Cool game, but way too punishing for newbs.

I do not think the game is perfect by any stretch of the imagination and there definitely could be more information that is accessible by new players to ease them in to the fact that some systems in this game don't operate like your run of the mill MMO. That being said, the reason this game even exists in the first place is that people who didn't want what is now the industry standard of a MMO paid a lot of money to get this game off the ground. A lot of what they were sold was dropped along the wayside in order to make a functioning game with the budget that the team had, and everyone accepts that, but all of this pressure to make the game more like what people have come to expect from an MMO is really pushing the game in the wrong direction. Very few people in the world would have donated to a kickstarter to make "low budget world of warcraft in brittania"

You state that the fear of wowification is rife, and you're right, but it has been the lifecycle of basically 90% of every interesting MMO that has come out since world of warcraft blew up, and it always gets there for the same reasons, and they all died anyway.

 

Great idea.

Again great idea. Maybe a visual clue would help? Something like... When you train one skill the skill is shown in bright green. As you add more skills to training, especially in the same tree the skills set to train change to Amber, then Red just a visual but maths based illustration as to what happens as you pile on more draw down from your pool?

Absolutely, the discussion on this from 'min maxers' is a distraction to the Quest skill levels required and indeed the average player. That is with no disrespect to the min maxer playstyle, which I respect/am in awe of/envy.

Here here

 

If you join one of the many guilds you can be powerleveled to past newbie levels in a few hours. I have players in my guild that reached level 110 in 2 months. Double xp is constantly on so your wish was answered there. Also you cant keep all your skills open at any level. That is something that has to be managed. I only keep one skill open at a time to keep my pool from being zero. I suppose the tutorial doesnt do a good job at teaching you that and you will learn about this game mostly from players. Its different from most mmos yes.

 

There are some great newbie equipment player shops around. @Vladamir Begemot has a great shop.

 

I will comment on the economy part. New players can not make gold by crafting and selling equipment, however this is true for almost everyone except the most dedicated crafters. I really see no way around this, it's just how the market will fuction. If we want a skill based crafting system where player gear is the best, I don't see a way to make the crafting and selling part newbie friendly.

But the good news is that it's a buyers market. As soon as you get some knowledge about price ranges, there are deals to be had. Many crafters sell goods below the cost of materials. The rest of us can participating in the economy by harvesting and selling resources, or killing monsters from loot and gold. I think that mining and selling ore can be profitable quite early on, as soon as the character can handle some ghosts and satyrs.

 

Yes you are 85 and have been playing for a month. To put it into perspective, It took my first character 6 to 9months to make level 85. 3months on the second one AFTER I new where everything was. A month on the 3rd twinked. EXP was literally half of what it is today. Quest gear didn't exist. You had to make or buy everything.

How many low level zone did you explore? What do you know about the game or the lore other than you don't like the gear. I'm telling you, the game is easier and not challenging because of these changes. Think about it, you are at end game content in a month. Now what?
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The 8 day character I didn't even twink him... yes I knew where everything was, but I LITERALLY did nothing but the quests in the gear I had or got. Why because I was testing the new outskirts and questlines and bug reporting on them.

If you think this game is punishing to newbs, that's your perception. I think the game in the last 2 years has gone from an interesting place to explore with interesting crafting mechanics etc, to a "level up, level up, level up" newb-fest where no one takes the time to or cares to learn the mechanics, then complains.


Like I said I don't want another WoW. It's not what the majority of us signed up for.

 

Sorry, you got to put your time in if you are a newbie.

Constantly dumbing down the game to make it instant grat for new players will kill the game.

But dont take it from me. Look at who is left here....We drive all our most invested players away

 

I don't think anyone is asking for it to be made instant grat. At least not on this thread. but scaring away 95% (arbitrary figure) will kill the game much faster than any changes made to make it more accessible. it's all very well saying this isn't what the majority signed up for but at present the "majority" are a handful of players, people have genuine concerns that those handful don't justify an ongoing game and it gets pulled. I like the way the game is currently, I am older and probably more patient than your average youth but even I have been frustrated at times with elements of the game.

 

One month to 85. Let's think about that.

1) They changed the mechanics to satisfy the instant gratification crowd.
This is in itself is a problem, because they probably know nothing about zones in the game, explored to find best exp, figured out to how best optimize their decks. Figured out what weapons and/or spells work best against enemies. Rushes to end game with no real personal investment in the game.

2) So clearly doesn't care to or want to join a helpful guild, seek out the social aspect of the player driven economy game, and expects it to drop. This DIRECTLY is a opposition to the spirit of the game.

3) Conjecture, probably hasn't take the time to learn the intricacies of deck building to learn how to optimize their character, and probably followed a guide to quest. Why do I say this, because We all know the quest system is borked and why it's being re-done for Episode 2, and doing that in a month with no guide or previous exp... yeah okay.

It's not like WoW. It's not like other MMOs. Games that have followed that mechanic are almost never successful. The reason WoW was as successful as it was, was huge company, huge development team, and huge marketing ability. (Also they had the advantage of watching UO, EQ, AC and DAoC set the path)

Games like Wildstar which recently died and other small shops can't market like WoW did, and even when they have similar if not superior mechanics die, because they can't throw money at a problem.

So old schoolers get an MMO they actually enjoy, and everyone is trying to dumb it down to WoW's level. I prefer substance over glamour.

 

Really... so end game in a month is not instant gratification?

