Game Essentially Broken For Authentically New Players

[Duergos]

Greetings,

I originally posted this in rants as I figured that would be the ultimate destination. It appears it was largely ignored by the devs. A tactic they are surely borrowing from politicians....ignore the constituents and they will ultimately go away......

Anyway, as my post in the rant section alluded to, a new player, with no guild/friends cannot play most crafting classes. Lets take outfitter for example.

Player finds the trainer!! Greets trainer. YAY ME!! I am now an outfitter. Greets trainer. Get lots of cool quests and the promise of beginner lore tokens that can be used to reciped needed to make items. ITEMS THAT ARE NEEDED TO LEVEL.

So, new player grinds and grinds these quests and amasses 100 lore tokens. A huge feat for a new player. New player proudly saunters up to the trainer to spend the tokens and quickly realizes that the game mechanics have been changed. Forms now cost cold hard coin. Not a few coppers. 1, 2, 3, and more SILVER PER.

This is crushing for a new player. How are they going to make the hundreds of silver required to buy their forms?

Let me tell you what they do.

They get pissed off, say F this and go buy Aion, thats what they do.

And for all the snobs out there I will steal your thunder.....yeah yeah, I know you dont care.....the player should join a guild etc.....

Think about it, the only two reasons that new players come to this game is to check out the crafting system and or to be a dragon. I dont know if dragon trainers take lore tokens or not, but I doubt it.

Anyway devs, you wonder why new subs are not growing at a level that you would prefer.....look no further.

I plunked down 14.95 on a whim to pop back in and see what had changed.....sadly, lots of things changed. Doubting I will renew. Yeah yeah I know, good riddance you say.....yeah yeah....whatever....

[xspicysnowballx]

...Isn't this suppost to be on the rant section of the forums?


Btw, I started the game not long ago and I beg to differ with you.

Istaria is a great game IF you give it a chance to be, not try to make it be or have unreachable standards.

[velveeta]

duer, i simply point out that most, if not all, forms are now drops, and depending on what shard you might be on, most peeps will be happy to help you out if you ask nicely........

[Vaz]

Istaria is a great game IF you give it a chance to be, not try to make it be or have unreachable standards.

In other words, it's great if you're ignorant of The Other Crafting Game That Begins With R.

As for the thread's subject, it's easy for a new player to look for the formulas they need on consignment. Where it gets messy, in practicality, is when the formulas in question are not found. That's where having friends and/or a guild comes in handy, and half-assed development comes into the spotlight.

[xspicysnowballx]

I'm not ignorant... I just know a good game when I see one.

[awdz]

Has anyone mentioned using the tokens at the formulatrons in Dalimond and New Rachival yet?

[Vaz]

Has anyone mentioned using the tokens at the formulatrons in Dalimond and New Rachival yet?

Yes. New players have no way of knowing about those, and even if they did it doesn't really help them to get a specific formula that they need at a specific time.

[Duergos]

Anyway, I do apologize for the sharpness of my original post. The purpose was to provoke some responses, which I got so thank you.

And yes, I realize it goes in rants...did you even read the post? I said in this OP that I know it belongs in rants.

People please take the time to read a post fully, and comprehend it before responding...

Anyway, as Forest Gump would say.....

That's all I have to say about that....

[Sigi]

I personally don't like the change from tokens to coin. In the time it was discussed almost everybody (of the ones reacting at the forum subject) thought it was a good idea because people were getting confused and annoyed for having and tokens and bounty markers and money. So what? would you say (and so did I) Also the grinding for tokens wasn't liked (even if you get and tokens and experience while doing the quests) And there we are ...
Some of it can be solved with rewarding money instead of tokens for the craft quests or with giving the tokens a reasonable value so you can turn them in for money at the pawnbroker. Still lots of forms are removed from the trainers and are now drops only.

You can't make everybody happy

[RuneDragoon]

Anyway, I do apologize for the sharpness of my original post. The purpose was to provoke some responses, which I got so thank you.

And yes, I realize it goes in rants...did you even read the post? I said in this OP that I know it belongs in rants.

People please take the time to read a post fully, and comprehend it before responding...

Anyway, as Forest Gump would say.....

That's all I have to say about that....

I wanted to comment on said post but didn't feel like receiving fireballs in return, possibly.

All I want to say is the the game is huge, the files involved are numerous, the databases are HUGE. I remember when some changes were made to the lairshaping trainers with a new patch, something unexpectedly borked because, effectively, a few new lines of text were added, and those NPCs broke. It is not so simple as one would expect to change a few lines in the databases, from this observation.

