Gameplay Design & Median

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Segolia
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Lets step back for a moment. Think back on when you first played Median. You just finished Den of Evil, then went to Blood Raven. Then you decide to go into one of the two side dungeons near her that you never go to in Clod. Without highlighting the text long enough to notice, you head into there and get super rekt.

Or, maybe that didn't happen. Maybe instead you skipped a level challenge... or two... or all of them. And you didn't realize until a certain point later after you found out about it. Why didn't you know about this challenge until now? Maybe because you noticed the big ol' warning on a lot of side dungeons and figured "Nah I shouldn't go in there until I'm higher level." That is the point made by the uberquests in the first place. But, how are you supposed to know about a specific level challenge in a specific area, alongside with the swirly effect by just playing the game? "Read the docs: http://docs.median-xl.com/" as many of us would say to new players asking about certain things about the mod. Yes.... but what about actually playing the game without seeking knowledge? You most likely will never know about it until you look into the docs, because of the fact you are contextually taught by the mod to not go into the areas that have red text, or otherwise, depending on when you played, a blatant DANGER warning.

That's the problem I've had with Median XL ever since I started playing, and it's been something infamous about this mod for the longest time. That of which, it's own inherent design is built upon reading a book or forum to have a general understanding as to what to expect, rather than being able to just hop on in the wild ride and explore the mod on it's own. Your own failures, rather than learning from your mistakes, or taking a moment to look at the environment, all come from a lack of research prior to playing. To me, subjectively at least, is rather poor design. This is not to say of course that I think this is an awful mod of course. I've played the mod since 2009, clearly I still have my fun with it. But with anything of course, there is room for improvement, even as subtle as one simple change, which I will get into later.

But first, for comparison sake. Lets look into other games. Specifically, how they teach you their game. Nowadays of course, many games just hold your hand and guide you verbally how even press a button on your keyboard. But there are of course, games that don't treat you like an idiot and teach you what to expect in their game contextually. What do I mean by that?

Lets look at egoraptor's video on Megaman X, and how much he praises it's design. It's a 20 minute video, and worth the watch. Alternatively, if you are at work or don't want to watch a video, I'll describe what I mean with good old Dark Souls in the spoiler below.

► Show Spoiler


I understand, given that I have a basic knowledge of Diablo II modding, that Diablo II isn't great at properly conveying these sort of basic things. You can't have GUI popups explaining what each thing does without hard coding. Instead, we have pearls of wisdom, of which the players don't start off with anymore. And hell, did you know that you could cube a pearl by itself to cycle through information? I didn't until I read the docs.

Now for actual feedback: Have players start with the Pearl of Wisdom again. Have a text that states you can cube the Pearl by itself to cycle through all the information, as well as updated information for the new uberquests of course. Add basic text to the oils and Catalysts, explaining what they do to what types of items. Now of course there will be cases where people don't read, sure. That will always happen. But at a bare minimum, it can at least lighten the load and make the mod just a bit more 'noob friendly'. As for Sigma, Marco I hope you take this factor under consideration. I'm not saying that documentation shouldn't exist, or that every single core feature should be explained bit by bit. What I am saying though is that some sort of clairvoyance in a blind playthrough of the mod is given some thought and consideration for the future, wherever Median heads into.
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Quirinus
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Sigma is coming!

Seriously though, this will be available in Sigma. Marco is aware of it, but he's currently busy with more important things imo. There's just so much to do.
"but if it's simple it's not that hard" - Quirinus 2017
"small things like this are not a big deal" - Quirinus 2017
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iwansquall
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Quirinus, I saw ur old thread where you made documentation into chm.

I think chm version is much better since it can search through all pages.

