A Concern Re: Removal of Settlement Stockpile in 1.04

[yllamana]

One issue with the "move missions into the world" concept is that a lot of players need a lot of direction.  We even had reviewers who would go through the tutorial, get to the world map, and still not realize there were missions out there for them to do, assume the game had no direction, and shelve it.

Needless to say, we didn't try to reach that far down to hold hands (we're not even sure how we could get through in a case like that), but there's also a legitimate reason to have some pretty prominent "you could go here next" pointers.

That said, I agree it shouldn't be flooding the screen with missions; for a long time we had it start with 2 missions per continent and work up to 7.  That may have been too few, but our usual practice of doing big changes like a binary-search instead of incremental ones does sometimes lead to situations like this

Well, as a simple suggestion of how to solve that problem, what comes to mind is that the survivors could be attempting to detect opportunities through whichever magical or technological means they have at their disposal, and they could display "missions" on the map that were actually part of a room in that terrain. So maybe you have a room where allied critters are fighting against enemies and you can get something out of helping them, and that pops up on the map with information about it to help direct the player. The mission's appearance would be random, so you'd still find tons of these little things wandering around, but if you were after direction that'd be available.

You could even have an NPC in the settlement (I think a human character would be more fun than an Ilari, though YMMV) who can suggest goals (maybe with a little two-frame talky head!!!) but who you can totally ignore if you want.

The problem from my point of view is the explorable world often feels pretty sterile and samey. You have all these cool game mechanic ideas but they're all locked away in missions. I'd just like to see those game mechanics appear in exploration because that's the part of the game that really interests me.

[JBSpook]

Two thoughts....

What if there was a way to delete missions from the world map?

Could be a new keybind you hit when your on a chunk that has a mission you want to get rid of.  A confirmation message, then a deleted mission.  That would then have to start the respawn timer for the chunk.

*You could clear away mission clutter if want
*You could clear away mission types you dont like and have no intentions of doing
*You could clear that perfect area to lay down that survivor scroll without having to do the missions first

Second thought...

Have a "hardcore" mode at world launch that doesnt spawn missions on the world map. All missions would have to be sought out  by adventuring.

[MouldyK]

Have a "hardcore" mode at world launch that doesnt spawn missions on the world map. All missions would have to be sought out  by adventuring.

Or an in-game option in the Difficulty Stone. :3

[Bluddy]

One issue with the "move missions into the world" concept is that a lot of players need a lot of direction.  We even had reviewers who would go through the tutorial, get to the world map, and still not realize there were missions out there for them to do, assume the game had no direction, and shelve it.

Needless to say, we didn't try to reach that far down to hold hands (we're not even sure how we could get through in a case like that), but there's also a legitimate reason to have some pretty prominent "you could go here next" pointers.

That said, I agree it shouldn't be flooding the screen with missions; for a long time we had it start with 2 missions per continent and work up to 7.  That may have been too few, but our usual practice of doing big changes like a binary-search instead of incremental ones does sometimes lead to situations like this

Well, as a simple suggestion of how to solve that problem, what comes to mind is that the survivors could be attempting to detect opportunities through whichever magical or technological means they have at their disposal, and they could display "missions" on the map that were actually part of a room in that terrain. So maybe you have a room where allied critters are fighting against enemies and you can get something out of helping them, and that pops up on the map with information about it to help direct the player. The mission's appearance would be random, so you'd still find tons of these little things wandering around, but if you were after direction that'd be available.

You could even have an NPC in the settlement (I think a human character would be more fun than an Ilari, though YMMV) who can suggest goals (maybe with a little two-frame talky head!!!) but who you can totally ignore if you want.

The problem from my point of view is the explorable world often feels pretty sterile and samey. You have all these cool game mechanic ideas but they're all locked away in missions. I'd just like to see those game mechanics appear in exploration because that's the part of the game that really interests me.

This is exactly my feedback from 2 months ago (http://www.arcengames.com/mantisbt/view.php?id=7745#c24169). I agree 100%. Make the missions appear as organic tasks for chunks that are modified to be like that mission. One chunk could have meteors falling, etc and would need you to take care of it. But it would involve exploration and it would benefit from the world's randomness.

[Tobias]

OH GOD! There's now a Tobias on the forums!

u wot m8


As for the whole cleaving/piercing thing, I do think the only people who associate "cleave" with the act of hitting multiple targets are people who have played DnD or Neverwinter Nights. That's not THAT many people compared to the number of people who haven't. I, personally, would go with the correct english term for it.

[zebramatt]

This is purely anecdotal now but I've been playing a lot of Dragon's Dogma and what that does with quests and the map isn't perfect by any stretch but something similar might mediate between those who feel directionless and those who feel oversaturated.

Basically, you can view the map with or without your current quest markers on it. You can bring up a list alongside the map and scroll through quests and have it mark the selected one on the map. So if you're just trying to get somewhere - maybe to collect some stuff to craft - then your map is clutter-free; if you're doing a certain mission the objectives are marked. And you can always scroll through the list to see if there are other quests nearby you'd rather be doing.

Obviously in Valley things are different. Missions occur in-chunk and are demarked on the world map to let you know they exist. But it strikes me you could add a toggle for their display and that would help the players who don't want to know about missions right now. You could also have a list of all the current missions (slightly less trivial to implement, admittedly!) so you can look at them that way. Maybe selecting a mission from the list would highlight it on the world map and show you the details. And finally, notifications of new missions being added to the list (and old ones being removed) could indicate to new players and players with the world map icons toggled off what there is to do in the world.