When Brighter Shores launched into early access this week, many players were surprised at the fact that each episode (aka a major zone) had individual professions to level, including one specific to combat, which effectively meant everyone was starting from level one again by simply moving into a new region.
This design decision did not please many, as user reviews entered into “mixed” territory over complaints of overlong grinds, reset progress, and unsatisfying progression, while other reviews lauded its chill vibe and slower pace – impressions that incidentally aligned with the views of our two writers who checked out the MMORPG ahead of launch.
The reaction to the whole system has brought lead dev Andrew Gower forth to explain what he calls a “breadth and depth” system. In summary, players can progress to each episode “relatively easily,” but that doesn’t mean that a previous episode is fully finished, as there are harder side quests that let players fully experience an episode. The game also heavily interlinks episodes: A given example involves gathering reagents from one episode, then bringing them back to an older episode in order to make items for a later episode.
By Gower’s reasoning, this system solves the problem of level scaling that other MMOs have, eliminates any gulf between players who spend hours grinding and those who can only devote a few minutes a day, and ends up being fun once players get used to it, particularly in the case of unlocking and progressing new combat professions. He also suggests those who don’t like the system can can simply “pick an episode [they] like and predominantly stick to doing combat in that one episode.” Either way, he implores players to “please give it a chance.”
Even with paragraphs’ worth of explanation and rationale, Gower does admit that some concessions should be made. The game now shows off a character’s total level instead of a zero when moving to a new area, the devs at Fen Research are looking into one player’s idea to make special content that utilizes all combat professions, and there are plans to better communicate the breadth and depth system in-game like a difficulty marker next to side quests and main quests that tries to visually move players away from completing a full episode’s content (and thus feeling the game is too grindy).
Response to this dev post continues to be mixed. While many players offer their appreciation for the explainer and express curiosity in how Brighter Shores will develop, others argue that the system is useless because enemies already scale with episode level and complain that the game loop is still boring or feels like a chore. Others are still asking for better explanation of things like combat calculation, suggesting that “zone” should be used instead of “episode,” and hoping for further tweaks to things like AFK profession rewards.