That probably gonna help alot of new players.
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Quirinus
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That's one of the things we're working on. We're rewriting the docs to auto fetch stats and stuff from MXLDB, so searching will be easy.
"but if it's simple it's not that hard" - Quirinus 2017
"small things like this are not a big deal" - Quirinus 2017
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potapo_gourouni
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@Segolia the blood raven thing you described. Exactly what happened to me and quitted the mod even if i just had started it :) . Then i came back some months later when i saw some videos and found out the existence of the docs.
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Leerek
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Please add to that pearl of wisdom 'can't be dropped until you cube it' :mrotate:
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iwansquall
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Ok, I just throughly all the text including the dark souls part.

1. Read the f**kin manual - RTFM
This was emphasize even back in median 2008. There were so many new player that keep asking same question on and on.
Documentation was in pdf format and distributed together with the patch files (i think marco only include tsw / d2se only IIRC as well as link to forum)

I help couple of people on shoutbox recently, and I genuinely think that not many willing to read through the doc before playing.
And because of limitation of d2 engine, it quite hard to pass that necessary information (read median statue for example)


2. Game Design
Frankly speaking I think median 2008 flow much better since there was no elite monster and there arent much hard hitter enemy except for uber (old fauzt was a bitch)
And in medianXL, it introduced tons of dangerous elite which made hatred a lot harder and required player to get more information.
And after Marco took over the development, I believe some flow are changed along the way (act 2 and 3 questline specifically)
I really want for elite monster damage to be toned down to 50% in hatred and 75% in terror (which deal much less dmg with max resist) simply because it will the transition easier for new player while making experienced player able to rush to endgame faster

*Remember 1k Attribute challenge? As well as BRC capped at lvl 100? How about level challenge at lvl 10 instead of 50. Back then it was a challenge, but doable thx to lesser insta-killer (as well as couple of imba stat like thunderhammer knockback and hit cause monster to flee)


3. Newbie guide
What new player need is guide specific for new player that have lesser text and visual guidelines (which I planned to write for long very time) which convey information much clearer than most of the guide currently available here.
The guide also have to considered that this new player arent playing d2 and came from current era of casual games.

Probably best answer for this is for me to write the goddamn guide already while I still interested with the game.
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Stealthmaster
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Has anyone noticed How.Many.Pearls.Of.Wisdom drop from regular mobs in Blood Moor and Cold Plains on Hatred? You can even get it from the 1st skeleton/zombie. Sure, they are invisible when dropped, but a person who still does not know that Alt key can highlight all items on the ground should not proceed in this mod any further anyway.
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GregMXL
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Legend.
Many amazing games require some reading. You can still hop into Median and have fun like any typical arpg and hack and slash stuff and watch cool items drop but if you wanna know and really conquer the game you have to expect to read the forum from said game. Not to mention most people already know the simple mechanics of this mod cause chances are pretty high that they've played cLod many times.
I don't mean to dwell...but I can't help myself.
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shnurr214
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Segolia, as a relatively new player i have to say i agree with you on a lot of counts. This games learning curve is ridiculous and i got so frustrated when i was first starting out i had to put the game down and come back a couple times with huge gaps in between to really feel like i understood what i was doing at all. I think the average person who picks up median on a whim would not have invested the time that i did just ramming my head against a wall in failure, which is NOT a good thing we want new players to try out and really enjoy Median
That being said part of the allure of the game for me is the challenge of knowledge acquisition and the satisfaction i get when i overcome a hurdle by reading docs and determining how to solve the problem or reading other players experiences and learning more about a certain encounter.

I'm torn, on one hand i think the learning curve in median is far too steep and not documented IN GAME well enough for a new player. The docs are fantastic, but you have to have sunk at least a couple hours in to really understand how valuable of a tool they are. On the other hand with the casualification of so many games nowadays median really drew my attention as a challenging and rewarding game worth spending my time on. So good in fact that its design and principles pulled me away from modern, more polished titles since the purity of the experience of this game is so damn worth it. :mrgreen:

tldr: I both think that median needs to be more user friendly and at the same time i want to preserve its inherent structure that forces players to acquire knowledge to overcome challenges. basically i cant make up my damn mind. :shock:

cron