A game for newbies?

[Nic]

An LP reset would have been nice methinks. But then people would be crying about it themselves instead of telling others to cry about it.

[sabinati]

i've been playing for 2 months and i have close to a million lp, without macroing. i never really did a lot of grinding either, most of my lp is from doing stuff that needed to be done. it's not that hard. it is a bit harder now with this map and the new challenges involved with it, but seriously some of you people need to realize that this is not a solo game. there are people with mines that are trading metal. there is a city dedicated to helping new players get started. get involved with other players and have some fun and you'll end up with a ton of lp and all the items you need. just have some patience and have fun.

[kobnach]

I don't believe raids are the main problem for newbies. It's the time you must spend before you make a difference.

I'd say it's a bit of both. Of course much depends on the player and their style. I remember having my cute little homestead - no metal, only a few crops - and being overjoyed to get one little grape seed, and then again to get enough grapes that they'd be usable. Much the same applies to carrots, which were fairly new at the time. And then came the day when I could finally kill something bigger than a rabbit or fish. And the day I mined enough iron - in a mine I was graciously permitted to use - to make my very first pickaxe.

If I'd compared myself with my neighbours, I'd have been devastated and hopeless. Instead, I saw them as occasional sources of gifts and good advice.

Now, metal will be even harder to get, but breeding up decent seed offers new opportunities. So someone could be just as contented as I was.

On the other hand, getting raided or griefed really sucks, as does finding that all of some simple resource is either used up, claimed, or in areas where one can't handle the combat. (I was somewhat appalled to see that people hadn't left any trees at all near the ROB - even when it's obvious - even to a newb - that just about anything a newb can do requires branches. I guess too many folks think they are on WoW, and can rely on periodic respawns.)

I guess the real question is individual - which gives you a sense of futility and helplessness, and which just seems like a challenge to be overcome with time and effort? Whichever one makes YOU feel helpless is, for you, the bigger problem.

[Ai_Shizuka]

This is one of the most newbie-unfriendly game ever, for various different reasons.

- The very first impact. A new player finds himself catapulted, literally, in a garbage dump. Half-assed fields and streets, tree stumps, baskets, unfinished buildings everywhere. Then he starts exploring and notice he's surrounded by uncrossable rivers of doom and retardedly huge claims blocking entire cliff passages.
There's a very large area near the lake almost completely cut-off by claims and cliffs.

- No animals in the inner rings. A player can literally walk for 20 minutes without crossing a single animal. As more and larger claims pop out, both these points are going to get worse.

- If he survives the initial shock, he's got to find something to do.
Mining? Out of question.
Hunting? Low level animals are becoming rarer by the day and have a life expectancy of 12 seconds. It's like your average MMO with people camping at the spawn spots.
Farming? As time goes on, this actually will become easier with more unclaimed/abandoned fields. In the first map I've been able to start all the available crops from abandoned fields. But then the new player can't do shit with his harvested stuff. Cows have achieved legendary status, so no butter to bake the good food. Beer? No metal for the cauldron. Cocaine? Need the boar bones. Carrots sound good, except the high-end players can bake high quality carrot cake.
One could try the silk business but, again, no metal for the cauldron.

- Stats are related to the animal problem. Str and Con are the most important stats for a newbie, I think. Easy way to get str FEP = boars. To kill boars the newbie has to train his melee/unarmed on increasingly rare foxes. Same thing for cows and Con. Except everything is like 10x rarer on this map.

- Find a place to settle. Basically, there's a single direction to expand into, but lev 3 foxes aren't very far away from the RoB. Aggro-free land is getting filled very quickly. And even with mass forest, the central rings will quickly run out of trees.


