What happened?

[Fren]

8 Months ago, I moved house in RL and was unable to get back into horizons till a couple of weeks ago.

When I left, the Training islands were teaming with newbies, all crafting away. There was a balanced selection of monsters to hunt all around the realms where someone could sucessfully work their way up levels. Trainers gave out quests to you if you asked them nicely, and task masters were always there to give a little boost to your quest if you were lucky enough to get a double assignment.

I come back and everything has changed. Firstly, I go buy aform as I wanted something new to train with. Ilook on the forms lists on the trainer, after someonetells me thats where to go now, and joy.. no descriptions, how am i able to tell if i'mable to scribe it? nevemind I thought, i'll go do some crafting, I am low level, so I dont feel guilty aboutgoing to brommel for a spot of sandstone mining.

There are no newbies in the training areas, I did wonder why, until I tried to craft some spellshards... oh dear, the machines are not there. Well, i thought, I dont have a clue where to look for my resources now that the spawns have changed, so i'll go hunt instead. So I headed to Tazoon, wondering if the bone golems were there and needed to be beaten back a bit.

Wolves... hmm... two levels below me, yet, I died... That couldnt be right I thought, so I headed to dalimond and thought i'd try there for something to kill. Hmm.. more wolves. and hey, half my level... better than nothing.

I attack one, and another 8 appear from nowhere. Health disappears, dead. so I recalland log in as my ranger. back indalimond, and I see a trophy hunter. Go kill grass beetles he says, so off i go in search of grass beetles. I find them near bristugo, and start to pick on one when my health starts to drop, even after I kill it. What is going on? oh, seems theres an invisible monster killing me.

Anyway, to cut a long story short. Why does everything seem so messed up for low level characters? I went out hunting with my guild last night, they were gaining levels quite easily. But I go out hunting on my own doing one of the trophy quests and I not only get killed by packs of rampaging wolves, I get killed by an invisible grass beetle!

Maybe bad luck, I dont know. What I do know though, is if we do get any new players, and they come to that sort of situation, lets just say they wont be playing for long.

So, my question for discussion is this...

Would you be willing to wait a little longer for game enhancements, if the dev team managed to fix all the bugs that are throwing this game into disrepute and keeping the new players from comming to us? (bare in mind, you may get your lair, you may even acheive arop, but if we dont get new players, we wont have anything to log into.)

[Brassandyn]

Basically, they fixed what wasn't broken.

And then they did it again, and again, and again.

[Issues]

Last night i created a new little dragon to keep myself occupied, and to my dismay i found it was really quite difficult to do either hunt or craft aswell, so i logged on a my Healer and started hunting Fire Pygmys and i started attacking one and suddenly as if from no where there were 5 of them [:S], so i can sympathise with you!

[Vahrokh]

The new mobs require a skill that pre-merge mobs did not.

And to multiclass earlier if your class is not "strong" in melee.

Once you got the knack at the new mobs, they are easy enough.

At least, my level 20 alt kills them easily enough.

[gopher65]

There is also a bug with invisible characters that just popped up. I really hope this is fixed soon because it is not possible to hunt right now.

[Melianteas]

I tried T-hunter quests, in theory they are for my level but... I cannot handle not to do it solo, it was a bad sourprise.

My secondary chars... well they never were good in crafting but I wanted to train them as my main char. After those changes, my secondary chars never will be crafters I don't have the patiente to run long, long ago, far, far away from Tier-1 resources until the close machine which was deleted.

Yes, the newplayer islands now are dead not many players around, I wonder where they are crafting.

[Vahrokh]

Well, my level 20 alt is pretty new. He's blk 42 and has about 100 craft levels evenly spread in several classes (mostly construction).

Actually levelling craft now is much faster than before.

You MUST (exactly like for adv) adapt to a new way, not the way you started months ago.

The new way is to get fast a single item high capacity disk and to go to the new isles.

On Unity the machines have been rebuilt, so you can get bronze with nearby smelter and anvil at S Parsinia, slate's even easier at Mahagra and on unity the plot just above the huge field has stonecutter and stoneworking. For Iron a new isle got smelter and anvil at iron and silver veins. For Elm too, it's just attached to the elm and unlike pre-merge the new machines give +25 bonus (like you had teched equipment but for free).

Granite is at dralk (but distant and little), lots right near mahagra (unlike pre-merge that was really distant and blighted and linked), and it comes with stone cutter and after a short run onthe road you arrive at the city, unless some plot near the ore has cutter and stoneworking already.
And for tier I-III even essence is banal, at wisp isle with channeler on site.
Obsidian is a joke, attacked to cutter and stoneworking.
Mithril and marble are a joke too as all know.

I.e. if you go blk you skyrocket to 100 and then raise the rest.

Got 100 levels in craft total in little time and no teched equipment and not even serious cargo.

Just try looking at the new, harsher and harder world with the new eyes it demands.

Is it pretty? No. Is it impossible. Not at all.

