New Player Impressions

[Dhalin]

I'm not exactly a "new" player, but with how the devs completely revamped the earlier parts of the game, I might as well be.

As some of you may have seen, I started a threat called "A New Project" in which I started a completely new character from scratch with no outside help, just like any truly new player would.

And I would have to say....

To be honest... how exactly is a new player supposed to ever get started in the game?

You start out on Spirit Isle with pretty much no equipment whatsoever. This is OK because Spirit Isle mobs are weak and you pretty much have to attack something much stronger than you to actually die.

Then after Level 4-ish, they shove you off to New Trismus. You can get a letter of credit to get a few pieces of Refurbished (read: almost worthless) gear, and a couple spells depending on your school (I did a Cleric).

If you took up a craft, you probably got a couple basic formulas to start with.

Herein lies the problem:

1). You need gear, but you can't get gear.
2). You want to craft gear, but you can't without the formulas.

For example, a Cleric starting out is standing in New Trismus wearing Refurbished Ringmail (except for the Refurb Scale Chestguard they started you with in Spirit Isle) and either a refurb wooded club or a refurb bronze mace.

That's it. Oh, and a refurb shield too that is barely worth even equipping.

The very first Cleric quest sends you after treants (Really? Treants?) and they are not very easy at all. I had a Bronze Warhammer that I got extremely lucky to find on the Consigner and even with that, these treants took forever to kill because of their healing ability which I had no real counters for given I'm only Lv7 (I even did the Trials of the Gifted quest too).

If you should finish that quest, then they send you after skeletons near the ruined homestead. These guys hurt when the best you've got is Refurb Ringmail. I was able to do it, but it was painful as my only healing spell barely kept up with the damage they were doing. Luckily I also found a Minor Health spell on the Consigner, but that was the only one up at the time.

After that, I saw a quest for Red Tusks.... which is utterly impossible right now. He kills you in <10 seconds before you can even take half of his life off. And that's with the best weapon I'm allowed to use right now.

Then, it is the quest to get the ring off of the gatherers at the beach. These guys also hurt pretty bad and when you've only got two ranged attacks (both on long cooldown), this quest I found to be mildly annoying too.

At this point I was going "Man I need some freaking gear."

Checked the Consigner, found a couple wristguards. And....nothing else. Just the wristguards.

So, why not craft and make my own gear? Sounds sensible, right?

Oh wait... If you want to make armor or weapons... you have to go clear to freaking Dalimond which means running past aggressive mobs in the teens.

Really?

Yeah, yeah, grinding up Imperial Tokens was annoying, but it was better than having to run to Dalimond on Foot and.....wait, what's this? The ONLY weapon form they sell is the Lv1 mace? Really? You're supposed to use a Lv1 mace until something drops a form for a better mace or Level 20 whichever comes first?

And Armor... you can buy Ringmail forms. Uh, my Cleric is supposed to be wearing Scalemail, not Ringmail. And from what I was looking at, doesn't look like you can buy Large shield forms, either.

"So go farm some forms!"

I killed 20+ pygmies on the beach..... 0 forms.

Killed 10+ skeletons near the homestead..... 0 forms.

With absolutely crappy gear, mind you.

So yeah.... why exactly did you devs think it was a good idea to absolutely kill the new player experience outright? I can understand jumping through hoops for, say, jman forms, but beginner forms? Really?

Why not just make us all punch enemies to death while wearing cloth while we're at it?

Like I said -- I hate to say this, but the old system was better. At least you could actually get a character started, even though the Token farming was annoying... you still had access to the forms you needed without having to trek through hostile territory with mobs much higher level than you mere hours into starting the game (not that a new player would ever know to do this anyways)...

[Northwind]

Istaria is still a grind game - you cant really expect to level through quests only and you already know that since you're an elder.

Those being said, i have to admit that lower levels are a total pain for complete newbs. As a reminder of my own experiences, I have abandoned my biped at lvl 15 warrior / 10 cleric due to his very low performance (read his inability to finish a quest requiring him to kill a lvl 12 halfgiant skelly mob).

