Jump to content

Onderon dailies are not designed like dailies


Rolodome

Recommended Posts

I will admit this is a bit of a frustration post, but I'm also speaking from a game design standpoint. I had the displeasure of doing onderon dailies today, imp side, and I don't understand how they got greenlit as daily quests. Dailies (I would think and maybe I am assuming "common sense design" too much here) are supposed to be designed in such a way that you can repeat them efficiently on a daily basis without too much tedium.

 

The amount of steps these quests have is far too many; some of them border on being treasure hunts where you have to look up locations of items that are sometimes extremely small clickies you have to locate on the ground (apparently the designers have never met a person who even needs glasses) (side note: on one, I had to do a web search and change instances for the item to spawn visibly on the advice of something I read); one of the quests for killing mobs and looting them, the spawn rate for the items you need from them appears to be something like 1/3 for killing silver mobs.

 

I don't want to focus too much on how the planet tanks my framerate despite being fine on other planets, as that's not the fault of the quest designers, but it is part of the experience and it makes it all the worse.

 

Anyway, I find myself caught between being more frustrated or more confused by these dailies. If the point is the stretch content and that's why they're so tedious, well.... isn't that what the point of dailies are in MMOs to begin with? And the absurd weekly rep caps this game has? I just don't understand what is going on here and it seems worth bringing up because this is some of the most recent content the game has had, and it seems as though the designers have either learned nothing over the years, or must be new and are flailing around wildly with whatever tools are on hand.

 

Maybe I'm being unfair, trying to make my preference into a design problem, but I think that's just me saying that because I don't want to be mean. Because I know there are real people who work on this stuff, maybe under awful conditions, and I don't want to kick them while they're down. I just don't understand, I can't make sense of how it's supposed to be fun or interesting; it's one thing to recognize quality work, but not enjoy it, it's another thing to not understand how it's supposed to be quality work. When this game had issues with being MMO-like at launch, it was easy (at least for me) to excuse BW as being a company "good at RPGs, but new to online games," but 10 years later it's hard to be understanding when it still feels like they are "good at RPGs, but new to online games." Like they haven't learned much of anything. :(

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I don't find them too difficult except for one or two on each side. They are slow the first few times when you don't know where to look, but once you know, they're not too bad. The Republic side definitely has it easier on this planet. There's a nice route that covers all of them, no backtracking. Empire side has a couple spots you have to backtrack. Because of this, pubside can finish the dailies 5-10 minutes faster.
Link to comment
Share on other sites

I don't find them too difficult except for one or two on each side. They are slow the first few times when you don't know where to look, but once you know, they're not too bad. The Republic side definitely has it easier on this planet. There's a nice route that covers all of them, no backtracking. Empire side has a couple spots you have to backtrack. Because of this, pubside can finish the dailies 5-10 minutes faster.

That's good to hear that they improve with time at least. I still think it's poor design though, I'd equate it to playing a buggy game and appreciating it more over time as you learn to how to play it while dodging the worst bugs. Which, incidentally, is what I'm starting to think is the case with this game in general in a big way... that it's largely been supported over the years by dedicated fans who learned how to circumvent its worst tendencies on auto pilot and that it's part of the reason the playerbase only seems to shrink over time. There are other important reasons, too, but... yeah. The thing about well polished/designed games is they have a way of making you feel smart because you get it quickly the first time, or sometimes you don't even think about it at all because it's so intuitive. I'm not gonna say doing such is easy, but I expect more from a game like this, ya know. 10 years is more than enough time to do some polishing and refine design techniques. And I still see recurring problems in the newest content, like confusing level design and quests like these.

 

Some of these problems are, at least on a surface concept level, pretty straightforward to avoid: Quests with tiny spawn items to pick up could be done better by making them 100% chance drop items from mobs in the area with a short respawn timer, while keeping to the same general concept of collecting items (in these onderon quest cases, you have to fight mobs to get close to the items anyway). Level design issues could be fixed with an optional GPS trail system for quests (admittedly, this one may be a lot to ask for their infrastructure, but it would allow them to still make confusing levels if that's intentional for some puzzle gameplay reason or something and without needing to change previous levels). Issues with tedious, filler content could be fixed by focusing on short, snappy content instead that is fun to replay and gets its longevity from that instead of from exhausting you (a good example of this, IMO, is the swoop races from the event; they are a bit repetitive and won't be everybody's cup of tea, but they are pretty short and sweet as length goes).

Edited by Rolodome
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Level design issues could be fixed with an optional GPS trail system for quests (admittedly, this one may be a lot to ask for their infrastructure, but it would allow them to still make confusing levels if that's intentional for some puzzle gameplay reason or something and without needing to change previous levels).

