I like the basic design of garrison followers. I liked recruiting them, leveling them up, and improving their gear. However, as with everything else, I think followers had some issues.
Mission Planning
Mission planning was just too complicated and tedious. There's a reason everyone used Master Plan, and that there was such an outcry when it stopped working with the 6.2 patch. Maximizing rewards by assigning followers to missions was an easy thing to automate, so it was automated.
I think Blizzard would have done better to make this simpler. For example, one thing they could have done is limit the number of available mission slots to match the number of characters you have. Thus you can't get 100% on all missions but must choose the missions you most want to win.
Or alternatively, perhaps at the beginning of the week you organize your followers into parties, with one tank, one healer, and three DPS. Then you are presented with 4 missions and you assign a party to each mission. By reducing the number of possible options, you greatly reduce the solution space, and make it much easier to do follower missions by hand.
Timed Missions
I don't think that timed missions were a good fit for MMOs. Timed missions might be good for mobile games, because your phone is always on you. But I don't think they match the rhythm of an MMO.
I think missions should have been more like dailies. They all complete at the same time each night. Then you can assign new missions sometime during the next day. I think that daily or weekly reset is a more natural fit for an MMO.
Follower Presence
Garrisons had a neat element where your followers would hang around your garrison and interact with you and other NPCs in small ways. Unfortunately, 99% of the time followers were out on a mission, so you rarely saw this element.
I think Blizzard should have just left your followers hanging around, even if they were technically assigned to a mission. Or possibly have the non-active followers hang around. (I don't actually know if this happens or not, I only have one inactive follower.)
Bodyguards
I like the follower bodyguard. I run with the draenei paladin tank. If I'm in a quest with Yrel, that's three paladins running around, delivering holy justice to the orcs. Good times.
However, the fact that you can click on the follower to bring up dialogue drives me nuts. It happens when I try to loot, and it happens an awful lot. Regular hunter and warlock pets don't have this issue, and I really wish Blizzard had thought more about this. The barracks should have just given a "Go Home" ability that you could put on your bars.
Conclusions
Overall, followers were a pretty good idea, and an interesting part of WoD. But the four issues above kept them from being great.
I've begun to replace quest-aquired followers by inn-recruited treasure hunter followers some time ago, so I have about 6 or 7 inactive followers already. They do not show up anywhere as far as I know.
ReplyDeleteOh, well. That's a pity and a bit of missed opportunity. I liked to see all my followers wandering in the garrison. It's a pity they're usually not there.
DeleteAlso, there is an item sold in the barracks for making you bodyguard's size smaller (1 hour duration, 1 hour cooldown). I did not try it myself, but it might solve the looting problem.
ReplyDeleteOne dismiss button would not solve the issue completely because reputation-maxed bodyguards have an additional function which is invoked in the same dialog as dismissing option. (Illona can summon your party members to you, Ishaal can send and recieve mail etc.). The best solution would be to have an additional pet bar, distinct from hunter/warlock pet bar. (I would very much like to control when Ishaal uses his stun/+20% damage taken spell or Ironfist his Sindragosa breath and not leave it to their rather weak AI).
Hmm, I don't have max-Rep bodyguard, so I didn't know about that extra ability. Still another button, or perhaps one of those sliding buttons with multiple options, which the warlocks/hunters use to summon pets would have worked better.
DeleteAs for a full pet subsystem, I think at that point you're beginning to trespass on hunter/warlock/frost mage territory. They get a pet which they have large control over. Other classes shouldn't get the same thing. We get a follower with minimal control, which is strictly worse than a hunter/warlock pet.
My big problem was how the missions lacked much flavor. Combined with the timing and the automation, I was only going through the motions because of carrots being dangled, not because it was in any way fun or immersive.
ReplyDeleteI don't know, I though the missions were reasonably flavorable, or at least had some implied flavor. But maybe they could have done a better job. I notice that the ship missions have more text and a better description of the mission.
DeleteThere's a mod that blocks interaction with the bodyguard if you're not holding down a ctrl key. Drove me nuts until I found it (especially because I use Leorajh who is fairly large). I think it's called "bodyguard away".
ReplyDeleteOMG thank you for mentioning this addon. This has annoyed me so much.
DeleteVery nice! I'll have to give that a try.
DeleteHehe that sounds like something I will install asap. Currently repping up thormok... He is huuge!
DeleteI think I aggree 95% with all 4 of your points this time. Especially 2 and 4 strike me as things that are just plain bad design decissions. Garrison missions timed as they are would have been perfect for mobiles, and would have made an excellent addition to the armory app. As an ingame activity they work contra to how the rest of the game is supposed to be played. Even with the changes to allowing shorter meaningfull gamesessions over the last expansions, wow is not a game that is supposed to be played in 5 min blocks spread out over the day. The PC platform in itself is bad for this design, and an mmorpg is even worse. I think your suggestion of making them daily is much more in the spirit of the game. You allready check by wow once a day (or it wants you to), but so far when in the day you do so, has been your own choice ( baring raidschrdules etc.).
ReplyDeleteAbout the bodyguard design. There is no reason to not include an (optional) toggle for whether or not you can click through him. I cant imagine anyone who uses them that havent been fruustrated at having to change cameraposition or move in order to harvest something, or pick up a questitem. I am looking very much forward to getting the addon mentioned above :-)
Shandren out
Glad to see we agree on this at least!
DeleteI actually expected Blizzard to add follower missions to the armory app. It seemed like an excellent fit. I do wonder why they decided against it. Maybe it would have made smartphones and the armory app "mandatory", and they didn't like that.
I think i remember them saying they didnt want to use development time on it, since it wasnt going to be a "thing" going forward, and the armory app meant meant for expansion exclusive features.
ReplyDelete