Critique: New players and pvp hotspots

[banok]

It probably wasn't the best idea to make all new players spawn in one area. because now it will always be THE place to go look for pvp, as it will remain the most active area in a very large world with not too many players. plus its central, big factions will live outside it and send warriors central to seek adventures.

For future worlds it would be nice if you use quality node placement to create more risk/reward areas of the map for big factions to fight over actually living in. And shit quality areas for new players and hermits to find relative peace or solitude.

I'm not sure yet how best this would be implemented. You could make the centre high quality and quality reduces the further would into the wilderness you go, or maybe you could make it scale up north and scale down south. I think I prefer the former as its still beneficial if new players see player activity at the start, but are advised heavily to move away from the contested area.

[Shiala]

While I support the idea of making life easier for new players to get going, I don't think that denying quality to people who aren't part of a big faction is the answer.

[Thuzzy]

Making the world with the best nodes on the center would not fix the problem, it would make it worse.
I agree that making all players spawn together was not a good idea.

[venatorvenator]

In my opinion this is not a problem. New players don't need to stay in the center. Walking 18 hours in any direction is enough to be safe from nearly all raiders, as few would bother to make so much effort just to kill noobs with no loot.

Staying in the center is the easy thing to do, and the consequence of that is that new players make themselves easy targets as well. What they should do is make a new char and attempt to walk past the 5 hour raiding radius; if they die it's not a big loss because it's a new char, and eventually they will be safer from this kind of raider. In other words, this is a problem of the players, not the mapgen system's. It's a lot of game development time wasted just to fix something that wouldn't be an issue if new players made just a bit of extra effort to prevent that.
That's not saying killing noobs is fine though.

[Potjeh]

IMO the spawning area should move randomly all over the map, like an eye of a giant shitstorm

[Phizuol]

I like the current spawn area. You don't need to travel too far before you escape the massive numbers of hearthfires. The main thing that seems missing is advice to new players that relocating should be one of the very first priorities.

The alternative is to spread new players out farther, but that just increases the radius you need to move away from the center to avoid attention and hf spam.

[Hervarth]

Central spawn location is terrific, player interaction now happens (in an averaged sense) as much or as little as each person chooses. There need to be more opportunities for new/free players to provide services to developed/subbed players, thats all. We employed local newbs to make bricks & cupboards for us until they got killed and moved on, but more stuff would be nice. And the killers are now cowering in their walls after I chased them a couple times, so to me the justice/siege system is a bigger issue than this.

[Robben_DuMarsch]

So to me the justice/siege system is a bigger issue than this.

I agree with this sentiment. Too easy to kill newbs without material risk of repercussion, even when others would band together to make you pay.

[DDDsDD999]

IMO the spawning area should move randomly all over the map, like an eye of a giant shitstorm

This makes the most sense imo. New spawns see each other at the same time and have a chance to converse, mingle and join together without the area being a barren wasteland littered with bandits. Makes for a more forgiving beginner experience.

The spawn-storm should still be limited to the centre of the world, but much, much larger than the current zone, but the spawn-storm's hot-spots would be much smaller than the current zone.

[fuinharlz]

In my opinion this is not a problem. New players don't need to stay in the center. Walking 18 hours in any direction is enough to be safe from nearly all raiders, as few would bother to make so much effort just to kill noobs with no loot.

Like someone discovers the game read that free players are given 48 initial hours and refilled 7h/week, create an account, log in, create his character and just think "hey, I might just wander in one single direction for my first 18 gameplay hours before actually doing anything else"...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XlJuxpeTats