I haven't seen any *deeply* confusing level design in SWTOR, certainly not at the level of GW2's Tangled Depths map, which is, er, very tangled, with three distinct tiers in the map (surface, dry underground, flooded underground), with the lowest level full of water that you get eaten in if you don't carry a light source.

Issues with tedious, filler content could be fixed by focusing on short, snappy content instead that is fun to replay and gets its longevity from that instead of from exhausting you (a good example of this, IMO, is the swoop races from the event; they are a bit repetitive and won't be everybody's cup of tea, but they are pretty short and sweet as length goes).

As compared, presumably, with e.g. Destroy Star Fortress missions which are deeply tedious, long and laborious, and reward essentially *nothing*.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Some of the Onderon dailies are pretty bad on Republic side as well, which may not be much of a problem now but it will be once 7.0 hits as we have to complete the daily quest in a single session. At least for me, some of the quest items are fairly difficult to spot because of the dense underbrush in the area.

Never did the Imp dailies there, but I assume they have similiar issues.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

As compared, presumably, with e.g. Destroy Star Fortress missions which are deeply tedious, long and laborious, and reward essentially *nothing*.

I'd agree that's a good example, yeah.

 

I haven't seen any *deeply* confusing level design in SWTOR, certainly not at the level of GW2's Tangled Depths map, which is, er, very tangled, with three distinct tiers in the map (surface, dry underground, flooded underground), with the lowest level full of water that you get eaten in if you don't carry a light source.

Lol, it's been a while since I did Tangled Depths, I was not a fan of that area. Heart of Thorns really killed my interest in that game in general I should really give it another chance some time, but anyway, when I say confusing level design, I'm not ranking it as compared to other games' confusing level design. Just there are repeated problems that I've both seen others talk about and experienced myself. An example in recent content is:

 

Mek Sha when you're doing the quest to ambush the rodian, I forget his name, the quest marker essentially sends you in the wrong direction because of how it's placed and the fact that this game has no indicator for Y axis on quest markers. The right direction to go actually looks like the wrong one completely at first.

 

And it also goes back to base game some too. Corellia is a complaint I've seen more than once, how it can seem like you need to go one way, but then you finally reveal that part of the map too late and you have to backtrack.

 

At least GW2 can say it's more of an open world game and Tangled Depths was basically a jungle, so it being confusing is somewhat justifiable in that sense, but this game has always been designed as very on-the-rails theme park maps, so I don't think there's much of an excuse for it. Maybe the one exception would be:

 

The Gemini ship in KOTFE(KOTET?) where it's sort of like a maze, but then it's part of the story that you are supposed to have some trouble knowing which way to go cause the droid keeps screwing with you.

 

The thing I like about an optional GPS-like trail system is that for those who enjoy level design with a bit of navigating required, or just aren't the type who regularly needs to be pulling up the map, they can still enjoy it as is. And those of us who get turned around going in the opposite direction because we haven't seen it that way before can have a better experience.

Edited by Rolodome
Link to comment
Share on other sites

I actually would disagree on the flow of the daily missions. I also like that the planet has me coming back to it for other things like Nature of Progress or harvesting. I find myself there quite a bit which is really what a daily area should be in my opinion. I think the feedback of "if there's a clicky don't make it the same color as the surroundings" is completely fair. I ended up doing all the achievements on this planet sans the PvP ones since there's just not many people ever in the PvP instance. I'd actually be ok if the 7.0 daily area mimicked Onderon. The poster is correct that once you find the route that works best for you it can be done quickly.
Link to comment
Share on other sites

I don't have any issues running the dailies pub or imp. Pubside is faster, you only have to go counterclockwise (and being DS helps). Impside there is some back and forth, but again you just need to go counterclockwise. and smartly use your QTs. It should take 10-15 min max to finish the planet. And yes it takes longer than say CZ-198, i enjoy Onderon way more
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Finding stuff in the Onderon grass is very frustrating (my personal pet peeve - not Onderon but crops up in other places lately - is the 'let's take away all the light and make them navigate and platform'). I learned to set graphics to Low (I normally run High graphics) when I work those, makes it much easier to see things. Depends on your system, of course, but I hope this helps.
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Finding stuff in the Onderon grass is very frustrating (my personal pet peeve - not Onderon but crops up in other places lately - is the 'let's take away all the light and make them navigate and platform'). I learned to set graphics to Low (I normally run High graphics) when I work those, makes it much easier to see things. Depends on your system, of course, but I hope this helps.

Or just turn off the grass slider, since that's the specific setting that helps.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

×
×
  • Create New...