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The Chronicles of Spellborn News - Creating a Better "Newbie" Experience
Posted by Keith Cross on Jun 05, 2009 | 4 comments in our forums
The folks at The Chronicles of Spellborn have taken a good hard look at the starting areas of the game, and have found it wanting. In their most recent developer journal they spell out their philosophies and plans to rectify the situation.
Combat is one of The Chronicles of Spellborn’s most defining features. Our enemies are not dumb and the rotating skilldeck is far more than just a rotating hot bar. But unless you have played a chunk of the game, you wouldn't really know this. We still face the problem of assumption where people see the skilldeck in its uncomplicated low-level form. It's hard to realise the freedom, strategy and personality it adds to combat later on. It's one of those gameplay mechanics which is truly easy to learn, but hard to master. It is entirely built around pre-planned strategy and fast action combat, the surface of which is barely scratched even at level 10. This is hard to imagine as there's currently no game that plays quite like ours does. Many reviews and positive player feedback will confirm this.
Differently put, we know that our game is capable of delivering the most intense action-rich combat ever to have graced an MMO. Yet, we also know we are doing quite a horrible job of "selling" this idea in the game at lower levels. The way we introduce people to our world is, simply put, not good at all.
;)
Read more here.
"As you have probably also noticed, the above "beta" screenshot contains the very first presentation of the new quest tracker. This is a feature often requested by you all and it will help you keep track of your activities. Not to worry though, this is still Spellborn and we still expect you to do your own thinking while questing."
Thank you.
And thank you for designing a better NPE, it was really not even close to how truly the game is, and you can't really expect people to play if they didn't feel enough of this game's innovation during the free play levels.
Wait...wait a sec. This game released? I like to think I keep my finger on the pulse of the MMO genre more than the average gamer, and I didn't realize this game released until about a week ago. Once you get that newbie experience fixed, you may just want to, oh...I dunno....ADVERTISE!?!?
Your dead servers shouldn't really come as a surprise to any of you over at Acclaim...just saying.
I have to agree. Despite having several friends who play this game, I was unable to get through the NPE. If it has been re-vamped, I may have to try it again.
They should never had chosen Acclaim as their publisher.
But in all honesty, there was quite a bit of noise when this was released in NA.