My thoughts on getting players to return

Discussion in 'General Discussion' started by Dominor666, Dec 10, 2018.

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  1. Boradic Boneslasher

    Boradic Boneslasher Avatar

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    Well in my perspective and a lot of the old players I deal with outside game that refuse to have anything to do with the game, is that along time ago the creators for some dam reason went from dealing with things ingame such as the skill system and questing system to dam decorations an crap such as that making the game more of a SIMS type thing then anything they were talking about when they were first producing the game.... It really has become a shame I try an try an try to get myself to come back an put time into the game but I just can't get myself to put the hours in anymore.. An the older players I try to get to come back an give it a refuse hell I know one individual that says he gets physically sick when he thinks about what the game became and he was a VERY VERY VERY large supposrter of the game from kickstarter on tell...… to get the old players back I can see nothing less then a golden ticket to Willy Wonka's Factory getting it done.
     
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  2. kaeshiva

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    I agree with your whole post Majoria - we NEED to put recipe acquisition back into CRAFTING and create work orders/consumption of crafted goods - particularly since crafters have all the cash sinks and the current system is so unprofitable - unprofitable by design, I might add - except for the player to player component, which there just isn't enough demand for the end products to justify making them.

    This was by far, the most, yes, I'll say it, stupid, shortsighted, and baffling decision to date in my opinion. It made no sense then, It makes no sense now. The original recipe system we had - discovery - was unique, and interesting, and sensible. "Teaching" was a manual process - you explained to a player which items to put on the table, and they did it. It required that you had the materials to actually get the recipe into your book. This was often more costly than the 250g recipe-from-vendor price besides! It was a great system, and then we added a few 'drop only' unlearnable recipes, which was alright, but then someone decided to completely screw up the entire crafting system by adding this teachability, reteachability, and unteachability, seemingly at random, to all crafting recipes. Then for further insult, they scrambled all the recipe shops so nobody could find anything and all wiki/resources/etc. became out of date and still haven't fully recovered. To exacerbate the problem, they then took all the non-basic non-standard components and put them into supply bags? A rare drop from a rare drop with hundreds of possibilities making getting the thing you actually wanted an exercise in frustration. Players quickly capitalized on this listing the recipes for tens of thousands of gold. These prices are finally starting to drop off, I expect because most people who cared about filling their recipe book have either left or given up.

    It would make far more sense to award recipes for crafting, or even have the NPC teach you how to make 'white iron blade' for example, as part of a quest in which he wants you to make 20 of them. You learn the recipe, but you can't learn another until you finish his quest. All crafting recipes should be learned by crafting, or through some crafting related means. They should not and should never have been made combat dependent. Crafting is already combat dependent to finance the fuel costs AND to get the materials since you'll have to fight off monsters nonstop regardless of where you go, with very few non-lucrative suggestions. As crafting makes no real profit outside limited demand consumables, you also have to adventure to finance recipe learning.

    I've been fiddling with LoA, too, and while I'm not a fan of everything in the ruleset, the tradeskill element seems to work well. Mine ore, make things, turn in things for work order, learn recipe and get small payment. Repeat. Develop your skill, while filling up your recipe knowledge. I guess that's probably why regardless of which LoA official server I go on, there are so many people online crafting packed around the blacksmithing anvil I can barely click on it.
     
    Last edited: Dec 16, 2018
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  3. Gia2

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    I'm enjoying LOA as well and have to admit it has multiple interesting aspects on its side:

    Openworld : It's incredible how can help blending into an adventuring mood. Actually travel by foot or horse to the destination with all the perils it's awesome.
    Pvp : Self explanatory. Bloody bay It's HORRIBLE pvp wise. only shores with Mobs add everytime. No plains or hills to actually build grp tactict. It's the worst pvp design ever seen in a mmo. I'm 100% sure devs never actually had 1 hr playing pvp in there or they 'd notice how bad that is. Entry map points are random. Can actually be farmed at respawn pts.
    Look Emain Macha/Odin gate/GW2 maps how perfect they are for gvg team fights.

    Classes : Everybody is useful in something. Team up is always welcome and required and so on. Not hybrids everywhere. No NEED to change deck every second to match the competitor build. Actually learn how to use both downside and advantages from the class you build instead of bastardize it every inc. This is required

    QoL : Eveerything is easy understable. No hard formulas beyond things. Theorycrafting that match to the actual result. Every UI part (target health/grp health mostly) is detachable and moveable in the screen.

    VARIETY (highlighted, not scream) : SOTA's 3 Statistics are really silly and force people to spend million to have resistance (ATT/2). Loa (and a ton of other old school/new school use statistics. MUCH MORE intelligent behaviour. Treasure maps. Encounters. I've seen personally at least 15+ different BOSS combact behaviour and have only 1 barely GM toon.

