Lesser Aradoth Changes on Blight - Feedback

[refuse]

I'm still wondering what the heck a maggot becomes when it grows up


They become dryads of course *hides* [img]/Web//emoticons/emotion-4.gif[/img]


Anyway, thanks Amon, your work is outstanding as usual.

:)

[Levity]

I think CeLana meant "lairs" not "layers" ....based on context.

Though it is also nice to have a mix of types and levels.

I'll try to patch over to Blight today to get my own impressions and feedback. I have a poorly equipped Saris level 8 warrior, and my high-level Reaver, so I can try it from both ends.

-Levity Merrel, Crai Aisling, Sans AoP by Aiya's pad
100 Blacksmith/79 Fitter/45 Mason/45 Carpenter/100 Reaver/52 IceD

[LaughingOtter]

Amon, what's with the saris manor scaffold in the middle of the sand near the SW Kion gate? It's not a plot - no plot stone. The area looks slightly flattened and expanded when compared to Chaos. Lady Kendra getting a place of her own and some cabana boys?

[AmonGwareth]

There is a NPC that went missing that was supposed to explain its purpose. Its a new building for Kion to house some NPCs.

Lairs. OH! I gotcha. Woo, that one went over my head. Heh. In some cases we do have that. Will have to ponder the other.

- Amon

[Levity]

If I ever stop practicing law, I hope to bea shoo-in for proofing/editing text, preferably in a big MMO ... *grins*

-Levity

[Hal`cyon Sskyler]

Overall this is a huge improvement to the newbie game, along with older players that happen to trek through the outskirts of Lesser Aradoth after pratically living there in the old world. I have some suggestions though, based on my observations of running around like a stupid newbie.

Starting from Kion, I noticed the following in reguards to mob placement (Sand Beetles)

-The postion of the level 1-5 small sand beetle could use some work. The biggest spawn I found was on the hillside a small ways south of town at 20400/24350. It was certainly packed, but I see a small problem with its placement. The current location places the mobs in an area where a player running due west along the road out of Kion will not find this spawn. There is what seems to be a smaller spawn of sand beetles near the bind shrine, but after offing a few to simulate someone else fighting these things, the spawn near the shrine just couldn't generate enough 1-5 beetles to, in my eyes, support more than one little player.

Right where the south and west paths out of town converge (about 20350/24500) there is a little hill about 25 meters east that gives a nice overlook of the city. My humble suggestion would be to move or expand the big field of small pecan sandies from it's current location further south (20400/24350) to this nice little knoll overlooking the town. In my opinion absolute minimum-level mobs should be impossible to miss, since beginning players can feel lost if they happen to take the wrong path, squeeze through the appropriate spawn fields, and end up being murderized by Lieutenant Khar. (I could see this happen)

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Same suggestion for the southeast gate out of Kion, the road that starts at the Kion vault. There's no little field of 1-5 somethings here, and as soon as you step out the gate you run into level 6-10's. An honest mistake after getting lost in the city could turn a complete newbie into beetle mush.

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The ambient forest and blight sounds are GREAT, but I can hear a pause in the looping that's very distracting.

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I don't know what your plans are with the complete lack of mobs aggro'ing you themselves, but if most of the monsters, even the undead are designed not to attack you automatically, it'd be nice to see one or two enemies in the advanced (level 10+) spawns that don't walk around aimlessly when you walk right up to them. Even the revamped spider huntresses just walked right by me.

One thing I really liked about the old Lesser Aradoth (premerge) were the Sand Beetle Harvesters. The normal sand beetles left you alone, but in with the upper-leveled beetles were the Harvesters, each with the ability to attack you unprovoked. Those added a huge amount of strategy and fun to mindless killing. Back when I was a level 15ish warrior, grouping with friends we'd have to keep an eye out, lest one of us scream "HARVESTER" and be forced to either decide to stand and fight or run away screaming. They were very memorable. I thought the same might be true for Greymane seekers, but they seem to just be a prefix for level 11-15 greymanes.

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Couple suggestions for resource placement. Southwest out of Kion is an incredible field of all 3 types of tier I gem. It's a usless field however, as there is no gemcutting machine to cut them. Running and recalling to town isn't much good either, as this field is almost a kilometer away from Kion. There is a nice flat spot at around 20825/23700 that would make a nice place for a destroyed gemcutting station.

