Friday with Means - May 14th, 2010 - Multipatch

[Dagget]

Means has already explicitly said that a rework of the New Player experience -will- happen and be in place and debugged on live before they go live with the engine.

[Shonta]

I seriously love how everyone thinks a change to fr00b island is going to solve the player base problem. This is a hard game. I play this game because it requires more thought then WoW. If you want all the WoWtards running around in this game it is going to require more than a new start up experience but a major change to the way the game is designed.

This is a difficult game, FC should provide better tutorials on their website or give ingame tutorials. Show new players how to gain access to the AO community. Advertise the forums, get people to ask questions. Inform people about our database websites (auno, ao mainframe, aouniverse...)

People get turned off by the difficulty of the game, not fr00b island.

Uh... you just suggested modifications to the newe player experiance.

When we talk about the new player experiance we are not talking about noob island per se, it is a part of it yes, but it is hardly the new player experience. See, I think of people below 50 as new, not below level 10. I would say even below 100 is new.
I think that the daily missions have actually addressed some of this, it has nice waypoints and missions explaining how to get to the daily mission building, I think they should add things like that for basic shops in the three start up cities.
I think we also need a way to make quick credits for new playersthat dont reley on selling ot other people. When I say "quick credits" I mean 50k, 100k, something you can buy shop implants with, shop nano's with, not vast amounts like ingots for instance.
Quests that grant basic armors and implants that are actually viable leveling option now and not 8 years ago could be put in as well. These are things a veteren would probably not do because having a higher level makes things more viable.

When I started AO the only thing that kept me playing was the friends that got me to play, they offered help and knowledge that on my own I probably wouldn't have lasted long enough to find out. I coudl go on a long time on the subject but I wont since it is so redundent.

[JenShay]

I don't understand what you people find so horrible about noob island. :

• What Wulf said. The way the teleport towers work, should be like apartment keys not like ToTW.
• There are no implants or even a quest / mission that shows you how to get and use one for your profession.
• There is no mission that continues onto the main land.
• Run left and die.

Off the top of my head.

The majority of us veteran players

(Sorry, I can't reply to this politely.)

Get knotted.

Veteran players are a drop in the ocean compared to all the players there are and more importantly should be. We keep getting reminded how FC is a business but they keep bending over backwards ruining the game for a dwindling few.

Try this then:

Means has already explicitly said that a rework of the New Player experience -will- happen and be in place and debugged on live before they go live with the engine.

Thank you both then.

[Alternity]

Evening


I see the greatest threat to Anarchy Online's future, as the developers seemingly reluctance to add proper endgame content.
By that I mean we've been raiding Pande for as long as I can remember, I mean year in and year out, if I remember correctly Means also stated that they were not planing to add any new endgame raidzone.

The instancing of Pande was needed in my eyes, to kill of the bots and give players freedom. But while doing so FunCom neglected to provide content that allowed KT wars, we used to be a lot of Orgs (RK1 :P) that fought for loot during the FFA days.
Hell making a KT toon was almost it's own segment of this game, and for many people it was the reason to play Anarchy Online.
With the instancing of Pande a lot of people left, because FunCom took away their sole reason to play, and made it apparent that they were not working on a replacement.

The Collector instance loot table also saturate other content in the game, it seams that FunCom is leaving behind everything that has to do with large raids.
Yes we still have Sector 42, but speaking for a Org that's been raiding that place once per week with our partner Czech Anarchy, for something around 1.5 years I can tell you that we do find it progressively harder to find a working 3rd partner in our coop or even maintain numbers within our own ranks.
People are bored of raiding the same place year in and year out, FunCom is slowly killing of the large raid Orgs.

We are desperate for new content for us to raid and compete in, we don't want a "harder" Pande with X more hp per mob, and X more mobs etc
We don't want instances that take 6 people to finish, we want utilize our whole Org and bring some sense of pride being in a Org that wins the loot.
That sense is now gone, and soon more players will be gone with it.

Then all FunCom will have is a potential influx of new players, players that have never seen Pande, and won't bitch about it for the next 5 years, or won't ask for KT wars.
But hey that might be a good thing? If your name is FunCom I mean.



Viz

[Ebondevil]

People don't give this game a chance not because of the start up experience. They see how this game looks compared to all the games coming out today with new graphics. At least 99% of people who play games are not ever going to give this game a chance based on the fact of how it looks. Really, who is going to give this game a try when there are 1000 better looking MMO games out there? Why play a game that looks like an N64 game when you can play a game that looks like a PS3 game.

Get people to try to the game, that's what a new graphics engine would bring. Not a new start up experience. You are the short sighted person my friend.

