New Player Experience Shaping Up Into a Complete Disaster

[Zbuciorn]

Why is Initial Leveling Bad

My character is leveling as I wrote this. I stuck him in a building with the mouse macro (right-click down, 100MS delay, right-click up, 100MS delay) looped. I understand this allowed (though it really shouldn't be post-beta) but the fact that I'm having to use a macro to bypass doing repetitive actions for character advancement is a huge problem guys. I remember all this from MO1. Wall running, spurt spamming, an endless list of boring repetitive tasks needed to level a new character.

People don't want to spend their first day or two in-game doing repetitive unfun nonsense to develop their character. Nor should macros be used to have to bypass bad game design. A great many will save themselves the trouble and just quit.

Solution

While leveling crafting is fine for the most part, action skills would be a lot better to level if enemies had XP values that get fed into action skills set to be raised when you kill something. You could implement more complex versions of this that for instance require you to be mounted to level mounted skills or require you to make the kill with magic to level magic skills but a simple system of enemies having flat XP values that get fed into the skills to be raised is 1000% better than any system that has me spamming block in a corner.

In a system where kills give XP the best way to level is for newbs to go find mobs of their strength level and kill them. Or band together in groups for higher value kills. You know, playing the game. Having fun. Not mindless repetition.

All attribute points should be distributed during character creation.
There is a lot of skills to be trained for fighting,crafting which are enough time consuming to prevent players from abuse of reroling.
New clade system may give players interested in experiencing their character progress quite a lot of satisfaction.

 

[Kaemik]

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

Damn. I didn't realize adding a small XP bonus when you kill someone for the first time each day to a system based on 1-2 hours of solo leveling in a graveyard to reach PvP viability with potentially a bit more XP to reach maximum potential could cause all these horrible disparity issues.

Glad when I was grinding thousands of hours in ArcheAge to avoid getting one shot by people I didn't have to deal with all these super game breaking issues we have to in games where you can fully max all your skills in under a week.

/sarcasm

Level disparity isn't a real issue in this game. All I'm proposing is the short time we DO spend leveling be spent doing things that are at least slightly fun. This is a game after all. I don't really care what ways people find to game less than a week of grinding so long as newbs have semi-efficient options to get through it that aren't as incredibly boring as casting spurt on themselves.

Not that I'm proposing a very gameable system. In-fact it's far less abusable than the auto-hotkey bait trash we have now. I feel like there is a language barrier thing happening here if you see it that way.

 

[Necromantic]

o 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.

Nope, it all comes down to good design. Good design makes progression part of every day play, not a before or afterthought.
Too many look at adjusting specific things like "like it slower" on their own. The only way you can make anything better is by looking at it holistically. The only reason why slower progression would be bad as many people describe it because they don't change the system or the curves and effects or anything else. And also because there are too many crybabies that want instant gratification.

 

[Speznat]

The thing is.
If people can take the easy route. they will, and if the easy and most efficent route is to short. They will log in and kill something and log out than they will do that. Thats why Time Limits and rewards system based on specific actions are bad.
Instead of time sinking and actually doing grinding they will macro and if they cant macro they will only do stuff that is worth it and the rest time they won't do shit. and they will play other stuff than.

You should never force with a game mechanic a behavior of people. In rewarding only specific beahvior by tweakign them with off world shit, in world shit is a other topic. or lore shit.

You have to provide game mechanics that lead to the same goal but with same investment in time and alternative options available.

The route with the less active time wasted will be taken by anyone because its just common sense. because it is how grind and progression work.
(thats why maps like nuketown in cod or fast rewarding playstyles in any game get played by the majority)
Thats why shaping the grind dont change behavior.

same with the german gender bullshit like Architekt -> Architekt*innen
It dont change how people think. Before that change the most people never thought of a seperation from male/female words to diverse words for diverse people. (many just saw the job word Architect as a job not as a male word until the seperation). And the outcome is that the majority now feel offended by the gender bullshit and think that people who uses this gender stuff are all mental retarded.

And what we can learn from that?
You can change the envirement and the surounding and the conditions. but you can't change the actions and the thinking that will come after that.
Thats also why signs with "dont throw your trash on this field" dont work.

the same with mechanics like get more just in that area, doing that. as an off world stuff to go there and do shit.
That takes away freedom of choice. for some. and they will be upset of course. Because other stuff dont worth as much as doing specific thing XY all day.

