Mythic has always had this deep love for counterintuitive /slash commands that you have to dig into lenghty patch notes and then learn. If there’s something absolutely archetypical of the accessibility problems of these games it’s about /slash commands. Direct and cumbersome heritage of the MUDs, the dawn of the mmorpgs. Sometimes I wonder if aren’t these to really define the separation between the second and the third generation of mmorpgs. Have you ever had to use slash commands in WoW to complete a quest? Obviously not. The basic design of the game begins there. In DAoC, instead you’ll have to /dig, /search and /use, for example. And for the last of these you have to exit combat, open the inventory, target the item, right click on it, type /use and press enter.

We aren’t talking about “sticking to what we love” here. The unbelievably clunky, counterintuitive process to trigger an effect on the artifacts was introduced with ToA, not even at the game release when they were in serious crunch time and couldn’t spend time to polish minor details (the controls are a minor detail?). This is brand new design. And for this reason absolutely unacceptable.

I’ve already wrote about this. If you cannot go back and redo the controls/UI for the multitude of commands the game already has, at least do it right for THE NEW ONES that are being introduced from now on. We are back at discussing “bad habits”. This is a terrible one that should be eradicated. So lets take again the test:

“When a new patch is ready to be released publicly, one of the devs should browse through each fix and new feature to see if it passes a simple test. If the test is passed the fix can be approved and published, if the check isn’t passed the new feature/fix must go back in development and adjusted accordingly.

The test is simple: a player should always be able to understand a change or use a new feature without reading the patch notes.”

Now lets see how the test goes with the very last patch notes (not official but confirmed):

– Added a new /xpoff command. This allows players to stop receiving experience points if they choose (primarily for use in the battlegrounds). This feature can be turned off by using /xpoff again. Players will be reminded that they have this feature on each time they enter the game, but not every time they would have gained experience points. Note that experience messages will not print when the player has experience turned off.

– Added a new /rpoff command. This allows players to stop receiving realm points if they choose (primarily for use in the battlegrounds). This feature can be turned off by using /rpoff again. Players will be reminded that they have this feature on each time they enter the game, but not every time they would have gained realm points. Note that realm point messages will not print when the player has realm points turned off.

Test: FAILED.

Of course these patch notes aren’t even official and not set in stone. If things change I’ll be more than glad to note it. But then I’ve observed how Mythic works for a long time and what I expect is that those command won’t change once the patch will be pushed live. The sky is falling? Obviously not. These are very minor commands to be used only by veterans. By the time you need them you’ll be aware that they exist. I’m not ranting on this specifically, I’m just using this as a blatant example of the awful bad habit that definitely ISN’T a thing of the past as it should. The actual priority should be to redo from zero the controls for those /use and /use2 commands that have to be used in combat and that damage directly the gameplay.

But lets focus on this example, instead. This is a very delimited feature. Why would Mythic implement two commands, one to block XP and another to block Realm Points? Because some players enjoy to play in the BattleGrounds. These BGs are accessible only at certain levels and are also capped by RPs. If you “go over” you have to move on and cannot keep playing forever in the same BG. So the purpose of the two commands is about giving these players the possibility to “freeze” the progress of their characters and keep enjoying that type of gameplay till they want. Summarizing some more this means that this is essentially a BattleGround feature.

Was it too hard to simply place an NPC right inside the starting keep in each BGs so that all players could go talk to it to block/unblock the two options? This could have erased the burden to discover and learn another two /slash commands. The commands themselves may even remain as they are but the NPCs could have helped new players to be aware of the function without having to dig it. It could have even be justified within the game as some sort of recruiting campaign called by the king to reinforce these zones that are more in need of assistance against the other realms (which also makes sense since the BGs are sometimes deserted). Maybe this could have even been the beginning of a new path that could have brought to new, special rewards (visual recognizability, special armors or banners, new titles, craft orders dispatched by the king for player crafters to be executed – just for some entry-level and conventional examples of what could be possible) only accessible for these special characters that decide to commit to these BGs and not continue on their conventional treadmill. Valorizing something that the players have demonstrated to appreciate (the smaller and more accessible scale of the BGs compared to the actual endgame RvR).

But instead Mythic keeps developing the game at the minimum common denominator. If there’s something to implement, they strictly do the bare skeleton. God forbid something more elaborated.

Again this is just a minor example and just an excuse to bring up an old problem.