V5 Feedback Thread

[Howlando]

Post your thoughts about Chapter 5 of EFU, "EFU: City of Rings" in this thread.

I believe a fair, accurate, and candid thread about this subject will be useful to new players checking out the possibility of playing here.

[Anonymous Lemur]

Aside from bugs here and there it's been pretty fantastic. The setting is great. It's suitably gloomy, but not so doomful that you feel hopeless at all times. There seems to be a place for all sorts of characters from the extreme risk takers to folk who want to be more laid back.

Can't say I think random quests are perfect. I would sort of like for those that drop keys to inner rings to lack level limits so that it's more difficult to get stuck in the outer rings. It's still a bit too early days to properly judge things like that though.

[Damien]

I think it's great. I would probably say equipment is skewed vastly towards mages and bards over any other class! Chainmails/shirts/leathers seem quite rare for some reason. Also shields..

[Spartan]

I am in love with v5 so far.  Sure there a few bugs that are being worked through, that is part of a massive new project like v5.

Some of the key good points for me are as follows.

- A setting this is supportive of a wide range of concepts. A lot of v4, Sanctuary was under direct threat of the Empire of the Dread and as such I had difficulty finding a good fit for my less survival / war minded concepts. v5 by what I have seen so far could support a very wide range of concepts.

- A setting that is a massive area to explore. It looks like it will take a long / long time to explore the majority of it. This is great as it gives your character a default 'quest' to pursue when other things are slow for them.

- A setting where the factions aren't over-powering. Sanctuary needed the Spellguard (IMO), but after a time the Spellguard always dominating a large part of Sanctuary started to get stale. The new factions seem to be relatively balanced power wise (based on the first week weeks) and the new Faction Application rules will be a very good thing but limiting the number of players in any given faction.

[Rocinante]

Though I am still getting my feet wet with the new setting like everyone else I am very much enjoying v5 so far. I wish there was more direction for new players as it seems like you are pretty much thrown in without any real sense of direction. That's not a bad thing per say but if you're a new player who isn't familiar with EFU I would feel lost after getting past the first puzzle.

[Pig-a-dig]

I'm enjoying what I've seen so far, but I'm also getting the distinct feeling that this chapter will be even more heavily reliant on OOC cliques to find content than in the past.

Possibly just a worthless worry, but I can't manage to shake it.

[Garem]

Howdy. Glad to be back.

Setting, from the outside:
This world is... strange. If you want to follow canon to the letter and immerse yourself in stories about characters you know from books you've already read, this isn't a great place. But if you're not sure about EFU because its story arcs are so different, it does meet you in the middle - the Forgotten Realms is noticeably present, not absent. Drow are still evil, dwarves are still greedy, elves are still haughty, and humans are as scummy or heroic as they can be in our own world.

Setting, from a few days on the inside:
Holy smokes. This setting is incredibly deep, with each facet being well-rounded and interesting. DnD is a game that can be about a dungeoncrawling battle, a political game of intrigue, or a high magic open world fantasy. This new setting seems to check every box. The core setting, with three distinct areas, gives every PC a fitting-enough place to call home and offers them an opportunity to play into the politics, espionage, intrigue, and so forth. I think that's always been crucial to what sets Persistent World DnD/NWN apart from other online games. Yet, it's still an avoidable part of the setting if you're not fancy for that kind of gameplay - because abstracting a bit, you realize that the whole world designed by the DM team is one kickass dungeon. If you just wanted to grab a few friends and play the toughest dungeoncrawl you could find and not talk to a soul, this might be it. The challenge of conquering the rings is great. But that means the world isn't open, right? Not exactly - because the introduction of the "planar seams" means that you've now got an open-world exploration game to go see new and interesting places with occasional breaks back into the main gameplay zones. It's basically a giant "West Marches" style game, with sufficient divergent paths to keep your interest high for years.

Opportunities and Concerns:
With a playerbase so well-established, I think changing some cultural norms is going to be hard. We've already seen in week one major escalations from the baseline, narrative degree of conflict between the political opponents. It's easy for players to turn up the temperature rapidly, to be more akin to the days of EfU1 and EfU4 (and the others in part, I'm sure). I think this is a mistake, and could readily lead to one of the problems EfU faces in allowing fights to go from politics and rhetoric and devolve into characters killing one another. DMs have, from what I have seen, encouraged this in previous chapters. I think this one should be different, and I think the (as thus far understood) compulsion of each of the factions makes a cold war more appropriate and desirable - to say nothing of being new and interesting. If murder happens, let it be distinctly personal and horrible (and hopefully, infrequent and narratively profound).