Thats why Rockstar games balacned all thier missions and all shit in the game in time invested. That everyone can do everything without having in the back of thier minds that they could have made more doing the other thing wich they dont like as much as doing the first thing.

TIME to OUTCOME balance is a neceesity. that should be considered. Aswell as Freedom of Choice. Aswell as the concept of feeling as Fair Play.

ANd thats something you and I dont understand and can't understand, and we both can't change anything and i highly doubt that henrik will reflect his own decissions on that system. Because i think he thoguht about that every month when playerbase declinign and declining.

But I think MO2 how it is now has a bright future.
Lets hope the best and Party Hard

 

[Necromantic]

same with the german gender bullshit like Architekt -> Architekt*innen
It dont change how people think. Before that change the most people never thought of a seperation from male/female words to diverse words for diverse people. (many just saw the job word Architect as a job not as a male word until the seperation). And the outcome is that the majority now feel offended by the gender bullshit and think that people who uses this gender stuff are all mental retarded.

And what we can learn from that?
You can change the envirement and the surounding and the conditions. but you can't change the actions and the thinking that will come after that.
Thats also why signs with "dont throw your trash on this field" dont work.

Well, that's more going towards what I said about just changing one aspect instead of changing the whole system. Let's not get too real-life political here though. It's not just a German thing, just that German being literally a gendered language sees an additional effect in nouns. Pronouns are retarded though.

You need many factors to change. For example, If you slow down progression you need to decrease the difference between low and high values while still making small gains some difference.
If it takes months or years to master something even with grinding and the difference between top and bottom isn't as huge people will be more viable from the get go and less people will bother with grinding things up. And in my opinion it would become more part of just playing.
Another thing to change the system would be to not add that much more power to the top but give people variety and specialization. So you can already be effective at lower levels but you'll get more toys to play with at the top.
Sure some people will always power level, and you can't really do anything against that unless you remove progression completely.
These are just potential examples of many aspects that may be changed.

I agree that time to output is important that's why I don't like limits per time. That only punishes more dedicated people.

 

[Kaemik]

Instant gratification isn't your primary concern in a PvP game. In a game like Mortal Online the speed at which you become stronger is VERY important. As with the previous mentioned example of ArcheAge, after hundreds and hundreds of hours of playing that game I reached a point that 5 max level players jumped me in the grinding spot and I tanked through their damage as a healer/tank until my little pet I had with me killed every last one of them. I got one shot on the same character within the same week. I have a video of someone one shotting the guy who one shot me.

In that game because I did not swipe, I spent 95% of my time grinding, 5% of my time PvPing, and 99% of the fights including the ones where I won was prettymuch fully determined by level and gear.

As a themepark that game produced a community so toxic it makes MO2 look like Mister Roger's Neighborhood. That's what happens when you take people who are powerless losers in every other game and allow them to win by playing 30 alts 23 hours a day or just buying all their gold from Chinese gold farmers.

That's what happens when you mix slow grinds and PvP. Fast grinds, full loot, combat that takes time to master as a player instead of a character. That's how you don't become ArcheAge. The grind here should be fast. It should be exceptionally fast to reach PvP viability and perhaps a bit slower to get all of your skills precisely where you want them. It has nothing to do with "instant gratification" and everything to do with if we want PVE and swiping to be the path to character mastery or actually mastering your character's build and learning teamwork.

 

[Necromantic]

You need both, long term character development and long term player development. Comparing any meaningful gameplay to Asian grindfests where numbers are king and increasing exponentially is, well, not that meaningful. It's the exact opposite of what I am talking about.

The problem is too many people look at PvP as duels, matches, skirmishes or the occasional larger battlefield. But any PvP really only has meaning with a world built behind it. And proper world building takes time. Characters, their reputation, skills and achievements are as much part of that as are player progression and environmental development. It's one of the big reasons Mortal failed, because there was PvP and some people doing stuff, but aside from some TC there was little meaning or world building or thriving economy behind it all.

I've played a few UO freeshards back in the day with decreased gains and it took me about two years to become the first wrestling grandmaster (unarmed combat at 100) on one of them. And that felt like an achievement and the journey there was also not grindy or boring.

 

[Kaemik]

Personally I feel any character development that happens beyond day 1 of the average player should only generate moderate character growth, and anything beyond the first week, damn near negligible if it exists.

