In drafting a post soon to appear about Clan Lord and magic mystic share benefit, I came to a long standing gripe that really should be addressed on its own. Everyone knows you advance in Clan Lord by getting "experience." One way you can get experience is by killing critters. You know this is happening, because of the message you get in the sidebar. You get one of these messages:

You vanquished a critter - This means you got a lot of experience.
You killed a critter - This means you got the normal amount of experience.
You killed a critter - This means you got a tiny bit of experience.
You slaughtered a critter - This means you got virtually no experience.

Now, look at that list, and spot the problem. It's hard to miss.

How hard is it to provide meaningful feedback? For a player to be unable to determine the difference from getting a tiny amount of experience and the normal amount of experience is pretty bad. Why not a seperate message between "kill" and "slaughter"?

Of course, I suspect the argument to this bit of design is it discourages rank whoring. Too much detail on experience gain allows players to focus on optimizing gain, and Delta Tao doesn't want that. Even though some people might have fun getting feedback about their progress, we can't have that, because that's not the type of game Clan Lord is. You are supposed to play Clan Lord for the sheer abstract beauty of it. Feedback, generally considered a key component to a good user experience, in both games and other applications, is unnecessary. If the sarcasm progress bar on your browser isn't pegged by now, you need to upgrade your browser.

I think if there were distinct message between slaughter and kill, you wouldn't see more rank chasers. You'd see happier rank chasers, and probably happier non-rank chasers as well, since people crave feedback. This isn't a game breaker, it's just considerate. It's really annoying when combined with variable creature statistics. We're slowly moving to a Clan Lord where players have no idea what the hell is going on with anything. It's all "subtle." (That's the HGM definition of subtle, which is "entirely invisible, and impossible to determine.")

Slaughter is generally an evil thing when combined with ever-increasing rank cost. In essence, what DT is telling us is there is one way to advance (at least as a fighter). You MUST hunt at the edge of your ability, no matter what. So, if you enjoy solo hunting, or very small groups, you are pretty much screwed when you get into the higher ranks. Why can't Worf learn from hunting in the passes? Sure, it's not nearly as productive as a group Noth hunt, because each new rank Worf gets costs more and more. But to say "No, you have to hunt on Noth. Tough," really stinks. Sure, reward the players who form the optimal parties and chew threw 'Noths with more experience per hour than silly Worf bagging little stuff. Slaughter, as it stands right now, is really excessively punative. It ramps up too fast. Things that can kill me fairly easily are worthless to me. Considering how much damn experience I need to accumulate to get to the next level, why discount the experience value to zero? Why should there be zero reward to a conservative, lower-risk hunting style? I have no problem with the lower risk hunts being less rewarding than high risk hunts, but for them to be worth nothing at all is just irritating. It's really sapped my enjoyment of the game, and it's why I basically just hunt for coins now. Experience-generating hunts, for a character at Worf's level generally are not fun for me.

Isn't a game like Clan Lord about providing many choices to players, instead of railroading them into single, optimal paths? If Delta Tao doesn't want minmaxers in Clan Lord, stop putting in game mechanics that provide single optimal solutions. Give us some options, please.
posted 3:04 PM | link |