If you look at everyone's join date who is debating with me, they have played less than 2 years. You don't know jack ****. Sorry bub.

I've been playing since '05, that makes five years. My personal view is that the newbie start up experience is much more important than the graphics and should be done before the graphics, the graphics will bring in new blood but the start up experience is what should get them hooked and if it's not improved upon then a load of new people will come in, 'Run left' and leave again.

Honestly the graphics Engine is lowest on my personal list of priorities, I don't play a game and stick with it because it's pretty, I play a game because I enjoy it.

This is a difficult game, FC should provide better tutorials on their website or give ingame tutorials. Show new players how to gain access to the AO community. Advertise the forums, get people to ask questions. Inform people about our database websites (auno, ao mainframe, aouniverse...)

That's a good example of some of the stuff that should be included in the new start up experience an outlines the problems with it.

[Kriang]

it'll take months for the runspeed adjustment???...that makes me nervous on how long the engine will take

[Technogen]

Christmas Day 2009!

2010 is going to be a big year for us all. The new engine, daily missions, new beginning experience, focused balancing efforts are all looming in the future....this is going to be exciting.

I can't wait!

Merry Christmas!

Technogen's superior memory and ability to search the forums 1, you all 0.

[Lektronik]

WTB Death of Pocket teams, PST! Offering incredible monthly subscription payment!

[Ruffixx]

Hmm. I'm not a fan of the strafe fix in the short term (dunno who would be, especially me being a Fixer), but I'll probably continue to do it for who knows how long due to years of habit

[Poundtown]

God forbid a game take longer than an hour to learn...

One thing that made me play more was that it took long to learn about the game. I kept playing so I could keep learning. What brought me into the game was the sci-fi setting that really no other MMO had. Still to this day there really are no other original, standard MMO games with a sci-fi setting. What will bring in the new people to this game is a new graphics engine. New visuals will bring in fans of the sci-fi genre.

Really you guys act like the start up experience is so terrible. It is a little difficult, yes. This game is not that hard to grasp though.

People try this game and leave not because of the "beginning player experience." They leave because they either dislike the game mechanics, the content, or it just is not what they expected. Introducing a new graphics will bring in a much larger amount of players and these players will either choose to accept the game mechanics and keep playing or they will either dislike it and leave. But bringing in this larger amount of people to try the game is what will increase the population.

[shadowgod]

Really you guys act like the start up experience is so terrible. It is a little difficult, yes. This game is not that hard to grasp though.

it is terrible. you have to learn how to look at it from a total newb perspective.

hell, even from my vet perspective.. last time i rolled a new char.. i was utterly lost and confused, and quite pissed off.

i had to ask on irc why the heck i had no items on my newly made char. and the fact you start out naked on the beach of some area makes no sense at all. so i have no idea why i'm at where i am.

nothing guides you, or hints at the fact you're suppose to go forward to the dude with the blue name. this is the n00b isle... its where you train people to look for blue named NPCs. but since i dont learn this when starting the game, i have no reason to go to that person. the lil floating boxes with "shift click" or whatever in the original BY's were way more helpful and possibly should be reintroduced to strategic locations.

there needs to be just enough "hand holding" in the n00b isle that they can recognize important things when they get to the proper game world. but not so much holding that they expect everything to be given to them.

[Keldros]

Honestly the graphics Engine is lowest on my personal list of priorities, I don't play a game and stick with it because it's pretty, I play a game because I enjoy it.

Don't confuse the engine with the artwork.

While eye candy doesn't hurt, one of the things that this game really needs is a client that doesn't choke when there are enough players around to form more than one or two teams.

[Ayria]

Game for newbie ends a bit later than noob island so I don't think investing time into it would make a difference.The issue I see is like this: Who in the world would start playing this game among with ppl playing it for 8 years? They stand no chance for getting in front or getting to old players standards.And yes, feeling a bit important to community matters.
Unless players bring their friends in,I won't count on newbies.

They had some chance, until the ocean of tears over Collectors got it nerfed.

[Rktim]

/slaps Hotphunk around with the fact that he has been playing sense 02'

Ok listen up kiddo..

If you add only the new grafic engine you will get say 8 new people, 5 will leave... total: 3
If you add only the new startup experience you will get say 3 new people, 2 will leave.. total: 2

If you add both you will get 11 new people and 4 will leave.. total: 7

See the key here is that BOTH NEED to be fixed. Funcom NEEDS to get the maximum amount of people to stay once the novelty of the new grafic engine comes and to ensure this they NEED to do 3 things:
1: New engine (Dha)
2: New startup experience (snaring new players)
3: Major re-balancing (keeping old players that come back)

All of these 3 must work together and 2 and 3 must be in place when they add the new engine or they will be missing out on a whole bunch of new subscribers..

