The future of Brighter Shores

[Sicknasty]

So, as a guy (who my friends can attest) is really into the RS style of chill out game, I can say i'm enjoying, but with a big caveat. It's....alright for a day one EA. I do wonder where the 10 years went into this, probly the custom engine and all the dialogue but who knows.

The worlds cute, musics great, characters are simple but fun here and there, classes seem to mean absolutely nothing to individualize yourself (right now), the afk farming is nice but horribly HORRIBLY under balanced when the level cap is freaking 500 (9xp at lvl 20??? really???), I could go on. But again, IT'S DAY TWO! There's plenty of road to improve upon this, so, some suggestions off the bat:

JUST PUT A BANK IN EACH ZONE!!! Holy S**t please, there was no need to reinvent the banking wheel on this one from RS or any game honestly. I do not need my logs in a separate bank from my bones, and my fish, and my potion mats, and my food, like....what??? To put it strongly, that is the wildest and frankly dumbest decision I've seen in the game. It's neat from an aesthetic point of view, but not having a universal spot to see all my crap I've collected IN AN MMORPG just ain't it, chief. For the love of Lord Brannof change this. There can be nodes out in the world to deposit certain materials, but I should be able to go to town and see everything I've got, OR at the very least the quartermaster spell should let me choose which bank I'm opening up or something different. This has got to change if you're gonna keep an audience of MMO players around and you'e doing these episodes of individual skills.

The episodes/skill separation. Weird, but sure I can get on board. HOWEVER, you've gotta flow them into eachother. Right now it feels like 4 separate MMO's, not Brighter Shores the MMO. Today, I'm gonna play Hopeport the MMO, and maybe dip a bit into Hopeforest the MMO. It's just...jarring I suppose. For example, the forest has almost no water/rivers anywhere, which is odd. Even the densest forests has water SOMEWHERE. But, if there was say a pond, well then Andrew would have to put fish there, which we'd have to be allowed to catch for the fishing skill. But that's episode 1 so we can't have that. Idk, the map connects but the worlds feel VERY divided because the skills are stuck in their zones. Maybe that changes in Episode 3 and 4, but it doesn't seem like it will.

Quests. Ho boy these are something. I am 100% in the camp that because it's EA, Andrew pumped these skill levels to the moon so we wouldn't blitz through the content, or lack there of at the moment. The Brannof quest in particular sticks out. Needing 61 Cooking for one recipe, and you can't even go into the world to farm these materials, it's just a money game basically, is very underwhelming. I'm basically paying my way to 61 so I can finish a quest that I'll bet 80000 Bacon sandwiches on won't be remotely rewarding for the hours that need to be sinked into that one skill. I can't farm pigs to also kinda work my Guard skill, or get some wheat to work my Harvest skill, nope. It's literally just have X money so you can buy mats, cook, sell, repeat to 61 and probly to 500 honestly. That tells me to setup a Macro for making Bacon Sandwiches, come back in 9 weeks and be done with that boring skill that did nothing for my gameplay experience. You can't even make the food as something to use in game, it's literally there just as a recurring profit machine. It's a nothing skill right now and gatekeeping one quest because one of the brothers wants a fancy meal. Episode 2 is looks slightly less obnoxious, at least the carpenter skill let's you craft parts of gear it looks like??

I would say those are my Big 3 that need some major revamping. I'm betting on Andrew's prestige with RS-esque games that this will get denser and in a good way, and I do hope he is seeing audience reactions and maybe keeping a log of in game chats to sift through cause people are talking about this stuff. We're comparing, whether you want us to or not, Brighter Shores IS and WILL be sat at the same table as RS in comparison. I don't think this will ever escape the shadow that is RS because...I mean it's obviously RS 2.0 with a bit of QoL under the hood, but to try and shy away from it seems silly. Know your audience, and know they enjoy ABC aspect of RS, and integrate it but in this ages gaming style. Slap in those QoL things, don't try and reinvent something that wasn't bad the begin with (BANKS BANKS BANKS BANKS BANKS!!!). It would be like if Notch decided to make a new Minecraft 15 years from now, and tried so hard to not make it Minecraft, like his audience isn't going to be confused why the Minecraft guy didn't make a better Minecraft after seeing all the fervor from the current Minecraft community.

