Purpose to side features (housing, fishing, mounts, ...)?

[Limp Squirrel]

Hi there,

I want to preface this by stating that Avalon has been the best expense I've made in gaming in a very long time. This game is the kind of vision that is missing from the industry at large. Games like this, despite their shortcomings, are a display of the developer's dedication to their vision and wanting to see that become reality. I've reached Act 2, about 20+ hours in, and I still find myself very engaged.

That said, I've been wondering about many of side features, and their overall purpose/value in the game. I'm talking about fishing, mounts, the housing system, the telescope lens, and sketching.
To put it bluntly, they feel very underdeveloped and in some cases tacked on as a checkbox. Mounts and housing come to mind as the main culprits. I can see that players could enjoy having their own house in Horns of the South, but what value does that add to the game?
Many, if not all functions, of the housing system are readily accessible otherwise. The house is just another hoop. There is no incentive to spend time or resources on the house.

Mounts also feel rather redundant. My character runs fast enough, coupled with many waypoints scattered around the world that there is pretty much no need for a mount. They're also a bit clumsy.

The sketchbook and telescope, I have honestly never used. The sketchbook could have been integrated into the gameplay I think. Like this particular quest to find a sunken ship. Maybe the NPC could request you 'to show her what you saw', where making a sketch could be act as that vessel.

I can understand these are features that were added late in development, or maybe just added in as a distraction.

Anyway, rant over. Just wondering if there are any plans to particularly flesh out these subsystems in later patches or even expansions?

[Brady4444]

I take it as novelty side content.
But there is another possibility. If a system turns out to be popular it could be expanded upon. I thought of that because this is the devs' first game. So it might be that they wanted to try a few things to see what sticks.

[Cy]

those side features are mainly ignored by me as well. I think they are really fine as they are. Wouldn't like it if I had to use the horse, the telescope cooking etc.

But all those features feel like the developers really designed the game with passion. Romance is another side feature for example and it all leads to us players having choices. In result I really feel like I decide my playthrough experience with the outcome of the story that I prefer and not every player having the same experience.

[JoeyBeanz]

Honestly i think they were added in because they're common features you see in a lot of open world RPG games like this. In practice, they're not really needed in this game at all. But you just know if they weren't in there there would be hordes of people crying about "where's the horses" or "why aren't there any player homes", etc. Same goes for the "romance" segments in the game. Completely pointless, but commonly expected content.

[Smokey The Bear]

Gardening is another "feature". There's a quest chain showing you how to plant seeds, takes like 2 days to grow plants, then I got a quest to find pumpkin seeds and 40 hours later I never found any kind of seeds.

[Sergalius]

From act 2 game would become more and more half-baked

[Rommel]

I found the horse but I'm like hey.......I'm faster!

[TheLuckyAce]

Originally posted by Smokey The Bear:

Gardening is another "feature". There's a quest chain showing you how to plant seeds, takes like 2 days to grow plants, then I got a quest to find pumpkin seeds and 40 hours later I never found any kind of seeds.

Same and besides from the Plots in the Castle, I never found a place to grow seeds even if I would find some :D

[Baron01]

Complate waste of time. It is clear that the ideas the developer team had were more ambitious but reality gave them huge check. The game is full of these pointless features that are currently just a waste of time and are either bare-bones or outright useless--this includes housing, housing decoration, horse riding, fishing and sadly to some extent even blacksmithing and alchemy.

The last two--blackmisthing and alchemy--work but their progression is very lackluster and completely falls off in act 3. Blacksmithing is "useful" in Act 1 or early in Act 2 but it completely falls off in later Act 2 and Act 3. There are no late game weapons to craft, most armors pale in comparison with what you can find in the open world, loot from Tombs completely blows any crafted gear to smithereens.

The game is unfortunately severely under-baked and it shows in later Act 2 and onward.

[Drake]

Originally posted by TheLuckyAce:

Originally posted by Smokey The Bear:

Gardening is another "feature". There's a quest chain showing you how to plant seeds, takes like 2 days to grow plants, then I got a quest to find pumpkin seeds and 40 hours later I never found any kind of seeds.

Same and besides from the Plots in the Castle, I never found a place to grow seeds even if I would find some :D

farming is something that was implemented late and never got finished. I wouldn't be surprised if it was updated later. It was featured in one of the trailers so I'm pretty sure they planned for it.

I think there is a lot that can be added to the game.

[busyman]

I only use the horse to ride back into town when I'm encumbered and sell off the loot. But it drives like a truck.

[Limp Squirrel]

Never even thought about using the horse when I'm overburdened!

Frankly, I just think many of these features took away resources that could have gone into more important things. Hopefully they get worked out a bit more, but then again, I'd also much rather prefer they spend those resources on the main content.