Its not only about getting new eye candy or a new startup experience, its about saving the game..

[Poundtown]

/me lols at what you think is wrong with the game.

You wanna know the secret why people leave?

Cause killing hecklers for 150 levels sucks. Thats why.

And then when your done killing the hecklers you get the pleasure of doing 1000 extremely boring Inferno Missions.

[SSK]

Yes it is a major set up from the old Backyards.

The problem many find is that, it doesnt explain alot about other aspects of the game, nor provide overly well in terms of equipment for a new player.
it does not teach new players a whole lot about;

The storyline.

It doesn't link to "prophet without honor", but tells some about aliens, introduces factions and if player is interested in RP side of game, he can find lots of dialogs with NPCs. If you search for story you'll always find it.

Implants including design and creation.
Tradeskills and the requirements, and which proffessions are best at them.
Nano program progression (there is some, as in you can get better nano's from the same line, but it doesnt tell you that, one is better.)

If you open equip window and find window called implants, then enter first shop and see door with same word, it's logical you'll go there and buy some. Then you see trade section of shops and wonder what all that crap is for and you find manual terminal, which tells how to build basic stuff. If tradeskills consume too much of IPs, you can come to conclusion it's not your business and you should ask someone which profession which name is obvious - engineer. Nanoprograms is easy to understand, which is better shows QL, requirements and effects statts

Twinking or rather using gear to get on better gear.

I hope they will never tell that to players, it's core thing of AO and if you have brains, you should figure it out how to increase one skill to put some gear on.

The equipment provided is not wholey great in either stats or appearance. They are unable to see what else is available.
They are not told that 99% of the stuff in shop terminals is absolute rubbish, especially the weapons and armour.

FC will never tell about shop items quality or how they are lazy or unable to remove useless junk.

It is not explained really how to get better armour/weapons. via tradeskills or going into dungeons and killing something for it.
Progression through different dungeons and area's is not especially well linked.

I think when you enter mainland there's some hint directing to subway and until you reach end of it you will proly know about totw. This game is MMO not single player, where you need directions for everything.

Mission terminal and how to use it and what each of the sliders mean is not explained.

I still don't know slider purpose without looking them up in web

Unless someone who has played before tells you, your not going to find out most of this, and it should not take an experienced player to tell someone this, they should know it from the start up experience.
I have had experienced gamers that i know try Anarchy Online and say the learning curve is much like that of Eve Online, its a cliff of razor sharp rocks.

In short, if you read item descriptions, chat with NPCs and have some common sense it's not hard to get started. This game isn't for brainless kids where everything is put on silver plate and with big flashing arrows directing to it. I understand beginning is hard with creds and about items like cushions you find out when it's too late

[Ayria]

/me lols at what you think is wrong with the game.

You wanna know the secret why people leave?

Cause killing hecklers for 150 levels sucks. Thats why.

And then when your done killing the hecklers you get the pleasure of doing 1000 extremely boring Inferno Missions.

That is by far not the only way to level. If you, or others, choose to level that way then so be it; if you quit because of the choice of leveling you made then so be it.

The rest of us with a brain capable of free thought will continue to explore the other numerous possibilities for leveling.

Oh, and just because; with your veteran knowledge of the game, you don't think the starter experience is hard: doesn't mean it isn't. Plenty of us remember our first days on Rubi-Ka, many of us have some pretty funny stories of the dumb {Removed by Venachar} we did because we didn't know better.

[grumpy-mcfart]

Oh, and just because; with your veteran knowledge of the game, you don't think the starter experience is hard: doesn't mean it isn't. Plenty of us remember our first days on Rubi-Ka, many of us have some pretty funny stories of the dumb **** we did because we didn't know better.

THIS!!!!!!!

if I hadn't had my cousin (who's been playing since 2001) there to hold my hand through noob isle and to explain about implants, I wouldn't have had any idea what to do

[SSK]

... Plenty of us remember our first days on Rubi-Ka, many of us have some pretty funny stories of the dumb **** we did because we didn't know better.

And it's biggest fun I had ingame.

Or there just can be sign in noob island "You didn't roll ranged advy, you're so dumb"

[Klanbear]

Well if I was in marketing I would be aiming for release at a significant "moment" i.e. The next AO birthday or thereabouts, pre Christmas, "Big MMO event" or maybe AO's 10th Birthday in 2011. This would maximise the "Wowtard" factor.