Minor spoiler for Vagrus: The Riven Realms
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Unable to find any half-skim guanaco milk for my eyebrow perifoliation treatments, instead I've been trying my hand at That Game That Misspelled My Name In The Preorder Credits and so far it looks quite promising, if still awaiting some fleshing out of its various features. Despite taverns including a hint system pointing you to various content, for instance, I've been having a devil of a time finding the various NPC companions to fill my roster, which in turn is preventing me from questing. About to rail against this lack, I ended up glancing at an online cheat-sheet only to discover I'd hounded circles around what should have been an obvious freebie.
Repeatedly.
Plotting all three of my trips to Deven so far with a view both toward accumulating fetch quests for simultaneous delivery and taking advantage of market prices to waste as little inventory space as possible entailed avoiding the unprofitable direct route along the main road, and consequently the hidden ambush site where you can rescue Finndurath the Spellweaver. I'd still have missed her if not for a damn reddit thread.
While Vagrus explicitly advertises a lack of handholding as one of its core selling points, given the importance of companions to questing and logistics, this one's proximity and the location she asks you to visit, you're obviously expected to run into her quite quickly. It's supposed to be a gimmie, a nice surprise while starting out. She's even located in an obvious spot. Too obvious, in fact, so that any gamer worth his salt will instead hit other locations (like the salt mines) for fun and profit instead of plowing forward. Is sweeping for side-quests before main objectives not a core strategy in cRPGs? Is maximizing logistics' profitability not in fact my exact job description as Vagrus? Why am I being denied an early reward for putting more thought into things than running there and back again horse-blindered, ignoring possible rings of power and profit?
It is possible for game designers to predict their customers' reactions so perfectly as to give the illusion of free choice while laying out a linear path. Off the top of my head, Half-Life 2's introduction (running through the apartment building) managed it beautifully. But it ain't easy, and the nerdier the genre the harder the players are to predict. A managerial cRPG exploration sandbox? Quite nerdy.* So why did you predict I'd simplemindedly rush from big city to big city? The more I play Vagrus, the clearer becomes the devs' very, very precise idea of how your early game should unfold, and entirely too much of it depends on foreknowledge of where and in what sequence to unlock stores with discounts, companions and free stacks of loot... while hoping for lucky fetch quest randomization. Its tendency to over-predict player actions clashes with its fundamental randomization.
Oh well. With a third rusty side-chick in tow, at least now I can re-attempt to lick the neck romancer's swamp hole. Later, comes.
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* edit 2022/12/05 - And that's not mentioning the gratuitous LATIN. No really, why did you ever assume your target audience would go for the obvious?
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