14.2 - New player changes

[Tech]

Once again, I fail to see what the problem is here. Are you mad because you all lost xp with your first toon? After playing the game a while, you don't die much between level six and thirty anyways. After playing a while, the first thirty levels are done in two nights. And I don't think we will have that much more players around thirty that don't know the basics. For them, thirty levels will still take some time. They do not know where to go. I spent a lot of time with my first toon trying to figure out my way around Rome and Omni-1. New players will still do that, and new players will still have to learn from teaming with others.

What we will have though, is a larger player base. That means more cash for Funcom. More cash for Funcom means a chance they can get another guy or two at the office. And that again leads to a better game. Perhaps they can even hire someone full time to do customer relations at these boards.

And maybe, just maybe we can start looking forward to Midgard again

--sil

[_________________Mor]

If people can complain about this, they can complain about ANYTHING...

[____________Mordikye]

Originally posted by Sergo_C
/ignore Mordikye, possible troll

I forgot to mention in my eariler post that I am still waiting for my CD. I'm one of the newbies this will affect, not an established player, and I am still very much against it.

In fact, a similar nerf in EQ is what made me start looking at other games, and here I am.

AO looks like a real gamer's game. Please don't d00dify it.

I'm afraid your 'newbiness' has glazed your eyes or something. I'm no troll. The point is, the argument about making the game easier for newbs is silly. No, actually, it's asinine. If you don't like easy games, then why don't you find something more challenging? But if you think AO is easy, you haven't been playing long... oh wait, you're still waiting for your CD aren't you? So as it stands, you know jack about this game other than what you've read. I'd love to be there when you 'wake up' in Rubika for the first time. And when you see you have nothing, and any information you've read, no longer applies because now *you're* playing the game. Once you're IG, come back then and point out who the trolls are.

[speardancer2]

I think extending newbie time isn't the answer; making a better manual or having permanent newbie question answerers might be, preferably ones who can speak French and German. :P

Yes!!! I agree whole heartedly with this, and the rest of the post this person made.

Even in the regular Omni OOC, there are so many questions that are so basic.

"I got a mission that tells me to return and item, where do I return it to, and how?"

"where can I buy a map?"

"How to I get better Nano's?" (sometimes asked as "spells"

This is definetely a bigger source of un-satisfied newbie players, than any death shock or having to get items.

Now we'll start getting new questions from the lvl 30 newbies, like :

"Hey, I just died, how come I lost experience?"

"WTF, where did all my equipment go?"

"Not again, this is the 3rd time I've had to re-buy everything"
(this is from the person with way too much gear in the recliam, because they don't know to get it back there)

Funcom won't be fixing their problems with this attempt at a fix, they'll just be extending them.

[_____________DoItAll]

Originally posted by silmaril
Once again, I fail to see what the problem is here. Are you mad because you all lost xp with your first toon? After playing the game a while, you don't die much between level six and thirty anyways. After playing a while, the first thirty levels are done in two nights. And I don't think we will have that much more players around thirty that don't know the basics. For them, thirty levels will still take some time. They do not know where to go. I spent a lot of time with my first toon trying to figure out my way around Rome and Omni-1. New players will still do that, and new players will still have to learn from teaming with others.

What we will have though, is a larger player base. That means more cash for Funcom. More cash for Funcom means a chance they can get another guy or two at the office. And that again leads to a better game. Perhaps they can even hire someone full time to do customer relations at these boards.

And maybe, just maybe we can start looking forward to Midgard again

--sil

Good intentions, but flawed logic. If I follow you, the best is to remove all penalties for all levels! So, the player base will be VERY large and Midgard in tomorrow...ROFL

Also, if going to to level 30 is too long for him, the newbie will don't like the time between 30 and 40, 40 and 50, etc...

So, I propose no penalties and all being level 200 (no pain, no wait)!

More seriously, what most players are proposing is a reasonable level for 'newbie time'. If you don't grasp the basics of the game by level 15, are you sure you will by 30?

The proposal of FC is so absurd. I see too things in it:

A/ They are so desesperate to have players in, than even Ossama will be welcome!

B/ By putting something so silly on, they distract us of others patch issues. Well done!

[_______pendragon-666]

My 2 cents -

Frankly, I found it easier to deal with newbie status in AO than other online role playing games - these proposed new changes seem unnecisary to me. You have to leave SOME room for decision (and mistake) making; and keeping the newbie cushion beyond lvl 6 insults the intellegence of the average gamer.

