Big Problems For New Players, Not Good For Istaria

[Aamer Khan]

In that limited way I would agree.

If however, you kept leveling them to, say 20, then its just powerleveling them.
( realize if this was an alt of a higher level character, then we all do that )

Training them, buy showing them where resources are, how to use machines and what items to make... IS the best teaching technique.

I even will freely make a full set of adventure armor for someone just starting out, so that they can gather a bit of resources, and can be better prepared to gather their own resources later.

I can make triple teched Mithril ring/scale and would go broke trying to make money from armor. I make it for fun. I sell bars and crafted items to the PB for money. I never have any problems making money. Never have. My wife made well over 500s just making bronze weapons and armors and selling to the PB.

Give a player a sword and armor and you help him for today. Teach him how to do it for himself, and you help him forever. ( AND they will be around longer )

*switches into implementation mode*

[Aziroth]

*kicks self* Okay I just found the replacement to Lore Keepers in Dalimond. Wish I knew about those before I spent over 50 tokens... Oh well live and learn.

[Anikitos]

If people ask me for money directly i will simply say no.

If i get questions regarding the game and tactics ingame by a fellow adv i will try my best to help them out and in many cased i will give them a few silver aswell to start them off.

What i wont do however is the following:
I wont powerlvl them, let me explain why.
I have powerlvled several people in my time in Istaria and it has been ok.
On one occasion though, i took a complete noob from lvl 2 warrior to lvl 25 warrior in one session.
The guy was extremely happy, but his gear extremely crappy.
Same with his tactics, which is understandable because it was his first day.
After i took him to 25 i went on with my buiseness and thought i did a good thing.
I was wrong, in reallity i hurt him.
He was not rdy for lvl 25 and did neither have the right equipment or knoledge to make by himself.
Last i checked he is lvl 70 now, but i spend atleast 10 days with him helping him out on many issues.

So the lesson is, dont help noobs with powerlving.
Instruct them on how to get cash, how to fight and where to fight.
But dont fight their battles, they must learn to survive solo.
You only hurting them in the long run.

Anikitos

[Lil Budy Wizer]

I rolled an alt awhile back to sell stuff on the newbie islands. It was sorta fun, but in the end it was discouraging. So many things needed, so few slots to list it in.

[Knall]

However...

The real problem is a lack of information.

Yeah missing informations is the real problem. I found this site (made by Silowyi), but dont know if they continue to work on it.....

When they do it would be a good way to get a growing pool of information maintained by the players itself.

http://www.dragonspires.org/wiki/pmw.../Main/HomePage

[Blister]

Is it worth the cost of the bloody gate travel to stock up the New Blah Islands? New players don't seem to have much money, nothing like I had. I made a new char to freshen my attitude. It was AWEFULL! Makeing things to sell is a total pain since they took the manufacturing equipment away from the New Blah islands workshops, so they cant even bang up a few blank spellshards to cash in without twice the effort I went through, and they dont have cargo disks, and they dont have cargo clothes. and they have crap packs. The baby islands are a barren wasteland for shopping compared to when I was there. However, shopping in general is crap atm. If you let yourself get broke its a BAD time to spent 2 or 3 silver on the 'extortion gates' trying to find something that isn't on ANY of the vendors. Like a standard slate cargo disk. Took 2 days to find one. Maybe it's easier in a US timezone to find anyone willing to bother even making one in the shopping chanel.

[Thorgat]

I think the main problem here is with so few newbies why do we spread them so thin at 4 starter islands plus kion/sslanis = lesser Aradoth, a huge area.
Kion is extremly stuffed with people and the consigner there is very busy with tier 1 stuff. And I'm selling rough leather backpack there in such amounts I can't believe it. If newbies are there, they shouldn't have any problems.
But if they are at one of the starter islands, they enter a deserted area mostly, only Brommel is a bit stronger inhabited.
I think the starter islands are very very nice from view and ressource placing but in a player dependent economy its simply too much area to have people tier one spread so much.
To prevent we loose those nice areas maybe it is possible to merge the starter islands (moving them close to each other and connecting them by land) and link their consigner without lowering the maximum item number (means you can place 40 items at them combined, it shows up at everyone at them). And I would place wisps and jewels there too = make them full tier one islands. And than lesser Aradoth should be revamped of course for another tier (I know, big cry of pain, but really, it is a problem to have so few tier 1 people that can sustain each other at one area as big as lesser aradoth so I wouldn't take lesser aradoth as tier one area and drop the islands).
I agree very much with Philip, people leave early from frustrations like that, even when we had several people, high level too at ice and the other two EU shards stuffing the consigner with low level stuff there, this in the end didn't solve the problem. The starter islands felt deserted by people and the newbies couldn't sell their own stuff very good because the consigners were refilled from the people outside their tier - for extremly low prices. So the new player couldn't gain much money from crafting itself.

