Continuing observations of a very old player
This game is big.. but it's not really any bigger than other MMOs out there. But the thing that has daunted several of the people I've convinced to play (on one of my subs even) is the sheer SIZE and DEPTH of the game.
Granted, most people playing MMOs, really enjoy a deep game. or do they?
I think one of the things people have mentioned to me right-off-the-bat was the lack of knowing where they were going. My son, for instance, never reads anything. He's a click-a-holic and then he'll get the cliff's notes from the quest log. Not really into lore I guess you could say.
So when the quest info says.. go east down the hill and find the beetles. He's not going to wait for them to spawn. He runs right by them three times before he realizes where they are. 1. Because he didn't fully read 2. Because he has no patience and 3. Because he's a lot like me.
Half the time he loses interest because he can't find the things he's supposed to be fighting.
But that's what people are used to right now. They want their hand-held they want basic info with a big red arrow and a dot on their compass showing them where to go.
So.. why can't we do that here?
Some recommendations:
Add a mappack to the game by default... It doesn't have to give everything, but most everything. Monster locations would be good. That way when the tutorial says OPEN UP YOUR MAP, they go... ahhh! Here is where I go to fight! Then, when they get done killing everything they come back and the person says.. go kill 10 beetles. They go, easy! I know where that is, ON THE MAP.
Add a channel to their chat window by default. Give them the tools to ask questions right away. It doesn't have to be Marketplace, but it should be something other than Main. In fact, I'd love to see MAIN renamed to "chat out loud" or "local chat" by default so people understand what it is. But having them defaulted to the new player channel or another channel that can be monitored by some saintly-hearted folks that can answer questions would be great. Most games don't even let you chat on the main chat channels in the game until they reach a certain level. We're just asking that they have a forum for questions besides trying to find another newbie on spirit or Skaalkar island.
Crafting: Make it later in the game. Don't give them options on Spirit island. It's: Go talk to the adventuring trainer. Period. Move the crafting trainer to a different area, maybe right near the portal on their way out or something and have all the items they need RIGHT THERE. a very small field of bronze, a tree or two of cedar, machines, etc. Or, hey just have them do it in NT where there are all the resources they could care to find (this is for bipeds, dragon crafting quests seem easier to follow and better fit the flow of the tutorial IMHO)
Devs: Continue to log into the game and make yourselves seen. Even if it's only for a few minutes a day. That goes a LONG way toward making people see the connection with the community and the developers. This game is unique and that aspect and we should show that off as much as we can.
NT: Get rid of the spell vendor and refurbished weapon vendor. Put the refurbished weapons on the PB by default for newbie-level money, make it part of the intro quest to go buy a weapon or armor instead of chocolate gruok tails or whatever. (more to follow on the spells)
NT: Make the signs readable from a distance.. put them everywhere.. put a sign post with all the various locations in the middle of NT where people can see it pointing to the various directions. AND give them the map pack also. This way there is zero confusion about where to go to find what. I get that question quite a bit from newbies in private chat. Where do I go to find XXXX? Once they've done the quest to go find that person, resource or monster.. unless they marked it on their map, they can't find it again. Should they have to mark it on their map? No. Technically it should auto-populate when they speak to a new NPC or find a new area as the "fog of war" abates and the map is revealed. I know we probably don't have that kind of technology so I'm willing to accept just a map already pre-genned with locations on it.
Newbies: Give them their spells through their first tier as quest-type rewards so they don't have to learn how to craft them. I.E. have the trainer give them to them as they hit milestones in training like lvl 5, 10, 15. At 20 they should be referred to the spellcrafter trainer to learn how to make their own. Same for dragons. The reason? Many people I've spoken to feel their characters are very weak as far as casters go when they first start the game. Because they only get 1 or 2 spells. If they were given the full gamit for their level (not formulas, just spells) it would make a huge difference in them understanding the game better, knowing that spells can cross-class, and they would be more viable. Plus it would make the game more exciting for those crucial first 15 levels to get them fully hooked.
Crafting Suggestion: PUT ALL THE TRAINERS TOGETHER. All this going to various cities is taxing.. even when you know where they are. That's another big complaint I hear. The running around to the trainers is crazy, changing gear, changing tools, etc. We can at least mitigate some of it to centrally locate the trainers for each tier. Specifically: Make a Parsinia (or just pick a city) and give them an adventure center. Line them up and give them machines. But put them all together. That has to be one of the most asked questions in MP chat from newbies. WHere is the trainer for XXXXX? Adventuring trainers in one spot, crafting trainers in another spot. One for each level (Beginner, Journeyman, Expert). Now, I realized the cities are populated almost completely by trainers as it is. And doing this may make some of the cities ghost-towns as far as NPCs go. But really.. is it necessary to have them all spread out in a city anyway? If ease of access is what people want, this is definitely one that will score some points.
Portal suggestion: Make all the pads accessible from all the portals. This seems obvious to me, even as a returning beta person. But why do we have portals that only go to certain places in other very certain places? Like Bristugo, for instance, only has certain locations, some T2 (dalimond), some T5. Genevia has whole other locations.. some T2 (scorpion island), Some newbie (beginner islands) when the CITY portals give you access to just about everything? Why not just plunk down two portals just like in the city everywhere there is a portal? Then you won't have to worry about .. gee.. I have to fly here to get to this portal which will take me here, then I have to get into this portal that will take me there. Then I have to find this portal.. I mean for some locations it takes THREE portals to get there. What newbie has that kind of money if they are trying to craft? Which brings me to my next suggestion.
