MagicManICT wrote:A person would think this that hasn't had extensive experience, but the truth is just the opposite. The start of a world is actually harder for new players. The vets are roaming far and wide to find where to settle their kingdom at, and are more likely to run across everyone.
I guess this is good point. You are definite correct that I have no extensive experience with action of competitive grouping at starting worlds. If this is case I think there is still some flaw maybe.
MagicManICT wrote:When should a new player start? Best time, IMO, is after the initial dust settles, 2-3 months into the server at a minimum. Big Boys are settled in and more concerned with the other Big Boys than raiding every other homestead. Since the player is new, they're not even going to have a homestead established yet. A month in from character start is when that's likely to happen, and then everyone has settled back into fighting wars or raising quality.
There are still some issue here I think though.
First, is pure newbie player more likely to starting at beginning of world? I think is most scenario, this answer is no. I think most newbie is just finds out about game and then comes here and hits play button and starts play. In some cases though, maybe they will. During new world maybe player advertise this game on other gaming forum. In this case though, I think most newbie will play with this person who advertise since general these sorts of postings are intent for create some ''forum village'' from this other forums. Still, some newbie will just see the ad and play solo. Also maybe some player check forum before play and sees player talk to world resets. Then he might wait for this reset before begin play. It is hard to definitive say one ways or other, but for the sake of argument, I will assume new player is more likely to start at beginning of world than any other times, but I am not convinced this is truth.
So then, intent is to make it hard to murder at start of world based on assumption there is many more new player starting here. Also assumes player is likely to quit if he is murder (and I think for many player, this is a reasonable thing for assuming). But this has its own issue. How likely is player to quit if his object is stolen? How likely if his object is destroy? How often does ''big boy'' murder newbie player anyway instead of just steal good things and breaking rest? I am not sure if delaying murder does change newbie attrition much. If we assume that it does not change, then we will need to delay theft and vandal for later times too. Given this is not suggested, I think it is obvious why this is large changing and probable not good ideas. So we must now assume that murder is much more likely to making player to quit for sake of arguments.
Next is issues of how to implement these delay. Original suggesting is just making murder skill cost many point. Even man who suggesting it says to making it take a day instead of some hours to get this murder skill. He also suggest this cost goes down over time. I think for any solution like this one, cost must be reduce later. Otherwise this is having many splash damage by increase barrier of entry to the PvP of game, which can hurt these same new player after they are no longer the new. But this is very inelegant solutions. I know jorb and loftar do not like for ''arbitrary'' restricting. Skill point changing based on world duration does seem very arbitrary to me. Similar some things like ''murder can not be buy for 1 weeks of world beginning'' is also very arbitrary solutions.
If you have follow this until this long, you have notice there is lots of assumption and ambiguity. I think any changing is going to require the tweaking later. Just look at track record for update, generally they are go through many iterator until it gets to good place. This is not slight toward developer, it is just nature of gaming development that change can have unpredictable result. Problem is that I think any solution for delay murder at world start is either 1. arbitrary or 2. increasing difficulty for murder for more times than just start (i.e. increase barrier of entry to PvP, which is no desired). It is possible that there is some solution where LP cost for murder can be increase to some ''sweet spot'' where it is good for early game cost and late game cost. But finding this sweet spot and determining truth of these assumption will take many iterator. World reset is some thing like maximum 2 time per year or so. So we can only make change and see result twice per year. This is taking long times to figure out. On top of this, there is maybe no pay off at all if some critical assumption fails as truth (e.g. if player is just as likely to quit if his object is stolen than if he is murder).
Even still, if all ends up going well and things are determine after some iteration to be success, it is so minor of gains. Original suggesting makes comment about there should not be first days murder. For 6 month world has some 6*30=180 day duration. 1 day out of this is just 0.56% of world lifespan that gets change for these labors. Even if makes it better for week or for month for newbie somehow (without impact anything else negatively) this is just improving newbie experience for 3.89% or 16.67% of game duration respectively. I think to chase some changing like this for such little impact is time that can be better spent some other where.
This is especially true since early game is already widely regard as best part of game by all sort of player. And double especially true when considering that final goals of game is for there to be no reset at all. I just do not think any attempt for doing some things here can make good returns on time investing. Trying to improve newbie experience is better to looking in other aspect of game.
by ven » Tue Sep 13, 2016 5:38 pm 
