Choose My Adventure: Exploring the purpose and plan of this community column

You are no doubt staring at the title image above and thinking to yourself that it really does not look like a Neverwinter screenshot. And you would be right; it doesn’t look like a Neverwinter screenshot because it isn’t a Neverwinter screenshot. My schedule has been hectic enough that rather than trying to cram in a rushed play session without much meat in it, I elected to have a brief delay and push the next Neverwinter installment back a week. Not to worry, though; it’s an extension, not a cancellation, and Neverwinter still will get its full four weeks in the spotlight.

Instead, I wanted to be a bit more meta and discuss a few things I see coming up in the comments from time to time as well as covering some ideas for the series moving forward. And yes, it contains polls for the compulsive voters in the audience, you charming folks.

Choices and lack thereof

I’ve seen questions crop up, from time to time, about why some options are or are not on the list when I run a poll. Case in point: There are several Neverwinter classes that were not on the class selection poll at all. Heck, I didn’t even run a poll when it came to Black Desert’s class options. What’s the deal? Why don’t we get more choices in the polls or more polls in general?

While it would be fun to claim that it’s a technical issue, it’s not. It’s a sanity issue, and it comes out of experience with running this particular column, starting with the nature of how we used to hold our polls.

Back in the day on Massively-that-was, we would usually have our Choose My Adventure polls stuffed chock-full of titles. I can’t think of one I ran that had fewer than nine entries, for example. And we would, often, see energetic races between several of those titles spurred on by fans… who would then not actually read any of the subsequent columns, thus leaving us in a less-than-ideal situation.

My goal here is to provide as many interesting poll questions as I can so that you get to feel like you have a hand in shaping what I do. Thus, when we open up a question of which game I’ll cover next, it usually is picking between a few games that have had big changes recently or ones that are otherwise important and relevant. Similarly, I try to make sure that the polls on things like class options cover stuff I reasonably expect to enjoy playing. I’m sure there are Control Wizard players in Neverwinter who adore the class, but I provided a truncated list of options that hew closer to my personal preferences.

And sometimes, yeah, I just don’t have a surfeit of different directions to go. This was particularly notable for Lord of the Rings Online; it has a lot of positive aspects, but the game at lower levels is pretty linear. Had I known, I may have done things differently.

Perspective and speed

I’ll be the first to agree with people who say that the meat of a game involves at least brushing against the level cap. Final Fantasy XIV allows you to keep doing the same thing at the level cap which you enjoyed on the way there, but it also adds several more options and becomes a richer game all around. So why do I not rush through faster? Why isn’t my leveling process faster as I work my way up?

The answer is that, by and large, I don’t know these games. I don’t have any familiarity with them. That means I also don’t know the “optimal” ways to level or the best builds, and I’m not trying to speed through. I’m trying to come into the game with the perspective of someone who knows little to nothing about the game before loading it up and making my first character.

Combine that with the fact that between playing this game I also have the games I regularly cover, events I’m covering, interviews I’m handling, writing, games I’m trying to play just for the heck of it, and a small bit of personal time… at the end of the day, I devote as much time as I can to the game, but that doesn’t mean I always have the time to charge through to the level cap.

This, I will note, is one of the things that I increasingly find worth appreciating in The Elder Scrolls Online. I really respect that I was able to sample a large amount of content in that game without hitting the level cap; good on you for that, Zenimax.

Obviously, this would also be somewhat different if I were covering a game that I knew forward and backward, or at least well enough that I could discuss it and experience it from the perspective of someone coming back to the game rather than first playing it. I’ve previously stated that these are titles I think are best avoided, simply because it’s hard for me to avoid existing knowledge with titles like Star Wars: The Old Republic. But rather than continue in that line of thinking, let’s put it to a poll.

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Worth noting here is that regardless of my knowledge of the game, I consider any new play runs to be, well, new. If I’m covering a game I know, I would still be starting fresh on a new account without relying upon friends to boost me up or transferring money/armor/resources from another character. It would just be a game I know instead of one I’m learning.

Duration

Each CMA title runs for four weeks, plus an intro column and a denouement after the fact. This duration was decided upon by the scientific principle of “it feels pretty much right.”

Jokes aside, it actually does have several positive aspects. There’s enough time for me to get a feel for the game if not experiencing the whole of it, and it means that the column isn’t stuck in one title for months on end. Some people are just never going to be interested in reading about WildStar, no matter how much of the column consists of my usual off-track nattering.

That having been said, there’s always space to go further. After all, I just outright stated that there’s always more to do that I may not be able to cover. So I came up with a rather elegant solution to this particular problem, since my characters are still sitting on the servers awaiting a return. Why not have a greatest hits week?

The point of such a week would be putting the games played over the past however-long into the polls again, with the explicit purpose of returning to the same character and picking up where I left off. (Rather than giving into a temptation to reroll and start all over.) I’d be picking up again, going forward again, noting what had or had not changed from my last experience, and so forth.

How will I decide whether or not I should do this? Well, I won’t. You will, in the form of a poll.

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I’m also considering what sort of time interval to use for a revisitation, but I’m going to hold off on that until it’s clear whether or not I should go this road in the first place.

As always, polls will close at 6 p.m. EDT on Friday, so you’ve got time to get your responses in. Thanks for bearing with me for a more meta week and for letting me know what you think about the column as it exists now and as it will exist in the future; it’s always appreciated,  and it’s part of the fun. You can feel free to send more feedback or ideas down in the comments, or you can mail them along to eliot@massivelyop.com. Next week? Back to Neverwinter properly.

Welcome to Choose My Adventure, the column in which you join Eliot each week as he journeys through mystical lands on fantastic adventures — and you get to decide his fate. He also values your input and understanding. There are only so many hours during the day, and our time on this planet is precious and short.