In most cases as well, it is better to let the devs know directly about bugs and issues by placing a ticket. People don't have super psychic powers. Devs are people.

Back on topic: From what I have seen, people ask other people about the tokens when they find they can't be used, most of them get a response, most of them don't hold a fit about it when the older players tell them they have so far been phased out. The reason it was changed is to promote at least a small economy and get players to start working together and trading, rather than all for yourself and buy from the npcs.

[Dragonboy]

It all depends on your playstyle I guess. I always had a terrible dislike for doing a few crafting orientated quests about 100 times so that I could buy all the forms. I think about 1800 days ago considering what I wrote earlier I would have preferred to buy the forms with coin right after my main dragon characters creation.

Although I must admit it can be quite misleading to do the quest for tokens and then need coin to buy them.

[Ladydragon]

okay.. so how does one go about getting coin and I'm not talking just about copper coin. where do you get the other coinage from? I've been trying to find information on it, but it is eluding me.

[Tcei]

Questing, the coin will add up to make silver ->gold -> Mithril. But it takes 1000 of each one below it. Also you can grind reasources and sell them to a pawnbroker for some coin.

There's an elf... I think, up on the hill by the portal, he'll give you several silver for a very simple and quick quest.

Edit: Money is very slow to come by in this game. even the top tier characters dont have more than a few gold on average. Very few folks will have a mithirl

[Ladydragon]

okay kewl thanx.

[Tcei]

Just realized I forgot trophie hunters, Marshal quest.

and coin pouches that drop from mobs XD

[Sigi]

the early quests in NT and Kion give nice coin, up to 40 silver a quest

[velveeta]

selling trophies to the aug trophy hunter (the only one to take all tiers - the rest only take their tier or lower) is a good way to get loot......

hunting some critters gives either direct coin or moneybags.....

any extra or unneeded forms or other loot can be sold to the pb for coin as well.......

try the casinos - had a visitor to blight that got about 500 silver from a couple silver investment....

the crown is pleased to announce the royal casino has had its first highroller!!
chaos_cave won a very nice return of 400sp from an initial investment of 5sp!!
congradulations on your excellent win, chaos, and we will be sending our largest tax collectors to your plot shortly!

some quests give coin, but they are few and far between (unless i am just not stumbling across the good ones......)

as a last resort, you can always work out a 'patronage' or 'apprentice' thing with a high level character......

[Kraegan]

The devs (I am assuming this was on purpose) did put in a great way to get forms at early levels without leaving NT. Go get your ADV school to about level 7 and go fight the sand pygmys on NT. They drops lots of forms and techs. In a few hours time you could potentially have everything you need, and much quicker then the questing/token route.

[Dhalin]

I like the change from Lore Tokens to Coin, BUT....

1). 1-3 silver is WAY TOO MUCH for a <Lv20 character. Way, way too much. Those should have been 100 coppers for the basic starter recipes, going up to 500 coppers for the most advanced recipes for Beginner Forms, at the most.

2). What's up with the "Some forms are _drop only_?" Back when you could buy what you wanted with Lore Tokens, you could buy EVERYTHING. Now, only the basic forms can be purchased? I'm sorry I do not understand the devs' reasoning behind this. Make ALL of the forms purchasable, prz.

3). The Robots -- Instead of Random Forms, how about Random Forms You Don't Already Know, and have the robot refuse the token if you know everything from that school and that tier. Or, get this, remove the randomness entirely and let the robots act like the old vendors once did -- you buy the forms with the tokens. Pick and choose which you want/need, but all of them cost 5 BLTs (and of course, the jman ones would cost JLTs).

[StalePopcorn]

I think the changes were made to encourage players to buy them from other players. The high coin cost for players the lvl 1-20 anyway) will hamper them from instantly buying every form in the game, making some forms a bit rarer to get/harder to find. While frustrating for new players, IMHO the reasoning is sound - the game encourages (some would say forces!) you to rely on other players to get things that you need.

Ditto with drop-only, and for the same reason as above.

If the robots only gave you forms you didn't have, they wouldn't be random anymore, and you could just spam them until you had every form anyway. Random gives you duplicate forms, but hopefully you can make money off them on the consigners.

I agree with the change for the reasons I've given, others will not, and that's OK. But IMHO that's what the purpose of the changes are. Also my crafting level is reasonably high, so I have most/all of the forms for Beginner and JMan. Got a lot of them the hard way back in the day when you had to trade for them, rather than just purchase them, so I felt the pain then