Another beef of mine is the giant lack of any bronze/gem area friendly to jewelcrafters. This school requires the use of two resources for any type of deconstruction work, and there is no good area with both bronze and gems to make this possible. I did manage to find the tunnel at 20333/23900, which as of this writing is empty. I'd pay 3 human children to see this place filled with gems AND bronze nodes, along with at least a smelter. ...and if you really love jewelers, you'd stick a jeweler's bench in there as well. The old Lesser Aradoth (premerge) had such a place for bronze and gems just eastish out of Sslanis, and it made the odd task of leveling off making jewelery a very possible task.
[:D]

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Those are half of my findings. Once I get some more time I'll comment on the southern section of the island. All in all, best ******** update ever.

[LaiAhna]

Hiya, I quit hunting in Hz altogether. I have been in the lvl 40s area in my 2 adv skillsever sense the merger. All I want to do now is build here. I go hunt in SWG so when I am finished with the building, it will be "cya round guys" Why? Because frankly I hate the hunting. I see no point in making it an art to slash and bash. This is becoming to much of a virtual reality and loosing the fantasy feel imho. Also crafting is pointless when everybody just needs to join a guild to get all they need free. So I will not be doing anything with these so called new mobs.

[AmonGwareth]

THanks for the feedback Hal'cyon. I have noted some of it. I don't understand this paragraph. Perhaps you could elaborate a bit?

Right where the south and west paths out of town converge (about 20350/24500) there is a little hill about 25 meters east that gives a nice overlook of the city. My humble suggestion would be to move or expand the big field of small pecan sandies from it's current location further south (20400/24350) to this nice little knoll overlooking the town. In my opinion absolute minimum-level mobs should be impossible to miss, since beginning players can feel lost if they happen to take the wrong path, squeeze through the appropriate spawn fields, and end up being murderized by Lieutenant Khar. (I could see this happen)

- Amon

[Senkeleron Fell]

You could definitely use more tiny mobs close to Kion and Sslanis for the newbies to kill.

[Hal`cyon Sskyler]

Haha, bear with me. I'm recovering from a long night. I'll post some screenshots to show what I mean.

To clarify, what I'm trying to say is that level 1 characters looking for adventure that find themselves in Kion have a good chance of missing their appropriate monsters to fight. Here's a look at the placement of the level 1-5 small sand beetles around Kion.

http://www.sskyler.com/sandies.jpg

Suggestion was to move the spawn area Hal is standing at in the picture to the little hill suggested in the picture. That way all obvious roads out of Kion pass right by a hefty small sand beetle area, thereby preventing any players from wandering further up the marked path, where the next enemy I ran into was Lieutenant Khar (level 17 named).

[Rob19700]

Love the new areas and the detail you put in, except all the oversized trees could have done better then that.But it sucks as far as all the creatures and takes away all the good crafting spots for young characters!


Mobs are everywhere , can't even fight garnet golems without gruok jumping you and you made it terrible for solo player at all!

[AmonGwareth]

I agree, Rob, the spawns are too aggressive. I'm working on reducing the number of spawns and for making it more solo-friendly. Though some areas will require a higher level or a group (Lesser Aradoth Deadlands in particular).

As far as not being able to gather, well.... some areas are easy to gather from, while others aren't. You have to pick and choose.

- Amon

[Rob19700]

The whole gem area was gone, where the gem cutter is below the Malachite and Turqoise golems(20330/23894).

And have no change of dragging disk to town anymore, maybe a good thing maybe not!

[Kulamata]

To Sslanis today. I have similar comments there about the placement of the beetles. There used to be a very nice progression along the Sslanis beach; but now there are no beetles until you hit the 18-20 Giants, and then past them you hit the 6-8's by the bridge.

Also there are some rocky areas, 20640/21575 and 20660/21940, that were very good once for playing hide and seek with beetles and spiders.

Hal's comment about the harvesters was right on.

Maybe a bit of iron could be added to the ore at 19820/22010 smelter? (No profound reason, just gut feeling.) The mysterious construct near Sslanis 19785/21900 is the sort of thing that really adds atmosphere

Maybe add a couple of skeletons at the little ruins at 19650/22350?
I am a sucker for those big arches, like the one below the blighted area at 19790/22650.

