14.2 - New player changes

[speardancer2]

Funcom is looking in the wrong place to try to get more people to stay

http://forums.anarchy-online.com/sho...threadid=24951

THIS is why people are quitting, not because the game is too hard.

[Tommara3]

Aye, my play session ended tonight not because I wanted to. I crashed out and had no interest to log back in. :\

[Darkbane]

No loss of items to reclaim until level 10.
No rez shock until level 15.
No loss of XP until level 20.

Much more sensible I feel.

[__________WyldeWayze]

The real reason this was done is simple as the nose on your face. My 'crat sat at level 11 and farmed missions for desirable low level items (cushions grafts) until he had enough credit to go buy a yalm. Actually he bought 2 yalms one for my higher level engineer and then one for himself all in all he made over 11 million in about 8 days.

Of course to do this he had to die after each mission so that he wouldent level.

Funcom is not doing the newbies any favor with this change they are just ending this type of activity.

Its really plain and simple

[Tommara3]

Heh, dunno what cushion grafts or yalms are.

But I begin to see Funcom's problem. How to make the game newbie friendly, without letting old-timer farmers from taking advantage?

Bleh, go find something more challenging to do, so the newbies can be left in peace.

[Tommara3]

A week played now. Level 18 adventurer, level 9 soldier, level 6 doctor. => leveling and having fun is not hard with the right weapons.

Took me a bit to find and research them. But why? My skill at shopping and browsing the Internet goes up! Nothing in game taught me or benefitted me as much. Why not just make it so for all newbs? Give them good starting weapons/nanos. And make them no drop, so you don't need to make newbie mission rewards substantial enough to draw the farmers.

[_____________Redlick]

Good idea, but bad solution.

It is true that the realy first char can have it a litle too hard, and that making it easiest could help.

But I think the reduction of penality should be reverse, and not that much, anyhow. Something like:
- up to 10, no xp lose
- up to 20, no rez effect
- up to 30, no inv soap

Gwen

[Ulltima]

I haven't been playing AO that long, but I'm pretty happy with the current system of rez sickness/item reclaim/XP loss. It makes me realize my mortality and take steps to be more cautious in missions and PvM. It also gives me time to get up and vent a little bit over being killed. Then I grab my items and head back to reclaim my lost XP.

Any n00bs who start AO after 14.2 are going to be complacent and wonder what the hell happened when they hit level 30 and get a one-way ticket to their reclaim booth.

"WTF I just lost 4K experience!!! Stupid idiots at FC nerfed me! /petition!!!!!"

I can see it now, and I don't like it.

[______________Sernon]

Hello???

The key word here is:

*Learning from mistakes*

If you do not let people do mistakes, how can they learn?

This is clearly massively overdone. Get a grip, Funcom.

I can perhaps see where this change comes from, but it will be a short-term solution. Try some moderation, you seem handle that concept, when it comes to people with more than 30 - 50 levels...

Reduce these values, and prove that you listen to the players. It was bad enough with the introduction of ridiculously easy token rewards.............

If you are going to make it easier for the newbies, you should look no longer than level 15, and even that is too much in my book.

Don't forget that when excitement is removed from gameplay, the players may not find this game as rewarding as could be.

Thanks.

Sernon.

[madcow]

So you can survive ALL the way to lvl 30 with just beeing reckless and shooting fish(leave the piranhas in Newland alone, they are mine, ALL mine.)

No risk, No game.......... well, time will tell what i will do when the patch comes.

<flames? - http://www.dictionary.com/search?q=flames >

[Darkbane]

Another point regarding 14.2.0.3 - I'd a new character so got to try this out. At the relevant levels, there is a message in the chat window describing what has just changed, they seem pretty clear. Of course, some people might just not read them, but... tough really.

[_____________Kwangju]

The mere posting of this thread proves how out of touch FunCom is.

FunCom must be a bunch of politicaly correct, hand-wringing Aunt Bee wannabes pansies The game is called Anarchy, not Opie plays on-line, let the noobs learn from dying and being stupid.

Hell, the game crashes, lags and respawns missions killing us all every time we log on anyway.

[______________Gerlis]

Originally posted by Cosmik
New player changes:

*Many people find the first levels and hours on Rubi-Ka difficult. This has never been the intention, thus we have reduced the penalty for dying in the very beginning. These are the new changes:

-No loss of XP from death until lvl 30

-No Resurrection Shock until lvl 25

-No loss of items until lvl 15

you have got to be joking... lvl 30 for xp loss!! What kind of crack are you people smoking. why don't you start everyone out with armor while you are at it..... OH OH I know start everyone with 50k IP so that they can try stuff out early on. OH and don't forget to give them 5 mil credits so they can get the 1st plane real easily.

I don't know about anyone else, but making the no loss of xp till lvl 30 is a bit overkill. lvl 10... hell even lvl 15 I might consider ok. But lvl 30... by the time someone reaches that lvl, if they don't know what they are doing to some extent, they should quit. This will just encourage the powerlvling of the ignorant. which means they will spend the next 40 lvls trying to figure out how to play smart.

[Sallust]

Get with it or read some other posters Gerlis. They long ago revised the levels they were going to make changes at.

