AVWW Beta 0.546, "Multiplayer Fixes Round 1," Released!

[x4000]

Original: http://arcengames.blogspot.com/2011/12/avww-beta-0546-multiplayer-fixes-round.html

This one has a whole list of fixes for multiplayer AVWW, to get rid of most of the small annoyances that have been reported.  In other news, we have plans for how to deal with the one major annoyance in the next few days, so stay tuned on that.  But we did want to give an update on what our plans are.

If you've not yet played multiplayer AVWW, here's a wiki article to explain all the ins and outs of it.  We really appreciate all the feedback we've gotten so far, and I think we're heading in a direction now that folks will be pleased with.

Enjoy!

This is a standard update that you can download through the in-game updater itself, if you already have 0.500 or later. When you launch the game, you'll see the notice of the update having been found if you're connected to the Internet at the time.  If you don't have 0.500 or later, you can download that here.

[Orelius]

I feel that leveling up is far too quick in multiplayer, especially since the number of players significantly increases the amount of experience gained.  As a result, things get obsolete fast.  A health scroll that you crafted yesterday suddenly heals a quarter of what it did a day before.  Your spellgems that require rare commodities to create are now useless.  To be honest, I'd rather have all the numbers go up instead of making all the rest go down, but that would change the game quite a bit, and I'm not sure if it would be for the better.

The big problem with this is that when the items become obsolete, they're hardly worth using anymore.  Attempting to get new spellgems with these spell gems is often very difficult, as your healing and damage items won't be nearly as effective.  It also wastes rare commodities, which is rather frustrating.  I shouldn't  have to go get another magma every time I want to get the next mark level of launch meteor.

The worst thing is that I don't know how this can be fixed.  Oftentimes, you're better off starting a new character just for the starting items, since they'll likely better by the ones you have by the next time you log on.

[zebramatt]

I tend to agree with Orelius although I suspect the solution lies either in refining the interrelation between ingredients itself; or in implementing some sort of resource pooling model for multiplayer.

[x4000]

Cheers, we know -- hence part of the reason multiplayer is in alpha. Exp is going away, and there will be other ways of getting rare commodities, and the general pace of leveling in solo will be slowed down while also the pace of multi will then match solo. Check out the threads in brainstorming on the new mission system, that addresses everything except the rare commodities thing which is something I've not noted the details for publicly yet. But it's all coming soon!

[zebramatt]

The brainstorming threads started to melt my brain, so I'm going to just cut loose and see what you do!

(Did you go with that binary Starcraft II -style mission branching in the end? I loved that, really made my choices matter.)

[x4000]

Yep, that's the plan for the core missions!  And actually, side missions will use something between that and the FFTA system. That's the whole "mission time" thing.

Incidentally, the average time between levels is expected to be more like 1.5-2 hours, with each level up being a satisfying conclusion of a hard core mission.

And yeah, brain melting is why I decided to write it all down! Just thinking it all out in my head only goes so far, heh.

[mrhanman]

Wow! So many changes.  It feels like a different game entirely.  I feel like I've missed so much.  Damn you Skyrim, Skyward Sword, Holiday Releases in general, etc.!

[keith.lamothe]

Wow! So many changes.  It feels like a different game entirely.  I feel like I've missed so much.  Damn you Skyrim, Skyward Sword, Holiday Releases in general, etc.!

Things are very much still in flux; you may be missing some of the process but not missing a whole lot of what the real 1.0 will be like, I think

[mrhanman]

Yes, but I think what fascinates me so much about this game so far has been the audience's ability to participate in the development in a very real, meaningful way.  I almost feel like I've been cheating on AVWW. 

[Dizzard]

Rock Paper Shotgun posted about the multiplayer features, I was a little surprised in the comments how negative the perception of AVWW seems to be. (well it wasn't that many comments but there was an overall consensus)

http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2011/12/08/a-valley-with-multiplayer-co-op-testing/?replytocom=867532#respond

Mostly about the graphics rather than the multiplayer. I'll be honest, the pictures I saw of AVWW at first didn't really pull me that much. (edit: although it was probably more because I don't usually enjoy side scrollers than anything else personally) It was only when I read what the game was about that I got interested. So possibly the very first impression of AVWW might not be the strongest? 

[keith.lamothe]

RPS commenter reactions vary widely from one post to the next.  Sometimes it's 70% negative, sometimes it's 90% positive.  Oddly, I think one time when the actual article was somewhat negative actually had the most positive comment thread.

It's a good group of people, overall, but with an readership that wide it's inevitable that they'll get a few folks who literally would derive more personal satisfaction from our failure than from our success, and that can really color the whole interaction.

[x4000]

It's interesting, because at Minecon we had tons of love for the art specifically.  And a lot of other places around the 'net have been really positive about the game in general, or about the graphics or otherwise.  Certain places like RPS in particular have been really negative on the art.  There aren't that many places that are that negative in that way about the game, thankfully, but they do exist.

On a related note, RPS keeps posting tiny JPEG quality 3 screenshots of AVWW.  Connection?  Hmm.

For the time being we're just ignoring comment threads of that sort, because there's nothing we can do about that.  There are legitimate things that need to happen with the game, hence the brainstorming subforum and a lot of our coming changes, but there's also armchair griping by people who've never played it or who are hung up on the fact that we don't have a AAA art team, and there's nothing I can do about those folks.  Given the response elsewhere, and how toxic a lot of folks seem to be in the comment threads on RPS articles about anything, I'm not terribly concerned these days.

[x4000]

New one!  http://www.arcengames.com/forums/index.php/topic,9569.0.html