    Stamina/mana difference. HAving only focus for both a berserk and a mage in sota it's so terrible i could get banned if i say how i think about

    SANDBOX crafting: everything can be harvested, not only those "Red Trees"
    And all that reached with way less than 500k Bucks and a small team. Speachless

    Still playing sota tho to finish dungeon
     
    Last edited: Dec 16, 2018
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  4. Floors

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    Lol.
     
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  5. Gia2

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    It's gaming, not marriage ;)
     
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  6. amaasing

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    What would bring me back? The ability to actually play the game in a meaningful way as a casual player. I am not a strong fighter and don't really want to be. I don't play PVP and never will. I want to login in and play for a bit each day and actually have fun exploring, gathering resources, getting fun/meaningful loot when I kill something. I would like to be able to go into some of the areas and actually have a chance at not dying - and even though there are a few areas that a casual player can access and play without dying all the time - the loot is not worth it.

    However it seems that the developers got too 'chummy' early on with players whose sole focus was 'Make it Harder, Take away any Hand-Holding, Punish the Players for everything' and instead of following a smart game design, they chose to follow what their player friends wanted. And here we are.....now back peddling with all the 'Quality of Life' changes that are ripping out lots of the 'Make it Harder, Take away any Hand-Holding, and Punish the players' elements that were put in the game (glad to see ALL of that go, honestly), but not really addressing the play-ability (or lack thereof) of the current game.

    I totally agree with what @kaeshiva wrote. And FYI - forcing all the players to now be in Multi-player mode just so new players will see more players in the towns and on the overland map is not going to save this game. Better content that everyone can play - regardless of their 'level' - and actually have fun and get decent rewards for their efforts would be a good start to get me back into the game. Personally, I would like to see a Release that had some new, fun areas for the casual players instead of everything focused on Trials and Badass Monsters and Group Play. Why can't low level areas have a Boss or two? Something that can be defeated with a little effort by a single player with better rewards for low level players and less rewards for higher level players.

    Content - not Complexity - should be the focus for now. Let's get the game back to being fun to play and not just a daily grind that produces no rewards.
     
  7. Barugon

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    I agree. It seems like most of the new content is intended for groups to grind and grind.
     
  8. kaeshiva

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    Indeed.
    What "other games" tend to do well with group content, is if content requires a group, then everyone in that group is rewarded for their efforts.
    This is handled a lot of different ways - bosses drop nice things EVERY time but require a group due to mechanics that makes them unsoloable, or
    Sometimes each player gets their 'own' loot from a kill, rather than having to split up the meagre bits that the boss has dropped.
    Sometimes a quest type flag limits how many times that boss will drop you loot in a certain period.
    And so on.

    Content requiring a group that only spits out a single reward, a small small % of the time, is unsatisfying.

    The problem seems to be the small handful of extremely hardcore solo players who, some through legitimate skills, and others through...questionable practices....manage to trivialize content that is downright impossible for the majority of the playerbase. By repeatedly steamrolling group content, they load up on these rewards and so, the rewards must be nerfed, their value must be decreased, their frequency must be decreased - all of which we've seen happen.

    We should not be balancing the game against these players. I reject the notion of "as long as there are players at lvl 120, we need to make content that challenges players at level 120." The reality is we should focus on -everyone else- to ensure they are having a good gaming experience, and not just grinding gold to buy things from the hardcore soloists that they have no possible way of obtaining by any other means.

    We've seen attempts to try and make the bosses 'not solo friendly' - but unfortunately just making them hit harder isn't the answer - it just makes it even tougher for everyone else, and the soloists still find a way. The loot may be good enough, if you are a solo player who can steamroll a boss in 42 seconds flat and reset it over and over - by sheer quantity you'll get something. That same boss takes a group of people 30 minutes and several deaths, the few hundred gold worth of random crap it drops split 8 ways is just insulting.

    I'm a level 120 player. And I'm refusing to re-spec into the cookie-cutter, flavor of the week build because quite frankly, I don't enjoy it. And that's my choice - not disputing that. But if I'm frustrated at my level, I can see those with less time (or willingness) to grind-grind-grind getting even more frustrated, especially when the door keeps slamming in their face every few releases when content they could previously do suddenly becomes impossible due to systemic changes, and they're left with 'grind the trivial crap' or 'grind in a group' neither of which is very rewarding.

    I'd strongly consider incremental rewards - it works well in a lot of games that have playerbases with mixed levels of commitment. As I mentioned previously, kill a cabalist, get 2-10 'dark fabric scraps' (or whatever) - every time. Eventually, you'll have enough to craft its hood instead of relying on the slot machine methodology. Want a dragon head? Surely each time you kill it, there should be a few usable skull fragments ...get enough of those, assemble a skull. That sort of thing. It means that you know going in to whatever activity you're doing that you'll at least make some sort of progress toward a goal, instead of what usually happens -you spend an entire evening standing around waiting on respawns in a full group waiting for your turn to loot and getting zip. That stops being fun after a while.
     
