I fought hard to keep this civil, as I thought to post something constructive out of my first extremely frustrating interaction with Arkadia Moon. As a general description, I find it aesthetically beautiful, promising as future development, but conceptually a disgrace. As somebody who bought a couple of deeds, I find disturbing the effort put into the marketing communication toward buying those versus the actual effort put into the gameplay. Maybe deploying it more functional and with less useless decorations would have been better. In no particular order, what I don't like: - lack of a forum section dedicated to it - all "cities" are full of useless empty buildings and non-interactive NPCs which just clutter the radar and screen with no visible scope or thought; apparently their only purpose is to make difficult finding useful NPCs, which is stupid - quest terminals are literally hidden among other screens (as compared to IFN/other mission terminals from Planet who had a good standout from day 1) - missions are the most frustrating experience I encountered in Entropia, period. A close runner is the Calypso mission to gain access to Cyclops Depths, the poorest, useless, blood-pressure raising waste of time which I encountered. Up until Ark Moon missions. Of which: - "find geologist whatever" who's supposed to help you exploring (to keep it unspoilish). No clue, no nothing. "He's admiring the fauna". '"He's drinking his tea in a toilet". Anything at all would have been helpful. Not asking for a waypoint, but something at all. - "pick a maintenance plan" - WHAT IS A MAINTENANCE PLAN, GAME?? I clicked "1 day" option and... nothing. I have a mission open which does nothing, has no objective, no task, no reward, nothing. Just sits there. - "extractors maintenance" - WHAT THE HECK are extractors? How am I supposed to maintain them? Simply from the use of word "maintenance", I would suppose is connected to above-mentioned mission, but any explanation at all would have been great. Like what the f* are extractors and where am I supposed to maintain them, or something at all. For the moment, that's all. I just keep poking around because I am curious about mining and hunting here, but from an exploring/role-play point of view, for the given time, is a very poor, game-breaking experience. Because it lacks a few words, mainly. As a suggestion to devs, try playing it yourself, mates, trying to ignore the things you know beforehand. And then maybe you'll have more visitors. Best regards and wishes, even if you destroyed my Saturday morning, tyvm.
Out of exasperation, I googled the coords of Jay. He's not there. Now what? (L.E.: the first set of coords I found here were wrong, the correct ones are on Monria (lol) forum)
And to sweeten a bit (well, somehow); after dwelling a bit in google and hitting up the npcs and getting some understanding, I see it as such: Ark Moon can cater to two cathegories of players, imo: - high stakes miners (to whom everything else is rather irrelevant; maybe the hazard suit is useful to not die here and there) - lower stakes miners and general grinders, which can even be loyalized through the maintainance mission and further events, where possibilities are literary endless What I would personally change: - remove the empty small buildings (if there are no real-estate plans for them) or make them all service centers with all necessary terminals, even temporary if for future there are other plans - put an exclamation mark on the quest screen - move the first geologist, Laura, near tp Alpha, I mean literally near, or, even better, add another NPC right near tp with an exclamation mark. This one should serve as the introducting lore creator/teller (with few words about what's the thing with the moon) and have three quest branches: - general exploration of the main tp's (which should start as invisible to the player), but a bit hand-holding, you want the players to get quickly the tps and take a look around; this should evolve into finding Jay and further exploring, maybe some general clue of the whereabouts of Jay and rest of his mission is fine as it is. (NOTE: when the player gets the IFN device, there should be some explanation - or mission to send to planet to discover what's up with that device, if it dips into main Ark storyline, I have no clue what's with it) - some daily mining quest with rigurously balanced skill rewards (such as to not be abusable with, say, rookie finder) - this should tie up in the meteor story line and send the player to Laura, which could be the reward giver - introduction of the quest terminal, which should also get a daily hunting mission Laura: - take away finding Jay, doesn't make sense atm and move him in the introductive branch as suggested above - use her to further the mining aspect and to develop the meteor/Milo quest - meteors could play a role in the daily mining, with two stages, pre- and post- hazard suit and hazard suit can absolutely be used in future particular events such as exclusive access (hazard catastrophe -like etc) Milo: - this guy needs a clear hand-holding way of his whereabouts, he is (together with above suggested dailies) the main source of loyalisation - make clear/explain what is that the maintainance plan (but of course under a lore hood) - maintenance plan mission should get a stage-ish appearance, similar to the oratan chain from the planet; that is to make it clear that 1 day to 7 days are a thing together and have a finality (which doesn't need to be obvious) - extractors' location clue is perfectly fine as it is, maybe a small hint in Milo's dialogue, but literally small hint, it is funny and should stay so Finally, add (if it doesn't exist already) a daily for manufacturing and develop these three dailies together with present and future missions to play into the factional thing IFN/Smuggler/PTech. With apologies if anything of what I said is redundant and already existant, what I am trying to address is first user experience, introduction to the concept, particularization of the concept and loyalisation. For structure and first interactions with NPCs and the road one-to-another I wholeheartly recommend first-arrival experience of Monria. Try to stay away from Calypso model, which is lore-less, meaningless and generally nothing ties up together with nothing and nothing has purpose, from a lore and gaming perspective. Best, K.
