It’s about two hours that I writhe in the bed trying to sleep, so I decided to get up and write something. As my Xfire profile shows I’m spending some time playing DAoC (and having fun), so it is becoming prevalent in the arguments I choose to write about here.

At the bottom of a recent entry I write:

Finally a note for the would builders. The quality of the art has increased considerably, this is undeniable. But there’s still a gap between the “beauty” of an environment and its usability. The new zones in Catacombs are wonderful to see but AWFUL to navigate. Often the players jump from odd places and breaks the normal paths exactly because the environment is NOT MEANT FOR THE PLAYERS. This is a critical design problems. These areas should not be designed just “to be pretty” but also to be functional.

A day later I find a brilliant post on the Vault that backups my points but in that humorous and effective way that I so totally miss (and I’m envious):

Albs, join the ‘I hate Baint’ club!!

Recently I decided to delete my Hibs on Lamorak and re-roll Alb there. I hadn’t really been in the Alb catacombs areas, except for a brief visit in beta, so it’s all new and confusing at times.

There are issues with the Alb catacombs area. First of all, they can call it an Aqueduct all they want, but everybody knows it’s a sewer. (As Freakazoid would say “Ewww ..poo gas!”)

Second, there are Ladders of Doom all over the place. Lag the tiniest bit, and its ‘Hello floor, Goodbye 99% of my HPs”.

But the worst, most evil thing about the Albs catacombs area is an Inconnu guard in shiny plate armor named Baint. I’m convinced this pasty, fish faced little creep is really a Lurikeen Vamp sent to Alb to wreak havoc among the under 20 crowd.

If I go up to any other guard in the sewers (Excuse me, Aqueduct)and say “Hey there, howzabout a kill task?”, they say “Sure buddy. You see that green mob standing right across from me? Stroll over there, whack it once on the head, and come on back for half a bubble of XP and a little pocket change. By the way, do you smell poo gas?”

But go up to Guard Baint, and it’s “So, you want that XP and silver, eh? Well, the only way you’re going to get it is to travel to the most out of the way, foul smelling part of this cesspit I can think of offhand. Someplace far enough away that nobody can hear you scream. When you get there, I want you to find this yellow con mob that has a good chance to BAF with a few buddies who are all resistant to whatever type of damage you deal. And don’t get any ideas about running back here for help. You’ll be dead before you even see a guard at clip range. Now, if (and that’s a BIG if) you make it back here, and ask real nice, and let me wipe my feet on your cloak, you’ll get that XP and whatever loose change I have in my pocket at the time. Now, beat it!”

Needless to say, I hate Guard Baint. Why do I keep going back to him for kill tasks, you ask? Because surviving his latest attempt on my life gives me a certain feeling of satisfaction. And it gives me incentive to ding 20 so I’ll never have to talk to him again. Well, at least not until I get to 50, and come back fully buffed to punt his smug little tin-plated behind all the way to the Abandoned Mines.

Hey, I can dream, can’t I?

Ahh.. I really wish I could write like that. Without sounding overdramatic, without being so awfully monotone and verbose. And still take a smart stab at a few flaws of the design.

But I just cannot.

So that’s your imaginatory link between my critics on the design of the Catacombs zones and the beginning of that post on the Vault. My analysis is more deeper even if completely inefficient in its purpose. But that’s also what I can do.

There are many different ways to tell a similar concept and I’m writing this to show these two ways and again focus the interest to point out another important problem of the game. The layout of the new zones is confused and definitely not player friendly. Even with the map sometimes the navigation is hard. Too often the layout is just not consistent on its own and fails completely to be functional. Many players reported the difficulty of the navigation or the hate for the ladders, but these two are just the superficial manifestation of a general trend that affects the whole approach to how a new zone is planned and built (often recycling and repeating the same “corridor” asset over and over).

From my point of view this becomes a trend that can be related to another bigger trend typical at Mythic: the superficiality with which some problems are considered. The fact that it’s “enough” for a zone to be pretty, removing completely the importance of its functionality. So, with this attitude, they do something that only apparently seems a good work but that, consequently, shows a bunch of problems that are a result of a lack of polish and attention. A lack of reiterations in the development.

Beta tests (and here I take a stab at what will definitely happen with “Darkness Rising”) isn’t about the “detail”. It is about the whole process. If “Catacombs” had a real and effective beta test, instead of an hype pitch in the last two months before release, it would have taken just a few minutes to observe how odd is the behaviour of the players when navigating around these zones. My minstrel moves around the Inconnu Crypt constantly BREAKING the patterns of the space. I need to constantly jump off the first level in order to arrive somewhere else without taking the whole tour of the place to pass over a bridge. Again I need to *fight* against the level design in order to move around.

Useful reiterations in the development should have observed these odd behaviours and adapt the design of the zone accordingly, for example building a bridge in the point where most of the players thecide to “jump”. That’s exactly what an In-Character architect would do. And that’s also what the actual world builder is supposed to do.

Again because the zones in the game should be designed considering many important different layers, from “the pretty”, to the functionality of the environment, to the ease of navigation, social spaces, gathering points and so on.

(and at this point I was supposed to link a wonderful story written by “Ole Bald Angus” about a crazy architect building a castle for a king that explained even better all these ideas… just to discover that the whole archive on that site is completely gone and I cannot link/quote. ARGH. My poor smart references…)