IMHO, up to level 20 there should be quest npc/merchants/trainers stocked with all the necessary hi quality equipment (refurbs are crap) that can be obtained for free or by doing reasonably accessible quests. Trainers should give normal hi quality items and quest npc giving teched equipment.
And by equipment i mean full set of armors, weapons and jewelries.

Before you'll jump me saying that this will kill low level crafting, allow me to remind you that it is already non existent.
There is no way you will find hi quality full set of armors and weapons on consigners and no one will do a teched set for a complete newb stranger that may as well quit in one week after getting his order done.

[Malicore]

you can buy full sets of refurbished gear to start. also spells are for sale at the dragon near the craft center. you can get weapon forms by doing quests at the blacksmith trainer. he asks you to make certain weapons, and gives you a formula to do so. it's not that hard to get started in this game. if you stick to the lower lvl mobs for a while you can easily hit lvl 10 in an hour. then you're ready to move on.

[Dhalin]

you can buy full sets of refurbished gear to start. also spells are for sale at the dragon near the craft center. you can get weapon forms by doing quests at the blacksmith trainer. he asks you to make certain weapons, and gives you a formula to do so. it's not that hard to get started in this game. if you stick to the lower lvl mobs for a while you can easily hit lvl 10 in an hour. then you're ready to move on.

#1: The blacksmith trainer's weapons quests are all level ONE. There's only 1 that a cleric would possibly want to use: Bronze Mace (he doesn't even give you the Maul recipe so you're stuck with 1H+shield). The very same bronze mace you could trek all the way to Dalimond to buy. You're trying to tell me that a low DPS output school like Cleric will want to use a Level _ONE_ weapon clear until 20?

#2: Refurb gear is absolute crap, especially for the amount of money it takes to buy a suit of it. Oh wait... lookie dat. He only sells Refurb Level 1 weapons too from what I remember seeing, because I tried looking for a Bronze Warhammer to compare its damage. I didn't see a Bronze Warhammer in his list. Just the Bronze Mace. He had Bronze Scalemail, but look at the chestguard: 7 Armor vs 12 for the regular crafted? That's barely over HALF the armor value. And again, he has no Platemail that I saw. So what am I going to do when I ding 10?

RE:Northwind:

I never said anything against Istaria being a grind game, nor did I say anything about wanting to level through quests. But... how can I grind when I'm caught up in this vicious circle:

1). Want to level my adv.
2). Can't level adv without gear.
3). Want to craft gear.
4). Can't craft gear without forms.
5). Need forms, they all drop from mobs.
6). Need to kill mobs, but can't because I need to get gear.
7). Goto #3.

You get stuck in this infinite loop of needing gear, but can't get gear and the only way out is to go begging high level players to make stuff for you (which absolutely destroys my goal in the game: to make a character who learns the way of the world by living off the land and making what they need as they go).

This is a very poor impression on a newbie player, especially those who enjoy crafting. What, you cannot craft now unless you go grind adventure so you can farm WA mobs? lol? What if you didn't really have much interest in the adventure game? Then you're screwed because Adventure is forced down your throat, whereas before, Crafters could progress their crafting (though they had to do it without buff spells).

Beginner forms need to be more accessible. Like I said, I can understand Jman and above to be difficult to get, hey that's fine. But beginner? Seriously, this makes the whole thing very sour when I'm looking at my single digit leveled character and I'm finding it more difficult to gear her than I've ever seen in any other game to date.

I've never seen an MMORPG where a new player absolutely cannot gear their character up, whatsoever.

EDIT: RE: Spells: Yes, Resliak sells spells... at several silver each. Where do you think someone who is <10 is going to get that much silver? I did all of the Blacksmith's quests and I have like 15 silver on me. I'm not even sure that's enough to buy the huge list of spells that a Cleric gets. I could try joining the Spellcrafter school, but from what I've seen of how they changed forms... I betcha most of those are probably drop-only too. So why bother?

[Dhalin]

Oh and I love how they moved my thread to the "Rants" section where nobody will see it hardly just because it wasn't all praise and worshipping.

