Inventory or Bank space

And it wouldn't be too difficult, if they already have the ability to implement bank vaults. I think the reason they haven't done anything about inventory spaces is because they think having over 100 is too much, but it really isn't considering in AQWorlds, you can have well over 200 inventory spaces. There is so much that could be improved, and even with just the items alone. I think it's stupid that we still have to pick up quest items in our inventory (e.g. Guardian Report, Torn Map, etc.), rather than having the quests trigger completion upon killing the respective monster. And I think it's silly that more misc. items aren't being utilized in the token slot (where inventory doesn't actually take up space), especially seasonal event misc. items like craft badges and war badges. All of these little things add up to filling players' inventory, and there's just so much that could be reduced further.

 

A lot of misc items haven't been transitioned into token items which would make sense to be token items like misc. items used in quests. More inventory space through story progress wouldn't be such a bad idea because we got a bank vault slot that way too.

 

Incremental inventory space through some form of progression makes a lot of sense, and it has the most pros compared to cons, especially since it's more of a reward for effort. The problem with just lending free space for every player, even new players and inactive players, is that from a technical standpoint, allocated space wastes more memory, especially if they're not being used, and therefore suppresses data stores and other resources. It's more noticeable from a company standpoint how much it affects them if their game has several millions of players and the majority of players aren't really playing or actually using their inventory, because having more data means paying more to cloud database services like Azure and AWS. Some games can manage it effectively, because they have the budget for it and a lot of support (paying customers), but other games have to be careful with how they manage it, because giving players arbitrarily high amounts of inventory space (especially a limit that they probably won't ever reach) could make the difference from paying a small amount to paying some exorbitant amount of cash to the companies managing data servers. Secondly, just being given free space with no effort takes away the reward factor.

I think a good progress point for when players should be given, maybe 10 more spaces, is when they complete a saga, and then maybe Guardians get a x2 bonus (so 20 spaces instead of 10). So then it'll feel like players can collect an entire set for each saga (where a set is about 7 items), and if players want more space, they can just spend their own money for bank space or something else.

But another thing AE needs to do is purge more inactive accounts, like non-Guardian accounts that have been inactive for a year or longer, because that also affects how much they're paying to manage their data. Many other games have active purges, and some of them occur after 6 months of inactivity or at the very least prompt e-mail notifications around that time period.

 

Yeah, inactive accounts are going to be a problem if AE decides to make inventory space upgrades a form of progression.

 

Well, if spaces are just a form of progression, and you have to earn it (say, at a certain level or at a certain point in the story), then it's not a huge problem, as long as inactive accounts aren't really being given those extra inventory space. It's more that freeing up those inactive accounts would put less existing strain on their database, and would make implementing new features that require space less costly.

 

AQ3D does need more forms of progression because we don't really have that many of them even though AE has had the time to add in some.

 

And progression flags wouldn't just benefit inventory space and bank space. Progression makes a lot of sense for many other reasons, too, like locking content until some progress has been made by the player. I think Arcangrove Forest utilizes some sort of flag that level locks newer players, so you won't see a bunch of level 1 players flooding the map and making it harder for appropriate-leveled players from accomplishing tasks there. Unfortunately, level locking isn't consistently implemented in other story areas, and it's mostly just bare-bone.

 

Yeah, there should be more flag based progression as well. Not that many places are locked behind progression and that should honestly change. Be it level locking or quest locking, we need more of it.

 

A lot of the flag-based events are mostly quest progression. In order to do quest B, you must complete quest A, for instance, and these flag-based events are tied to story most of the time. The flag-based system isn't really expanded to many other things except maybe in a few occasions.

But the implementation of flag-based events for other things wouldn't be that difficult, but now that there are loads of releases, features, and other things untouched, AE probably won't utilize flag-based events on them as much just because it'll be a mess to implement it now, so they'll only focus more on newer releases without really going back to older releases that could really benefit from the feature.

The real lesson is not to postpone implementation of features, because then everything starts to accumulate and it becomes more of a nightmare to fix those things, and this is true for just about anything, especially massive-scale projects. It's always better to fix things early than to wait and then fix it later, especially if it's something that has a high chance of blowing up, and AE tends to have a high disregard for prioritization, especially when it comes to fixing some of the simplest bugs and oversights of a new release. They tend to just move forward with the next thing and completely sequester any of the actual problems, even years from now.

