User blog:RPGProductivity/Brief Thoughts

I tend to be a perfectionist in everything that I do in life, but for these reason, I am not going to "perfectionize" this post, and rather, simply release my current thoughts about this app so far within my first 5 days of using it.


 * It's important to note that these are just my personal thoughts on what I've experienced so far. My natural flow in life is to ask "How can this be improved?" - I absolutely am loving this app, and I wouldn't ever want to change such a great and efficient app; these are simply my personal thoughts on "possible solutions" to different elements of this app and are completely up for discussion and thinking further on. Enjoy!

Thoughts on the Party System: I am excited to get some quests going, but I have found that this seems to be a rather long and time-consuming process. The other day, I got to level 15 and got the first quest scroll. I thought "Okay, I'm going to join a party and get to questing right away." - However, it's taken several days to simply join up with a party, and now that I'm finally in a good party, we now have to wait for everyone to "Accept" or "Reject" the quest before it can begin. I think this process could be fine-tuned to happen much quicker.

Possible Solution: Let's look at the process of joining a guild. Guilds are set up very efficiently. If you want to join a certain guild, it is public so you simply find one that you are interested in and hit "Join" and there you go, you're in. Why not take this same concept and apply it to the "Party" system.

In further thinking, here's how a new Party system would play out. A player searches through a list to see which Party they want to join. If a Party is considered "Public", then you see a Party you're interested in and just hit "Join" and you're in. In doing this, you take away the process of having to post about your Party on the wiki, sending invites, going through the hoops of discussion where people are already in a party, or the invite code doesn't work, etc. This would also create consistency throughout the system of HabitRPG, where the user would be familiar with the Guild system, so if the Party system is aligned in the same way, the user will understand this system and will be able to join a Party faster, with a better user experience, and they will be able to start doing Quests faster.

Thoughts on Quests: After several days of wait time, I am now in a great Party and excited for some quests! I viewed the Party page and I saw that there was already a quest going on, awesome! I found out that I would not get any XP or Gold because I was not part of the Quest when it was started - Okay no problem, I'm fine with that. So I thought "Awesome, this quest will be done by morning and we'll have a new Quest up and running right after this one, so by tomorrow we'll be on to a new Quest. After logging in, I see that there is an option to "Accept" or "Reject" the new Quest, and I accept. However, now there is more wait time for members to Accept or Reject the quest, which I'm semi-okay with. I can work on my patience and wait another day or so until people have had enough time to Accept or Reject this new quest. However, in my mind I can't help but think "There's got to be a quicker way to get a new quest going."

Possible Solution A: I haven't had a lot of time to thoroughly think through this idea and come up with a concrete solution like my thoughts on the Party system above, but here's an idea I have about the Quest system. Upon joining the Party, perhaps there would be an option to where quests would start automatically without any approval. Party members would receive a notice that says something along the lines of "New quests will begin automatically and every Party member will be added to the new quest. Be sure to check back each day and complete your Dailies so that you don't hurt the team!"

So the possible solution here would be to add in a Party "Option" so that new quests would start automatically rather than waiting for Party members to Accept or Reject before the quest starts.

Possible Solution B: Introduce a "Hardcore Party"! This would go along the same lines as "Solution A", except that a "Hardcore Party" would be recognizable by a certain icon or visual, and users would be notified that a "Hardcore Party" is dedicated to intense progress with zero wait time. All quests would start automatically, and perhaps there would be incentives for joining a "Hardcore Party" rather than a "Party". For instance, the quests could move along quicker by allowing a slight stat increase or something that would fit users who are wanting to progress through the game and level up as quick as possible.

Feel free to jump in with your ideas. Again, these are just my own opinions - I am absolutely loving this app so far, and I see all the potential that this app has, so I want to contribute with the ideas and racing thoughts that flow through my head. Let me know your thoughts, I'd be glad to hear them!