What this game aims for - a treatise?

[mikawa]

I would like to ask the admins / devs if any document exists in which you can read about the main goals this game tries to achieve. I mean, a kind of treatise where all the important points for the gameplay are written down.

 

The discussions in the gameplay forum mostly consist of personal player experiences which might vary from day to day, so I think most of the discussions drift soon after the OP into a quite different direction; or depend on single (non-objective) observations.

 

Due to my opinion, a post with a kind of gameplay treatise could help the devs to get better feedback which of the goals are quite reached and which are far away from success. Instead of doing a kind of try-and-error-implementation, this would help to streamline the work on the game and would help not to misspend precious development time.

Edited May 12, 2016 by mikawa

[Tief N Tote]

well they are in development and are trying different things. this is early access.

[mikawa]

Early access does not mean "Let's try do so something, but I will have no plan at all".

[mikawa]

Well the battle part is already good, it was good since a long time. It is the "maybe something else in future" what I would like to know about. There *must* be some kind of plan, I'm sure.

[Nelson Hornblower]

QA from a developer from awhile ago, worth a listen about future plans: 

 

https://www.twitch.tv/braincage/v/39127630

[Galileus]

Such documents are not released to public. They are in-team tools, otherwise you would be asking for people pointing fingers and blaming without the realization how game dev process is fluid.

[mikawa]

Oh, it's not my intention to point fingers at anyone.

 

It's just about understanding better for what exactly the devs are aiming. As lot of people are now involved in giving feedback it would be helpful to know more about. For example: it doesn't make any sense to complain about "single" player issues (players who don't want to join clans) when the aim of the game is to force clan building. This is only a small example and might apply to many other topics as well.

[surfimp]

It's a sandbox game. You have to create your own meaning and purpose.

 

Embrace it as a metaphor for the existential crisis that is life.

 

Edited May 13, 2016 by Sansón Carrasco

[mikawa]

 

Embrace it as a metaphor for the existential crisis that is life.

Nice thought. But even when I write a simple text-based game I *always* have a kind of concept paper handy, to sketch out the most important points about the whole thing. So I guess for a game as huge as NA there *must* also be a kind of concept paper, where all the crucial points about the gameplay are laid down. I'm only curious whether the testers (remind yourself that we are in "alpha" which means that not all the important facts are nailed down yet and that we all have already paid for being alpha testers) might have a look at it. It would improve almost every discussion that takes place in this forum at the moment.

 

Edit: I have not asked for a treatise that covers every little detail in this game, this surely should stay hidden from public, but for a more general concept paper that draws out the direction this game would take in the course of its ongoing development.

Edited May 18, 2016 by mikawa