Again, I'm enjoying the game. I love these chill grindy games, but to a point. I still want to have fun, not just do a gameplay loop that is spend money, craft, sell, repeat. Give me the option to get the items another way, JUST LIKE IN RS! I hope this helps some of you make your decisions, and it's free so really what's the harm in trying for yourself =)

Fair winds and following seas, Shorians!

[bb]

Fair feedback and points I think

[Tubey]

Yeah agree with a lot of this.

Whole banks in each zone is unlikely to happen, because most of your bank wouldn't be applicable to nearly every other zone. So bizarrely, due to the design choice of segmenting the game, it's basically not needed. You think it's needed logically but at the end of the day, even if you go to a bank, you'd then have to travel to where you use the mats anyway, where they're already stored, so it'd be functionally pointless.

It's just another example of how the bizarre progression philosophy kills the game unfortunately.

A lot of what you state I'd expect to be fixed in a normal Early Access, and I'd forgive a lot of it. But as above, a lot of the flaws are a consequence of something that's baked into the core of the game - which is the weird chapter 'progression' issue. So it's difficult to see how it can be fixed.

[Tower Dove]

There are actually multiple deposit boxes actually in each zones. You just need a phd in chapter 2 skills to do the quest :).

To me the elephant in the room is that content is AI generated. When you think about it, how can it not be fully generated at this point. Quests make absolutely no sense, there are almost no animations, no human would names npcs like that, and there are wtf why fetch quests at some points that break naration and do not make sense even. The multiple combat styles that are actually copy paste with different skins and combat that is doghit are debilitating as well. The combat is arguably worse than even early runescape

[10Shots1Kill]

Yeah, but making me walk to 3 different banks just to clean my inventory on each trip? bish pls

[Mouz]

The introduction of area 2 makes it look like the scout skill would be used as a hunting skill, maybe sneaking or something else at the core of it that would separate it from the guard combat skill. At least then it would be more excusable. Unless this is planned for the future which then Andrew should have just locked us all in area 1 as a short demo version of the game

[Sir Seal The Slippery]

Originally posted by 10Shots1Kill:

Yeah, but making me walk to 3 different banks just to clean my inventory on each trip? bish pls

Brighter chores

[hanny]

Thinking about it more and I kinda think the game was just and afterthought because people kept bugging Andrew on twitter to make a new MMO. There is hardly any real thought or connection to what RS made great in this. It feels bland, cheap and lazy. For example until lvl 20 you farm the same 3 fish but reskinned, same goes for other professions. So its clear they spend the most dev time on the engine and everything else is whatever. Now you can cope and say they will add all these things, but currently they arent even ashamed to still ask a monthly sub and have weird prices for longer subs for this content. They will add 3 more chapters and call it a day.

[Clippy]

Great feedback. Jarring is the word I used too. Players need to be properly introduced to the idea of combat being different in the regions. My idea was to sell the idea that they are professions rather than a partial reset. You fight in the port town and gain xp (and appropriate equipment) in being a port guard, fight in the forest and gain xp as a forest scout etc etc, then link them all together by giving real value to the total level so it feels like you a building towards a goal larger than the individual regions.

[ChiefE]

What is the endgame? I'm in chapter 3, and still just grinding endlessly, without any reward. What do we grind towards?

[Ossie]

Originally posted by ChiefE:

What is the endgame? I'm in chapter 3, and still just grinding endlessly, without any reward. What do we grind towards?

its day 2 of early access, the only answer you can get for now is that its similar to runescape, you grind to be able to do higher lvl stuff.

[Sicknasty]

Originally posted by hanny:

Thinking about it more and I kinda think the game was just and afterthought because people kept bugging Andrew on twitter to make a new MMO. There is hardly any real thought or connection to what RS made great in this. It feels bland, cheap and lazy. For example until lvl 20 you farm the same 3 fish but reskinned, same goes for other professions. So its clear they spend the most dev time on the engine and everything else is whatever. Now you can cope and say they will add all these things, but currently they arent even ashamed to still ask a monthly sub and have weird prices for longer subs for this content. They will add 3 more chapters and call it a day.

