that's the goal, or just a necessary side-effect of other goals (those are legit, not every game can or should aim at every play pattern), that's totally understandable.

[livid anvil]

and I think that the best approach will never be an extreme one like "no content book" or "no exploring" and that a balanced experience will always be best

[vivid mural]

i mean exploring can make you find those boss altars that i talked about earlier

[frail dagger]

Some form of content book is mandatory with no in-game map

[vivid mural]

youll probably die though

[frail dagger]

You need some way to say "go in X direction to find Y challenging zone"

[livid anvil]

i wish we could do an ingame map so dearly

[lean plinth]

.

[vivid mural]

again wynntils 💀

wynntils really has everything and the kitchen sink huh

[ember crypt]

I just realized too, the more you fight those over leveled mobs the faster you gain experience. Making the grinding feel less like a speed boost that simmers down, and more like a slow burn that continues to give you a similar % despite the level bumps

[frail dagger]

I don't even dislike the content book as a thing, in the current execution I just had more fun once I stopped looking at it - and the only thing that stopped me having fun in an accessible, simple way was realizing I shouldn't explore areas based on challenge but rather based on intended quest progression for level band

[lean plinth]

you will get stat checked it just happens

[cunning oxide]

this was not my point, my point was that in my opinion, most players use the content book to track quests only.. but in the case of that first dungeon, as Terminated already explained it, its just an oversight of not mentioning about the key guardian system due to the the recent changes where a quest is no longer a requirement for that first dungeon, but you just need the key. Before, that quest gave you a single key as a reward, so it was very intuitive.

[frail dagger]

"as a regular player, I Just don't see how its punishing that a mob that is 15 levels above your level gives "only" 50% more xp overall than a mob at your level... "
If I can do something in 5 seconds and get 20xp, it's punishing to do something that takes 30 seconds and might kill me but only gives 30xp in return. It makes me feel like I'm being dumb and wasting my time.

"Better rewards for time" is the whole point of quests giving lots of XP too, it's the incentive

[ember crypt]

@frail dagger T

1.) Devs are restricted by the limitations of being a vanilla Minecraft server at the end of the day. If you haven't already yet, download Wynntils it will make your game experience a million times better
2.) You are seeking higher level difficulty content with higher rewards. You will not find this challenge from mob grinding, but rather from Dungeons, Boss Altars, and Raids, which do not scale their EXP downwards by challenging them too early I believe

[frail dagger]

@livid anvil a lot of my dialogue with other players here is in terms of general design stuff, not directly applicable feedback. My general thought process with feedback is that players should give their experience and devs can decide what to do about it - because even though I'm a dev too I have no idea what the constraints other devs are working with are

[cunning oxide]

your misjudgment was due to an oversight from a recent change to that dungeon requirements specifically (not requiring a quest anymore), but it is not representative for basically anything else in wynncraft as a whole, just so you can understand where things stand

[lean plinth]

You are wasting your time ngl, the game has intended progression and you are going out of your way to break that. You are still in the very very early stages of the game where questing is your best option to get used to the game while gaining steady xp. Once you reach the midgame your options will open up greatly and you won't feel as forcred down a path. Like I said you are still in the soft tutorial that doesnt really end until you leave wynn at lvl 40

[frail dagger]

Also "sir, this is a wendy's, I understand you wanted a steak and we do sell beef but we don't sell steaks" is a perfectly fine response. Sometimes negative feedback from someone looking for a different experience is a good sign the game IS working as intended. I'm not being passive-aggressive when I say "if the goal was to make me feel like it was a bad idea to explore or take on harder content, it's working". Sometimes that IS the goal.

[livid anvil]

yea i get it

[ember crypt]

I will say the ability tree is very extensive, and like I pointed out earlier, there are people in the 80's who still don't know how to put together a good ability tree combination. I think this way is better to help the player gain more experience with the tools they already have instead of allowing them to speed level (accidentally or on purpose) without restrictions and end up with 17 new abilities that they don't know how to implement into their gameplay

[frail dagger]

Yeah, I have no issue with the rate of progression I'm experiencing at all. It feels very well tuned.

That's hard to do

[ember crypt]

Also, for me at least, these people I meet who don't know how to play their class intimately are almost always people who skipped quests and grinded for XP instead of taking it slow