Nice.

So not only did they destroy the new player experience, but they're also trying to quietly sweep feedback under the rug. That makes me want to resub my account sometime my RL money troubles get better, sure!

[Azath]

The getting forms part...that one needs to be sorted. The best way to farm beginner forms currently is killing lv16-24 agh'kuks up by the akes of crystals tears and the lv11-14 on the beach near kion. Not very freindly untill you're about lv13 as a cleric which even then can be hard to get a foothold on killing the agh'kuks near kion. Then the agh'kuks near the lakes? my ped is over 20 or a few levels over in her schools; with some pretty good schools in there too: I've got spiritist to do somewhat decent damage to lv20, cleric at lv21 and most of their spells cross over and spiritist has the syphons and leechy type abilities that cleric doens't have to heal her..but shes stuck...as she can't get t2 gear due to her craft not being high enough and to me not having the right forms and i don't want to beg anyone to make me new gear...and due the fact those agh'kuks by the lakes kill me everytime (even when i go 1v1 on the weakest of them) i'm not gonna get new forms on my ped, luckily i use my ancient to farm all my forms for me...fair on the newbies? nope.

[Dhalin]

The getting forms part...that one needs to be sorted. The best way to farm beginner forms currently is killing lv16-24 agh'kuks up by the akes of crystals tears and the lv11-14 on the beach near kion. Not very freindly untill you're about lv13 as a cleric which even then can be hard to get a foothold on killing the agh'kuks near kion. Then the agh'kuks near the lakes? my ped is over 20 or a few levels over in her schools; with some pretty good schools in there too: I've got spiritist to do somewhat decent damage to lv20, cleric at lv21 and most of their spells cross over and spiritist has the syphons and leechy type abilities that cleric doens't have to heal her..but shes stuck...as she can't get t2 gear due to her craft not being high enough and to me not having the right forms and i don't want to beg anyone to make me new gear...and due the fact those agh'kuks by the lakes kill me everytime (even when i go 1v1 on the weakest of them) i'm not gonna get new forms on my ped, luckily i use my ancient to farm all my forms for me...fair on the newbies? nope.

I wouldn't be surprised if this was their sort of "punishment" for attempting to Play For Free -- sounds like you pretty much need a dragon (or other people to make stuff for you which completely defeats the purpose of leveling your own crafts), which you can't HAVE unless you have a paid account.

So they make progression pretty much impossible without a ton of outside help or being able to make a dragon.

[AmonGwareth]

Dhalin, your replies and comments prove the point of why this thread was moved to rants. Much of it is not constructive, it is ranting.

Some of your concerns are legitimate. Cedar Treant Saplings, for example, should not be able to heal. Ghosts on the island should not be doing ethereal damage. And so forth.

Regular equipment was not made available and the refurb gear was expanded as a result of player request. Many players did not want us to undermine crafters by providing regular gear for sale on vendors. I personally have no problem doing this and in fact we've got an initiative to make basic un-teched gear (that has corresponding formulas for sale on trainers) for sale on trainers throughout the tiers. Looted gear would remain the realm of crafters.

We're certainly open to constructive feedback on the islands and introductory game. We're not trying to run off non-Dragons. In fact, we would prefer if more people took advantage of the f2p portion of the game, enjoyed themselves, got hooked, and bought a sub to try out other parts of the game.

Please keep your bashing of the team to threads where you are not attempting to acquire legitimate developer feedback or simply not at all if you wish to continue to get responses from us.

[Dhalin]

Dhalin, your replies and comments prove the point of why this thread was moved to rants. Much of it is not constructive, it is ranting.

I didn't start getting annoyed until after the thread was moved.

The original post wasn't the happiest review of the new player experience, but to immediately move it to the rant section? I'm sorry but I feel that was a bit unwarranted, thus I got annoyed by it.

Some of your concerns are legitimate. Cedar Treant Saplings, for example, should not be able to heal. Ghosts on the island should not be doing ethereal damage. And so forth.

