(I thought I'd say that, because I occasionally put so much effort into my titles, that it's no longer obvious what they're about.)
There's anticipation about new DLC, and I think it's great that a year after ME 3's release, free DLC still gets people excited.
I'm mostly remembering what had me most excited about the game, the old weekend op/community Challenges.
In those early days, two weeks apart, the story of the Mass Effect Universe was being told. Not everyone survived to tell the tale. There were failures. Sometimes of the whole community, sometimes of the individual.
The community was growing together, then.
It wasn't possible for this bronze player, with barely a clue how this game worked, to finish some of those early ops alone. I had to brave into the world of Gold, without even knowing how Biotic Explosions worked. When things were blowing up around me, I really was freaking out, and only the Veterans could yank my stupid head under the firing line and keep me alive long enough to get my Valiant III (woohoo!)
I had to be carried. I had to learn. I had to find out about the tragic failures of the op, waiting days (almost like communication had been cut to major hubs) for results or intelligence on whether the op had succeeded against the enemy.
It's like we were participating in a huge, epic War Story.
And now we get our killstreaks, and our revives, and those have been an interesting change of pace. It's a little more work than using a flame power a few times, but it doesn't seem to do much in the way of telling a story.
So here's my plea for a compromise between the old style, & the new. Weekend Challenges that are difficult enough that approximately half the community will have to work really hard to get it, or seek help from more experienced players. They would happen every two weeks again (to accomodate the extra work involved). There would be an individual goal, and a community goal.
In the first operation, the community goal would be really hard. Individual goals (with the Promo Weapon pack) would be fairly easy, as they are now.
Two weeks later, the individual goal would be very challenging, but the commuity goal would be relatively easy.
And, of course, the operations would tell a sort of story, the way they did in the Spring, complete with consequences for the failure of Community Goals.
Not everything can be done under the new system, but I don't necessarily mean complexity. Maybe one of the really challenging goals could be extracting Gold with one of the kits with the lowest successful extraction rates on Gold (I don't know what those are, but someone does.)
I've spent enough time talking about that, here's my answer to a few of the most obvious questions/criticisms.
It's too hard for new players.
It isn't technically any harder than it was for new players last spring, and we managed to do it. Back then, there were not 100s of Videos on how to play, there were not advanced communities of players on BSN to tap into, and there were far fewer Platinum Experts to turn to (since Platinum didn't even exist for most of the early ops.) Hard doesn't mean impossible.
The weekly system rewards us more often.
Yes, but it diminishes the meaning of that success, as well. When was the last time someone had an epic story about how they finished an op? Most players would prefer an easy reward every week, but that doesn't mean most players shoud get an easy reward every week.
To keep the community alive, it is necessary to cater to new players.
Actually, I debate the truth of this. Keeping new players in mind is important, catering to them will not work. The ME 3 community is going to be kept alive by players like me, 6 months from now. Not someone who got the game for Christmas, and is still figuring out which difficulty they want to play on. They may stay, they may go. Keep players like me happy, and we'll still be here in 6 months, and some of those new players probably will be, too.
You're an elitest douchebag.
I
It's because I think the reward should go to the players who are willing to work hard and take risks for it. And you don't have to be an elite player to do that.
TLDR: Weekend ops were more exciting when they were hard, and told a story. Keeping the community thrilled and engaged will work better if we find compromise between easy ops, and challenging ones.
Modifié par Jeremiah12LGeek, 07 février 2013 - 10:49 .
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I think I just opened a can of worms with that comparison, so maybe I'll drop it...
