Most high level wizards are familiar with the story: Party gets wiped by Cheating Boss because a Menu Chat teammate didn't understand the rules.
I've tried to deduce a solution to the problem. Ultimately, I think it would require additions to the Menu Chat or modifying the way chat options are implemented, and I suspect KI has no large interest in either of those solutions.
So, unfortunately, for many of us, the actual solution is to refuse to run those dungeons with Menu Chat folks. Harsh, but I just don't see any other way.
I can devise no way to be a better Healer than I am, and I have troubles keeping an energetic 8-year-old alive in Water Works or Helephant Tower even when they are not limited to the Menu. Menu Chat is just impossible.
So -- Menu Chat teammates are now off my options list for those places. No exceptions. The time investment is too huge to lose yet again due to inability to communicate.
But my heart goes out to a well-meaning player who just really wants to do Water Works but is under Menu Chat limitation. Until someone shows them how, they are unlikely to be able to solo it, because even Wiki101Central only gives you so much information. Much about these places is learned by doing, and, frankly, doing with friends.
I have reached the point in my musings where I suspect KI has used these complex dungeons as a partial answer to the perennial requests for an adults-only area. They've made these things so impossible to play without open chat that at least the youngest of kids will get indirectly excluded based on their age.
I don't like the idea that there's a section of this game, which has from the start been ostensibly for kids, that kids are unlikely to get into, and unlikely to succeed if they do get into. But it may be a reflection of the reality that the paying demographic of the KI customer base are in large part adults, and if small parts of this game have become adult-oriented, so be it.
So I have not made the formal request for the kind of intensely game-altering Menu Chat options it would take to make it possible to facilitate teamwork in complex dungeons.
I think it's time to simply accept that not everyone can get everything, and as much as it breaks my heart to see someone running around the entrance to Water Works asking for help, begging for help, pleading for help, I need to just let it go.
I posted a lengthy commentary on this some months back, after trying to do Nastrond with a nice, well-meaning menu chat kid. And failing at the last battle, owing precisely to the limitations we all recognize. Given how long this has been an unresolved issue, I guess I have to agree with your somewhat fatalistic assessment--i.e., that KI will never change the menu chat options to allow for cheating dungeon play. It is unfair.
But of course we all know that many, many younger players have text and even open chat (you can tell by "listening" that some of them haven't mastered even grade-school level spelling/grammar skills). Here's my take: I think KI really wants everyone on text or open chat, and offers menu chat to placate parents long enough for them to see that the game is basically safe. By not changing the very limited menu options, they hope to (passively) encourage people to change the chat options for their kids. They want a social game, with more interaction, and that's always going to be limited with menu chat. Case in point: my Nastrond friend now has text chat.
My feeling is that they shouldn't offer an option that comes with built-in game limitations. Menu chat memberships cost the same as text or open chat memberships.
But then I am not looking at the game as a business, just as a player.
I happen to have a few menu chat people I have befriended, I can not get through BriskBreeze or the MarleyBone tower with one of them, we go in get killed because I can not relay the cheats and we try till he gives up, no one else will help us.
I did to WaterWorks the other night with a menu chat, three of us jumped on the pad and he joined and I talked the other two into letting him run it with us, they were pretty good sports about it. I tried to explain that these poor kids get nothing out of the game because people shun them everywhere not just WaterWorks. I did hold off on healing during the first boss fight because we did not want him doing the wrong thing again, I felt slightly mean doing this but we all agreed it would be the best strategy to get though the fight sooner. We did have to do an extra fight because he ran ahead and activated the eels area, one of the boys had to leave leaving just the three of us for most of the last fight, the other text chat person found "Do not use that Spell" on the menu chat, I had been just using No and it only worked some times and after one Ra he used that, during this fight I can pump out Rebirths every 4th round so can not exclude anyone in healing, altho it is only 1/2 health it provides the damage shield we need, even the text chat person got us Ra ed once, luckily my pet is a very good healer and as long as I don't get defeated we are safe, I have been in before and being life I know the drill on healing and I was actually able to get some good hits in since the other team mate left and completed my outfit but getting my robe just in time to use my level 60 gear for Mirror Lake.
I only hope after all that time and hard work the Menu Chat person got something from it, personally it would not hurt my feelings if they let menu chat people get all the gear for any cheating boss area if they are lucky enough to run though it.
My son said this over the past week, "The game started out for kids. The end is not for kids (meaning Celestia and Zafaria) are not for kids.". I find that very, very sad. I got introduced to this wonderful game by my son. Many of my friends had the same thing happen. Children are an important part of the player base. They bring their families to it. His playing brought me. I have spent way more than I care admit on this game. That is what made Wizard101 so different and unique, entire families playing together.
I hope KI will keep the game so that can happen. People playing to have fun. There are plenty of other games out there. Not many have the atmosphere of family fun. That is a great draw. It is changing. I guess I have to deal with it and decide what to do.
You guys are worrying me with this thread. The above person said that Celestia and Zafaria are not for kids, I'm a kid and I have wizards in those worlds :(. And also when the op said that you can't do it without open chat, you can do it with text chat too right?
If you want a menu chat to know the rules, you could just say don't cast that spell or do a battle orders thing? Believe it or not, I've actually met a menu chat that did know the rules to a boss.
You guys are worrying me with this thread. The above person said that Celestia and Zafaria are not for kids, I'm a kid and I have wizards in those worlds :-(. And also when the op said that you can't do it without open chat, you can do it with text chat too right?
I don't think you need to worry too much. We are focused here a bit heavily on small bits of negative things in what I still feel is a vast sea of positive things.
First, the only thing I objected to was the inability to communicate complex (cheating) boss rules effectively using Menu Chat. Both Limited and Unlimited text chat can be used effectively. And these complex battles are a very small subset of the game.
Second, it was a kid who made the observation about the two new worlds not being for kids, so I suspect it is a reflection of the loss of simplicity. That, I further suspect, was what the poster meant when they said it made them sad.
It is a valuable opinion, as it comes from the very demographic for which this game was ostensibly designed, but it is just one opinion.
Rihanna12 wrote:
If you want a menu chat to know the rules, you could just say don't cast that spell or do a battle orders thing?
You can, but most of the time it is simply not enough.
Rihanna12 wrote:
Believe it or not, I've actually met a menu chat that did know the rules to a boss.
As have I; but in those cases, we had the benefit of him running with someone who actually knew him (his older brother in one case), who could speak for him on Limited Text Chat.
But as to the game, I wouldn't worry about it. Plenty of kids have already screamed their way through Zafaria, many on Menu Chat.
