Please stop making exciting zones

| Friday, November 14, 2014
Jade Forest is a nice zone. It's pretty. The story is awesome, particularly on the Alliance side. And I never want to do it ever again.

In the title I don't mean actually exciting, but rather the highly-scripted, frequently-interrupted, linear "exciting" that has been an increasing trend since Cataclysm. Rather than informing us of the need to kill some quantity of reskinned rats, we are instead treated to voiceovers, flybys of things, and short vehicle events. These are all fun, the first time around, when the story is new, the events are new, the flybys are of new things, and the voices haven't yet been reused a few dozen times. I'm not saying Blizzard should higher a different voice actor for every single NPC. At least they don't have people with identical voices carrying on random conversations consisting mostly of hello, goodbye, and their hatred of mudcrabs.

The first time around the breaks in the flow come with a reward in the form of something new. The second time around, they're just breaks in the flow. Even worse, you know they're coming, so it's that much harder to kill into a rhythm of murder. On a related note, I actually like the ridiculous name floats for new enemies; gives it a Kill Bill sort of feel.

I propose a solution: Background Hero Mode.

It is often the case that a scripted sequence features someone in an endless battle, off to the side, barely in the camera. Endless slaughter is kind of our thing, so why not have an option to play as that person? Let the scripted stuff run its course nearby, while you spend the time happily drowning the grass with blood. To spice things up a bit, give bonus xp if you kill a certain number of enemies during a sequence, or let us run some of the off-screen machinery, such as crashing Ogrim's Hammer and carrying boxes while asking everyone nearby if they're going to give them more work.

0 comments:

Post a Comment

Comments in posts older than 21 days will be moderated to prevent spam. Comments in posts younger than 21 days will be checked for ID.

Powered by Blogger.