Hi,
This is my first weekend where I’ve been able to play Heart of Thorns Beta IN Maguuma. My general impressions are, “Not good”.
I find the content flat. I remember when Dark Age of Camelot came out with Shrouded Isles it was just 5 maps. They were Domnann, Caillte Garran, Vale of Balor, Vigilant Rock, Cothrom Gorge, and World’s End.
Each maps was a unique piece of the world’s mythology, right down to the town names.
Heart of Thorns is a copy-and-paste fest. Do you really think people aren’t going to notice you’ve scaled up Hylek and pasted some rock-dog, beetles, and spiders before calling it a day?
The creatures you’ve made are really no-effort creatures. Here’s a single creature from DAoC:
http://camelot.allakhazam.com/Mobs/pics/b01/h-tangle-weed.jpg
There’s more effort put into that level 1 creature than anything ‘new’ I’ve seen in Heart of Thorns.
Here’s another exciting creature:
http://camelot.allakhazam.com/Mobs/pics/Ancient-Treant.jpg
Another:
http://camelot.allakhazam.com/Maps/zpics/screens/h-Shannon-Estuary02.jpg
Still more:
http://images.mmorpg.com/images/screenshots/072004/inline/1826.jpg
… All of the stuff from DAoC is exciting. Fresh. Original.
This is a genetic accident.
http://massivelyop.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/Itzel-1.jpg
It’s not even funny. Here’s an example of making something kitten y that’s hysterical:
http://dustmeat.deviantart.com/art/Troll-Mount-Commission-64095546
It’s completely clear two very different era’s of technology, not even remotely parallel have collided. To us, as a player, it’s “haha, funny”. To the story-character is, “Dees glasses be da boom, mon!”: no conscious awareness anything is wrong.
The Hylek are like trying to make a whole game out of laziness and bad humor. We’ve got teleporting rock dogs, mushrooms with legs that fall over to attack, and such gratuitous use of copy-and-paste with the Hylek it’s a wonder no one has yet to sit the devs down for a serious chat about what happened to Stargate Universe:
That echo of the gun shot you hear at the last few seconds of the video, that eerie feeling that it gives a moment later… that’s the same feeling your players give you when they say, "Well, this is another copy-paste feste by Anet. How’s that Blizzard game going? Or Destiny? Or, what’s that new thing coming out… oh ya, Star Wars! I’ll get back to this when they make some real new content.
Classes wise, I like where things are going. It looks as though you’ve gone a long ways to see they are working. I’m pretty sure the content side of the game is a bloated dead horse, though.
Here are some ideas for what “good content” looks like. “Guild Wars 1 style diversity in creatures. Take a look at creatures from everything 1999 MMOs to 2006. No one’s using that content anymore. Take a serious tone into your art instead of Barnie-the-Hylek style art.” It didn’t work for Warcraft, Aion, Wildstar, or any other big title.
If you force your players into a world of neoteny they will assume it is you who are the child and abandon you. Bottom line: What costs more? Developing a product with some actually flushed out content or risking that your consumers will make you enough of a profit back before your checks bounce?
Final review:
Creature design in Heart of Thorns is horrid.