0009116: Anachronism Mission Complaints and 1 Suggestion - DEV Arcen

ID	Project	Category		Date Submitted	Last Update

0009116	Valley 1	Suggestion - Mission Ideas		Aug 3, 2012 2:23 pm	Aug 31, 2012 11:46 am

Reporter	S. Michael White	Assigned To
Status	considering	Resolution	open

Summary	0009116: Anachronism Mission Complaints and 1 Suggestion
Description	When I do the anachronism missions, I shudder for three reasons, though I actualy enjoy the idea of the mission: 1: Some of the elementals flying around look similar to each other, though they are from different time periods. 2: Terrestrial enemies clump up tending to be difficult to snipe in a crowd of 6 or 7 non-targets. This exponentially increases the number of new targets to be tracked down.This almost doubles the time it takes me to beat these missions. 3: I haven't yet grasped which enemy is from what time period. Without graphics or scripting solutions, the only thing I can offer (for number 3) is that once you've identified(shot) an anachronistic monster, it displays this info upon pause and hover-over. A line that says ANACHRONISM, may help in avoiding the same mistake of shooting an ice elemental twice when you thought (or forgot) one was lightning-based. And if it's not already there, an Encyclopedia to brush up on the enemy types would be good study material. (Apologies if it is.)
Tags	No tags attached.

Internal Weight	Feature Suggestion

Pyrrhic Aug 9, 2012 5:49 pm reporter ~0027495 Last edited: Aug 9, 2012 5:55 pm	1) The game's going to be getting an art revamp in the next couple months (http://www.arcengames.com/forums/index.php?topic=11285.0), so I guess this point is already being addressed. 2), however, is a problem. Are terrestrial enemies still clumping up? This was supposed to have been fixed in Beta 1.201 (http://arcengames.com/mediawiki/index.php?title=AVWW_-_Post-Launch_Series_3_Release_Notes#Beta_1.201_Entropic_Leap): "Interior journey to perfection and anachronism missions have now been updated to also be a bit more labyrinthine and difficult to traverse...this makes it so that the monsters don't clump up so much as they otherwise were." (You may also want to look over 0008860, which brought about that change.) 3) I thought the mission description tried to ease players into not stressing out about memorization. It basically encourages players to experiment, and if they kill the 'wrong' enemy, no big deal - a few more will spawn, you'll learn from the mistake, and (presumably) not make the mistake again. I don't mean to sound harsh, but is the 'trial & error' method not working for you? Is it because the different monsters look too similar for you? (If so, then maybe we should just wait until after the graphics update.) 3.5) The idea of somehow explicitly telling the player which monsters are anachronisms is interesting. Your idea of saying which are anachronisms in the pause/hover-over text seems like it'd work fine, except that it would require players to pause the game. Alternatively, perhaps it could a line that floats in the air, like the damage or 'movement slowed!' messages - but maybe that would clutter the player's visual experience too much. My general concerns about what I'm calling "idea 3.5" are that this might make these missions too easy; and instead of looking for certain monsters, players would be encouraged to look for that "anachronism!" line of text (whether by pausing or amongst the floating damage-text), which seems anti-immersive.

S. Michael White Aug 21, 2012 4:01 pm reporter ~0027882	Great and thoughtful responses. I've since put more time into the game, so consider the suggestions as from a newb point of view. Still, the points were that the levels (at the time) had a small amount of flat areas separated by like a single wall. My only way of getting terrestrial enemies to separate was to hope that the bipedal ones weren't as fast as oh say a boar. I had found myself in situations where all manner of projectiles were shooting up at me as my enemies created a picket fence with only one in the middle as a target. I've suggested auras before on other comments and was told that it was labor intensive, but if you wanted some visual to display which enemies had been discovered as anachronisms (instead of having to pause), a red aura might surround a previously shot non-target. Whether that cheapens this unique mission style or not is up to you guys. I'm certainly okay with the "trial & error" method, though I was being a dummy and forgetting who was what after a 15 minute foray in extricating targets, mostly the elementals as I mentioned earlier. One mission type out of 10 or so ain't bad. It's tolerable in present form.

Pyrrhic Aug 26, 2012 1:24 am reporter ~0027985	To me, it seems like you just experienced a learning curve. A frustrated new player isn't the greatest of things - but if the problem resolves itself over time (as the player learns more monsters), then the problem can't be that bad. Re your points 1 and 3, I made a suggestion that Anachronism missions unlock (but the unlock being a pretty simple one). As for your point 2 (monsters clumping), I'll have to look into this. Like I said, this was supposed to have been fixed; if it still seems like a big and consistent problem, then it should probably be reported.

Date Modified	Username	Field	Change
Aug 3, 2012 2:23 pm	S. Michael White	New Issue
Aug 9, 2012 5:27 pm	Pyrrhic	Relationship added	related to 0008860
Aug 9, 2012 5:49 pm	Pyrrhic	Note Added: 0027495
Aug 9, 2012 5:55 pm	Pyrrhic	Note Edited: 0027495
Aug 21, 2012 4:01 pm	S. Michael White	Note Added: 0027882
Aug 26, 2012 1:19 am	Pyrrhic	Relationship added	parent of 0009372
Aug 26, 2012 1:24 am	Pyrrhic	Note Added: 0027985
Aug 31, 2012 11:46 am	tigersfan	Internal Weight	=> Feature Suggestion
Aug 31, 2012 11:46 am	tigersfan	Status	new => considering