PC Alpha 19 Dev Diary

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madmole said:
THe old one wasn't UMA, it just wasn't high quality like this. No the new trader Jen actually looks like a woman, not a skinny man with long hair.
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I've been meaning to ask, was she voiced by the same actress that did Miss Fortune (League of Legends)? She sounds exactly like her. Every time she says that voice line where she says something to the effect of "you look dangerous" or whatever, I can't help but chirp along "You've got dangerous eyes. I like that~"

 
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MechanicalLens said:
Goodness, I couldn't imagine having to do a T5 fetch without the icon on the compass. 😶

6 hours later...
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Right. Oblivion had some quests that were vague and you ended up using a wiki to find the marker. The marker was 2d on a map, not 3D with a floating sprite like used for Skyrim. It was much improved and I see why they did it as a designer and player. Some people enjoy complicated vague, find the needle in the haystack. It works for detective games where there isn't impeding doom or player fatigue after fighting through 6 stories of an apartment building to reach said location to deal with. But its just good design that means most people will get it and understand it, and thus enjoy it. Is it dumbed down? You could say that, but I say ignorance is bliss, my gaming time is mostly to enjoy myself in an RPG, its not pvp or to stroke my ego that I figured something out. That isn't our game, you have a horde coming, it is time sensitive and I can't count how many times I tried some tier 5 quest and couldn't find the satchel after I was already 2 hours into it, killed everyone and its 'somewhere'. At that point you just want to go home and get your reward not scour 1 of 500 blocks that are 2500 hp each.

Ranzera said:
I've been meaning to ask. Was she voiced by the same actress that did Miss Fortune (League of Legends)? She sounds exactly like her. Every time she says that voice line where she says something to the effect of "you look dangergous" or whatever. I can't help to chirp along "You've got dangerous eyes. I like that~"
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I forgot her name. She is an outsourced hired professional that is all I know. I think she did a great job.

 
So I just started playing Terraria and to my surprise they have a Blood Moon event. Dozens of zombies trying to eat my pixels just like this game, sky even turns red.  

Is this where the idea came from for this game? I thought it was an original idea all this time. It's literally called a Blood Moon.

 
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Isn't there a Blood Moon in BoTW too? I don't think everyone is copying each other, there's probably a common source of lore and I doubt any video game is it.

 
Khalagar said:
I think biomes still need a bit of re-work in general anyway, but not for realism reasons. Burnt Biome and Wasteland are just miserable to explore, and on every poll I've seen (on reddit at least) has had had those two be by far the least popular biomes, with all the comments mentioning how bad / unfun / ugly they are.

There's literally no reason to ever go to them, they are just vast expanses of nothing. No good distinct resources, ugly scenery, very few PoI since everything is destroyed etc. Winter, Forest, and Desert all are viable places to live and spend most of your time, but the only reason you'd ever go to a Burnt or Wasteland biome is for a challenge or change of pace.
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Burnt Forest is actually pretty in a dark way in A19. I'd bet in a future version the artists will do some cool stuff with the Wasteland too.

 
Roland said:
When you're convinced that everyone else is going by some crazy kind of logic it is time to start questioning your own...

Nobody is bending over backwards. The way it is makes sense. Your scenario could make sense if it was written that way. Bandits do tend to raid stuff-- so how could there possibly be anything left in the wasteland? Because they also tend to hoard and stockpile stuff-- just like we do. If you would stop bending backwards to try and justify the logic you are trying pass off as the only one that makes any sense you would be able to see other perspectives as well.
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Yup.

Everything depends on the games story line, in which there is almost none.  

Without a narrative, it's like we are debating what kind of tea aliens prefer most!

The possible narratives are almost infinite!

From what things look like to me, a lot of the buildings and names could be from survivors of a first wave apocalypse: maybe (only) a nuclear war. 

The second wave apocalypse happening (years?) latter, appears to be more supernatural, just by looking at the BM night is a strong indicator.

Bandits could have just moved into the area, like locust swarms do, looking for more food/loot, maybe the player was a bandit!  Maybe that will be the actual story line even, adding late game threat to the player (who has a strange story line of his own!)

 
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MechanicalLens said:
Goodness, I couldn't imagine having to do a T5 fetch without the icon on the compass. 😶

6 hours later...
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You know, there is some truth to what MM said about it being difficult to find the item to retrieve sometimes.  My brother and I had the hardest time finding the fetch item in the bear den POI one time. 

We literally had to tear up the floor between the 1st and 2nd floor.  And this is even with the damn compass icon lol...

Maybe my eyes have been desensitized from playing world of warcraft for many years lol...

...Maybe a good compromise is have it so the compass icononly show which floor it's on?  *shrugs*

Laz Man said:
You know, there is some truth to what MM said about it being difficult to find the item to retrieve sometimes.  My brother and I had the hardest time finding the fetch item in the bear den POI one time. 

We literally had to tear up the floor between the 1st and 2nd floor.  And this is even with the damn compass icon lol...

Maybe my eyes have been desensitized from playing world of warcraft for many years lol...

...Maybe a good compromise is have it so the compass icononly show which floor it's on?  *shrugs*
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Just had a thought...what happens if the player stops tracking the quest as their active quest?  If it turns off the nav beacon then problem solved. Lol....they can search through every painting to their hearts content.

 
mdf25 said:
Technically 5 biomes are axed, since caves, hub cities, water and other forest variant were also biomes too :)  I miss the plains though and hub cities.
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Hub cities <3

I personally don't care for bandits.  In terms of a more satisfying goal-orientated end game, I would love to see a central hub city with a crapton of the most dangerous zombies and the best loot, surrounded by a rubble city with good loot and lots of normal zombies, and on the outskirts of that, country side with very little loot, and very little zombies. The player would start in the safer outskirts, and as they get stronger, they can start pushing their way towards the good loot.  No need for gamestaging then (which makes it feel like you never win) because it naturally gets harder the closer you get to your goal.

Maybe someone will (backstreet boys reunion tour) it in after it goes gold. 

 
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Khalagar said:
Yeah, there are a few things that not only stump new players, but even veterans often don't know about, like the ability to sort loot in your backpack and stashes by clicking the tiny, near hidden, auto sort button.
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You're kidding me? There's an autosort button? When did that get added in and how have I not noticed? 
Just the other day on this forum, someone was @%$*#!ing about there not being a way to sort your inventory :D

 
Khalagar said:
Problem with manuals was already mentioned, literally nobody reads them. Even getting people to do a tutorial is really hard, they would rather just struggle for 2 hours trying to figure it out on their own, fail, and then call it a bad product and leave a bad review. Just the nature of the beast (humans)

Tooltips, context menus, and super ridiculously obviously ultra user friendly UI is basically the only way to get derps to learn a system. I'm a great fan of gigantic red arrows in the guides I write for work, I've seen these being pretty common in modern games now days too. Where it pauses the game, and has giant arrows pointing at the button saying "CLICK ON THIS TO SORT YOUR INVENTORY" and "HOLD R WHEN PLACING A BLOCK TO ACCESS THE ADVANCED ROTATION AND SHAPE MENU"  and won't let you past until you demonstrate 2nd grade reading level skills
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I recently played a game that did that. Wasn't a great game, but this kind of thing is really useful. So much faster to grasp than reading a paragraph of text.

wmfPOEX.png

The above game didn't seem to have a way of turning off the tips, so I assume it only happens for the first play through, but there can always be a 'switch off tips' button for veterans like Path of Exile has.

 
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