Tonight on Twitch: Tolero Q&A with Strimtom!

[rfachini]

I've tried to do a summary of what was discussed in the Q&A.

Thank you! That was great.

[Merchants_of_Eutopia]

I've tried to do a summary of what was discussed in the Q&A.

Thank you!

[Madja]

Thank you very much !



What exactly is a "modern gaming style" ?

I'm not entirely sure. She just says "Some of the tutorial, you know, it was great for the time that it came out but it could stand to be refreshed because, you know, the way gamers play now is different than they played back in circa 2009."

[Promethia]

This is the least charitable possible interpretation of this phrase.

I would, instead, say that modern games allow you to jump in with a very surface-level idea of what you want and begin to understand the game before making character-defining decisions.

Furthermore, many modern games allow you to change your choices either at certain milestones in the process, when you can be expected to better understand the game, or at will (possibly with the requirement that you be in a public area or not in-combat).

Lastly more modern games have stepped back from hiding information from the player. The game doesn't benefit from hiding, for instance, attack speeds, DPS, proc chances, or cooldowns from the players. These values can and will be found by the player base, and made available online to those who care and know where to look for them. The only thing that hiding information does is make the game more difficult for new players to understand and make it easier for experienced players to take advantage of them.

I agree with your more optimistic interpretation. I try to talk friends into playing DDO all of the time, but one of the difficulties is that DDO is much more complicated, especially at first, and it just takes a while to wrap your brain around it. It scares them away, and they give up quickly, saying something like "I cannot get into it". The modern expectation is that you can jump into a game and start playing immediately with almost no knowledge of the game mechanics. You learn those mechanics as you go, gradually over time.

I know some people think that means you have to "dumb down" the game, but I don't think that's true. You just want to slowly expose new players to all the game's complexities step by step, insofar as that is possible. The leveling process does that a little, but there's still so much you need to understand when starting a new character for the first time. Some transparency will help, but with more explanation. I could not have survived without DDOwiki, and even with that, it takes quite a bit of effort. Also other players really helped me, and again, I could not have survived without that help from others. That's a problem when you think about new players, right? Should every new player need to do a bunch of reading and find an experienced player to help them?

[Alrik_Fassbauer]

That the player doesn't have to make any choices on character creation or while leveling.
Think something along the lines of all those boring afk mobile games.

Yuck !

I'm in an RPG forum, and there are lots of people who like games like POE, Pathfinder etc. ...

I think that Iconics were a step into the right direction to make characters in DDO more accesible to new players, but with actually showing new players what kind of choices "the system" makes when "auto-levelling" them.

If only these Iconics could be TR'd to level 1 ...

[Ipsum]

I'd pay money for this.

https://pastebin.com/gksgc2ye


My paypal is loremipsumsed

[dredre9987]

I agree with the above.
I really appreciate the time and effort put into this interview and I've been trying to listen to some of it here and there when I have time. 2 hours and 20 min is a lot to ask from a viewer.
A written summary with just the key points and answers to what may be upcoming for DDO would help.

I mean isn't that what the Producer's letter is for?