General rambling about Eldarya and questionable direction choices
Oh gods, that’s gonna be long. Actually, I don’t play Eldarya anymore, it just feels like a waste of time right now. But fortunately, a lot of my friends are still brave enough to continue, so I have a lot of insight in what’s actually happening in the game.
I’m writing this mostly because of this post, or rather, the article that was mentioned in it. It is mostly the Eldarya writer’s response to all the criticism from the players and oh boy… Not going into details because some people actually did this, but just quick summary of my personal opinion after reading this (just my thoughts regarding Eldarya, I’m not even going to mention the attitude that shows in the article): I somehow feel like the person writing Eldarya doesn’t like the game as a whole – the genre, target, setting. I heard from people that play MCL Alternate Life that it’s actually pretty good so maybe the fantasy part is the problem? Or it can also be lack of solid preparation to write something like this.
Anyway, as for my thoughts regarding Eldarya.
1. They don’t know its players
Actually, no, more than that. I feel like they don’t have any specific target in mind. Beemov games started when most of us was like 12-14. But the thing is, now we are mostly adults and younger people don’t seem to be so eager to join the fandom (not that the games have anything to offer to younger players, I mean, for example playing Eldarya before unlocking the market is absolutely devastating experience). And right now we have a game that is trying to be everything. For some parts, I feel like this is written for children. But then we go to the more heavy themes that would be either not suitable for their age, or simply boring for them. In the same time, this “heavy stuff” I’m talking about feels so unrealistic and grotesque that despite efforts, you just can’t take it seriously. And with this we go to the second part.
2. Because they don’t know their own players, they don’t know what genre should they even make. And how to approach it.
But, really – if you’d have to tell someone, what Eldarya is – what would you tell them? Their main page is saying “romance and adventure fantasy game”. In the google play, it’s tagged as otome. The writer’s words: fantasy adventure series - what, you could say, also shows that the romance is so low on his priority list that he doesn’t even mention it – could be just understatement but I feel like it’s worthy to point out. So, what we get if we sum this up – three keywords – romance, fantasy, adventure.
As for romance… We all know what it’s like right now. As someone that was aiming for the Lance’s route, all I can do is laugh. To be honest, I’ve never believed this will be good route. I like the trope, but this just couldn’t go well with everything we’ve seen before, especially with only 20 episodes. I’m not sure if it’s worse than what I thought it will be, but definitely is no good. Emotions are non-existent. Everything is just… dry. Narration tells me that characters feel certain way but I just don’t see it, I don’t know why, I don’t feel anything. Those rare romance scenes we get are so out of place that you can think someone in the team was like: “Wait, I forgot there was supposed to be romance in the game! Let’s just throw some random kiss here, yeah, that will be great!”. Absolutely meaningless.
Fantasy? Right… You know, if you read/played/watched a lot of fantasy genre, you know that making it good is not about “oh, let’s put magic and dragons here”. From my experience it can be either the easiest or the hardest genre possible, depending on the writer. You don’t have restrictions. You don’t have to do boring research on “how the law works in this country at the other side of the ocean in terms of what I need here” for this to be coherent. Creative freedom 100%, you can do anything, rules from our world don’t matter and yet, you can use some of them which will make your work easier. You don’t even have to be Tolkien or Sanderson, with their fantasy worlds that have been created from scratch in every little detail for over 10 years. You don’t need explanation for everything, you can make it simple – just make it work and stand by the rules you’ve already made. We have magic in Eldarya, but actually we don’t. How many times did you see characters actually using it? I’m not counting alchemy here, just pure magic. Kero used telekinesis ONCE. In TO tutorial if I remember correctly. Or one of the first episodes. I don’t feel like the magic is integral part of this world so how could it be convincing when they suddenly use some strange spell/ritual/thingy to solve a major problem important for the main plot (let’s not even start this whole discussion on how it’s not really a good idea to use pure magic powers to solve a problem, especially if you didn’t introduce those powers ).
And now, with the most recent episodes – fantasy… yeah. Someone on our discord server said something that sums it up pretty well – Eldarya is right now something like MCL but with explaining us in most stupid ways possible how our own world works.