To sum it up, there's no choice for a newbie. The game dictates what he can do and strongly encourage him to join a community. Wich, imo, is BAD for a couple of reasons.
- Joining a village should be an option, not the only possible way to even see some features. In a game like this a hermit-lifestyle should still be feasible. Obviously I don't want a pg to be able to make EVERYTHING, but basic low q resources should be available for every skill. I'm talking mostly about metal here.
- A new player can't contribute to a village. Sure, there are people willing to help. But not everyone enjoys the company of total strangers. And not everyone likes to beg. Because we are talking about begging here. Charity from high-level players to get things started. Again, one should be able to pick a profession and get it started by himself. Sure, the beginning process should be long and difficult, but not completely ruled out by some arbitrary game limitations.



Then, at some point, the whole system disproves itself. As the player goes through the mandatory hunting process (because hunting is the only feasible choice to get large amounts of LPs), everything becomes easier and easier. One has simply to go out hunting for a while to get insanely high amounts of LPs.
Example: circa 130k LPs are required to raise a skill from 1 to 50. 500k from 1 to 100. So, while a new player is strongly encouraged to pick a skill and specialize, a high level player can simply go hunting a couple days and become a grand master in his skill of choice. I was able to kill lev 8 foxes on the old map and those was well over 1K per kill. I don't know about bears, but the point is clear.

At first the game says: "Everything's annoyingly hard and time-consuming".
Later it becomes: "You are strong, go hunting a couple hours and do whatever you please".
And the gap becomes wider and wider every day.

Strong players trade each others their uber-quality good, while new-average players struggle to sell their garbage to get some iron for super basic stuff.


I'm one of the suckers who lost a decent pg (70 melee, 50ish str and con) to lag. I was very tempted to quit the game, but decided to give it another try.
Now I'm finally at the turning point where things start to become a bit easier (37 melee, 24 str, enough for lev 3 foxes). But I've been playing A LOT and I knew what to do from the start. I can't see a genuine newbie reaching this point in weeks, possibly months. No problem if the initial process was fun, but it's NOT.


Ugh, wall of text. Gonna stop here for now.

[Jackard]

Related to discussion: viewtopic.php?f=5&t=2044

Allow people to choose a few things they are good at from the get-go. No more of this wicker/campfire/pottery crap just to get started.

[theTrav]

The game is hard. It's hard on new players... It STRONGLY encourages banding together with others for support.

I agree with all of those both as descriptions of the current game and in that I think they're reasonable philosophies for the developers to have in the game.

metal is IMPOSSIBLE for me to get as a new player, therefore I cannot do ANYTHING

This I think is a gross exaggeration at best and a blatant lie at worst.
Cows can be reached without passing animals that will aggro, I've done it several times, and each time it's taken me no longer than 30 minutes to find a cow. My stats had nothing to do with that.
Bottleneck will trade you metal for a shit ton of butter. Boo hoo, you have to work another half hour to get your cast.
I've also traded with at least two other communities who have iron mines, both for different resources, expensive trades yes, but oh so worth it.

I'll concede that there are a few too many things linked to metal right now for my liking, and I will be happy when there are more resource chains and more localised resources so the user has more choice, but I think people blow the metal thing way out of proportion, mostly because they are too lazy to organise a trade.

[VoodooDog]

An LP reset would have been nice methinks. But then people would be crying about it themselves instead of telling others to cry about it.

yep.
lp reset would be really nice, fair, fine and will bring ALOT more fun to all new players.

[theTrav]

I don't think an LP reset would let new players do anything they can't already do... I also don't think it'd take long for the current leaders to become current leaders again...

All you'd be doing is pissing off people like me, who play casually over a long period of time. So cut it out jerks!

[Peter]

Or maybe all new characters could be brought up to 1,000,000 LP. Of course, existing players would also get a similar upping to that value.

It'd let everyone get to the actual "gameplay" part.

[kimya]

since when would that be the "actual gameplay part" ??? it was a hell of a fun to start, and if ppl talked to each other from the beginning, theyd see that there are lots of ppl who help newbs getting started. this game is no fun if you get everything you need without doing something for it.