New Player Experience Shaping Up Into a Complete Disaster

[Kaemik]

If the intent is simply to address the problems that made MO1 vets leave, then the best this game can ever hope to do is replicate the success of MO1 which released in 2010 and was already a laughing stock for its small population when I was playing DFO in 2011-2012.

SV made a huge gamble when they expanded the map. Now to make this game feel as alive as MO1 ever did, they need to populate a larger area. Simply targeting MO1 vets who left will not be sufficient. They actually need to make a game that is better, and because it's better has the capacity to draw and retain audiences MO1 could not. The idea that they have done that by increasing new player movespeeds is beyond laughable.

 

[Teknique]

Well you either have population growth or decline.

I'd argue the size of the population doesn't matter much if at all, just which direction its trending.

We can't know how it would have turned out but my guess is that if the problems that made vets leave didn't exist the population would have been growing instead of declining.

Hell the target for SV is 4500 subscribers. That translates to what? 700 people playing at once at any given time? to make up a random number

 

[Kaemik]

Sure. The question is just fixing the problems vets had sufficient to grow a population. I'd argue in any game, if you want to see growth, you need to create a game where when a new player logs out after their first day of play they are left with the feeling "Wow. That was amazing. I can't wait to log in play more tomorrow." Still wanting to log in after your 3rd year matters too, but actually less than capturing the attention of the many players who try the game for a day, and then decide to leave. Player turn-over is to be expected even in a perfect game as some people just get bored doing the same things too many times.

"Reroll your character if you want to be a mounted archer because Khurites are trash MAs." "Here is this macro, go download this program and find something else to do for an hour." These are not things that desire in a new player to log in and play the game the next day. Understand that as someone who played MO1 and did not immediately decide it was trash, you're an extreme exception to the rule. Even I'm an exception to the rule as someone who sees enough potential in it to have kept track of it all these years.

Addressing MO1 vet grievances might recapture the glory days you long for, for a moment. But that is the absolute best they could ever hope to potentially achieve if they don't make it a legitimately better game, with a great new-player experience. And those glory days will be fleeting just like last time.

 

[Teknique]

Sure. The question is just fixing the problems vets had sufficient to grow a population. I'd argue in any game, if you want to see growth, you need to create a game where when a new player logs out after their first day of play they are left with the feeling "Wow. That was amazing. I can't wait to log in play more tomorrow." Still wanting to log in after your 3rd year matters too, but actually less than capturing the attention of the many players who try the game for a day, and then decide to leave. Player turn-over is to be expected even in a perfect game as some people just get bored doing the same things too many times.

"Reroll your character if you want to be a mounted archer because Khurites are trash MAs." "Here is this macro, go download this program and find something else to do for an hour." These are not things that desire in a new player to log in and play the game the next day. Understand that as someone who played MO1 and did not immediately decide it was trash, you're an extreme exception to the rule. Even I'm an exception to the rule as someone who sees enough potential in it to have kept track of it all these years.

Addressing MO1 vet grievances might recapture the glory days you long for, for a moment. But that is the absolute best they could ever hope to potentially achieve if they don't make it a legitimately better game, with a great new-player experience.

I didn’t have this problem I really enjoyed mo 1 right from the get go so I guess I can’t really relate.

I even survived deleting my toon.

I have a few suggestions that would have helped me

Reroll token

Preset builds or link to a guide.

Quicker grind on armour training and anything magic related.

Sure, rebuilding the character creation entirely could work but they have no time for that so it’s a pipe dream at this point

 

[Kaemik]

It's numbers man. I could likely learn the code and rewrite the needed portions in a day. 2-3 days to actually test different systems and create something somewhat balanced.

Might it make hybrids more powerful? Sure.

Would more melee deciding that they should implement magic into their build be worse than most major build types being trash for most races and it being somewhat questionable if some races are even useful at all? Not in my opinion. And probably not in the opinion of the many people who quit because they can't play the build they want even if that's something so logical as a damn Monglian horse archer.