 

TBH this works both ways, a lot of things I 'whinged about' the greater element of community that played game still grumbled at have now been implemented as sensible new player / making it easier for established player base is fantastic so when my self imposed exile ends during winter I'm definitely looking forward to gaming in SotA again.

I do agree with OP too in thinking a bigger boost to exp pool for beginners would be a positive and not at all detrimental to established players, say 1million exp? We all like clicking shiny new skill buttons when you're new to the game the spamming of keys overrides any sense of common sense that may usually come after a few hours gaming and you then re-create a char having decided on a path to begin your main chars experience with.

oh and I'd still like a rune book style feature *runs off fast*

 

A few examples of newbie friendly ideas that don't break the system

1. Quest that explains how to use public vendors buy/sell orders - that system is for newbies but newbies don't know it exists, this would really help get to the heart of the underpinning ideas of the economy, ie player run.
2. more crafting quests, most gamers assume lowbie crafted stuff is guff, that isn't the case in this game and is pretty decent compared to the drops even at 50 or under craft skill.
3. Give people time to understand deck building and skills before burning their xp pool. You cant even touch the essence of the deck system till about 40 as you just don't have the cards to draw
4. 1 starting zone then move to the 2nd and then the third. the fact that these 3 areas all start at the same level doesn't make a natural progressions so you just hammer through the other two as they are too easy if you've spent time on the first one
5. more basic crafting recipies to start off with, especially in terms of basic components
6. there also needs to be a concerted effort to make the newbie friendly zones more complete as that is where all new players get their first impressions. by that I mean ditching pointless NPC's adding relvant ones with more quests and making the 2 or three areas around the starting zones really full of stuff to do.

I'm sure tere are hundreds of ideas out there that don't really break the system

 

To be honest I don't even know what the end game is, for me its opening a bar/tavern with an active guild around me and helping in the community. Is lvl 85 really the end game?

 

LOL - runes!

Yes it does cut both ways I agree - this forum is split between those that 'do' and those that 'don't want XYZ changes or things to stay the same.

In terms of a bigger exp pool, I have to say why? All it does is speed up levelling, gets you to end level mob fights faster and finishes the game prematurely. I guess if that's what you want and what you do, and then move on it makes perfect sense, but as @Chrystoph Reis said, and its also the same with me, I've taken months, no years even to get to level 9o, but I've covered every blade of grass on Novia, played every game system extensively and immersed myself in quests and the Lore.
If I was already posting that after a month that I was frustrated, close but not quite close enough to the end game and needed to urgently grab another 20 levels to enable me to solo dragons, I would probably give up and move on.

Its not that I think there is anything at all wrong with this play-style, in shooters like Battlefield and Planetside, that's exactly what I did, BUT I didn't stay there long. I think SOTA needs to invest in players that will stick around for years, especially given its economics are all about steady growth and half a dozen expansion episodes.

But it is the nature of this game, it splits opinions and all of its players, or most of them, new and old are passionate about it and want it to succeed. Broadly I think were all still on speaking terms.

 

What truly sux about this is, I have crafted lots of good newbie gear, armor and weapons, posted it really cheap for them, just to have someone buy all of it, and resell on their vendor for WAY too much. So, the newbie player never gets it, they can't afford it. So now, I just don't craft any....

 

This discussion reminds me of the WordPerfect* mantra, "Easy to use, not easy to learn." It's important to remember the distinction.

*Yes, I'm that old and I used to be a WordPerfect wizard.

 

Considering at that point you can do 99% of the content with a group, solo about 89%... I would say yes.

 

Thank you for your feedback. Unfortunately I don't agree that the game is too hard for new players. I think it's refreshing to come to a game where everything isn't just automatically understood or known. That's what makes it a unique and different game.

I do think that people need more access to folks that have answers to questions, however. I think that requiring people to install an understand how to use Discord just to have a question answered was actually what was unfair and difficult about the game. And I think the fact that we now have Universal chat as well as multiplayer in non hunting zones, new players should have an easier time of finding the information and help that they'll need.

 

Good feedback from new players perspective, more is needed th as most just leave if they dont like it, however some things are more acase that it doesnt need fixing so much as showing in the new tutorials how things really work ie xp pool.

1) Agree. quest loot is rubbish for the most part, and yes the intention is that the game is meant to be that the est gear is player crafted, but not that the only gear is player crafted, theres plenty of good drop items too .
They could easily give out equivalent of upto +5s as quest gear, or even use their system to take items that players have sold to npcs and give out semi decent ones from that list maybe ?

2) Not needed, the issue here is that your never meant to leave all your skills unlocked, at later levels you lock them all and build a pool then level certain skills faster.
The way system works = kill mo get xp it goes to pool. Each use of skill takes a proportion of xp from pool depending on its size to level skill so more in pool and less skills going up = bigger gain per use. This needs demonstrating in the new tutorials imo
as its a key part of the skill system and is totally not ovious to a new player.
Also grouping = more xp the more members

3) micro transactions, agreed, on the tab it should point out where to find merchants , it did use to take you to the store wesite ut its a wip atm so expect change there.

 

Level 85 is, like others pointed out, already high enough to do a large part of the game's content.

On the other hand, we have no cap on character progression except diminishing returns. This means that the goal is constantly moving forward if you compare yourself to the best of the best. And new content is added sporadically to reflect this development of the player base. So it's easy to understand how it seems a very grindy journey to get to the top.

To have a good experience, one should not imo rush to the part of being a fully fledged member in UT groups. You will leave the actual game in the back window.