Spiral Knights - Rank 4: introduce Arcade here?

Rank 4: introduce Arcade here?

10 replies [Last post]

Wed, 02/15/2012 - 11:26

Realnight

I'm at Rank 6 right now and have to say I'm loving the missions - it has some issues (which I'll post more about) but overall really nice.

I really like the feel you get from the missions leading up to the snarbolax and the fact that you are given a cobalt set makes you really feel that you have graduated to becoming a knight and are ready to go into the clockworks.

However I'm feeling that at around Rank 4 there needs to be an introduction to the arcade and here's why. The following missions are all about getting you ready for different damage types, but if I were on the production server I would not have nearly enough cr to buy any new equipment to take advantage of this training. At this point I wouldn't have even gotten my current equipment heated up. Since mission kind of suck you in you just want to keep going - a lot of new players I feel will just keep going in their cobalt set - completely missing the point of the type damage training.

It's also not clear that you can repeat missions at this point - so players will completely miss that they can keep beating the Snarbolax to heat up their gear, get more crowns and get more tokens. (side note: boss tokens are kinda glossed over in the token tutorial - it should be made more clear to new players what boss tokens can give them)

I think a arcade tutorial at this point will help a lot. It will give new players a chance to do some grinding (which will be needed when they don't have free energy and cheap gear like we do on the testing server). It will also help slow them down from trying to beat all the missions at once without being properly equipped.

It also looks like your going to be phasing out the old objectives (because they do not fit with the mission system at all). So you're are going to need an arcade tutorial at some point.

Wed, 02/15/2012 - 20:37

Wolfkit

The mission system seems to mostly be a repackaging of current gameplay, and has so far about completely discarded the old packaging, while I feel that the old packaging should play a much bigger role.

Especially because you can't just hop in halfway through a mission; you have to join at the very beginning, while from the arcade you can hop in about anywhere. This makes missions seem a bit more solo oriented than the arcade. This conflicts with SK's team oriented nature.
I would be fine with this if the arcade was introduced much earlier, before rank 4 even, to allow for easier playing as a team. That, or adjust missions to be tolerant of joining partway through, to make it easier for groups to form.

Wed, 02/15/2012 - 23:33

Round-Shinigami

Big "Invite friends now"

Big "Invite friends now" button in the mission lobby would be a good hint.
Or "Need help? Invite friends!" hint somewhere before you start.

As for arcade - I've been thinking about it myself and reached the following conclusion: the game should "pause" knight's ranking progress (missions are locked after you progress to some point for a limited amount of time, letting you heat your items, get into arcade) or, at the very least, "Go, explore, get experience, fame and money and come back when you're ready for harder missions" message.

Thu, 02/16/2012 - 04:45

Merethif

+10

Thu, 02/16/2012 - 12:04

Realnight

Yeah make it something like

Yeah make it something like "We need some scouting done of the clockworks in order to find locations that need more attention - You can help us with that through the arcade."

The concept of scouts/strikers has already been presented to the player so it would be a good fit.

Sat, 02/18/2012 - 23:04

Wolfkit

Relevant:

http://geek.pikimal.com/2012/02/17/mmo-update-three-trends-that-grind-my-gears/
This is quite relevant, most notably the section on Theme Park vs Sandbox.
Before missions, SK fit most definitely into Sandbox. There was the story with the Skylark, the Alpha Squad and the Core drifting along behind the scenes, but for the most part the game was just about venturing into the clockworks on your own schedule. Nobody telling you to run this particular level, grind this particular boss, craft this weapon.
But with missions, the focus is no longer on the Arcade. You now are pretty much on a scripted path in regards to what levels to run. Instead of letting you learn about the game on your own, you get handed information on a silver platter, only you get it when OOO says you get it. You don't care for JK boss rewards and would much rather grind IMF? Well, you have to run RJP once, because OOO arbitrarily decided it came first.

I want freedom. I want to run a level and run it because I want to, not because it's next on the list of things I 'need' to do. I like the freedom of being able to put off crafting an Acheron and craft a Cutter up to a DVS and an Autogun up to a Blitz instead. I don't like the feeling of not being able to run IMF because I'm putting off RJP. Sure, I can always go through the Arcade instead, but a new player won't know that if you haven't introduced the Arcade to them.

Sun, 02/19/2012 - 05:42

Wriggle-Nightbug

Well...

I don't think that the arcade is going to be completely discarded or anything.
For instance, notice that there's still two locked tabs- 'Expansion' and 'Arcade'. I imagine Arcade missions are gonna be the ones that really get into teaching you about it/setting you loose into the gates with a vague goal in mind.

Sun, 02/19/2012 - 06:51

Wuvvums

I really don't know which

I don't like the comparison between sandbox and theme park; I just don't think you could make SK an open-world MMO without having a lot of issues. I also think the company is way too small to develop an entire world to explore with only a four-person party, and fix things like lag and such. Most of what Spiral Knights boils down to anyways is the game-play element. To be honest, would Spiral Knights in an open world setting be much different than a level-setting? The gameplay and the combat is still essentially the same.

I do think there should be an arcade introduction. But I don't think they're trying to deter us from arcades. I think they've been trying to mostly make a story line to follow and they're sort of experimenting with this. By the way, I've been able to repeat missions, so I do believe they are repeatable. Maybe not the boss ones, but the other ones are.

Sun, 02/19/2012 - 09:03

Wolfkit

I don't mean that SK should

I don't mean that SK should be or ever has been open-world in that sense. The structure of a level is very much part of what I like about SK.
What I am referring to is the ability to choose which level to run, or lack thereof.
And you do have a valid point in that we are testing the missions, not the relationship between missions and the Arcade. However the point of this thread is pretty much to discuss possibilities for this relationship. It is entirely OOO's decision in the end, but we can still give input.

Sun, 02/19/2012 - 15:53

Realnight

@Wuvvums

@Wuvvums - You're right most missions are repeatable (including boss missions) - I guess the bug I would consider here is that players are never told they are repeatable. So imagine a new player that just got to rank 4 and needs to make an elemental set and shadow set. Up until this point the missions have been very linear and have given the new player everything they need when they need it. Up until this point you can literally just do one mission right after the other without doing anything else. (Which again I think is great because you graduate to Knighthood feeling like a prepared knight)

So now they need to make a shadow set and elemental set but they don't have the resources to do so. They haven't been told they can repeat missions (and since the story has been linear repeating missions would just kind of seem wrong) and they don't know about the arcade (primary grinding area). How I see it is that since they are now used to just doing one mission after the other they will just continue to do so in their current gear (Cobalt set) - completely missing the point of the Rank 4 damage type training. (which by the way I think is fantastic - the less we have to direct new players to the wiki the better)

I think there is a problem with this and I think it can be mitigated by the introduction of the arcade. Even if they only use arcade missions and not the arcade proper.

The other option is to add more prestige missions that give heat and crowns (clockwork style missions) but I have a feeling that is what arcade missions will be like anyway.

Mon, 02/20/2012 - 23:53

#10

Zekeyspaceylizard

I agree with Realknight and

I agree with Realknight and support this.

The arcade is pretty much the bread and butter of this game and while the missions are quite nice, the arcade is still more important. A mission that takes place IN the arcade could be a cute way of introducing new places to it. Gremlins in the arcade / save Feron or some other silly short mindless thing.

Search

Rank 4: introduce Arcade here?