I know this is back-to-back post, but this post is totally separate.
I would also advocate that a literal in-game roundtable / direct communication between dev/players could be good? With maybe a kick-hammer tool prepared for any potential random unbehaved? Maybe an in-game talking stick / AoE silence on players not holding the talking stick (lol). Just to directly exchange ideas, assuming audio does not cut out (lol). Or to take volunteer counselors (basically powerless GMs) to exchange player/dev info as in-game entities?
Just wanted to highlight what the current roadmap is, the current focus, and how that relates to this thread. As well as offer my thoughts out loud for the current roadmap.
Here’s the current roadmap, which looks quite good:
Looking a little further ahead, we are excited to start giving more information about what will be coming out before and during Content Patch 1. We are excited to put out two new dungeons before the content patch, along with the second Raid, Tinkerer class, as well as the first phase of player house customization in the content patch coming out later this fall.
See, as an IRL engineer the Tinkerer(by it’s name alone) sounds amazing. Absolutely. I love play tinker/engineering type of classes. However, the second thing that comes to my mind is that it’s going to be a class as simple as musky/pally/scoundrel. If it is, then I won’t be very excited and probably won’t play/level it seriously. Prove me wrong? Have some kind of advanced play/interaction where players can develop skill in a fun/challenging way, and not just throwing down like turrets etc? Also, rather than new classes, I think revitalizing existing classes, adding new features/class questlines to unlock new features, specializations, etc would be quite favorable. Something to add excitement for each class. I would personally still easily merge Scoundrel into Musketeer, Paladin into Shaman, and just translate items/xp, for example. Then expand warrior, add finishing touches to runemage to address bad spells/some ruined talents, and create totally new features for rangers which I’ve talked about a bit in my post history. Other examples of class excitement might be like instead of a simple legendary drop, there’s an associated legendary questline with the item? Combining rare materials? It might even need group/guild assistance to complete? Second raid is very good, player housing modification also sounds potentially really cool. Especially if you can get some kind of economy interaction with rare placeable house items, or craftables, etc. Maybe even let us place down chests to help organize storage, etc. I’m not sure the housing is what players want most right now across the board, but depending it could be a fairly well received feature. You have to ask yourself: What does this give players? How much content(hours of entertainment) will this give each player? Can I pimp my house out in 3 hours, 30 minutes? Is it a horrible grind that will take me weeks to get anywhere? What can the player do with the house? Will this interact with other parts of the game (like rare hunting, crafting, gathering, raiding, special events like the fall event(option to permanently be rewarded a pumpkin alchemy table? Monkey in a cage for catching monkies? IE re-use the asset that already exists. Other critters?)? What level of customization is available (uniqueness/variety a player can choose from to differentiate from other players / allow a player to make effort in making a unique, or somewhat unique creation)? Can a player buy a different house, that uses a different door? Maybe a “richer” house? Or maybe they just like the 2nd story view? This also could add value/meaning to dram, say if the richest house cost like 500k dram and was massive in size. Can they have their dragon run free in the house within a certain space, play with/feed them? Can the player buy/farm a rare utility item like a pillar & teleport to their house (but perhaps not out of their house?). What about a fish tank where the players can put fish they catch in it? Or trophy fish plaques? A small garden to grow some harvestable plants or just for deco? A display to show your guild emblem, if you had one? Can other players enter their home to come see other players houses? Are there social interactions available in the house, like a dueling pit, a game of giant darts, a mini-mage tournament, dragon racing? etc. Can a player make their house public so that anyone can visit if they type the players name in to some kind of door-prompt (or like knock on the door to bring up the prompt)? Can the owner set chests to public/private(friends/co-owners/same-account-characters) to give out free goodies or share items with friends? Or take live-alchemy lessons? Or a good way to trade items with your alt? This all very much depends on how much time you’d want to spend on housing lol, but above are all features for example that I think would be cool/worthwhile(maybe not giant darts lol, although I would play!). A fleshed out system, rather than the bare-bones of a system that isn’t quite complete. I see the roadmap says that it’s phase 1 of housing. The above is just examples of stuff, if housing were a priority then what kind of features would be appealing to a player that is like myself. Something like a dueling pit, dragons running around, and aquariums though would fall quite low on my list of things that are currently most important to me.
Along with this new content we are also pushing out bug fixes on a regular basis, along with some longer term bug fix goals including fixing class issues, continuing to work on improving voice chat in game, fixing fellowship logs, adding an in game way to report bugs and send output logs on PCVR and Quest, and more!
- bug fixes goals!
- improving voice chat (also voice chat bugs?)!
- In-game bug reporting - #3 (probably will be different, but I am a big fan of this - especially for VR)
This upcoming patch sounds like a good patch for someone like me depending on:
1] The number/type of bugs fixed
2] How enjoyable/not-enjoyable, strong/weak, simple/complex the tinkerer class is.
3] If the housing rocks my socks somehow, and has some really cool features that tie into a variety of other aspects of the game.
4] The raid is not crazy bugged and has good mechanics, challenging, and rewards cool items. Bonus points for a cool environment/immersion/visuals/audio and anything else that could add flavor.