Your experience is nice, but it's anecdotal. I promise you if you saw the numbers on what percentage of people try this game never log in a second time, it would astound you. Even compared to other MMOs I'll bet you'd find those numbers shocking. This game's new player experience is horrible. And StarVault's #1 priority should be fixing it until it's ten times better than it is now.

 

[lord_yoshi]

You seem to be completely confused. It's not that SV can't code in your "solution" but rather that they won't, and they have far more data points concerning new player experiences.

 

[Kaemik]

And they wouldn't disagree with me that it's a problem. That's why we're getting Haven. Likely in the form that it was in MO1 which everyone on both sides of the multiple topics of debate about it said they didn't want. Things like actually being able to play more than 0-3 viable roles per race probably would get a hell of a lot more done in terms of making new players enjoy their experience though.

Making someone reroll a character in an RPG is a lot just more than the annoyance factor of having to start over. It's telling people "Yeah that Mongolian horse archer you just made, got excited about playing, came up with a name for etc. It's completely unviable. You need to play a half-orc rape baby now. Even if you don't want to."

If that's the kind of experience you think is acceptable for new players, then don't even attempt to build an RPG. As other people have said, they knew people who quit over this. I did too. I was one of them. At this point though I'll play whatever dunks on twerps like you the hardest. Doesn't mean I'm going to stop advocating for them to make this an actual RPG though.

 

[Godkin Veratas]

And they wouldn't disagree with me that it's a problem. That's why we're getting Haven. Likely in the form that it was in MO1 which everyone on both sides of the multiple topics of debate about it said they didn't want. Things like actually being able to play more than 0-3 viable roles per race probably would get a hell of a lot more done in terms of making new players enjoy their experience though.

Making someone reroll a character in an RPG is a lot just more than the annoyance factor of having to start over. It's telling people "Yeah that Mongolian horse archer you just made, got excited about playing, came up with a name for etc. It's completely unviable. You need to play a half-orc rape baby now. Even if you don't want to."

If that's the kind of experience you think is acceptable for new players, then don't even attempt to build an RPG. As other people have said, they knew people who quit over this. I did too. I was one of them. At this point though I'll play whatever dunks on twerps like you the hardest. Doesn't mean I'm going to stop advocating for them to make this an actual RPG though.

There will always be some restriction on races. This is not going to be a game like WoW where a gnome warrior is identical to an Orc warrior. It's not what Henrik wants. WIth accurate descriptions of strengths and weaknesses and an implementation that follows through on said descriptions, I don't see a problem from a new player experience angle. e.g. It's a problem when the lore says Khurites are the best horseman and they are not. Less of a problem when someone rolls a Khurite stubbornly wanting them to be the best mage because they like the looks and also like being a mage. That's just stylistically a different game.

That said, there are some things that have yet to be implemented that will determine viability more broadly. In your example, a Khurite mounted archer may still be superior to a Thursar if they implement a mounted system that favors smaller, lighter riders for particular mounts. There is some indication this may be the case.

The bigger issue, working within the context of what SV is designing, is how to maximize each race to have some viable lore based paths, and actually excel at something people want to play. Currently, Sarducaan, Sidioan, and Tindremene excel only at being mediocre.

 

[Kaemik]

I don't think every race should be able to fill any role. I think every race should fill many roles.

People seem to forget these days but the term "RPG" does not actually mean "Ridiculous Progression Game". It actually stands for "Role Playing Game". They're not just about grinding and leveling believe it or not. And even for people who don't talk in-character or write stories like Zeal, it means our character is the vehicle through which we experience the game play world. If you're not at least somewhat attached to your character, an RPG has utterly failed to be what it claims.

People should be able to create a character and find many logical options of semi-viable builds available to them. They shouldn't be jolted out of the experience by finding the particular race they picked can only viably be one thing they aren't interested in playing. That it is no good at the things that race should logically be best at. Or that it isn't good at anything at all. And then have to delete the character the game was supposed to be making them feel invested in.

