Encouraging new players to stay plus ideas for new in game features.

[Donairian]

If people do not mind me bringing this thread back I would like to add another suggestion that a friend had when I was discussing this thread on order, I apologize for the thread necro but considering this thread was still on the first page of the suggestions forum it seemed ok if I brought this back up again.

But anyway her suggestion was that maybe access to different areas could be restricted from new players as well on top of the level cap or could be used instead of the level cap or trial period, this would allow travel only to the spirit isle, Skalkaar and New Trismus for new players. Again the removal of the 15 day trial period in favor of this would ensure that new players stick around for longer than their usual 15 lifespan as it sits currently and the presence of older players arriving from the mainland might well encourage said new players to actually have time to consider investing in a full subscription to the rest of the game. This sort of confinement would also give the game the look of being very well populated for new players appearing in the tutorial areas and could very well encourage them to remain on the game adding to the benefit this offers the game community itself. I know from experience from my own childhood that confinement from the rest of the game in this manner adds to the desire of wanting to actually explore the in game world and would aid new players immersion in the game considerably.

again I would apologize about bringing this thread back but I had something to say and decided against posting an entirely new thread for it when the suggestion I post now is related to what I already said here. Also I do not take credit for this idea, I asked for permission to post this suggestion on this forum and I think it reflects well on what I intend when I made these suggestions.

[Tilithia]

I like this idea but then Genevia would have to be permanently Unavailable to them otherwise they could port there and there anywhere they wanted. or even walk on foot.

[Daulnay]

Since this thread has been necro'd, I have a couple suggestions for retaining new players (for the devs);

The construction system keeps some of the players. Add a quest line to introduce new players to construction, plots, and the rest. Show them the advantages of using player-owned crafting stations.

The wall in New Trismus was great, and it'd be good to always have something like that around. I would love to see a tower with a launching platform for hatchlings built somewhere in the new player areas (lesser Aradoth, maybe?), on top of a hill/mountain. I also think it would be ok to have the Aegis 'destroy' part of the New Trismus wall every 6 months or so (and let the experienced players know that it's part of introducing new players to construction, so that the destruction isn't discouraging).

Hatchling players get a thrill out of climbing places and gliding. A hatchling quest that is a tour of good gliding spots would add unique dragon-only content for new players, and whet their appetite for becoming a full-grown dragon (and help retain them as players).

Now some suggestions for us players -- we can help retention, too.
1) Keep an eye on Marketplace, New Player, and Help. Answer questions politely. Offer to guide new players around things that get them frustrated or stuck (such as adding too many adventure schools as a biped). Let them know about 'hidden' parts of the game, that are unusual, like teched spells. Or things that new players overlook, like Training Points.

2) Keep a low-level alt around, for accompanying new players. Welcome new players and provide companionship *as a community*. Just as you would at any group open to the public in the 'real' world. That brings new players one of the better parts of the game, the community. (If the community operates mainly at max level, new players don't see it.)

3) Organize community events, to be run at a newbie-friendly level. Make sure that at least a handful of other players can be there before announcing it to new players.

We can help keep the game alive.
-

[Berdagauret]

Excellent suggestions, particularly the suggestions aimed at the rest of us!

[Vishok]

In the end, to people saying that the game's dying because there's a paywall - that's not it. World of Warcraft has a subscription, too, does it not? That's certainly not dying any time soon. The game's content, play style, and age are what's killing it slowly. The years of tab-targeting MMOs are behind us. People want action and to be involved. It's not everyone, of course, but it's the general public. Putting Istaria as a semi-F2P MMO isn't going to safeguard it for eternity.

WoW is the exception nowadays for subscriptions. Most every new MMO that comes out with a subscription has to revert to at least some form of free to play. Wildstar, Star Wars: The Old Republic, Elder Scrolls Online, and I'm sure numerous others. The only games going strong with paid subscriptions that I can think of are Final Fantasy XIV and Eve Online. WoW can't really be used as any metric because it's pretty much a phenomenon that isn't going to be duplicated any time soon. Many have tried and failed.

That said, I don't think the subscription is the main reason the game isn't more popular, it's because it's an old school game with an outdated engine (which is what you already said). There's already a form of free to play with the human characters. If someone really wanted to play they'd go ahead and stick around with the free to play human. Istaria isn't hidden completely behind a pay wall.

