Holy Adventure Information overflow!
The flick last week was apparently just the start of the information iceberg for Adventures!
Following up on the flick’s release, we received a DevSpeak, an Info-Drop page, and the Reddit AMA. If you had questions about Adventures, odds are… they got answered this week!
Let’s start with the DevSpeak:
At first glance, it looks like a plain, boring disclaimer this week.. but, there is a quick flash of a more…colorful disclaimer:
Keeping like colored letters together to form words, and then putting those words into sentences.. gives us:
“The Disclaimer guy loves you and wants you to be happy so do like wise with your fellow gamers and be excellent to each other. party on!”
So..Disclaimer guy is obviously either Bill, or Ted:
Actual highlights from the DevSpeak video are:
- 5 person simulations that take place in alternate versions of zones you’ve already seen
- Leveling/Elder game modes for each Adventure
- Unique mechanics that may not exist in other parts of the game.
- Choice matters
- The Malgrave Trail (level 45 Adventure) is shown as an example of choice mattering. You protect a caravan, and have to select from multiple paths to get to the destination. Each route could be geared toward a specific path (Solider, Explorer, Settler, etc..)..and will have different challenges along the way.
- Siege of Tempest Refuge (level 30 Adventure) has “Tower Defense” elements, to help you fight off the attacking forces.
- XP, medals, achievements, and titles can be awarded in an Adventure.
The Adventure Reddit AMA on Weds. afternoon, was just chock full of good information, here’s my favorite Q&As:
Q: Hello! Are there any advantages in having various Paths by people in the Adventures?
I mean do Settlers and such get to build some stuff for their team? Do warriors get some missions that the rest of the team can participate in? Etc.
A: Hi! Thanks for the question. Paths will only come into play in the higher level adventures. And even then, the path composition of your group won’t have any run-making/breaking affects. We don’t want to add the extra difficulty of getting that optimal group combination in.
I can give you an example of the effects you will see though! In The Malgrave Trail adventure, for every player you have in your group with a particular path, your caravan will receive a particular buff. This includes things like Your caravan moving slightly faster for every explorer you have, a percentage of the caravan becoming armed for every soldier, maximum supply stores being upgraded for every settler, and your caravan’s max health being increased / starting supply of medicine for every scientist.
Q: How much replayability do you aim on Adventures having for endgame players?
A: Four of the six launching adventures will have veteran difficulty modes that drop level 50 rewards. These modes will also have tougher fights and additional mechanics in place to take the challenge to the next level.
Each adventure accomodates a fair number of playthroughs without your group seeing the same content twice. Replayability is among our top priorities when we make adventure content!
Q: Are adventures truly dynamic? Or are they “solvable” in that there is a particular solution that you/your party should know in order to get the maximum rewards?
A: The lowest level adventures respond pretty predictably to player choice, but once you’re past those introductory instances you’ve got a lot of different variance in the mix. One of our key goals is to make sure that a good group of players will always see better results from a solid strategy they cooked up in real time than one they read off the internet. We also spread out loot rewards across the various routes through the content to ensure that making the same choices every time isn’t the way to go.
Adventures and dungeons will be similarly rewarding, and the expected time to complete isn’t wildly different between them. As far as difficulty, dungeons and advenures are challenging in different ways. Dungeon content tends to stress a group’s ability to cohere in combat, while adventure content rewards groups that communicate and strategize well on the fly.
Q: It seems the adventure concept will greatly increase replay-ability for leveling alts or repeating adventures. Will there be different adventure choices based on faction for even more variety?
A: We’ve generally avoided faction-specific choices, mostly for balance reasons (we don’t want a case where the Dominion has an easier route through an instance, for example).
Each faction does have its own exclusive introductory adventure, however.
Q: Are different options in adventures tailored to be more difficult / have better rewards? Will the “elder game” difficulty of adventures have any differences outside of increased difficulty?
A: Our approach to increasing the difficulty of veteran adventures definitely extends beyond the mobs hitting a little harder. We have additional mechanics in place for every veteran modes.
We also got the info drop via the WildStar website (make sure you stay on the page for several moments, so you can experiences all of it’s personalities).
Here, we get a short introduction via the caretaker, a brief description of each of the initial Adventures (including their level requirement). There’s also a sample of how you can choose between different options during an Adventure.. so, make your choice! see the outcome!
If that wasn’t enough information for you… Carbine also ran a 40,000 invite “beta weekend” event this weekend, which, is one heck of a stress test. Speaking of Beta… Gaffney swung by Reddit..and gave an interesting Beta statistic:
The total we’ve let into the beta (not counting stress tests) is something like 3.3% of the people who have signed up, after one removes all duplicate emails from the numbers. Demand is high.
3.3%.. so, if you got in.. consider yourself really lucky!
That wraps up this week’s news on Nexus, I’ll see you guys next week!