If a Thursar can't be a full-mage fine. But every race should have multiple viable options that fit their theme. I don't want a Sarduucan swordmaster to be identical to a Thur-Kal berserker. I just want it to be a viable option that doesn't leave you completely useless compared to players of similar skill with a better race.

 

[Godkin Veratas]

I don't think every race should be able to fill any role. I think every race should fill many roles.

People seem to forget these days but the term "RPG" does not actually mean "Ridiculous Progression Game". It actually stands for "Role Playing Game". They're not just about grinding and leveling believe it or not. And even for people who don't talk in-character or write stories like Zeal, it means our character is the vehicle through which we experience the game play world. If you're not at least somewhat attached to your character, an RPG has utterly failed to be what it claims.

People should be able to create a character and find many logical options of semi-viable builds available to them. They shouldn't be jolted out of the experience by finding the particular race they picked can only viably be one thing they aren't interested in playing. That it is no good at the things that race should logically be best at. Or that it isn't good at anything at all. And then have to delete the character the game was supposed to be making them feel invested in.

If a Thursar can't be a full-mage fine. But every race should have multiple viable options that fit their theme. I don't want a Sarduucan swordmaster to be identical to a Thur-Kal berserker. I just want it to be a viable option that doesn't leave you completely useless compared to players of similar skill with a better race.

Yup. Is there a specific combination that you want to play but find “relatively” useless?

 

[Kaemik]

Yup. Is there a specific combination that you want to play but find “relatively” useless?

At this point. No. Back in the day funnily enough I wanted to be a Kallard fighter in days when Thur/Khur was the only real viable option for that. When I came in to MO2 I came in with the mindset that no matter how bad this gets, I will play the race that I need to play to be strongest at the build that I want to play.

I was just expecting the decisions to be a bit... harder. I have a spreadsheet with four builds of every race. One min-maxed dex, one min-maxed con, one min-maxed strength/size, and one min-maxed int. I use them as reference points to help find sweetspot builds with ideal stat allocations for specific things.

The thing I find so incredibly striking is how few true options there are per build. Outside hybrid builds I'd say you're talking 1-3 arguably ideal race choices per build. Things like the difference between a Kallard MA (Or Thur/Kal if the Thursar mount restrictions aren't meaningful) and a Huergar MA. One has melee secondary, one has magic secondary, both very viable. Then maybe a few objectively inferior but kind of viable builds. Something like a Blainn fatmage. The Huergar is straight better and you have no valid reason to pick it (Despite it actually being a bit more logical that the Blainn would be better at mounted builds if you went by lore and theme as opposed to stats). But if you did pick it you wouldn't suffer much.

And then for every build I'd say you have 8-13 racial selections that are so terrible as to be completely non-viable. You're nerfing yourself to an unacceptable degree by playing them.

These numbers strike me as very wrong, and they mainly concern me from a perspective of keeping people engaged and interested in the game. Perhaps I'm wrong and more builds are viable than I think. But I'm kind of expecting when theorycrafting meets actual gameplay for all these builds in a couple weeks that I'll be doing more elimination of builds I thought were viable than adding new ones I didn't think were.

 

[Speznat]

Their issue isn't even resources. Implementing a system where you level by actually killing things may take slightly more work, diminishing returns would not. It would be insanely simple to implement and require no new assets. Bet I could get it done in a day with access to the attribute code myself and 90% of that would be learning the language. Just a matter of doing it. Their issue is they clearly haven't learned from their mistakes and have no idea how to properly balance a game. They are putting all this work into clade bonuses and adjusting stat caps when they're basically rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic.

people will macro killing each other.

 

[Dracu]

Mortal online strength is necessaity to communicate with people and have people join a rather personal community where actions and reputation matters. MO2 will be able to deliver as long as this is communicated and shown on haven.

