One thing I've found fascinating over time is watching the way Cryptic iterates on its modules. If you look at the first three "expansions" for example, you can clearly see them refining the daily area concept with each release - Icewind Dale remains one of my favourite maps to play around on to this day.
However, every time they tried something very different, it didn't go down too well. I mean, I liked Tyranny of Dragons and the idea of a campaign that you can do while levelling (even if the associated level scaling was screwy), but based on them never repeating the experiment, I suspect it wasn't too well received. Elemental Evil with its level cap increase was a disaster for all kinds of reasons, and Underdark deciding to completely decouple the game's grind from its story... let's just say I probably wasn't the only one who noped right out of that one after playing through the whole story in a single evening.
Lately we've returned to a more traditional "daily area" model, however with the exception of Chult's "six times weekly" patrol missions, there's been a general move away from traditional daily quests coupled with a strong push towards forcing players to log in and play every single day by making it impossible to pick up several days worth of dailies just to "binge complete" them all at once on the weekend. This is a shame because that's exactly how I like to play through the old areas. It's no coincidence that I have yet to complete any campaign after Elemental Evil on any of my alts.
I like that they're not afraid to experiment a bit, and that they learn from their experience. That they are tweaking new things also means that the community is still active.
ReplyDeleteWell, I would say they are a bit afraid to experiment these days... but on the other hand it's kind of nice to know what to expect from each module. If you enjoy the game as it is, you can rest assured in the knowledge that you'll get more of what you like with each expansion, just spiced up with a few new mechanics here and there.
DeleteBut oh yeah, the game is definitely active. I meant to write a post about that as well actually. For how little press it gets, it seems to be much more popular than other MMOs that get a lot more exposure in the blogosphere, such as Secret World, Wildstar or Rift.
I'm sure D&D has something to do with it, but also the fact that its F2P from the beginning has an impact as well.
DeleteActually in Chult, you don't need to "preload" up on quests (other than the patrol ones which cycle in availability every 20 mins).
ReplyDeleteI still often only go in on one day in the weekend and fill up the weekly quota of shineys. You are right that they aren't dailies - they are "repeatables" which become available as you complete one of the other ones in the area.
Soshenstar has 4 of those, and I found sticking to 2 (alternating between batiri and templars) was the fastest way through it. Very grindy though. :P
Omu ones are an improvement.
Yeah, Chult wasn't actually too bad. I was more thinking of things like Maze Engine with it's one daily mission that you need to repeat for weeks, Storm King's Thunder hiding the repeatable missions behind a daily you need to pick up first, and River District being just "do stuff" once a day.
DeleteThe Soshenstar repeatable quests are probably my least favourite part of that area as well, because I think repeating the same two quests at a time over and over again is tedious. Only done one round of Omu so far but it does seem to have a bit more going on again.