wow.. what a negative experience you seem to have had. I do however feel this post goes overboard. let me address a few points based on things that have been said by the Ark Devs in various posts, plus a look at other places in EU as comparators. This forum covers Ark moon and tbh I can't see why another is needed since the moon storyline is and will increasingly be part of the ark story, evidenced already by the smuggler connections and presence of certain intermittent mob spawns that also appear on Ark. Though a tab to take us to posts about moon could be a nice inclusion Seriously ? There are plenty of empty/useless structures throughout EU including, may additional NPC's with no role, they are called set dressing. In your RL.. do you live in a room empty of all but the essentials, or do you have the usual clutter that brightens our lives and makes the place look homely and lived in. If all the clutter were removed from the whole of EU.. think how boring it would be.. no people standing chatting, no soldiers protecting sites, no empty buildings to explore, NO Trees - who needs them anyway, not as if we can hide behind them etc Also since the Ark moon is young and ripe for further development, we have no idea what use those buildings may have in the future. Faction HQ's maybe, shops or market places, or have significance in the main storyline as it unfolds. I am sure if you had asked in local chat someone would have explained what you need to do. Which is visit the buildings, shown on the map on the wall behind the NPC and interact with the engineering terminal there. Yes it is mildly boring and repetitive, but the outfit you will collect if you complete the mission enables you to do a 2nd discovery mission. The upshot of these is as yet unclear and will be part of Ark Moons future story. Is it stupid to not tell us everything up front? Is it stupid to introduce things in stages ? Have you ever read a murder mystery.. did you seriously expect the solution on page 1 ? Some interesting ideas here Let's hope some are taken up Totally agree The moon is not perfect, Ark is not perfect, EU is a long way from perfect, and what is perfection anyway.. your opinion would be different from every other players. But to some extent overcoming the foibles, getting to find our way through this complex universe and helping each other along the way is what makes this game durable. If it were all just a series of straight forward grinds I suspect many would get bored and wander off to play something else I hope you enjoy future visits to the moon as you get more familiar with it, it has some beautiful and interesting locations, that surely must have importance in the future (the temple like structures for instance).
Look at this vid.will help you to get the mossion done.iv got the cords for all the other missions on moon and i will log on the evening and give u the cords to help.u out.im with you on moon stuff its very poor design.but still i like ark and is why im still there
Maybe it wasn't clear what was the main frustration drive. "Find NPC x", lacking a certain clue structure (ref your mystery comment, to which I wholeheartly subscribe), means to visit every.damn.orange.dot on the radar. Of which the moon has an extraordinary high amount. After I turned around two times at Alfa tp through all those "colonists" groups, mouse-overing each of them, was enough for me. I took a break, went on to simply visit around the spawns and such and left it for later. As for forum section, I meant a tab here, not a separate website. Best, K.
I fully agree with the orange dot spam. Early on I brought this up with the team and inquired if it was possible to convert the civilians to objects instead, I know this was being looked into but unfortunately I haven't heard anything on that. The moon has a clear exploration focus, but the spam kinda kills it for me.