Game will have success besides shoddy unbalanced systems if guilds do their best.

 

[Kaemik]

people will macro killing each other.

Yeah, I think it should be mainly tied to PVE. I know some people have suggested making PvP an avenue of leveling but if they do that I think the gains shouldn't be that huge and only allow one gain per player per 24 hours. At this juncture probably left out entirely for simplicities sake.

But what I mean is something like we already have for clades. You kill a risar, you get 200 points. You invest that in earning a clade gift. Same concept. But all NPCs have a value and it can be applied to any action skill. That way, instead of running a spurt macro on yourself to raise your ecumenical and int. You go farm zombies at the graveyard and invest the points in raising ecumenical which in-turn gives int.

This should still be a fairly fast process just like it doesn't take long to spurt-macro up to pretty high ecu. But it would be a hell of a lot less boring one for incoming players. And it actually gives them some valuable experience in playing the game.

 

[Kaemik]

Mortal online strength is necessaity to communicate with people and have people join a rather personal community where actions and reputation matters. MO2 will be able to deliver as long as this is communicated and shown on haven.

Game will have success besides shoddy unbalanced systems if guilds do their best.

Bad systems will still have a detrimental effect. I've recruited and trained a lot of people across a lot of titles. The faster you can throw them into the action and allow them to start having fun, the more of them who stick with the game. I really don't want to be telling people how to run auto-hotkey scripts to spurt spam as part of their new player orientation. I will, if that's what this game requires. Because at least we'll be in the same boat as every other guild losing a ton of new recruits to trash game mechanics. But I think it will be better for the game if grouping up to go do an hour or two of PVE with them is a better way to get them the skills they need to come run with us in PVP

 

[Dracu]

Bad systems will still have a detrimental effect. I've recruited and trained a lot of people across a lot of titles. The faster you can throw them into the action and allow them to start having fun, the more of them who stick with the game. I really don't want to be telling people how to run auto-hotkey scripts to spurt spam as part of their new player orientation. I will, if that's what this game requires. But I think it will be better for the game if grouping up to go do an hour or two of PVE with them is a better way to get them the skills they need to come run with us in PVP

yeah i get that and you are 100% correct.
Just wanted to throw this in to maybe remind some that the shitty systems have never been the selling point, atleast to me

 

[Kaemik]

For me, to a large degree community is the minimum you need to offer to get me in the door to most MMOs. I have a lot more hours into games like Wurm Online, Darkfall, and EVE than World of Warcraft. There are a few other games out there that offer community and interaction. Their mechanics are what distinguish them from each other. That's why I didn't play MO1 longer. It had a few mechanics that were absolutely mind-blowingly good weighed down by problems like I described in the OP.

 

[Speznat]

Bad systems will still have a detrimental effect. I've recruited and trained a lot of people across a lot of titles. The faster you can throw them into the action and allow them to start having fun, the more of them who stick with the game. I really don't want to be telling people how to run auto-hotkey scripts to spurt spam as part of their new player orientation. I will, if that's what this game requires. Because at least we'll be in the same boat as every other guild losing a ton of new recruits to trash game mechanics. But I think it will be better for the game if grouping up to go do an hour or two of PVE with them is a better way to get them the skills they need to come run with us in PVP

the thing is if you implement something like exp only every 24 hours and some other restrictions people will get mad because they need so much time to have the same state as all the veterans have to be viable in pvp. So they quit even mroe easy and play rust or other stuff.

So any mechanic that makes the whole leveling and progression slower is a very bad mechanic. I now macroing stuff is also shit. so just faster leveling can also do the trick. People will macro or do repetive tasks anywa.

you must kill the cause of the problem. Not the symptom of the problem.

If you tweak leveling mechanic youre completly wrong. you should better suggest stuff that prevent repetive leveling mechanics.
If you prevent the problem than you dotn have to fix the sysmptoms with off world restrictions or any other mechanic on top.