[Justme]

I am one of these "new players" and here are my 2 cents:
- number 1 problem for me is the adventure level grind. It is not fun, it's tedious, boring, longwinded. Moreover it forces me to multi-class and level crafts or hope that someone wants to craft my stuff. I am watching a movie in between waiting for skill cooldowns, does that sound like fun to any of you ?
- closely related, the amount of players that want to team up is 0 or close to it
- the intro island is as bland as it gets. Go play an Asian ftp game. For all the flaws these games have, one thing they master in is getting players hooked early on (until the pay-to-win shop wall gets hit but thats another discussion)
- lastly - there is no clear goal after reaching uberness in any class or craft. There is no substantial economy to speak of so playing crafter/merchant seems to be pointless. And being able to kill lvl 100 mobs after all the levelling and work put into it so you can...yea do what exactly ? Other games have pvp, or pve against bosses that require full teams, or something else to keep you playing. With this game i honestly do not see it, other then hanging around in popular towns which most seasoned players seem to be doing. My conclusion is that this game is all about the journey and less about the endgame, where the journey as it stands today is a grind that makes asian games feel like cakewalks. Suggestions: new community projects that give shard benefits (beyond a toolshop or bridge, more like statues or alike that take months to finish but give great bonusses, more end bosses to kill, away to grow your character even after said level 100, and in general more to do once lvl 100 is reached (and i am not talking about more fed-ex quests to kill X of Y!)

The issues you all seem to be focussed on, are not issues for me. I do not care much about graphics etc, they are good enough to want to make me keep playing if the other things were worthwile. The bugs and connection issues are there, but not game breaking. I do not have any urge to pay to be able to get a plot, because after all is said and done, why would i want to own one? Now if the endbosses would drop unique furniture recipies for instance, or trophies i can hang on my walls, that would be something different.

For me one thing is sure, you will have to change a lot to get (and keep) new players.

[meepsa]

I am one of these "new players" and here are my 2 cents:
- number 1 problem for me is the adventure level grind. It is not fun, it's tedious, boring, longwinded. Moreover it forces me to multi-class and level crafts or hope that someone wants to craft my stuff. I am watching a movie in between waiting for skill cooldowns, does that sound like fun to any of you ?
- closely related, the amount of players that want to team up is 0 or close to it
- the intro island is as bland as it gets. Go play an Asian ftp game. For all the flaws these games have, one thing they master in is getting players hooked early on (until the pay-to-win shop wall gets hit but thats another discussion)
- lastly - there is no clear goal after reaching uberness in any class or craft. There is no substantial economy to speak of so playing crafter/merchant seems to be pointless. And being able to kill lvl 100 mobs after all the levelling and work put into it so you can...yea do what exactly ? Other games have pvp, or pve against bosses that require full teams, or something else to keep you playing. With this game i honestly do not see it, other then hanging around in popular towns which most seasoned players seem to be doing. My conclusion is that this game is all about the journey and less about the endgame, where the journey as it stands today is a grind that makes asian games feel like cakewalks. Suggestions: new community projects that give shard benefits (beyond a toolshop or bridge, more like statues or alike that take months to finish but give great bonusses, more end bosses to kill, away to grow your character even after said level 100, and in general more to do once lvl 100 is reached (and i am not talking about more fed-ex quests to kill X of Y!)

The issues you all seem to be focussed on, are not issues for me. I do not care much about graphics etc, they are good enough to want to make me keep playing if the other things were worthwile. The bugs and connection issues are there, but not game breaking. I do not have any urge to pay to be able to get a plot, because after all is said and done, why would i want to own one? Now if the endbosses would drop unique furniture recipies for instance, or trophies i can hang on my walls, that would be something different.

For me one thing is sure, you will have to change a lot to get (and keep) new players.

I'll reply to all your points at a later bit, but, concerning the unique plot boss furniture/trophies, if you look at the myloc queen banner/mural you'll see that it requires a Myloc Queen Hair which only drops from Shaloth the Myloc Queen. I would definately say yes to more of these.

[hejtmane]

I'll reply to all your points at a later bit, but, concerning the unique plot boss furniture/trophies, if you look at the myloc queen banner/mural you'll see that it requires a Myloc Queen Hair which only drops from Shaloth the Myloc Queen. I would definately say yes to more of these.

The first thing that has to be fixed on that list is combat

Justme nailed it without combat updates you are not keeping people unless they just love the idea of a dragon. Fix combat first and more people would stay and some of the other stuff will start to fix itself like more items for sale like in the early days. That should have been the developers priority like years ago.