People will grind endlessly to get 5% damage bonus or health bonus over other people so you can keep something in beyond that and have a game stay a PvP game. But if I feel the need to log in grind, as opposed to that any progression beyond week 1 is a small reward for doing certain things... you've entirely changed the nature of the game from PvP to PvGear/Stats IMO.

I agree people need objectives and reasons to PVE beyond week 1. I'd just rather see such things tied to the building and enhancement of player controlled territory. Not their characters.

Also, non-repairable (or very expensive repair costs if they ever make it in) gear is a major piece of this puzzle. You make gear go up exponentially in cost while not going up exponentially in power (Which seems to be something MO has gotten right) and it keeps the gear grind endless without allowing it to break the game.

I want the concept to exist that people can come in, join a game, go PvPing on day 1, and feel like an actual part of the group whose contributing. That was possible in EVE, and I maintain that's one of the reasons EVE is the only successful PvP MMO.

 

[Avenoma]

All attribute points should be distributed during character creation.
There is a lot of skills to be trained for fighting,crafting which are enough time consuming to prevent players from abuse of reroling.
New clade system may give players interested in experiencing their character progress quite a lot of satisfaction.

Not from my point of view. In MO1 it was not intuitive that one had complete control over things like weight and dropping intellect to squeeze points into a 3rd attribute. The current system walks people into that and I feel is needed.

 

[Necromantic]

Your character development is part of your territory to develop.

If you only have character progression for a week or so, then why have character progression at all. At that point you're only having it for the sake of having it.

People will always grind and abuse systems to get to the top but if that top is little enough of a difference to be overcome by other factors then let them.
All that is also disregarding again all the factors I mentioned have to be taken into account and is again only looking at numbers. As I said before, the top, or mastery should be expressed by other things than just power anyway. Have stuff be almost fully effective at upper mid-range but add versatility and specialization at top.

 

[Kaemik]

If you only have character progression for a week or so, then why have character progression at all. At that point you're only having it for the sake of having it.

On this I mostly agree. It's basically just an extension of the tutorial and an obstacle to rerolling your character if you trash your name or rack up your murder count. I don't believe leveling is in the slightest bit necessary to MMORPGs as long as there are other goals to work toward.

Horizontal progression (leveling giving more character versatility), as opposed to vertical progression (leveling making your character more powerful), is a fine enough idea but I'm fine enough with a system that nearly entirely cuts leveling from the equation. So long as gear churn and TC give extended function to crafters and PVEers I'm happy enough to see leveling nearly gutted from the game altogether.

If I were designing a game I'd take a much more serious look at horizontal progression. For MO2, I'll be happy if they give us something that doesn't require a macro to get through while preserving sanity.

 

[Anachroniser]

I think it is quite lame to make a character and set up a macro just so that you can competently play the character, sure. I completely disagree with the idea of any more diminishing returns than there already are. What makes mo so interesting to me when it comes to builds is the way you can pair various races and combinations of skills to make something like the psyfighter. The extreme variance in characters is key to their identity, if you collapse stats together so that any clade or age or whatever else is the same as anything else you might make it more beginner friendly but you do so at the cost of depth. The game is one of tradeoffs, even age is part of that. To remove the tradeoffs and specializations would simply run contrary to everything else in the game. The better solution than removing features from the game is to offer up more information to the starting player and then give them an opportunity to reroll before leaving haven. The game currently does a quite poor job of explaining stats and should do better at it but removing the importance of stats is not a solution.

 

[Anachroniser]

Honestly, there are so few viable builds per race that the current system may as well be some trash system from Korea where your class determines your race. It basically is that just with a deceptively open seeming system that cons newbs into thinking it isn't.

This is just laughably false also. A veela is a viable foot fighter foot archer dexmage and psyfighter. Also could make one a great petfighter. A huergar is viable for pretty much anything though probably a bit slower than desirable on foot. Thursars are viable for anything not a mage. Simply because there will be a meta spec for each playstyle does not mean that they are the best and most certainly does not mean they are the only option. You seem to reference D&D a fair bit but it should be abundantly obvious that a half orc mage is a bad idea. You can certainly pull it off in D&D because the game is cooperative. If you took D&D rules and made it a pvp based game, the idea that D&D is perfectly balanced and that you dont disadvantage yourself with your racial choice is frankly absurd. Even with the 5th edition move more towards roleplay than game mechanics, there are still notable ramifications to how you build your character including your race.

