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Recent comment by Scott Hartsman
Khalathwyr
Member UncommonPosts: 3,133
Thought some of you may find these interesting. Enjoy. Source
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This must be "Reply To Huge Threads" night!
I'm supposed to be working on schedules right now - This is far more fun. 
I mentioned part of this in the Kill Six Bugs thread, and another part in the Will My Hotbars Save With This Whole Souls Thing thread but it bears repeating here.
The newbie experience we showed off at PAX was solid fun for a lot of people. That said -- It was, entirely unashamedly, the alpha newbie experience.
Let's talk about the things it did show: It was very playable, rock solid, showed that souls are real, abilities are real, combat is smooth, animations are good, movement is fluid, characters look great, rifts look awesome, rift loot works, contribution works, many types of quests function smoothly, rewards exist and work, and as a bonus, did have a pretty interesting story on both sides for those who chose to read it.
Remember, we had to make sure to have an experience that was entirely approachable by someone who had never played an MMO before. It would have been a huge mistake for us to chuck someone onto a high level character with all of the souls discovered, then have them make headway against high level, advanced types of dynamic content.
Not for a brief walk-up demo at a convention, anyway. To the majority of the people who played, that would have been the antithesis of fun.
That we already have a game that works so well that people are talking about the quality of the content is incredibly high praise for pretty much every system that sits under it all.
Yes, we're going to be levelling up the starter experience.
For the moment, however, I'm going to think the team should be taking comments like this as a huge compliment to all of the things that are already in place. How many games have you played that didn't have them solid by launch?
- Scott
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"Many nights, my friend... Many nights I've put a blade to your throat while you were sleeping. Glad I never killed you, Steve. You're alright..."
Chavez y Chavez
Comments
It's good to know the starting experience will be more than just killing bugs!
Damage control. They are working their tails of now to raise the starter area experience to a higher level before (the not yet announced) closed beta, which is a good thing, but the above remark is masking the shock they must have felt from player responses to what they had planned to ship. Which to my mind was not so bad at all, but not so bad is apparently not good enough, which is also promising.
It takes one to know one.
I really don't believe it is just damage control, but even if it is, it does tell us one really big thing. The developers at Trion listen and respond appropriately to what the community is saying. Will they ALWAYS give us what we ask for? Probably not, but even the fact that they listen and take what we say into consideration is a big plus in my book. The new player experience has to be balanced in a way that brand new MMO players can learn how to play and at the same time it has to grab the attention and interest of us old jaded veterans and I think for a lot of us old-timers killing more bugs is not the way to do that. It was ok for a game show, but it really doesn't cut it for a AAA MMORPG. I'm glad Scott is listening.
I also agree with what he said about the underlieing systems. For a game still in alpha phase it is good to hear such positive feedback on the combat system, souls system, and rift system. And the game is gorgeous, too. I have no doubts this will be a keeper.
It certainly is one thing that makes me smile a bit. The first time I saw something to this effect was when Cindy (the Community Manager) put up a poll on the official forums with respect the the reputation system they added to the forums. There was a significant amount of disappointment in the move that was subsequently voiced so she wanted to give us the chance to vote as to if it stayed or not. THe masses voted against it and Trion promptly removed it.
Sure, that's a small thing but the little things do matter. They give indication of principles and to this day I have only seen positive things out of Trion with regard to interacting with it's customer base.
"Many nights, my friend... Many nights I've put a blade to your throat while you were sleeping. Glad I never killed you, Steve. You're alright..."
Chavez y Chavez