It is pretty darn simple more aoe attacks early levels and not on a 2 minute freaking timer (there are like two in the game warrior and scout and one is at level 90); reduced the recycle times on attacks and spells;make more attacks/spells not on the same timer; reduced health bars of mobs at early levels. Most of those changes are not hard and could happen quickly. Now the extra aoe attacks may require some animation adjustments. Heck if they started with the recycle times and health bars and un-linking timers now with a promise to add more aoe attacks in the future I would be playing now to support the game with money to make the aoe changes and other changes. Quit making people fall asleep fighting or you will never keep new people

[Kida]

It is pretty darn simple more aoe attacks early levels and not on a 2 minute freaking timer (there are like two in the game warrior and scout and one is at level 90); reduced the recycle times on attacks and spells;make more attacks/spells not on the same timer; reduced health bars of mobs at early levels. Most of those changes are not hard and could happen quickly. Now the extra aoe attacks may require some animation adjustments. Heck if they started with the recycle times and health bars and un-linking timers now with a promise to add more aoe attacks in the future I would be playing now to support the game with money to make the aoe changes and other changes. Quit making people fall asleep fighting or you will never keep new people

Just wanted to comment on this. I brought the issue of slow combat up last year and timers/abilities were given some adjustment at the start of this year, so if you haven't returned to the game to try them, I would suggest that. If you have, then this is also some extra info I was told by a dev after expressing my dislike of the slow combat, even after adjustment (which did help, but wasn't really enough):

"Aside from the fact that it would require a serious overhaul of every spell and ability, I'm not confident that the game (server and client) would be responsive enough for it. The client already has odd glitches at times with ability recycling. In addition, I think it might exacerbate the spawning issues as you could potentially kill monsters faster than they would appear (you already do, but this might make it even worse). And I'm not sure if the AI systems on the server could handle the increased speed. I believe they have some built-in latency and brain-tick rate that might not be fast enough."

Don't have much to say on the matter aside from sharing that information. You say it's simple, but it's really not such an easy fix. I will say that if you want an MMO with faster, more responsive combat, there are lots of other options out there. A game this old with as many problems as it contains probably won't be able to match modern games' speed in that regard. I'd rather the team focus on fixing long-standing bugs like the memory-leak issues, crashing, and creatures not spawning than introducing a whole slew of combat changes that could break combat/spawns more than fix it.

[meepsa]

The first thing that has to be fixed on that list is combat

Justme nailed it without combat updates you are not keeping people unless they just love the idea of a dragon. Fix combat first and more people would stay and some of the other stuff will start to fix itself like more items for sale like in the early days. That should have been the developers priority like years ago.

It is pretty darn simple more aoe attacks early levels and not on a 2 minute freaking timer (there are like two in the game warrior and scout and one is at level 90); reduced the recycle times on attacks and spells;make more attacks/spells not on the same timer; reduced health bars of mobs at early levels. Most of those changes are not hard and could happen quickly. Now the extra aoe attacks may require some animation adjustments. Heck if they started with the recycle times and health bars and un-linking timers now with a promise to add more aoe attacks in the future I would be playing now to support the game with money to make the aoe changes and other changes. Quit making people fall asleep fighting or you will never keep new people

I don't exactly get your point about AoE abilities, there's plenty in-game if you look beyond the starting schools.
Mage gets spell bombs to learn which are usable in several classes, druid gets an AoE root spell if I'm not mistaken, spiritist get an AoE drain (or it was reaver, either way, spirit based classes get acces to AoE abilities and spells)

Yes some share timers (which are only a second or 10), but as Kida said, the combat simply can't be sped up all that much.

[Justme]

I don't exactly get your point about AoE abilities, there's plenty in-game if you look beyond the starting schools.
Mage gets spell bombs to learn which are usable in several classes, druid gets an AoE root spell if I'm not mistaken, spiritist get an AoE drain (or it was reaver, either way, spirit based classes get acces to AoE abilities and spells)

Yes some share timers (which are only a second or 10), but as Kida said, the combat simply can't be sped up all that much.

Well, not sure what to say after i read this....Other then that your beloved game needs new players, and if you keep everything "battle" as it is today it will not happen.

If spawns are killed too fast, make them respawn faster. If the engine cannot handle it, improve the engine. If that means stopping all other tweaks and fixes, so be it.
But to continue on the current path is pointless, IF your goal is to keep new players playing.

And you dont have to take my word for it, just log in to the game and count all the "new players" online at any given time.

[meepsa]

Well, not sure what to say after i read this....Other then that your beloved game needs new players, and if you keep everything "battle" as it is today it will not happen.

