Was the Rift DLC too good and they scaled back for Storybook Vale?

[GrailQuest]

You could farm Mist quite fast just running around doing timebending and clearing sand swirls. This makes it easy to fuel the Ancient Machines.
Auto-gardener basically takes over watering for free, which is a big deal for long-growth-period multiple-watering-required crops like Pumpkin.
Vacuum works on an entire biome and saves a lot of time especially for hard-to-see items like Dark Wood.

Not quite as good as base game stuff like free fish from Moana and free flowers from Beast which make collecting fish and flowers almost obsolete in the base game. But still solid quality of life that is quite powerful.

The only powerful thing in Storybook Vale is the Lure Traps which can get you piles of White Snippets quickly, taking the work and variety out of Snippet Hunting entirely.

Wondering if they deliberately tried to avoid make-systems-obsolete goodies. Or just saving it for a reveal next year to encourage a second wave of DLC sales.

[PlayerNumeroUno]

It's hard for me to talk about now, I can say storybook questing feels more efficient and navigating the map is more intuitive. We all mostly know the likes and dislikes of Eternity Isle, it's definitely rewarding completing Eternity Isle :) Eternity Isle is not a cake walk, would I change it no, no way. It's a perfect reminder, we'll never forget that one.

Storybook, as far as trials, layout, design, questing, landscaping and non landscaping content building flexibility, it felt less torturous and redundant.

My main gripe with Eternity Isle was that it felt over crowded with spawns, which is the correct way to introduce the machines, however, because the machine quest was very limited, I personally did not get into really learning how powerful and game changing the ancient machines are until after I completed all the quests. The area had to be complex because searching for timebending content in a straight forward map would be boring. I get that now.

Again it's hard to talk about comparing the two dlcs for me. I was super harsh on Eternity Isle. I literally complained about everything mostly. After a year it's... it's... um familiar, I got a few builds over there I like, it's wild area; for sure.

With Storybook I'm not complaining about anything and not confused about anything, was that because of Eternity Isle?? Likely yes.

I would say Storybook is scaled forward. :)

[NeonSunset]

My biggest problem with Eternity Isle, as I know a lot of people (including the person above) have as well, is that the areas were overly crowded and you just don't have room to build or decorate without having to remove almost every little tree, shrub, rock, etc.

Here with Storybook Vale, it's more open and "clean", so I've already found myself placing down paths, decorations, etc. with no issues. It's definitely more accessible to decorating.

The Rift DLC also feels overall more grindy.... For me personally, I struggled sometimes with getting enough things to craft what I needed or to unlock new biomes. Sadly, I'm not a young man anymore (gamer in his 40's), so I can't have super long gaming sessions like I used to. Storybook feels better balanced in terms of crafting the new items and finding the required things to unlock areas.

Having said all that, I enjoy both DLCs, but I do feel that Storybook is a step in the right direction for any future ones that will come out.

[EUKSharon]

I think for foliage the best one is the latest edition, the rift in time was ok but the base game without dlc's after re looking at what you got now feels very little, i have a second account with just base game and nothing more and find it really boring and very few decorations and the foliage for decorating is not good either.

[GrailQuest]

Originally posted by NeonSunset:

My biggest problem with Eternity Isle, as I know a lot of people (including the person above) have as well, is that the areas were overly crowded and you just don't have room to build or decorate without having to remove almost every little tree, shrub, rock, etc.

Here with Storybook Vale, it's more open and "clean", so I've already found myself placing down paths, decorations, etc. with no issues. It's definitely more accessible to decorating.

I think the upcoming open-space islands specifically for players to decorate how they like is definitely important and helps resolve the conflicting goals of map design in DDLV.

I can see that Rift and the base game tried to give us interesting spaces to open up and experience (too small to really call it "exploration"). They tried to give it ambience for the various quests, tried to have zones that each feel different from each other.

But in a game where they also promote building and decorating, this was in direct conflict with the players' needs for clean open space. I think a lot of players just cleared the base game locations for not just harvesting convenience but building space. In doing so, the biomes lost their identity entirely.
Rift had interesting spaces but the layout wasn't conducive to building how you like.

For me, SBV maps feel really bland. You literally have just boring wide open spaces. And they were careful to re-use the instanced spaces for quests so that they could leave the buildable space alone for players to bulldoze and build.

I feel they should have released the open-space islands first to reassure players that they will definitely have real estate that is easy to manage. And then they would have more flexibility to create interesting spaces in the DLC realms, to have more ambience for the expansion as a whole.

[PlayerNumeroUno]

Originally posted by GrailQuest:

Originally posted by NeonSunset:

My biggest problem with Eternity Isle, as I know a lot of people (including the person above) have as well, is that the areas were overly crowded and you just don't have room to build or decorate without having to remove almost every little tree, shrub, rock, etc.

Here with Storybook Vale, it's more open and "clean", so I've already found myself placing down paths, decorations, etc. with no issues. It's definitely more accessible to decorating.

I think the upcoming open-space islands specifically for players to decorate how they like is definitely important and helps resolve the conflicting goals of map design in DDLV.

I can see that Rift and the base game tried to give us interesting spaces to open up and experience (too small to really call it "exploration"). They tried to give it ambience for the various quests, tried to have zones that each feel different from each other.

But in a game where they also promote building and decorating, this was in direct conflict with the players' needs for clean open space. I think a lot of players just cleared the base game locations for not just harvesting convenience but building space. In doing so, the biomes lost their identity entirely.
Rift had interesting spaces but the layout wasn't conducive to building how you like.

For me, SBV maps feel really bland. You literally have just boring wide open spaces. And they were careful to re-use the instanced spaces for quests so that they could leave the buildable space alone for players to bulldoze and build.

I feel they should have released the open-space islands first to reassure players that they will definitely have real estate that is easy to manage. And then they would have more flexibility to create interesting spaces in the DLC realms, to have more ambience for the expansion as a whole.

That's a pretty good idea, know world of warcraft does that, I know I got a couple free expansions from them before. took a few years.