Quests:
A core part of character development in adventure RP games is the questing system. It's tough, since you're balancing the basic competency of playing the game with the fast-paced demands of an action game (with no pause button!) but the ability to play a hardcore, rogue-lite game with this kind of seriousness-of-purpose in roleplaying is simply impossible in other games. So yes, quests matter. Not all RP happens in the tavern, nor should it. So with that in mind, the quest design thus far has been great fun. I cannot speak to specifics, because find-out-in-game, but some of the new quests have had me laughing out loud (the act, not the typed-emote). They're funny, challenging, and/or downright creative. And given the ever-shifting nature of the gameworld, with new alleys and planar pockets to explore each day, it's great to enjoy the variety of over a decade of quest-making and refinement. Please sir, may I have some more.

Loot:
For a low-magic world, the loot continues to be creative and fun. Can't say much more for now. Bravo, team.

Self-guided Gameplay:
I've put in 10-15 hours into the server so far, with very limited (but always positive) DM interaction. No DM guided/boosted quests, no DM missions. It's just been seeing the world they built and living my best life - and I haven't felt like I've missed out on anything at all. There's so much content here. Holy crap. Bra-freaking-vo. Mysteries to solve, new quests to find and beat, you name it. I can't wait.

I haven't been this excited since EfU2's wild first days. Seriously, I'd write more, but I want to log in and play again.

[Moonlighter]

I am having fun. Progressing in-game is certainly a great challenge, but it feels surmountable, but not too surmountable. Balance thoughts aside, the setting is very great and a much-needed break from the doom and gloom of the old EFU's chapters. Nothing apocalyptic is going to happen if your character simply decides to settle down for a life on the City of Rings, and that, in my opinion, opens things up a lot more for the non-action oriented concepts.

[Sankis]

The quests in efu5 so far are amazing and, in my opinion, far better than most quests in efu4.

So many of these quests feel unique and inventive. Even those that are a bit more straight forward tend to have great writing, interesting puzzles or fun twists.

I'd write more but it's difficult to without going into specifics. I just really love those that I've seen so far.

[Sneakybeakyivdamke]

Endless room music is 10/10, would quest train again.

[Ladocicea]

No nature/hermit start, no wilderness areas in ring 100, and to pass beyond into 99 you have to cooperate with other players (yuck).

It's almost like you don't want me back, H.

[I love cats]

Lado you don't need other players to pass to ring 99 if you can figure it out. There also is quite a lot of nature areas if you can look!!!  Ring 100 is more of a starting area than anything.

(TBH I wish there was a hardcore prelude.)

[Quarterdragon]

(TBH I wish there was a hardcore prelude.)

It kind of feels like the whole server is the hardcore prelude.

[Moonlighter]

The hardcore prelude was basically never necessary and ultimately not a great addition to Chapter 4, IMO. The current prelude (Ring 100) accomplishes everything it did, really. We're not so far into the server's lifespan that everyone's done it so many times they've discovered every little thing and need to skip a bunch of boring quests they've done a million times before, much like the starting fetch quests a few years into EFUR.

As far as the lack of nature/hermit start, I actually think this is a good thing. "Nature" was very segregated off from the rest of the playerbase in R, and that ultimately lead to a lot of undesirable behaviors. Better they're outright integrated in the same set of circumstances that everyone else is. You wake up in the river, where you go from there is up to you. Whether you make the left to Pauper Ponds straight out of the door and start taking up the mantle of "nature" is up to you, it's right there if you want it, and probably a good bit more hardcore than the Ticker or Peerage experience to boot.

[Ladocicea]

Lado you don't need other players to pass to ring 99 if you can figure it out. There also is quite a lot of nature areas if you can look!!!  Ring 100 is more of a starting area than anything.

Sorry, my mistake. I thought we started in ring 101. I meant no wilderness in 99 and you have to cooperate to move into ring 98.