And adventure… Well, I could make a whole post about “everything wrong with” for just that one part. Let’s start with – why on earth did they choose military conflict as a main plot for this game? Don’t get me wrong, I love fantasy with those type of conflict, I really do. But it’s also very difficult and requires research – and here it is non-existent. Some time ago, with a couple of friends, we’ve been discussing 30 episode of TO, or rather, the battle itself. I’m not going to do this again, it would be way to long. But – if you’ve watched GOT, especially the last season. If you’ve seen Battle of Winterfell. And if you’ve seen some analysis of everything that went wrong with it from the tactical point of view. Yeah, Eldarya repeated every single mistake and added some more. If you’re curious about those things, just go to youtube, a lot of experts explained it very well – I’m sure you’ll see similarities. If you’re not –
Look at the map. HQ is really solid place for defence. We have hill, high walls and the cliff on the other side, so there is only one side for the potential assault. Wall is the perfect place for archers, crossbowmans and mages. While defending the city, you take advantage of it – especially of its walls – to the maximum. What you DON’T do, is going outside of those walls with your forces, to fight a battle on the BEACH. I guess most of us have walked on a sand at least once. Yeah, imagine fighting on that kind of terrain. And Lance’s army? Attacking from the beach side, really? He’s a dragon, they could literally fly with him and chose best place possible, and they chose BEACH? Just imagine them, walking one by one, just like some ducklings, up those very narrow, rock stairs that lead to the HQ. And that’s just the top of the iceberg.
In ANE on the other hand – we have diplomatic mission, for example. Here there is no point of telling what was wrong with it – there wasn’t a single thing that was right. They came to the ruler and king of the country they’d like to cooperate with in a way. What are first things they do? 1. Show of power. 2. Disrespect for the monarch (I don’t care right now what he’s like, he’s still a monarch and a ruler). 3. Going there with the very person he’s in power conflict with, also being his past wife (and probably present wife by law), a refugee that they gave an asylum in the guard. Telling him no, we won’t hand her over to you. Well, if that is not provocation then I don’t know what is.
I’m not telling that they should create great and realistic plot with R. R. Martin’s level of politics and complicated military situation. I mean, I would be delighted, but I’d be in minority, most of players would be bored by it. But! There are already things that are doing really good job (in my opinion) with simplifications! A Ranger’s Apprentice for example, or The Powder Mage Trilogy. Both of them touch the topic, in completely different ways, but both of them work on the simplified concepts of complex conflict (also military conflict). What I think makes them work is the fact that the authors did really good job with their research. In Ranger’s Apprentice you can find a lot of concepts that are brought up in The Art of War by Sun Tzu. They are simple concepts by themselves – but they are real and logical. What Flanagan did was probably taking some of them and making them the main focus for the certain part of the plot. You read about some kind of the tactic characters use – it’s nothing complicated by itself but just feel like it could work – of course it does, because it did through the real history. It’s just simplified, and with the simple narration it makes the books fun even for the younger audience – and not grotesque for older one, as long as you understand and accept existence of those simplifications. This is what Eldarya lacks. It tries to bring up complicated topics in simplified way, but you just cannot do this from nothing. We are not strategists or tacticians – but we can read and take inspiration from other sources. With a little of logical thinking on top of that, it is possible.
They could do all of that. Or they could just stick to the things that worked perfectly fine. I mean the very beginning of the Eldarya: TO. It was simple – we had clear main goal – collecting Crystal shards. We had some problems that we had to overcome – food shortage, human organizations, Ashkore (rest in peace, my favourite character :< ) and the fact that the guard leader was young and inexperienced what made her more likely to make mistakes. We also had enough space for our love interests, enough time to get to know them, get attached to them (as a character, but also as a player), get some quality fluff we deserved. Personally, I think this simple problems would be much more fitting for the game like Eldarya that despite being fantasy and adventure, more than anything should focus on romance. Generally I think Eldarya right now lacks everything that would make the game good – there is no real direction, no real idea, no research, and most importantly, no passion from the creators (or if it’s there, sorry but I don’t feel it). It just feel like a project everyone in the team is tired of creating, would love nothing more than to throw it away and never ever look at it again, but just cannot stop right now because they have to finish is somehow. You know, the kind of feeling you get when you’re at the end of writing your thesis. And it’s sad. Because it had potential – not the kind of potential like masterpieces in the gaming world, but enough potential to become really fun game that you play as a form of relax after a hard day in job/school, also donating it once in a while as a form of appreciation for the creator’s work. I could write even more but it’s already almost 2000 words so I’ll stop here.
Summary: they don’t know what to do but also won’t listen to their own players because of reasons. Result – no one gets what they want.
Oh, also, one last but very important thing! I don't like the concept of aengel powers AT ALL. I think Gardienne should be simple human or have powers so limited that they could just support her but not solve the problems for her. Why? Because maybe that way we could see solid character development, MC that relies on abilities that was earned and not handed over to her. Working with her own creativity, problem-solving skills and the knowledge she gained during both her life on Earth and in Eldarya. Right now, everything that defines her and her abilities - are her powers (and what's funny is the fact that writers KNOW this and shamelessly throw this on us whenever possible - you know, all the "now with my powers I'm invincible" rambling). Yep, now I'm done for real. xD
