Starting tracks

[Laremere]

I think a good way to make the beginning of the game much less of a grind fest would be to have "starting tracks." You chose between three different tracks to begin your character on: Farming, Mining, and Hunting/Fishing. Farming would unlock Plant Lore and Farming, Mining would unlock Stone Working and Mining, and Hunting Fishing would unlock Hunting and Fishing. This would allow players who begin to start doing something right away besides building a million fires.

[Ferinex]

Seconded.

[sami1337]

Yeah that would break the insanely lame grindfest.

[jorb]

Well aware that early game is a mess.

[Rift]

yea... i cant wait till the quest system is implemented to help new players learn the ropes...
Chick in diner: ok... now go find me some rats to cook up to feed to the starving children... Watch out for the ratkings...

[kobnach]

Yeah that would break the insanely lame grindfest.

It wasn't a grind fest. Sure, I made rather more axes than I needed, but it helped my learn the mechanics. Then I learned pottery, and made a few teapots - all in an hour or two, maybe less, of chatting with a helpful player. Then I made a kiln - basically it all felt like experimentation, and one expects a bit of grinding.

My only real complaint was that I messed up the landscape with the pottery; a nice clay pit near the RoB might reduce the resulting mess, help keep that area livable. Of course it might also be a bit imbalancing, since it makes things so much easier.

[theTrav]

It wasn't a grind fest. Sure, I made rather more axes than I needed, but it helped my learn the mechanics. Then I learned pottery, and made a few teapots - all in an hour or two, maybe less, of chatting with a helpful player.

You've had the benefit of talking to a helpful player. When I started the game I first got stone working, close to useless...
folowing that was will to power... useless...
Then I got hearth magic... useless...
Then I got hunting... Useless...

Then I got fishing, which was useless at the time because I wasn't anywhere near water.

I eventually got the skills I wanted, but in general as a solo player without anyone else around I found it pretty tedious to start the game. I guess it's better now because there's more players and more people around RoB to introduce new players to the game, but I think it'll be good when J&L get around to improving the early game.

Having said that though, I don't really care about the early game because I'm not there anymore, I'm at the latter part of the mid game (got all skills, got enough combat ability and stats to not fear animals in most areas, haven't started competing with other players on stats and combat for pvp stuff.

[kimya]

sounds like you just picked the wrong skills

[theTrav]

sounds like you just picked the wrong skills

I did, that's kind of my point... A new player, even with the skill tree, has a large number of skills to chose from, and no way of telling which ones will open up more abilities and which ones will be effectively useless to them.