Why wait until lvl 30 to decide that --fill in char class-- is not what you were after and want to change/delete that char? In 6 or so lvls, you're not kicking yourself so hard... in 30, you may realize how much time you've wasted on --char--. and not return to the game. (marketing point).

[_______________Hobie]

what gets me is people who think this is the WORST move funcom has ever made. come on now, have you guys REALLY run out of enough things to complain about that THIS is the WORST thing that funcom has ever done? lol.

as it is, i'd rather see 15 as the level when people are forced to grow up.

whatever funcom decides to do, this would not make my list of top issues to whine about.

[_______________Hobie]

oh yeah, it would be nice to extend the newbie ooc channel past lvl 6. i spent a good part of this last week on newbie ooc with some new alts answering people's questions. but the channel goes away after lvl 6 and i'm SURE it would be helpful for new players if it stuck around for a while longer. a lot of questions they have don't even come up until later and the regular ooc channel doesn't go into missions, shops, or outside zones.

[Friean]

No loss of xp until lvl 6 is fine. It took me a while to appreciate the importance of the insurance machines, and believe me, sometimes I will leave a mission half done to go and find one to safeguard the xp I've accumulated!! By raising the bar to lvl 30, you ensure that you will just have MORE griping AFTER level 30 when they start losing a whole night's worth of play!! Because trust me, if they haven't figured out how to use those machines yet, (which are in plain view, not hidden) they won't BOTHER to.

No res shock til 25... why rez shock at all? Never did understand that forced pause in the game. But hey, I use the time to go empty out my inventory, check for new sale items, etc...!

But if they do implement the 'no loss of xp til 30'. There are a lot of characters I have that haven't even made 10 yet that I'm sure I will re-roll.

Any other big surprises coming soon, or can I go and enjoy the game without feeling that I'm gonna waste my time???

[Brad, STL/MO]

Originally posted by Swavena
Posted on the Beginers Forum too:

... Not everyone that plays this game or any of the other MMORPGs out there is 13 years old....

Considering that this game has an MA rating, I'd like to think that very, very few of the players are 13 years old or younger.

I said I'd like to think it. I'm aware it's not true. It'd just be a better game if it were more true than is. (I will probably rant more on this topic in the Off-Topic forum tomorrow; if you want to flame me for this, save your ammo until I really tick you off.)

[____________soupbone]

I've just started playing this game again, after quitting it after the first 3 weeks of it's release. I'm have two characters both level 10 and I've been playing about 2 weeks now.

Comming from EQ I find the minor death penalties in AO to be a god send. Corpse-runs are the main reason I quit EQ. I don't care about losing exp myself since I actually find this game to be enjoyable to play. So what if I stay level 6 forever, I'm having fun at level 6. One thing I learned from EQ is that if you don't enjoy the game at level 5 then you will probably not like it at level one million.

Do you ever really lose items from dieing? If I loot something in a mission and die before I can get back to save will I ever lose the items? That would frustrate me a lot if that happens, but I could survive. Still better than corpse-runs.
The most frustrating part of this game for me was finding the stores. It took me till level 8 to find the basic nanos for my engineer. I know, I should have asked someone. How I figured out how to travel between cities is beyond me, whatever it is called, but I did. Well, at first I tried to run across the land to get from Tir to Athens, didn't work. Thanks FC for no corpse-runs. Finding missions in other zones was hard to figure out at first. I know I spent a good hour or two trying to find one mission that was 3 zones away.

I don't see these changes really being needed, except reducing the rez-shock duration. So far I'm having more fun in AO then either EQ or DAoC.

[Cosmik]

Just to let you all know - based on the feedback to the proposed new player changes (at which the levels of being introdiced to xp loss, loss of items etc is changed) we are reviewing the limits we previously set. Still on-going right now, but I will let you know what happens.

Thanks for the feedback all, and remember, we still have the test server to try this stuff out on too.

[_________onomastikon]

Newbies have it tough -- but this is not a solution. It is illogical and will not be fun.

I am a newbie. I would not welcome this.

IF YOU WANT TO HELP THEM, DO THIS:

Make QL 1-30 items less expensive. Make QL 30 items about 5% less expensive than they are now and QL 1 items about 80% less expensive, and a linear development in between.

That is the biggest problem we newbies have.

Anything else is just silly.