[Durrin]

I LIKE the idea of linking the beginner island connies if it is possible. This would at least maybe make it feasible for someone to go there and stock newbie equipment without having to hop to 4 different places.

Perhaps a better idea would be just to get rid of all the newbie areas except New Brommel, give thatONE connie a higher limitand then have the town crier or some other NPC let all the beginners know that New Brommel dies not have to be the center of their universe and that Kion and Sslanis are places they should visit also. I realize this would lessen the variety of starter locations, but really, how much variation is there? Most people level up to 10 rather quickly (even nowadays) and then are ready to step out into the wider world. The main difference in the starter towns is only in the geography of the set up mostly anyhow and would not be missed. Giving them choices just for the sake of choices when there is no functional difference is maybe not the best way to go with populations the way they are now.

[David Bowman]

We are increasing the consignment capacity on the Training islands from 10 items to 18. We are removing Travel Gate fees to the Training islands. These changes will reach Chaos and Order with Delta 54. (Delta 53 is currently on Blight).

We are currently examining the tutorial and early player experience in order to create a new and improved version for players. This will most likely result in an entirely new tutorial and a single Training island. We will be seeking feedback on this as it progresses.

Thank you for your feedback and suggestions.

David Bowman

[EyeJon Toothas]

[:D] Yay - Good news indeed! Thanks for listening to the players!

[Korsh]

Sounds like an excellent idea. Thanks!

[Alexorium]

http://community.istaria.com/Web/ShowPost.aspx?PostID=15939

Has anyone looked at this :-D

[Martal Bau]

We are increasing the consignment capacity on the Training islands from 10 items to 18. We are removing Travel Gate fees to the Training islands. These changes will reach Chaos and Order with Delta 54. (Delta 53 is currently on Blight).

We are currently examining the tutorial and early player experience in order to create a new and improved version for players. This will most likely result in an entirely new tutorial and a single Training island. We will be seeking feedback on this as it progresses.

Thank you for your feedback and suggestions.

David Bowman

Good to hear. But I hope more consigment improvements are being considered. 18 per conny is a good number, as I said earlier in the thread [:)], but I think the ability to sell a packaged set would be a HUGE improvement. I'd be way more willing to make lowbie tech'ed armor sets if I knew the lowbie could buy the whole set at once and not have to worry about getting all the pieces individually.

IMO it would really encourage more crafters to use the consignment system and would give them a good avenue to help lowbies.

[evilkarl]

Thanks for the update David, larger consignment limits in these areas will help considerably

Is it possible to add all entry level craft/adv schools to the training area?

At present there is no druid, spiritist nor monk trainer in the tutorial as such people starting these classes do not get the extra info, the free level etc.

The same goes for miner/gatherer and i'm sure others as well.

[kengar]

Definitely good news, though if you cut it down to one training island, you may want to increase the limit further if there's only one connie. My alt (86 blacksmith/40someodd outfitter) was bound in New Brommel until we got a guild plot, and while I never bothered stocking the connie there, every once in a while I'd see someone while passing through that was trying, not begging, but still didn't have much armor, if any, when already past lvl 11. When I saw that, I'd usually grab them, pull some bronze out of my vault, and have them fully equiped in a few minutes. With free ports to the newbie area, that becomes more practical (gives me an idea for a guild event), but the point is, I'm not trying to take advantage of the lowend market.

It would be nice to be able to list 8 complete suits of armor (2 cloth, 2 leather, 4 metal), and that's 96 slots. It can be done with two accounts if you're willing to split suits up between different connies, or if we get 6 connies. Just a thought, 18 is kind of an odd number. That's a full suit of armor (invis and vis helm/mask) a backpack, and a few weapons. Still not quite enough, though if enough people show interest in helping out on the newbie islands, just the detailed changes would be enough.

[Blister]

We are increasing the consignment capacity on the Training islands from 10 items to 18. We are removing Travel Gate fees to the Training islands. These changes will reach Chaos and Order with Delta 54. (Delta 53 is currently on Blight).

We are currently examining the tutorial and early player experience in order to create a new and improved version for players. This will most likely result in an entirely new tutorial and a single Training island. We will be seeking feedback on this as it progresses.

Thank you for your feedback and suggestions.

David Bowman

Hurrah!!!! Thank you. Now lets see if we as a playerbase can pick up the banner and keep the babies in clothes and tools!