Shattered Kingdoms

The lore of that armor doesn't match up with its true quality.

Here's how it's an MMO concept: you've stopped talking about fun as the most important motivator. You used the terms "monthly" to talk about repeatable quests and "cleared" to refer to instanced areas instead of respawning ones... those are MMO concepts. PvE does not require solid groups. Efficient PvE requires competent players with appropriate characters. These concepts work in an MMO environment where zero sum gains and infinite potential exist. They do not work in an environment where there is a vast mechanical disparity between characters of different builds and scarcity of rewards. Getting fragments to forge into tokens is currency obfuscation, pure MMO logic for hiding the grind from players under a panache of Skinner Boxed Delights.





We used to have a theory that Nashira played a character that ran around in extremely nice MR gear, but Nashira's kindly come forward and cleared that up. Ironically, this might support your point here.

I agree with the underlying sentiments I think you're expressing, many builders appear to want players to lower their expectations of what their time is worth. Whether that is an unintended consequence of the risk/reward design implementation or an actual, true feeling remains to be clarified.

Dude, I don't see why you're so negative about this.

If people can gather the right character builds to do PvE for loot, then they should be able to find the builds for a group to do it for fragments.

I think 'disguising the grind' would be a good thing, right? Everyone complains about how boring the level grinding is.
Adding quests to leveling is disguising the grind and the Playerbase pushed for that in a past poll. (I think Meissa even added some to the exile sewers after that. Thanks for that.)

Can you elaborate more about why this wouldn't work? Use small words. You are smarter than I am and I don't want to work the Google machine.

Fragments would simply make PvE trips more frequent. More frequent trips mean that more players are going on these adventures. The routes are being seen more often and learned by the newer players.

I suppose, in a gameplay thread, the best way I can really sum it up is that SK has been implemented as a game platform for roleplaying and player-vs-player competitive gameplay. PVE content is neither a part of either paradigm nor immediately compatible.

Think of it like this. You're in, I don't know, Arathi Basin. You just took the stables. You swing around to the blacksmith alone, figuring everyone else would go for the mill. You eat a death from a small squad that happened to go the same direction as you. Perfectly normal, right? Now, imagine you lose all of your items to that squad. Would you queue up nearly as fast?

To continue the analogy, imagine you're finishing up Zul'Farrak with a group. You finally manage to beat all the waves. Guess what? There's no loot, it's all been taken already. The rewards are gone. The risk is immediately less incentivized. Would you join another group that didn't quite have it together?

There's an even more powerful analogy already made. How many people are running Scholomance these days? The rewards are undesirable, so no one bothers to take the risks.

If SK tries to adopt the features of an MMO, it will run into even more problems than MMOs do because it is not designed to be played like one. SK isn't designed to be played like a MOBA, either. SK is designed to be played like a hardcore MUD.

PVE trips should not be more frequent. Repeating the same content to farm tokens was derided when it was hero belts, ignored when it was CRS loyalty tokens, and would only continue to be a bad fit if it were loyalty fragments.

Besides, handling PVE content is some of SK's worst gameplay. A healer doesn't see anything other than the info command and few of them are quick enough readers to actually engage in triage, people have to parse logs to figure out where they even went, and most aggressive NPCs don't even have the chance to get their descriptions read. It's so much wasted effort. It's leveling up without the catharsis of experience points and getting to move on to something else.

Also, loyalty fragments are too much of an OOC concept to be an appropriate means of motivating what should ultimately be an in-character risk for an in-character reward.

The concept of fragments being ooc is a valid argument. Counter: it could be worded ic. "Credit with the wiseman/quest giver." Credit or reputation. But a valid argument nonetheless.

So you're actually sayin that PVE shouldn't be a bigger part of sk? You stated "pve shouldn't be more frequent." Im kinda blown away by that. I disagree. But this, you already know.

I'm just trying to find a way for the knowledge to be passed down. That's the basis of the idea.

Your analogy is pretty much saying that, because In a mmo, you dont lose your loot when you die makes our pve less desirable?

How would you suggest we pass the knowledge down?

You don't. You make it attainable through the ages. Attainable here doesn't mean looking around the world for a footnote reference to some Sea King. Attainable means areas and content are as transparently built as factions are transparently lead.

There's nothing wrong with some IC books, or people posting stories of their adventures.
I think improvement to the areas themselves so that there are clues/actual hints that point to what to do, as well.
One thing the player base can actively work toward doing. The second is more of a staff thing.

A game is no good if it's too easy. A game is no fun if those who know how to get the stuff, continue to always get the stuff with their characters/small group of people they know to get the stuff vs. the less experienced people with the areas/newer players. There can be improved methods to learn that don't include spoon feeding everyone. The best way for a group of new players to learn some of this stuff is to do the same thing those vets did - get a group and go. Perhaps the frustration, and the reason for some of the posts that come up is 1) people don't want to take an extended amount of time to find an appropriate group which is harder to do in an environment with less active characters and 2) if no one in that group knows where the start point is / there aren't decent clues in the game to find it, or navigate it, then people don't want to take another couple of hours doing that. It's a bit of a time disparity. Many people are discouraged when they spend days or weeks trying to get a group together/find someone who knows to get them started or find it easy to latch on to a veteran who can do the same thing in .. 30 minutes from start to finish. Somewhere in the middle I think could be a happier medium that 'doesn't give the game away.'