I'm glad you agree with a couple points I made in the thread. Hopefully, something is eventually done about it.

Regular equipment was not made available and the refurb gear was expanded as a result of player request. Many players did not want us to undermine crafters by providing regular gear for sale on vendors. I personally have no problem doing this and in fact we've got an initiative to make basic un-teched gear (that has corresponding formulas for sale on trainers) for sale on trainers throughout the tiers. Looted gear would remain the realm of crafters.

Not providing regular equipment on the vendors is OK, if you allow crafters to acquire formulas to make the gear they need which we're not doing. As I said earlier in my thread (and a couple agreed), is that you can't farm mobs if you have no gear. If you have no forms, you can't get gear without having someone else make gear for you which defeats the entire purpose of you even leveling a craft in the first place.

We're certainly open to constructive feedback on the islands and introductory game. We're not trying to run off non-Dragons. In fact, we would prefer if more people took advantage of the f2p portion of the game, enjoyed themselves, got hooked, and bought a sub to try out other parts of the game.

Alright, fair enough. After analyzing my own experiences with attempting to use the f2p service in the game, it almost looked like a player was punished for doing so considering how utterly hard it is to actually get a biped started. A dragon wouldn't feel the pain of this anywhere near as badly -- they can easily fight with no weapons, outdated weapons, etc until well into Jman levels. A Biped can't really do this... unless, I dunno, you were a Monk maybe?

Please keep your bashing of the team to threads where you are not attempting to acquire legitimate developer feedback or simply not at all if you wish to continue to get responses from us.

I will apologize for any "team bashing" (though to be fair I didn't post anything like that until after the thread was moved, which I felt was completely unwarranted and unfair). I'll still apologize even though I feel the thread was unjustly moved.

Now, back on topic.....

Could you provide some sort of... I don't know... vision on how you would start a fresh Biped with absolutely no outside help/high level alts/etc?

I'm genuinely curious to know how exactly a player is expected to make this happen when they have next-to-no equipment available to them, crafted, bought, whatever.

BTW, some suggestions:

1). Allow the undead and pygmies on New Trismus to drop the lower-level weapon/armor forms (Lv1-Lv10 gear). Or, if they already do drop them, perhaps increase the drop chance a little? I killed 30+ mobs and didn't see a single crystal, form, or tech.
2). Allow the Blacksmith and Outfitter Trainers to sell some of the lower-level weapon/armor forms (Lv1-Lv10 gear) -or- give them to the trainers in Kion. One shouldn't have to run clear to Dalimond on a fresh out-of-the-box character just to craft.
3). Make Refurb gear slightly better (+7 armor on a refurbished bronze scalemail chest guard compared to +12 on the non-refurbished? How about +10 and +12 respectively? That sounds more reasonable).
4). Give the Refurb gear vendor Lv5 weapons at the very least so you're not trying to get from Lv1 to 20 with a Lv1 weapon.

Any of those would at least give a new player some sort of.....something......they could do to progress their own character instead of hitting their head against a brick wall like it is currently.

[Northwind]

As I said, offering free and quested quality armors and weapons will give a fighting chance to newbs.
Up to lvl20 no more.

[Malicore]

lvl 1 gear will get you to 10, even refurbished. and then it's time to move to Kion/Sslanis anyway. where you "can" buy higher forms. though even a lvl 1 can go there. can also go to dalimond without being threatened by mobs along the way. teleport to sanctuary bay and run south down the beach to dalimond and attune. good idea at that time to run west to Bristugo and attune there also.

I recently created a new alt myself. and had no problems lvling with what exists in the game, such as refurbished gear and bought spells for T1. moved on at lvl 10 to Kion/Sslanis. he is currently a cleric, lvl 20 and no problems getting there. he has been in bronze plate since lvl 11. in just a few short hours, he was lvl 20.

[Dhalin]

lvl 1 gear will get you to 10, even refurbished. and then it's time to move to Kion/Sslanis anyway. where you "can" buy higher forms. though even a lvl 1 can go there. can also go to dalimond without being threatened by mobs along the way. teleport to sanctuary bay and run south down the beach to dalimond and attune. good idea at that time to run west to Bristugo and attune there also.