If spawns are killed too fast, make them respawn faster. If the engine cannot handle it, improve the engine. If that means stopping all other tweaks and fixes, so be it.
But to continue on the current path is pointless, IF your goal is to keep new players playing.

And you dont have to take my word for it, just log in to the game and count all the "new players" online at any given time.

except that we've received word from the devs some time ago (this was through the skype group chat that is no longer active) that the active sub numbers (not counting free accounts because those weren't even able to be counted accurately then) hasn't increased much over the past few months, but neither has it declined much in that time-span. Which leads us to believe that the influx of new players is roughly the same as the people that leave.

The idea that istaria "needs" new players is incorrect, the way it's going currently is fine, it's true that it has the chance to increase more with an influx of new players, but there simply is no feasible way of getting that.

increase respawns? not possible due to engine.
improve the engine? maybe, this would also mean that the game's inner workings would need to be redone, and with the devteam having to deal with a messed up game as it is (we've been told a few times already that there's barely any documentation left from the original dev team, or that there barely was any to begin with), I don't think this would be all that propable either.
change engine? well, unless you think that dropping the game and making it again from scratch is feasible, then sure. This is what we've heard over and over. The way the game works currently simply wouldn't make it possible to just hop over to a new engine.

[Kida]

If the engine cannot handle it, improve the engine.

As much as I wish the game could make big changes and improve, this line really stands out to me. You have no idea what this takes, do you? There's like 5 people left on Istaria's backend team, and that number has dwindled from well over 20 people. 5 people cannot possibly restructure an entire game that has passed through so many hands, the code takes forever to figure out and clean.

The team is working as fast as they can in their spare time (you're aware that this game is just barely staying afloat, so you're aware that the team behind it isn't making a killing off this game and likely have second jobs to sustain themselves) and improving as much as they can. They've made some great strides lately, fixing a lot of the crashing issues that have been there for years. There are still bigger problems to tackle, one being making improvements to the engine so that changes can be made easier, but you seriously think they should drop everything they're doing to focus on combat? Really? It's not as easy as "oh well I just wrote it in a sentence, surely they can do it in a week!"

Do some research into how much effort and time goes into creating a game and custom game engine, look at the messed up development history of the game that led to an ugly mush of multiple developers' code with no notes to figure it all out, and then get back to me when you're a little more educated on the subject.

[Justme]

As much as I wish the game could make big changes and improve, this line really stands out to me. You have no idea what this takes, do you? There's like 5 people left on Istaria's backend team, and that number has dwindled from well over 20 people. 5 people cannot possibly restructure an entire game that has passed through so many hands, the code takes forever to figure out and clean.

The team is working as fast as they can in their spare time (you're aware that this game is just barely staying afloat, so you're aware that the team behind it isn't making a killing off this game and likely have second jobs to sustain themselves) and improving as much as they can. They've made some great strides lately, fixing a lot of the crashing issues that have been there for years. There are still bigger problems to tackle, one being making improvements to the engine so that changes can be made easier, but you seriously think they should drop everything they're doing to focus on combat? Really? It's not as easy as "oh well I just wrote it in a sentence, surely they can do it in a week!"

Do some research into how much effort and time goes into creating a game and custom game engine, look at the messed up development history of the game that led to an ugly mush of multiple developers' code with no notes to figure it all out, and then get back to me when you're a little more educated on the subject.

Sorry, but i find this answer a fine example of "how to kill the messenger".
The title of this forum thread is "encouraging new players to stay". And We take the time to tell you what will make us stay and what wont. Now, you may not like what we have to say, but that does not change our opinion.

To put it simple: you can put lipstick on a pig but i still will be a pig, meaning you can tweak and change litle things till eternity comes but it wont keep new player playing as those things are not why they leave. How unrewarding or frustrating that might be...

[Spyrioyo]

Sorry, but i find this answer a fine example of "how to kill the messenger".
The title of this forum thread is "encouraging new players to stay". And We take the time to tell you what will make us stay and what wont. Now, you may not like what we have to say, but that does not change our opinion.

To put it simple: you can put lipstick on a pig but i still will be a pig, meaning you can tweak and change litle things till eternity comes but it wont keep new player playing as those things are not why they leave. How unrewarding or frustrating that might be...

