AC2 was RE: [MUD-Dev] Total Annilation of Downtime

[Brian Hook]

Raph said:

> And yet neither seems to be finding an audience (which I find very
> distressing). Why is that, if they are so fun?

In the case of AC2, I honestly think the name is holding it back
because AC, by and large, was considered utter crap by a large part
of the gaming community -- poor design, poor graphics, uninspired
milieu, etc.

The two games don't feel similar at all.  AC2 is a far greater
accomplishment, IMO, and it does so many things right it's
astounding.  They spent an insane amount of time addressing some
common complaints, and they made the game feel like there was always
something to do.  The UI feels really good to me.

But I'll tell you exactly where it falls down -- variety.  Lack of
variety absolutely and utterly kills that game.  There are maybe a
dozen distinct types of mobs.  There are only three player races for
effectively nine character classes, and nearly everyone looks the
same -- even with the ability to make your own player rep somewhat
unique, the lack of interesting "skins" for armor, etc. really
hampers any uniqueness.  There isn't a terribly strong incentive to
play one of the non-optimized race/class combinations, which means
that effectively you have three different archetypes in the game.

The terrain is gorgeous.  Absolutely beautiful.  Fantastic art
everywhere, it runs well on a low end system.  The interiors are
decent as well.

But there's not enough of it.  Contrast this with EQ, which has
significantly cruder technology.  But the variety of places you
could visit in EQ, even just at launch, was much greater.  AC2 is a
vast world, but every location has a distinct sameness to it.  You
have rolling hills and some mountains and water.  Sometimes it's
greenish land, sometimes it's brownish, sometimes it tannish, but it
still ends up feeling the same.

The skills, once again, have the same element of uniformity to them.
They feel like "Different ways of saying the same thing".

Maybe a good way to describe AC2 is that it's a very limited
vocabulary with a lot of synonyms.  Taken in isolation, when you
first start out it feels great.  As you continue to play, you
realize that everything is just a variation on something else you've
seen.

I really enjoyed the beta, but between the broken crafting where
they uncharacteristically committed a gross cardinal sin ("Thou
shalt not make items of value to high level players drop off low
level mobs") and the overall blandness of the universe, it just
failed to keep me involved, so once beta was over I stopped playing.
It is probably the single least frustrating MMOG you'll find.

Which is sad, because on a per-system basis, I think it's better
than EQ across the board.  But EQ just has more stuff to see, do,
be, kill and own.  A dozen+ races vs. three.  A dozen+ character
classes vs. three.

- Hook


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