The spawn rate is really good in the blight area; and in general the 5 minute wait thing seems to be much improved.

As I said before, I like the changes a lot, and I look forward to seeing how it develops further.

[Seikojin]

:o I think this is a good time to reintroduce the idea of blight tools to allow character changing... Maybe an NPC to level up and level down you active classes?

I really think getting people to and fro on levels and abilities will speed the testing and development process by a large amount (2 to 5 times the current speed i believe)

[Levity]

I took my level 8 Saris Warrior in to the Kion area. The land is verdant again, woo hoo! I do like the road going under giant tree roots.

The tunnel behind the gem hut is nifty; I assume that gems (and maybe ore) will spawn in there, though it was just empty when I looked. The gem bench was sitting *behind* the hut (at 20333 23885).

My Warrior was only able to hurt spiders by using her Experimentor chain attacks. Slicing with the sword was no more effective than frowning at them. That might be a function of spiders working as designed, but it did surprise me.

Having heard that the mobs weren't aggroing, I blithely ignored Lieutenant Khar. Then I blessed my Saris sprint, a lot *grin*. I was able to explore all over, though. Even up onto the Aegis pinnacle, killed some skellies then fled the named by leaping off the cliff. I think the volcano's terrain is somehow different, but cannot put my finger on it. Still looks cool, though. And the spiders are back! I miss the red and black ones of lower iron, but it was great to see the blue ones swarming. I was very cautious, I don't know if they are non-aggro like the spiders of old. They have soldiers mixed in with workers and hatchlings, nice layering there.

I switched over to Levity_Order, intending to take a gander at the south end of things. Then I heard a comment from someone that she was trying to get to Blacksmith 13, and I diverted to New Brommel to chop cedar ... so the only further thing I noticed was that the text for items made that floats up as the crafter works were black in color, making them hard to read. I'm pretty sure I haven't seen them black on Order, though I couldn't say what color they are. Just that I can read them fine on Order, and could barely see them on Blight.

Sorry not to have a lot more for you.

-Levity Merrel, Crai Aisling, Sans AoP by Aiya's pad
100 Blacksmith/79 Fitter/45 Mason/45 Carpenter/100 Reaver/53 IceD

-Rielterre Mere, the Sprinty Kitten, 8 Warrior

[FalconHeart]

Okay, spent the past couple of maint shutdowns with a couple of new characters on Blight.

Possitive notes:

The variety of mobs now available on Lesser Aradoth, not having to go to the island south of Parsinia to find undead a definant bonus.
The spread of resources has improved, with clearer seperations in the resources this makes getting what resources you need more efficient.

Negative notes:

The mob density and placement precludes low level crafters from being able to work in the area now. Going out of Kion (ignoring the small sand beetles cause they don't aggro unless attacked)one way first mob I found was a level 12 named piggie, the other a level 17 named skeleton mage, these need to be moved unless your goal is to keep new characters in the training islands longer.
Confectioners/Gatherers no longer have a good low level training area cause the piggies are gone, so back to porting from resources to trainer for them.

Overall impression:

For myself, my main character won't suffer for these changes, but if I want to start a new character, or if a new player comes in, I fear the frustration of the new area set up. While I like the new area for my main character, I don't know how well I will like it if I seriously start a new one with the new set up, as I sense a lot of death points for low leveled characters.

Snrrl - Saris 20 Cleric/33 Healer
16-31 Blacksmith/ Fitter/ Carpenter/ Mason/ Miner/ Gatherer/ Confectioner/ Weaver/ Enchanter/ Spellcrafter/ Tinkerer/ Alchemist

[Nimbus Hocken]

just in general.. I noted that there are some areas with low level mobs that are apparently accessable by first having to pass thru some higher level mobs. I wonder of the mob level areas coudl be more consolodated to allow noobies to hunt similar levels of varying types of mobs.

now I see low tier mobs of a type mixed with higher tiers of same types..

REwork the spawn areas to go more with tier of mobs, rather than type of mobs.

I know I said the same thing three ways. but I have a picture in my mind and cant draw to save my life.