Races have strengths and weaknesses but to say they are confined to a single use is an extreme exaggeration. To remove their strengths and weaknesses such that they don't excel or fail at any task would be to remove the identity of the race.

 

[Kaemik]

Yes, Alvarin have a lot of options. Kallards have a lot of options. Heurgar have a fair few options. Thursars are a bit more specialized especially if their mounted builds get nerfed but they're very good at what they do.

Half the human races are basically restricted to hybrids if they're useful at all. I'd argue Sarduucans are not a top-tier race in literally anything except highly specialized mage-killer builds that probably aren't that viable if you only have a single character due to how niche they are. Alvarins and all other humans both have their own anti-mage bonuses that probably make them better given they don't suck against everything that isn't a mage.

Not arguing D&D is perfectly balanced. But if you take just the core materials from the player's handbook (additional stuff like Book of Vile Darkness is where you need a DM to step in or else you can make builds like pun-pun) every single race has multiple classes they can play they are good at. For instance, I could probably make a reasonable argument that every single core race except elf makes the best paladin. As versatile of a role as fighter is, I CAN argue every single race makes the best fighter. I'd go about building each of them very differently, but they can all fill the general role of martial badass that fighter sets you up for. (Not for 5e. That edition is way too watered down for my tastes as a 3.5 player so I can't tell you much about 5e builds)

If most races were viable on 50% of the roles and each race had at least 3 viable builds that are distinctly different... I'd be quite content. I do not believe that is anywhere close to the case. Some races have the world. Some races get royally shafted.

Also what they CAN'T do should be logical. Steppe Nomads like the Khurites made mounted archery famous. And the Middle East also had a strong tradition of mounted archery as well. Logically if MA's are restricted to only 2 races being clearly the best it should be Khurites and Sarduucans. Instead they are two of the worst. The Roman Empire was famous for it's heavy infantry. Tindremenes... eh. They're alright at best. Their armor looks really nice on Kallards, Thursars, and Ohgmir who all are far better at that role. If Tindremen's can't be MAs on the other hand. Yeah that makes sense. Romans often relied on auxiliaries from conquered territories to provide much of their calvary. They never had a strong tradition of mounted archery for sure so it would make sense as a racial weakness.

So there is the crux of the issue. Is any RPG perfectly balanced? No. But I've never seen racial balance half as bad as this game creates in any game ever. To the extent of rendering many if not the majority of logical builds so gimped as to be completely non-viable in a competitive context. Literally, every other RPG has better racial balance than Mortal (at least that I have played and can recall), and the majority use diminishing returns. So maybe when you're an extreme outlier in not using a certain system, and also an extreme outlier in having massive problems with the issue that the system addresses, it's not a good time to reinvent the wheel.

I'm not saying Thursars should be viable fat mages as much as you guys try to strawman that argument to me. But Khurites should be a viable fucking mounted archer, don't you think? Like if you don't look at the current system and see a problem either you give no shits about roleplaying in a roleplaying game, or your head is buried in the sand. In either scenario listening to the "this is fine" mentality will help ensure MO2 stays as shitty, backward, and dead as MO1 did.

 

[Necromantic]

Stop even using the word fat mages, I hate the concept! Those should either be so gimped in other areas and unable to ride horses because they are so fat that they aren't even that kind of a thing! Whenever people bring up mages they only talk about that retarded concept instead of actually talking about mages.

 

[Kaemik]

I will continue to discuss fat mages until they are no longer viable. Just because you don't like a role doesn't mean it isn't worthy of discussion. Half the community wouldn't have me discussing taming, domination, or necromancy if that were the case.

 

[Necromantic]

The problem is you are talking about Thursar being viable fat mages or not, while fat mages shouldn't be a marker for anything to begin with.
You're using a concept you don't even want to see to evaluate another concept. That's like using bad numbers to evaluate whether something is good or bad. You're invalidating your own point. It's all about context.

 

[Kaemik]

Ok. Thursars probably shouldn't be viable foot-mages either if we're talking something like a sheevra footmage that's pure dex, con, int and psy. Happy? Fatmage was just an example. Any kind of Thursar mage build that's viable should be some form of hybrid/battlemage because of the heavily physical/martial nature of that race.

Also I never said I don't want to see fat mages. You did. I think they're a rather interesting character concept. They make some very interesting tradeoffs to get absolutely hellacious spell damage output. Their worthiness isn't something I care to debate here though. Just saying as long as they are thing I will talk about them.