I have to say there are limitations cause of the dev team, and that but we need to focus on the fixes to prevent crashes and other stuff before changes like to combat happen first. It takes a lot of code to go threw. It won't take a week it may take months to years to get new stuff in. You need to think of all factors. Yes, there should be new stuff that keep players, and new appeal, but we need be ingenious and use what is already there to make new content and fixes, that will save time, and work for the devs. Instead of saying do this, I sorry if this may be harsh but you need to do your part and contribute and submit new stuff to devs and help the devs out with problems because if we do some of the work for the devs it will save them time and it will get implemented faster into the game. We need to work with the devs and together as a community to make improvements to the game. I have seen too much fighting lately. We need to display teamwork and cooperation between shards. I am willing work with Order and blight to help improve the game. This what we need, is come up with ideas. You say we need to improve combat, then why don't we brainstorm ideas how to do it, but in way that able to be done by devs and in a way to save time for them, we can do some of the work for them, but make sure it can be handled by the engine and other factors that can make work for the game with little trouble.

[hejtmane]

I going to address several things and my opinion and clarify what I think can help combat wise.

First the person that threw out game design crap I understand how complicated it so anything after that got ignored that is how you have people not listen.

Second on the aoe not every one wants to be a spell caster for big powers some of us like to walk around with a big freakin weapon and chop heads off now we will multiclass enough to help us accomplish the goal of making my melee work better like buffs heals debuffs I am not looking for spells to do my main damage.

Yes I understand there is a delay from when you push your button to when it happens; hell the last game I played we had that delay built in to the formula for dps chains.

What i am referring to is the big power recharge times what this games calls recycle. Most games powers, attacks, spells:recycle, damage buffs etc are database entries they usually export them to spreadsheet manipulate them and upload them back into the database. There are several things they could adjust to make combat easier and faster pace. I am going to use melee as an example this could also apply to spells.

Lets take warrior for example
Multistrike 1 delay 20 recycle 2:00 (minutes) take that power and drop it to 45
melee flurry delay 20 recycle 1:30 take it and drop it to 30 the extra attacks does 45% damage they could up that to 60% and may do the timer at 45

That is the type of changes I am talking about; from how often a power is available to use; to increasing the base damage or the +extra damage or how effective a buff is etc

That should all be spreadsheet work and yes it would change the combat system but that is not doing a complete over haul of how the powers work or animation changes etc

http://istaria.wikia.com/wiki/Multistrike
http://istaria.wikia.com/wiki/Melee_Flurry

They could also boost base damage of weapons and spells then you would not have to touch monster health

That would be phase 1 than after time you could work on which powers share timer links most developers use booleans from my understanding for things like this currently and in the past.

Then later maybe take certain powers and redesign them as an aoe attack

Look all my experience is as a biped I played up until the great server merge and you hand tokens after the merger and depending on how many tokens you had depend on which plot you could buy. Then I have come back many times over the last 6 years but the combat was still the same long tedious and so boring and every time I left because of the combat not because of anything else no reason to craft anything for the toon because it takes to long to kill anything so whats the point

[Kida]

First the person that threw out game design crap I understand how complicated it so anything after that got ignored that is how you have people not listen.

lol okay.

not listening to your entire essay-length response either, then. and from the few snippets I examined with my eyeballs as I was scrolling past it, you clearly didn't comprehend any of my previous messages.

this thread needs to be locked, nothing productive is coming from it at this point. just a broken record screeching out huge paragraphs and not listening. yawn.

[meepsa]

lol okay.

not listening to your entire essay-length response either, then. and from the few snippets I examined with my eyeballs as I was scrolling past it, you clearly didn't comprehend any of my previous messages.

this thread needs to be locked, nothing productive is coming from it as this point. just a broken record screeching out huge paragraphs and not listening. yawn.

agreeing here, we need a lock.
if somebody is trying to give improvements to the game, yet shuts down "game design crap"...then you're basicly saying you like bananas but think banana trees are redundant.

[hejtmane]

lol okay.

not listening to your entire essay-length response either, then. and from the few snippets I examined with my eyeballs as I was scrolling past it, you clearly didn't comprehend any of my previous messages.

this thread needs to be locked, nothing productive is coming from it at this point. just a broken record screeching out huge paragraphs and not listening. yawn.

I quit reading that one post; I read the rest of the post I did not ignore every post over one persons posting. So what ever and good luck with the game.

[Cegaiel]

Devs appreciate all the feedback. There are good points in this thread, but it's moving off topic and slowly progressing to being non-productive. There are tweaks that could be done with timers, delays etc, I don't disagree with that.

Devs will be focusing back to content instead of fixes towards the end of the year, things such as combat timers and tweaks will be looked at more closely then.

Thank you all.