[Fren]

I'd love to see someone take a level 1 crafter and try to get anywhere now. I'd also like to see someone take a level 1 adventurer and get anywhere now. Without quests, without machines on the newbie islands, young players just starting, without any help from existing players, will simply get bored and leave.

A rethink is needed for the lowest of levels to give them something to play for. If we dont start thinking about them soon, no-more will come.

I asked a mate the other night, what can I do? What is there to do at the moment? His answer was "T-hunt" I thought sorry but no, that is boring. I said that my adventurer quests dont exist any more, he said go hunt. I said I can't, the mobs of my level are too hard, they trounce me in seconds. He said hunt lower ones then. I said I get no experience from the ones i CAN kill, he replied that I should hunt in a group then.

I asked why he helped Dragons on thier quests, he replied that Dragons need help on thier quests. Though it seems that a low level humanoid warrior, since they dont have any quests, dont need any help at all.


Truth of the matter is this. I AM BORED.

Why did they delete the old quests before the new quests were put in?

Why is there so much focus on Dragon questing & AROP when others have no quests at all?

No offense to you dragon only players, but rest of us would like a bite of the cherry too. I fought by all your sides when you complained about the bad parts of playing a dragon, you had no rop, and were incredibly underpowered, I agreed and gave thoughts on how to make things better. Now the role is reversed, help us poor bipeds.

It seems that nobody cares about the low level characters any more at all. Nobody makes items for them, they have nothing to do, their machines have been deleted, their newbie islands are empty.

My task in horizons is this. Get to level 80-100. Why? because its the only way i'll be able to do anything in the game. I can't even participate in the invasions because they are pitched for the high level players. I hate being forced to powerlevel, but it seems that this is the aim of horizons at the moment.

[imported_Lycaunoss]

Actually Fren they are focusing on the high level game right now to the detriment of the beginner part of the game. Unfortunately for dragons that means ARoP.There are many of us dragons who havn't had anything to really do for 6 months or more so that is a very necessesary piece of work. I hope that once they have completed work on ARoP and raised the cap that they revisit the beginner side of things or else there won't be a game to play.

No new players = dead game.

[Vahrokh]

While you are getting bored and dragons got quests, dragons got no plot nor much other stuff (ie I am since september that I am maxed, doing basically nothing that is not people to people oriented).

And yes, I have a level 20 reaver level 50+ crafter that can level up pretty fast because I just had the face to ask on market where there were fields with machines.

Maybe for today's "generations" asking is too much of a challenge... we should place big arrows to show them where to find their underpants...

About the quests: you lost some "kill X of YY" from trainers.
And trophy hunters came in game with plenty of "kill X of yy" + they take tokens and all. And these quests are a photocopy of dragons tasks - believe me none bothered doing "unique uber interesting quests for dragons". It's all kill X of YY and rarely some "kill named that would require you being 30 levels higher for task XX".
Marshals are coming too, with other kill X of YY.

It's all what you have.
It's all what dragons have.

They got Rop true and in some seemingly distant future ARoP. Period.
They did not get (useable for their things) plots or nice weapons or events (but a week long one) instead, so the matter seem to me pretty balance.
Plus they have exactly 100 levels before being done with the game, mechanically speaking. 100 pretty canned levels, where you cannot even choose what to dress because for fighting either you get all the puny armor you can or are a dead chicken.
Add dark cyclone and shining blades quests and the incoming racial quests.

Both game branches got the possible. It's little, but still is all what's available. We can either deal with it or will go engross the Wow convo. That's it.

[Fren]

after spending two hours crafting with a level 20 smith, i've gained more or less 20% of my level. I just feel there has been one hell of a lot of bad moves recently. I hope all these nice things come very soon, or I'll be gone.

[evilkarl]

A level 1 Adv should have no problem depending on school.

If you stay on the starter isles until you are level 10 (which is part of the design of those isles) those mobs are unchanged from the old world.

After 10 it can get more interesting it is true mobs are more difficult these days. Perhaps one thing you didn't realise is the world is now divided into bands or strips. Starting at T1 in the west and raising in tier as you head west and unlike the much better system we used to have it is not all mixed up. While you used to hunt t2 mobs in and around tazoon now they have T3 (40+).

Personally I miss the old world.

Wolves, spiders have way too much evasion and are difficult to hit for most people to kill even when the wolves or spiders are significantly lower. Beetles are great except that they have a 30-60second invunerability. There are actually more variety of mobs in this world however most of them are golems(3 of gems, 2 of stone, 2 of metal for each tier), Tree ents (3 per tier), wolves, spiders, beetles and some WA.

Some schools find fighting against certain mob types easier than others eg Beetles are resistant to pierce and golems to crush.

The world has changed and not for the better you need to adapt to survive. I hope some day we will see some cross tier areas and the spawn code fixed so you can't have 10 mobs suddenly pop around you in what seemed to be an empty area.

The invisible mobs are a recently introduced bug one that is hopefully squashed soon.

I'm still hoping weapon skills will come down so evasion is not worthless