[_______________Weylt]

Well I read about half of the posts, so I don't know if anyone suggested this, so here goes:

Obviously, by the poll and by peoples reactions..lvl 30 for exp loss is WAY too high, the current system could work fine with a few simple changes. The item recovery isn't that big of a deal, that's only a minute and a half out of your life. However, the rez effects does tend to get annoying at those low levels, so you could even put that on a slope from 1 to say 50, and at 50 you lose everything till your last save. (ie: at lvl 1 lose 5%; 2, 10%; 3, 15%; or whatever)

The better thing to do instead of raising the levels would be to make it so they actually have a better chance of living, cause just the fact of dying is depressing, no matter what you lose. In the training areas, make the mobs there drop actual useful things, more money, the people-mobs drop armor and weapons. Also maybe a few of the beginner nanos for some classes. By doing that you reduce the number of people dying, and increase the number of people happy... Simple as that..

[elviella]

I enjoy the game till level 30 the most. It doesnt take long too level, small changes in your equipment still make a big difference and the game feels like a challenge because most outdoor areas are still risky.

Just to play the low level game more, I started new chars several times. Personally I like the game the best till about level 30, the higher levels feel like they are something missing.

If anything you should increase the challenge at higher levels and create more that will be possible at higher levels, the low level game is awesome and this patch will ruin it. It will make it the high level game at low levels, boring that is.

Please dont do this, if there is anything you want to change about it, at least do all the limits below level 10. A real new player will need quite some time to get there and has plenty of time to constantly discover all the new things in AO.

[Indycc]

I think this is a terrible change. It just allows people to not learn anything. All it does is raise the ammount of high level clueless people. You die because you make a mistake, you learn from that mistake. If there is no harm in dying there is no incentive to learn.

So lets extrapalate this a little bit for affect.
You are a lvl 1 you get to lvl 30 without any trouble and you dont learn anything along the way. Oh now you're lvl 30 the real world kicks in. You have no mentality of this real world the game becomes <i>difficult</i> again. (since difficulty is supposedly the reason for this change) Ok funcom the game is too difficult for us lvl 30's i think there should be no XP loss till lvl 50. Funcom keeping its paying customers happy agrees that the game is too difficult and raises cap to 50. You get to 50 without any skill or brains. Crap too hard again. Funcom raise no XP loss to 100...the cycle continues till there is never any risk/penalty in death.

This is rediculous part of the patch. If it need to be raise you should stop at the title. By this point you are saying you are high enough and skilled enough to be titled and have a rank. It is at this point that you should be grown up enough to realize how to play a challenging entertaining game

[___________Lockdown9]

umm, I like it. Being a n00bie I have lots SO MANY XP. Im lvl 14 ATm and would prolly be alot higher if i didnt die from a TINY lag spike or staying in a battle to long and then die while 1 XP away from dinging. Its very frustrating =(

HOWEVER! They could make it so that as you got higher in level you would only loose a certain amount of XP. So u lose none till say lvl 15. Then from 15-20 u loose 10% of XP earned. Then 21-25 u loose 25% and 26-30 u loose 50%. Then at 30+ all of it................ would still help =/

[____________Haohmaruxx]

I agree with everyone else that says these numbers are ridiculously high. If you think this will stop the whinners from complaning, it won't...they'll just whinne even harder once they do lose xp. Something like:
No loss of XP lvl 10

No loss of Items....what, people can't wait 75 seconds to reclaim their items??? pathetic...

Ress shock: This I agree with very much, something like no ress shock till lvl 6-10 would be nice for newbs, get them back in the game alot faster.

More heal kits, good, yes. I remember my first character's voyage through the early levels, and yes It took me at least a month or 2 to get to lvl 30. Would I have liked it if I didn't lose xp? NO. at those levels the loss of xp is so negligble doing so will only pamper players, and make sure they stay noobs till lvl 30.

On a side note, I hope FC listens to this thread instead of thinking that better answers will come from the test server. Players on the test server are all experienced by the most part, you won't see many of them bothering much with this aspect of the patch, so just because you don't get lots of feedback on this issue doesn't mean players are happy with it. Nuff' said!

[_______________Intra]

I see even after the poll these same numbers have gone to test

[______________Nexzen]

I think it's important to have the level of losing XP lowered, because the n00bs in the game need to know how to lose XP gracefully,

if they get to level 31 and suddenly die and realise they have lost 60k or so, they will start abusing the other people (if in a team) or suddely find the game a waste of time and money (not that $13 dollars a month is much) but still find it annoying and seeing they can only loose more Xp at higher levels, they may quit the game....And we need as many Omni-tek members as we can get =)