The Issue.
The game is using all sort of data (character characteristics, activities, exploration progress, main quest status, etc…) There’s an underlying system that connect everything but its presentation to the player is sometimes a bit bare-bones. And because of that they can easily get confused or even lost. Also it does impact their progression feeling, especially when they are new, as they can’t really tell what’s important, what’s not, if they struggle because they aren’t on the right track or if it’s expected, etc..
I don’t think that everything should be explained upfront. Far from that, there should be mystery. And the game currently manage that particularly well in some cases. But I think that it’s still not enough.
Two things could be separated:
- The zone exploration which should remain as it is, full of mystery (the player is mostly alone without help).
- And the Game meta data (e.g. how much of a zone I have explored? Did I “unlock” the main paths? what about my own characteristics etc etc..). These meta data could be available to NPC’s when the player communicate with them. They should be able to help him thanks to their knowledge and the new informations progressively brought to them by the player (“I see that you’ve found a new place etc..”). It could work for many meta aspects of the game (Realm → Zone → Town → NPC’s → Character → Equipment etc..). All these data could be progressively revealed (unlocked?) to both serve newcomers and experts. It would help to remain connected to the game, to define objectives, to track their progress and to fully access all the game features.
This knowledge system shouldn’t have to be invasive. It could even potentially be optional. But I’d not build it only for new players. There are a lot of opportunities to make it valuable for experts as well.
Whispers!
They could be the network supporting this knowledge system. Here are a few reasons why:
- They already exist but in a limited way that could be expanded both on the Lore side (whisperer faction?) and the system one.
- Players met them frequently, at the right time to obtain valuable infos
- They already provide a screen with a Menu with a lot of available space
- They could be tweaked in the realm settings (or even be the place to manage and display realm settings?)
- It’s a system that could be progressively enhanced, first to help new players and later to bring value to experts
- Whispers don’t have to be static only, they could later exist under different forms (as events, as items, etc..)
- There could even be different types of whispers, some of them rare with players benefits, so that they would be part of the exploration.
- They could even be connected to a “wiki”, or even a “”ladder” and share the same database, available in game and outside of the game as well.
I realise that such a system needs a lot of efforts when there are many other things already worked on. But I wanted to share this idea since I think that it can be implemented progressively and could become the foundations for many new future ideas!