Editing Announcements - 2010/04 - Shedding Skin (section)

=== Quest Hub ===
{{Turbine Developer
 |      Date = April 20th, 2010
 |      Link = http://forums.ac.turbine.com/showthread.php?&postid=502046#post502046
 |      Text = One of the appeals of Asheron's Call is that it has a large exploratory component that many other games lack. We do not wish to create a quest system that takes that away from players. In many other games I have tried that use "modern" quest trackers those actually take the place of figuring out quests. Yes, it is convenient at first but after a while one tends to click through quest accepts without reading them, run to the blue blob on the map without reading the quest or knowing why, and killing things until feedback happens saying the quest is done. After hearing player feedback we didn't feel that would be right for Asheron's Call. We were concerned it would diminish the exploratory aspect of the game.

That does not mean that the current UI and quest systems can't be improved. We can and do implement such improvements. We will continue to do so.

Our goal for tailoring is to make the game have as much customization as possible in how a character looks. The layer tool is just a way for players to tell use the order that their characters are putting on their armor. Everyone can make the decision to tuck in their shirts; this is just an in game way of telling the game your preference along those lines.

Sev~
 | Developer = Severlin
 |     Title = Producer
}}

{{Turbine Developer
 |      Date = April 20th, 2010
 |      Link = http://forums.ac.turbine.com/showthread.php?&postid=502088#post502088
 |  Question = I understand that a real quest tracker or adding other ways to alert players to quest might interfere with the original design of randomly stumbling upon quests. Still I think many players here are disillusion. The majority of people are resorting to using the Wiki to find quests for MFKs and XP and looking to the Wiki for steps to complete it. If they are not then they are most likely one of the newbs who are 275 and are incapable of completing a quest unless they have someone to lead them the through it. Even then the leader is probably just reading from the Wiki. If not that then they are asking on /cg where a person points them to the Wiki or someone answers them back on /cg after looking it up on the Wiki.
 |      Text = We are always looking for suggestions on older quests that could use better explanation, rewards or even balancing. We have gone through a number of older quests to update them and plan to continue to do so. If people have specific examples then post away.

As for the multi-slot tool, reducing all existing multi-slot armor to single slot would have left many existing characters who used them with big holes in their protection and no way to inform them of this fact and no way for them to hunt effectively for new pieces if they are randomly hit in unarmored areas for huge damage. We were unwilling just convert armor and leave many characters potentially unplayable. It would be particularly bad for returning players who were suddenly unprotected in areas.

As for the layering tool, making these armor pieces into single slot as a large scale forced action would still leave the problem of armor that can now be stacked having uncontrolled visual layering rules. Yes, we could have easily made arbitrary decisions on how things stacked. In fact our first iteration did exactly that, but every decision ended up with some combination of armor pieces that would have looked better layered differently. We would rather give the player a way to control things like this instead of arbitrarily making a choice for them they may or may not like. Believe me, an arbitrary stacking order would have been much easier to do. I had to add new tech specifically to get the layering tool to work.

Sev~
 | Developer = Severlin
 |     Title = Producer
}}

{{Turbine Developer
 |      Date = April 20th, 2010
 |      Link = http://forums.ac.turbine.com/showthread.php?&postid=502092#post502092
 |      Text = One of the goals of the quest hub was to introduce players to the world of Asheron's Call (or re-introduce) by showing them a great variety of locations and types of quests as well as introducing bits of lore through the NPCs and the quest.

For instance it was decided that every portal in the hub would place the player on the landscape outside of any dungeon. This allowed the player to see where they were in the world and experience a great variety of locations.

When Asheron's Call launched there were a great number of low level players experiencing the world together and happening across a low level dungeon in that level range was something that would likely happen. Now, however, as many players have pointed out at low levels players don't wander the world happening across dungeons at low levels, they get twink gear and buffs and go to Olthoi Arcade or Moarsmen or other such locations. The quest hub re-introduces players to many quests they haven't done in years or have never done.

Before the quest hub the difference between leveling a low level character using buffs from a bot and twink gear was greatly different from working on your own. The quest hub allows players to work on their own to level at a similar rate. Between increasing experience gains on the quests and reducing running/searching time it goes a long way to catch up to buffed xp grinding.
 | Developer = Django
 |     Title = Turbine Staff
}}