Portal charges: Get rid of them. All of them. If they have a disk, they have a disk. Why charge them for it? I recommend lvl 40 and below shouldn't get a charge for using portals (based on current crafting level). Can this be abused? Sure. Does it matter? Why would it? The point is, the newbies aren't getting charged money they don't have to try to dip into the finer points of the game and people trying to make the highest level of structures in the game aren't going broke trying to haul materials hundreds of thousands of times. (Literally hundreds of thousands of times) Presuming they want to switch to a sub-40 class every time they travel (which won't happen much).
Quests: Make each and every quest actually has a quest entry. No more of this "go see Johnny by the bank to continue your quest". You click OK without reading the entire thing, or you maybe have the memory of a goldfish or, more likely, crash. Now you have no idea where Johnny is because it didn't open a quest or update it in your quest log. Make it a quest entry to go find Johnny at the bank. The last serious offender for this quest I can remember is the whole Dralnok's Doom quest line (for example).
UI: I recommend having a portion of the tutorial that talks about nothing but windows and how to manipulate them. (Or add it to the training NPC mentioned below) I don't know of any other game that has the look and feel of an operating system like this game does. People look at it and all the windows and immediately think.. wow, what in the world? Pop-up windows don't do it. There needs to be a slide-show or some kind of powerpoint presentation "VI presents: Istaria Operating System 101". Explain how to move windows, how to open the various items on the "desktop", what each one is for, etc. I still belive the popups should be in the game, but AFTER the presentation they should make more sense and be more of a refresher. the main thing they need to do (and should be by default IMHO) is have their map open and sized on one side of their screen right away and their inventory open, sized and moved to a side or the top of their screen by default. Of course, the map only being as useful and important if it has the MAPPACK on it. Otherwise they are a dot floating around on a screen with roads and a few topographical features.
UI: Open all 10 hotkey bars by default. I don't care if they are vertical or horizontal, I doubt the players will either. At first.. But during the "slide presentation" of how to use the istaria operating system 101 (haha) you can SHOW how to drag abilities and spells to the hotkey bar to use them, how to move the bars around and how to set them to vertical/horizontal, etc. And, also handy, is knowing how to switch the hotbar keys by using SHIFT-number key on the primary hotkey bar.
UI: Can we please give the newbies (and the rest of us) a "clear all hotkey bar keys" option? Even if it's just for the hotkey bar we're right clicking on at that time?
Tools: Make them zero bulk. This includes disks. Yes.. zero bulk. Heck I'll even take 1 bulk if it's absolutely necessary. This makes sense because the newbies that are trying to learn to craft.. they don't want to have to make 18 trips to gather things they forgot. They should just carry all their tools around with them. Granted, that's going to eat their stacks when they are low level. But at least it won't eat their weight. And even the later players won't have as much of an issue with carrying what they need and it reducing the amount of resources they can gather. Yes, dragon toolclaws too. I know they only carry one. But fair is fairAnd yes, I've known people that have become frustrated with the game because of going back and forth to get tools, then they forget their crafting gear, then they need their disk, etc etc etc. It's incredibly off-putting to new players to make a game into work.
Disks: Do they really have to make people that slow? Can we not speed them up, especially for the lower-level disks, so people aren't crawling along? Most people don't take the time to put speed on their crafting gear. Especially considering some of the oddly-high comp requirements for speed techs. Not asking for much, maybe an adjustment of 10 for all tiers and 20 for T4 and below?
Multi buffing: In several of the games I played before this one. Once you reached a certain level as a certain class and had earned all the buffing abilities, spell buffs, etc that were available to that class you were given access to a multi-buff that would give you all the buffs at once rather than having to cast them all individually. Then all the timers would be overlapping also rather than one buff lasting 15 minutes, one buff lasting 30 minutes, etc. They would all last as long as the shortest buff. Recommend this for dragons especially.. One cast - all buffs. Granted, the actual spell effects would need their keywords to avoid conflicts/stacking with other spells (just like they do now) but it would be so much simpler for all. Especially if it worked for other classes also. Or maybe a working single-button all-buff hotkey tutorial on the Training NPC (below)? Showing the pause times required for each buff, etc.
Training NPC: Could have all kinds of stuff on this guy. Tutorials on hotkey creation (manually), spell-buff script tutorials, crafting tutorials, building tutorials (this would be awesome), crafting etiquette, various buildings for plots and what they do, Silo ettiquette, how to bind hot keys, how to use your map, how to use the compass.. etc etc etc. We could actually SEND people to this NPC to teach them things they ask about. Each of the "lessons" could be selectable from a list and basically call a slideshow or powerpoint that walks them through the entire process. I know, steep time investment on the frontside, but definitely a worthwhile pursuit that some of the players versed in death-by-powerpoint can help with. Might even mean much less time spent hands-on in spirit island if they have already learned what to do from the training NPC.
These are just a FEW ideas to make the game a little easier, a little more attractive to the new players and a bit more of a pleasure for the rest of us in that we have peace-of-mind that the game will continue to thrive with new blood joining and staying with us.
Originally Posted by Mensar