And even though flag-based events could improve inventory space limit (e.g. complete a storyline saga to earn +10 more inventory space), it could take years to see AE actually implement anything like that since they have their own priorities.

 

Heartwood Forest was said to be Ashfall quality and if they can bring some variety with flag based progression like Ashfall did then there could be hope for more content of such caliber. When it comes to branching out with this, AE should keep going bringing them different forms more instead going to just using their most used forms of flag based progression.

Maybe it's too much to ask for and that shouldn't be a thing what we say at this point, we are way past that point. AE needs to put their game shoes on and get things done, but that accursed release schedule keeps slowing them down.

 

They'd have to come up with new ideas, if they want to achieve what Ashfall did. For instance, Ashfall's success could be defined by the introduction of action-packed cinematics, a more defined story (a death of an NPC was never really expected), and a higher-level of exploration (e.g. finding keys in the map). It was that first impression of being immersed by things that the game's never done before that made Ashfall one of the successes in AQ3D. A new player isn't necessarily going to think the same way as an old player who played Ashfall for the same time, because a lot of newer features in more recent releases share resemblance to Ashfall, so there definitely will be higher expectations, if we're to expect that Heartwood is supposed to be on par with Ashfall.

The features of Ashfall, if implemented for Heartwood today, wouldn't necessarily make Heartwood stand out like Ashfall. Heartwood would need features of its own, and something truly unique. They could expand the Crimson Circle storyline in Heartwood, but it wouldn't really be as interesting, because we already have lots of references to cultists in the game (such as the Nightlocke cultists). And an intro area isn't necessarily the best place to throw in an explosion of content (that could be saved for the climax of the story)... usually, you want some sort of hook that'll keep the players anticipating. You don't want to reveal the entire story arc at the beginning, but you might want to leave cliffhangers and an idea of what could happen later in the plot.

I think if there's any idea that could make Heartwood Forest an enjoyable experience, it would be some sort of labyrinthine exploration, like exploring a forest, and you might loop back to the start for taking the wrong path, find treasures along certain paths, and meet up with lost travelers (that might offer hints, have certain secrets, etc.). The idea of getting lost in a forest is a common trope in fantasy video games and in a lot of classic literature, so that would definitely leave a good mark for Heartwood. It would definitely create a memorable experience compared to killing monsters over and over again. There are a lot of ideas out there, and several references to spark an idea.

 

That's what we want to see and what AE should go for. The expectations are no doubt high if AE decided to say that Heartwood Forest has such quality, but we have to experience it and see if that claim holds any water.

The plan was to make new players used to that kind of quality, but that in turn should pressure AE to keep that kind of quality going which no one would mind in the end. They certainly have an opportunity put glimpses of things that players would come across storywise.

I really want to see that emphasis on exploration and after looking through the leaks, it does look like it's not a small area. Ashfall did nice job with it and Heartwood Forest can hopefully follow.

 

I think it's a bad idea to try to alter things way too much. Like look at what Battleon's become now... it used to be a village, relatable to the Battleon in other AE games, and then they tried to make it a kingdom and alienate their current fans, and they couldn't even explain the background to the kingdom, so they ended up calling it New Battleon, and left a bunch of holes in the plot with Vane's introduction.

Some ideas ultimately backfire, and huge claims, like defining the quality to be expected, can also end up backfiring. That doesn't mean ideas should be limited, but the implementation of ideas should be reasonably restrained.

 

AE is making AQ3D to be apart from their other games so having those kinds of changes are welcome. AQ3D's story is a mess I know, but that's what happens when you do things out of order.

It's hard to say how Heartwood Forest revamp is ultimately going to turn out for obvious reasons.

 

They pretty much have the Heartwood Forest revamp story ready; in fact, the cutscene dialogues were made before they added the new craft stuff to Winnie in Battleon. I think they're missing animations and things outside of the Heartwood release at this point. If you know how to access their API, you can pretty much read spoilers before they actually release it, and make a judgment of the story for yourself ... or wait until release just like every other player.

Spoiler: Images of New Heartwood

Spoiler: Heartwood Dialogues

Beginning of the Dialogue
(From ID 633, and ends at ID 651)

I can't really judge much of it though, because there are areas to explore and tasks to do in conjunction with the story itself. It would probably make more sense to wait till release, but you can still get an idea of what Heartwood Forest is supposed to be like.

 

I will make my judgement when I am done going through it when it actually comes out. AE did share leaks which did look nice, but I have to experience it myself in full to give a fair opinion of it.