  9. Addison

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    I really appreciate your comments here because I feel they definitely apply to me! :D

    I am an RN with crazy hours at all times during the week, giving me a very limited amount of free time to actually play the game. Then, when I do get the opportunity to play, I come to find out that my character is completely useless because the skills I wanted to invest in have been nerfed and now have to start back at square one! I have done this three times already and REALLY HATE IT, lol! ;) One tries not to get discouraged, but it's not easy when you can only play a few hours a week and your character now stinks because of uber levelers "working the system"! I don't blame those players, it's human nature to exploit every skill set to make your character as strong as possible! Especially if one has the time to play ten plus hours a day. I blame the devs here for focusing on inhibiting those players and ergo, hurting us little people :(. I'm level 90 and feel like I stink as a light armored archer.

    When you then add into the mix the really weak quest system that doesn't appropriately award you with good XP or loot things get even more discouraging. I have completely stopped playing, other than to pay taxes, simply because I feel like there is nothing left to do except grind. I finished the story, which I found rather lacking, and have done almost all of the quests available in the game. So now what? I have completely lost interest in grinding because I know any investment in my skills will probably result in another nerf making all that "grind time" a waste. I really enjoyed Shroud, but outside of the QoL decisions, I have been somewhat disappointed in where things have been going. That isn't to take away from the developers, I know they are working their tails off to get things lined up for Episode 2 and 2019. :)
     
  10. Anendrue

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    As a recently returning player. The book might go along way towards keeping me in. If it returns 100% including exp lost on unlearning skills on previous attempted builds. Especially with crafting specialization coming. Now there might be a reason to dump all your producer exp into a highly specialized skill tree while using alt accounts for refining and/or other crafting builds.
     
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  11. macnlos

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    A respec does not the game fun make. Yeah, it’s a nice thing but after it you are still playing the same game.. loved the comment that with all the decos and such it feels like the Sims.

    Don’t through the baby out with the bath water here... but let’s be honest... an ugly baby it is. When it stops being the Sims, I might take a look at it. Sad thing is I dropped 500$ for the PoT in Eps2. But let’s be clear I have no problem cutting bait if needed.
     
  12. Sway

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    yes please
     
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  13. Sway

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    I agree with this fully. maybe some of the basics when you start you might have to buy because you learning this skill. but quest that can give you recipes is a great idea
     
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  14. macnlos

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    If you want to be just a crafter, you can do that. Oh... wait... if I want to do that I have to go adventuring to get recipes to learn how to craft... <-- That is just ridiculous. But I can guess you can just by the recipes off a vendor... but you will need gold for that too and since the economy is a mess, I guess you still have to go adventuring..
     
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  15. Sway

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    course you can't get gold from crafting unless it's to another player. but they can all make what you make unless you make something special, to witch you need a special recipe that you need to get from fighting
     
  16. marthos

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    So a little self-serving here, but can anyone with some sway with the Devs see if they can get their opinion on some of these ideas? I'd love to see DS or Chris weigh in on whether my suggestions match what the devs want to do?

    That was a disappointment when they added that. I mean, it's good that we aren't blocked anymore, but I would have rather seen the players have to liberate them for that to happen. It would be on us to keep the roads flowing smoothly. Worst case scenario, players just have to pay a reasonable fee to skip the scene on the overworld map.

    I would have added a charge to access your bank from another city too. The convenience is great, but we need gold sinks. For example, the more control points that are liberated, the smaller the fee to access your bank from another city. This could emulate global trade and the cost the "bankers" incur from moving your goods around. There is are so many ways the control points could be used to impact the entire world, item availability and price it seems like a wasted opportunity. Towns could have quests that pop up asking for players to escort caravans through occupied control points - the quest would spawn a special encounter ideal for one or two players. When the control points are freed, those quests go away.

    Layering control points on top/in conjunction with other systems that impact the whole world could lead to really interesting scenarios. Control point closed off, plus the miners guild completely out of power but the mages guild in power, plus Darkstarr in political control could result in a widespread shortage of coal. This situation causes alchemist NPCs to create artificial that is really expensive but has a small chance to produce really rare ingots when used in smelting.

    Think of all the levers we could create that control the world and all the different combinations of those levers. Each player can pull those levels in any direction to a small degree, and the world that exists at given time is the combination of all of our little lever pulls. That to me is essential in created a living breathing world. That would be a game-changer MMO. SOTA has the foundation to do this...I just wonder if the developers see that as achievable or if they're stuck selling new decorations/houses to keep the lights on until another wave of cash is somehow found.
     
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