Posted By Argos at 6:30 PM - Fri Nov 22 2019

It's cool to see behind the veil, the test build, and the way movement puzzles are being put together. I'm worried however. I'm aware that this is ONLY a testing room, but what will you do to keep this from becoming monotonous?

Well, at the abstract, you can think of each of the mechanics here as gears, where each one you put in place interlocks with the others in different combinations to produce differing effects on the overall machine. As a designer, I personally really like that model, because it expresses how the various can interact with each other to create something new.

Another way to look at things abstractly is to think of each mechanic as a tool on my tool belt. Each one is used to solve different problems, though a job will encompass the use of them all one point or another, often even using them in conjunction with each other. That's definitely the job of mechanics like this; Both on the game side to give players a way to respond to environmental impediments and on the development side to give us a suite of actions we can use to interact with you. Each mechanic is a verb you can use as a player to speak your intent to the game we build for you, if you prefer that model instead.

Looking at it that way, the fun, or conversely the sense of monotony doesn't come from the individual words, but from the conversation those words are used to create.

Things might change as we continue to move forward, but at the moment a player has over 40 inputs they can use to "speak" a pretty complex vocabulary of several times as many verbs. Traversal accounts for around 20 or so of the verbs and interacts with everything from a curb up to a castle or cathedral wall that's nailed down in the world. Hopefully that means the "conversation" will have everything it needs to be interesting and fun, that's definitely the goal of expanding advanced traversal the way we have.

@SnipeHunter, I'm not trying to be disrespectful, and I'm excited for my chance to play, but you made it seem almost tedious (probably because you see and do it literally all day)

Heh, note taken! It was a pretty long day, I admit, and I was getting kind of tired. I didn't mean for that to show though!

Should we expect 'jump tests' strung together with slides and swim traps in the final build? A dodge duck dip dive and ....dodge mentality? 4 options repeat? Motivate me here because i want to be excited for this.

That depends on how you look at it, I suppose. The pre-existing dungeons of the world, except for the ones that aren't, are generated with a dungeon generator algorithm we created. Part of what that does when it builds, say a cavern or a ruin, is add certain hazards and obstacles to the terrain or delving it builds so that there's some amount of risk involved in investigating these places.

That helps to create, for example, a desire to seek out the knowledge of the techniques you might use to bypass or otherwise pass through a hazard safely. That, in turn, creates a self-directed path of progression for your character; you see a hazard you want to bypass in the world, you work to acquire the ability ("to learn that verb"), and then you use that ability as well as your able to bypass said hazards. Similar hazards will no doubt be created by players in their own dungeons and delvings, as well.

The rest of the world though? Those same "verbs" work everywhere, barring obvious reasons in the world why they wouldn't, of course. This isn't a game where the environment is purpose built to constrain your use of your abilities. This is so you can do things like swing from the rigging of one ship to another, or climb the stone work of the tower to sneak in and steal the giant gem in an statue's hand inside. If you can find a good application of these methods that just emerges organically out of the state of the world, we want you take advantage of that, for sure!

So what makes that not OP and game breaking? Your physical limitations and your training. There isn't a single mechanic we've included in traversal that we didn't first find proof of actual people performing, but those people are athletes at peak performance, with ingrained training.

An Elyrian has mostly the same limitations that we do, so they're limited by how much energy they can put into an action, how much endurance they can muster over longer periods of time, how much strength they have trained into their musculature, etc.

will these be used as 'energy/level checks' the same way higher health mobs could be construed as 'dps checks'? "i dont have enough energy to climb this ladder to the top, better go level up so i can climb higher" ?

Managing the limitations I was just mentioning is certainly an aspect of successfully using all of the advanced traversal mechanics, and there will absolutely be parts of the world you can only access by knowing certain traversal techniques. Additionally, your attributes, your tribal traits, and your life choices will impact your physical performance. That does technically mean these mechanics are gated behind "checks," but not so much in the way you mean most of the time, I don't think.

I suppose there will be places where that is just pragmatically what happens though, whether by design or by virtue of the circumstances at the time. You might be a Kypiq and be looking at climbing ten story structure's outer wall and realizing you're not going to make that with your endurance values being what they are. You might then decide to try to overcome them through training... now you're looking at an energy check whether that was intentional or not, right?

That said, it's mostly about options and giving players more ability to make choices by giving them more "verbs." That same kypiq might decide to invest in gear that makes climbing that wall easier and less energy intensive instead... They might decide to try something even more extreme if they have access to the right tools.

Not sure if that answered your questions or not, but I hope that helps!