But like you suggested making everything take longer. In terms of time. would just increase the problem a lot more. And more people will get even more mad. and will play other stuff.

 

[Kaemik]

the thing is if you implement something like exp only every 24 hours and some other restrictions people will get mad because they need so much time to have the same state as all the veterans have to be viable in pvp. So they quit even mroe easy and play rust or other stuff.

You're entirely missing the point. I said you that through PVE it should take no more time than it currently does through macros. The point of a 24-hour cooldown on getting XP from killing a single player isn't that you should only get so much XP per day. It's that killing your buddies alt 30 times shouldn't be an efficient way to level.

The average player should go out. Kill zombies in a graveyard for an hour or two, and have a build that's at least group PvP viable. Then they go out roaming with their guild. Kill bosses, get some ganks, maybe run some dungeons and all the little ticks here and there finish up their progression naturally. The PvP kills if they give XP are a bit of bonus XP not something meant to be the sole or even a major driver of your progression.

The only people majorly hurt by the cooldown timer are people who want to grind by killing the same character over and over. Which is the intent. That shouldn't be viable. Hence the timer.

As I said though. This isn't even a central theme. You're attacking the primary system (that leveling should be done via actually doing content vs. action spam) based on a minor side tangent. I don't even think they are at a state to be bothering with such things. Right now it's simpler to use a 100% PVE system, so that's what they should be doing. The idea PvP could give limited XP is only something I talked about because someone else suggested it and I wanted to propose a way that could work without being abused rather than just shooting their idea down.

I think this forum has enough of people shooting ideas down for the hell of it that sometimes, even if I see the flaws, I try to find workarounds to make people's ideas work instead of just using one obstacle as a reason to say they can't.

 

[Speznat]

You're entirely missing the point. I said you that through PVE it should take no more time than it currently does through macros. The point of a 24-hour cooldown on getting XP from killing a single player isn't that you should only get so much XP per day. It's that killing your buddies alt 30 times shouldn't be an efficient way to level.

The average player should go out. Kill zombies in a graveyard for an hour or two, and have a build that's at least group PvP viable. Then they go out roaming with their guild. Kill bosses, get some ganks, maybe run some dungeons and all the little ticks here and there finish up their progression naturally. The PvP kills if they give XP are a bit of bonus XP not something meant to be the sole or even a major driver of your progression.

The only people majorly hurt by the cooldown timer are people who want to grind by killing the same character over and over. Which is the intent. That shouldn't be viable. Hence the timer.

As I said though. This isn't even a central theme. You're attacking the primary system (that leveling should be done via actually doing content vs. action spam) based on a minor side tangent. I don't even think they are at a state to be bothering with such things. Right now it's simpler to use a 100% PVE system, so that's what they should be doing. The idea PvP could give limited XP is only something I talked about because someone else suggested it and I wanted to propose a way that could work without being abused rather than just shooting their idea down.

I think this forum has enough of people shooting ideas down for the hell of it that sometimes, even if I see the flaws, I try to find workarounds to make people's ideas work instead of just using one obstacle as a reason to say they can't.

PVP exp based created other problem with new player that dont have friends feeling a huge dissadvante because they grind it up with there 20 buddies like we all would do.

The player will always search the fastest grinding method and minimal effort to do shit, thats how humans work.
If you create barriers that only 20 people will grind the hell out of each other each day to get your stuff up its simply wrong.

I know what youre idea is and what is it about, but i doesn't change the fact that it can't work.
It will end up in even another barrier to players for no reason.

If you think people will go and farm on the graveyard than your completly wrong.

The guild of 10-20 people will login will kill each other for the exp and than they will play a other game and login the next day again. until thier chars are up.

YOU can't force people into actually doing action because they will hate it.

If you drive people to mechanics that they must do, than they will hate it. YOu must get people to actually wanting to go to the graveyard not forcing them.

Problem solving is better than Symptom solving