To this I'd currently disagree. As we're already seeing, patches are being made for the beign stuff happening in game, like the CUSTOM_ZOMBIE thing (never actually experienced it but heard people talking of it), so Andrew and team are invested. Now how far they're invested, time will tell.

The reskinning of stuff to higher levels in a weird way I don't mind. Because this game looks to be much smaller in world scope, it makes sense. Less zones to farm but you gotta add upward progression, so to be able to toggle back and forth works for the idea. Will it get boring? I think so in the later 100's when the difference is so microscopic, grinding to 500 will be for the insane (myself included =) ), but again from the games standpoint it does the job *shrug*

[Pesky Bee]

This game just feels like a job. The beginning content felt fresh, funny, was really enjoying myself. Then I started hitting skill walls. Not like, gain a few levels to progress, kind of walls but grind for 5 straight hours kinds. I'd get burnt out and move on to another quest, only to hit another massive grind wall.

I'm not really having fun anymore. The fact that none of my skills transfer to chapter 2 feels like I wasted a ton of time, and it makes me worry that when I get to chapter 3 it will be the same crap all over again: Total reset and grind for days to get the next morsel of content. To me, it feels like they couldn't come up with much beyond Hopeport, so they just padded the time between with mind numbing repetition.

I want this game to do well, but as of now I can't justify subscribing. The game, in its current state, does not respect the time of its players

[JustATextBox]

Originally posted by Pesky Bee:

This game just feels like a job. The beginning content felt fresh, funny, was really enjoying myself. Then I started hitting skill walls. Not like, gain a few levels to progress, kind of walls but grind for 5 straight hours kinds. I'd get burnt out and move on to another quest, only to hit another massive grind wall

I'm really curious why people feel this way. Personally I feel like the leveling is pretty damn fast. At least up to level 200 - I can't speak to how the wall at 200 feels

But "5 straight hours"? For what exactly? Certainly not a single level, I don't think it'll be that slow even at level 200+

[Elon Musk]

Originally posted by Sicknasty:

JUST PUT A BANK IN EACH ZONE!!! Holy S**t please, there was no need to reinvent the banking wheel on this one from RS or any game honestly. I do not need my logs in a separate bank from my bones, and my fish, and my potion mats, and my food, like....what???

I like the way it is, with the banking spell from ep2 every farming runs feel nice. Yes there could be atleast 1 more banking tablet in each episode but its fine like that

Also u have to see it that way, currently it seems that banks currently have unlimited or atleast a very high space, u can store absolutely everything of the resource and level u want. If youd have rs bank system, I bet most banks would be almost full already, then they have to sell banking space again or put it into mem. I like the current banking system.

Originally posted by Sicknasty:

I do wonder where the 10 years went into this, probly the custom engine and all the dialogue but who knows.

Dont forget how small his team is !!! I think is only 6 man working on the game and 2 or 3 working for the sound etc, but thats not much of a big concern.

This game is HUGE for this small team of 6 people!!
People should pay more respect to that

[nowhere man]

Originally posted by Weorhtleas:

Originally posted by Pesky Bee:

This game just feels like a job. The beginning content felt fresh, funny, was really enjoying myself. Then I started hitting skill walls. Not like, gain a few levels to progress, kind of walls but grind for 5 straight hours kinds. I'd get burnt out and move on to another quest, only to hit another massive grind wall

I'm really curious why people feel this way. Personally I feel like the leveling is pretty damn fast. At least up to level 200 - I can't speak to how the wall at 200 feels

But "5 straight hours"? For what exactly? Certainly not a single level, I don't think it'll be that slow even at level 200+

It will most definitely get to a point that you can easily spend 5+ hours, way more than that, for a single skill level. The question is, will it be any fun? If it is, then it is, problem solved, if not, a lot of people will quit playing and build up statistics.