I recently created a new alt myself. and had no problems lvling with what exists in the game, such as refurbished gear and bought spells for T1. moved on at lvl 10 to Kion/Sslanis. he is currently a cleric, lvl 20 and no problems getting there. he has been in bronze plate since lvl 11. in just a few short hours, he was lvl 20.

And where exactly did you get the bronze plate since you can't make it yourself, and no NPCs will sell it?

Someone mentioned a Kion consigner, but I didn't see one, and I checked the buildings, didn't see any signs for consigners...

[Malicore]

you can teleport to any racial city in the game. find just about any craft npc you want, buy forms and so on. small change for T1 forms. I attuned him to Sslanis/dali and bristugo. you can go to any racial city via kion, with exception of chiconis, Sslanis and dali, till you attune to them

[Dhalin]

you can teleport to any racial city in the game. find just about any craft npc you want, buy forms and so on. small change for T1 forms. I attuned him to Sslanis/dali and bristugo. you can go to any racial city via kion, with exception of chiconis, Sslanis and dali, till you attune to them

You can't buy platemail forms, nor can you buy warhammer or fine weapons last I checked?

This leaves you with.. what, Ringmail and a Bronze Mace from Level 1 clear to level 20?

[Malicore]

they do drop. and he is using a fine cedar shillelagh.

[AmonGwareth]

In my opinion having the undead drop crystals, forms and techs on New Trismus would be entirely useless. It would clutter the loot tables by having items that players would not use or would not know how to use. I will take a look at them, but I believe the best things for them to drop would be refurb equipment and junk loot that can be sold for coin.

The Blacksmith and Outfitter trainers both offer quests that you can do to gain many weapon forms. They are easy quests, they don't require you to travel off the island or even into mob-infested areas to complete.

#3 and #4 I'll take a look at.

[Dhalin]

Thanks for at least looking into it.

I think Refurb gear wouldn't be so bad if there wasn't such a huge difference between normal and refurb, but that's just my opinion I guess.

I'll keep "camping" the consigner hoping for actual crafted gear (or their forms) to pop up in the meantime I suppose and I'll just have to hope that I won't hit this same roadblock when T3 comes that I'll be able to farm pygmies once I get to T3 while using T2 teched gear.

[Khalon]

Dhalin, you might also try checking the NT connie a little more often. I know many of us older players periodically stock the NT connie with things like fine weapons & shields, plate armor sets, jewelry, spells, etc. We did go through a "dry spell" recently where there wasn't much for sale for about 10 days or so, so I can understand a good bit of your frustration. Chasing is really nice about putting tons of newbie forms on that connie too, if you prefer to craft your own .

Khalon 100/100/100 semi-retired craftsdrake
Xynder 100/100/21 loony Lunus
Martel overworked and underappreciated dwarf martial artist and craftsman

[Malicore]

there's almost always ppl, willing to trade forms, you can get some from drops and some you can trade others for. expecially dragons that have lots of beginner forms they can't use, willing to trade for hoard items you find. or rahool sellable items. or you can offer them cash for dropped forms, check connie for ppl selling the forms. I got lucky and was able to obtain what I needed to craft the weapons and platemail forms. make friends, trade/buy what you need. go to other towns for forms npc's sell.

you don't "need" platemail so to speak. as you can do with scailmail if that's all you can obtain. I don't even bother to tech any low lvl gear, since the lvls go by so fast, you don't even miss them.

you can also make the bars/items need to craft equipment and ask another player to make, if you haven't taken the time to lvl craft skills. many ppl work together as a community, it's what this game is about.

[AmonGwareth]

4). Give the Refurb gear vendor Lv5 weapons at the very least so you're not trying to get from Lv1 to 20 with a Lv1 weapon.

I checked out Frelic on NT and he was missing the Refurb Long Sword. However, he does carry some Level 5 Refurbished weapons including a Refurb Bronze Maul which is usable by a Cleric.