I am coming out from my slumber to address this issue that many players are feeling. (Ah yes literally the second day of me taking a break) I thought I would check in again, and all I see are rant posts.
All the complaints revolve around how the game is boring. You guys aren’t wrong. I 100% agree with your reasoning.
It all comes down to PLAYER SATISFACTION.
The game simply isn’t satisfying enough for people to enjoy. Yes, it may be super complicated, with extremely well built features and a mature developer, however it doesn’t make the players feel REWARDED and SATISFIED.
Four main reasons for this:
- Long walks in quests.
- Randomised NPCs.
- Quest spawn rate
- NPC aiming
Now before you click off and say “doublerun thats never going to change, because these are core features that define the game.”, just hear me out.
Firstly, the boring quests, combined with the smart NPC aiming. You literally walk for AT LEAST 400M in total to the quest location, which in itself takes up 80% of the total time it takes to do a quest.
AND ONCE YOU GET TO THE NPC YOU NEED TO KILL, THEY HAVE SMART NPC AIMING, SO YOU NEED TO ACTUALLY PUT IN A DECENT EFFORT TO KILL IT.
IN TERMS OF QUESTS, THERE ARE LITERALLY NO QUESTS, SO PEOPLE HAVE TO ACTIVELY FIND QUESTS. EVEN SO, there’s no GUARANTEE That they’ll find one.
Ok, lets compare to the somewhat rival of WoM, which is Blox Fruit. Both are RPG games. One is developed by kids, and another is developed by a guy who’s probably gonna get hired by Blizzard.
First impressions of anyone who has played both games is that WoM is way better well built. It’s another level of roblox game. HOWEVER, even though Blox Fruit lacks SO MUCH, it’s leveling system is ABSTRACT AND SATISFYING.
There is a sense of PROGRESSION. On each island, there are different NPCS at a FIXED LEVEL that all have a different theme to them. There are also fixed quest givers. As you level up and progress to each island and fight harder NPCs, you have this SOLID sense of ACHIEVEMENT that you are growing stronger.
In a sense, everything is TANGIBLE in Blox Fruit. When you look at WoM, everything is RANDOMISED, and players are getting FRUSTRATED that they don’t have a sense of CONTROL over what’s happening. When it comes down to the fundamentals of game design, people play games that are easy to understand and have a simple but immersive form of fun.
Take a look at World of Warcraft for example. Even though its a HUGE open world mmorpg, and players have to travel ALOT, at least theY know where they are going, because everything is certain. Now lets compare that to the one quest where you have to find 6 dark wizards in the area and kill them. Not sure about you, but when I get that quest, I literally just delete it and find a new one. I can’t be bothered wasting my time finding 6 completely random spawning NPCs.
Now going back to Blox Fruit’s leveling system, we see that it takes longer to get to max level compared to WoM, even within the first 2 updates it received. So it terms of time, WoM is much quicker. But what’s lacking with WoM is that it doesn’t make people feel as if they’re getting stronger. There’s no instant reward, such that players are not feeling motivated To keep leveling.
This is also even more exacerbated by the lack of frequency of quests in higher levels. When you’re a Starter Wizard, there are alot of quests, but each quest doesn’t give much exp. When you’re Apprentice Wizard, you get less quests, but more exp per quest. Which is more satisfying, do you say? Some may say Apprentice, but I think most would opt for a continuous sense of growth.
Another important factor contributing to this issue is the storyline and bosses. I seriously expected Vetex to be a bit more creative with the storyline and make it an actual story, but it just turned out to be a bunch of quests. Coupled with a no level cap raise (even just by 5 levels), this is literally why people think doing the storyline is more of a “chore” than anything else.
HOWEVER, a major reason as to why I think the storyline is actually somewhat good is because that vetex introduced TRACKING. As mentioned in my points above, this has given a sense of security for players doing the quests.
As for the bosses, making them randomised was not a good idea at all. It doesn’t give a sense of STORY and AWE (yes) that fixed bosses have. Like that one boss in AA at Doom village where you enter a cool little hole to reveal an epic evil boss is really cool. HOWEVER, if vetex plans to add fixed bosses in the future, I highly suggest he doesn’t just sprinkle them here and there within the 5000 level cap. I would rather have 3 fixed bosses within a span of 600 levels rather than 5 fixed bosses within a span of 5000 levels. Players simply don’t have the patience and scope to look at the bigger picture of the leveling system.
To summarise and reiterate my points, it all comes down to TANGIBILITY and SATISFACTION. Those are the two things that players are not getting from WoM. I dare say, the only good thing about WoM that has kept me going is the community. All the people are mature and nice. This is precisely why Guild Update is so hyped for many.
As for my suggestions on how to improve, they are as follows:
- Increase quest spawn rate, and have a guaranteed amount in a certain town.
- Have certain fixed NPCs, and make them spawn more often.
^ fixing both of these should also fix long walks in quests - Have structures spawn more often, if not guaranteed with a randomised type
^ if you fix all of these then the difficulty in fighting npc aim should be compensated (and thank you vetex for adding the aiming nerf)
**- Make the NPC level progression SHIFT throughout Magius, such that higher level NPCs may spawn more often in the northern regions of the map, and lower level NPCs will originate from the bottom right of the map, where we are now.
Thanks for reading, make sure to share your ideas in the replies.
Back to hibernating.