I like the way they're changing it to better, though I might shave another 5 levels off all the death effects. I wouldn't want to make those levels 5-20 too easy. I'm a token farmer too, but I don't think excessive token farming should be encouraged or make things too easy for newbies so that they hate higher character levels if they get used to easy ones.

I mean, take a hint funcom! People whine about change, any changes you make to the game!!!

It is the first time in levels 5-10 outside of the training area that I think are the hardest. These should be cushioned because people are still adapting to the world of RK outside of the training grounds. I don't think they should have more than 5 levels to adjust to that and it isn't challenging enough for those of us making new characters going through those levels.

So when is this patch coming anyways?

[______________Zretch]

You guys make it sound like level 30 is ultra high or something. Level 30 out of 200 isn't exactly handing them the game on a silver platter. You're not saying that they can't die, that they kill anything with one shot, or that they can kill reds with impunity, just that some of the time wasters that accompany death (and thus the disincentive for taking risks) will go away.

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"I must agree to the rest of the people, it might be a little to high, it will be way to easy for other people, we worked for our levels and now the nuubs can just cruise through without any troubles.

well, im not the dissapoointed but you should set the level to be more in the range of 15 or 20 tops.

Well, thats all i have on this case."
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Please get over it. Level 30 represents what? Two weeks of gaming time? You worked for your levels...that's fine, should Funcom not fix an aspect of the game that was broken just because you had to survive without it?

Things change in games like this as they go on. Almost universally, games become easier for low level players because of the wider availability of high level items/buffs to take advantage of. On the flip side, however, please remember that none of the newbies here today get to take advantage of things like Sparkling Freedom Arms pistols, mobs that didn't cast spells, and being able to remove the recharge time on 2 handed hammers by double hitting autoattack.

As people have said here today...experience loss isn't what makes the early game challenging. Death effects don't make the early game challenging. The single biggest advantage veteran players have over new players when starting a new character is knowledge of skills. What skills need to be increased at the start in order to survive combat. The next biggest advantage is knowledge of what items are sold where.

When I first played AO, it was singularly the most frustrating experience I had in an MMORPG. I didn't know what any of the skills were, so I just left them alone. I was trying to kill monsters with no weapon skills, no points into Str/Sta/Body Dev/etc. No nanos memorized, etc. The next day I tried again with another char and discovered that little skill button at the bottom of the screen...BIG difference.

As I went along, I discovered that all newbie weapons were not created equal. The solar powered pistol is utter crap, while the soldier rifle and the enforcer baseball bats are pretty nice. I also found out about the martial arts and fighting hand to hand as a newbie thing.

From there, you just have to know that after getting to level 2-3, you just need to start doing missions for better cash and more consistent experience than the newbie yard, and bolt for the outside world and the "real" missions at level 5. Go take that money you earned up to level 5 and buy some equipment and off you go. After that, getting to level 30 really doesn't take that much time.

Anyway, I don't see what harm these changes will do to the early game. Newbies will still come in, not know anything about where to put their IPs, where to go to buy/sell, and where to go to hunt until they do some wandering around and exploring on their own. All these changes will do is make screwing up and dieing a little bit quicker to recover from. Newbies will still die...and die alot.

[______________Gerlis]

Originally posted by wileyd
Get with it or read some other posters Gerlis. They long ago revised the levels they were going to make changes at.

I like the way they're changing it to better, though I might shave another 5 levels off all the death effects. I wouldn't want to make those levels 5-20 too easy. I'm a token farmer too, but I don't think excessive token farming should be encouraged or make things too easy for newbies so that they hate higher character levels if they get used to easy ones.

I mean, take a hint funcom! People whine about change, any changes you make to the game!!!

It is the first time in levels 5-10 outside of the training area that I think are the hardest. These should be cushioned because people are still adapting to the world of RK outside of the training grounds. I don't think they should have more than 5 levels to adjust to that and it isn't challenging enough for those of us making new characters going through those levels.

So when is this patch coming anyways?

Ok Mr I know everything.... If they changed those lvls, then why didn't they update it in the posts? See unlike some people I have a real life and am not able to read every post on this message board.

Also, if you are so well informed, why didn't you know when the patch was going live?

[___________Chaosboss]

I think thats about right,you dont start to play the game well until your about lvl 30 anyways!

[______Alpha Kaalenti]

Well, I believe that newbies will enjoy the new startup system. Just think back to that day when you first unrapped AO from the box and installed it, signed on not knowing what to expect and got in the create a player room. The first few levels were harsh trying to figure out what buffs were and how to attack and how to heal. Now, i'm a veteran and I can get a new character to level 20 in one night without dieing no problem and thats without the new changes. SO, I think this is good for the unexperienced players who WILL have trouble in the beginning and it certainly does not hurt those more gifted players who won't actually get a challenge till late in the game.....

Still patiently waiting on SWG Do or do not, there is no try...
______________________
Kaalen-90 Nano-Technician
Garisson-64 Soldier
Kaalenti-47 Martial Artist
Dislocate-40 Enforcer
Jakkie-20 Martial Artist
MelBlanc-15 Enginee