The Good and the Bad

Good: Great new content.

Bad: I wish I could get to it. I'm so busy running away from everything, and I mean EVERYTHING. I'm getting stuck in a ridiculous amount of random encounters, all stuff I can't really kill. Sure I could kill cows and sheep I guess. But is that my only option?

I could join a group. Sure, don't allow solo play until higher levels.

I own a town I can't even get to because of control points.

Pretty frustrating way to spend a night in-game. LOVE all the new stuff, but it's not helpful if I can't get to it until it's time to go back to work.

No other way to say it...THINK about the new player experience. This is going to kill people trying this out for the first time. I know what I'm doing and I'm really struggling.

Back to the never ending struggle of making it to the town that I freakin own. 10 years from now maybe I'll see it.

 

Turn off random encounters, and for gods sake let POT owners zone to their damn towns without jumping through 1 million hoops. (for this release)

 

Bites tongue....

 

I am curious where your town is - and what route you took to get there. Mine is up the coast North of Brittany and I didn't have any trouble getting there through EastGap (or whatever the new one is called). I was wearing the starting armor and took a side path through the pass. I got hit by a couple of fire-balls, but took minimal damage.

 

I managed to get through pretty much without even being seen.. at night. My town is up near Noreach.. talk about off the beaten path.. there isn't even a road.

 

Comically my initial experience at the beginning of R20 went like this:

1) Do tutorial. Kill skeletons with reasonable hit points. Arrive in Soltown.
2) Exit Soltown. Walk toward Solania.
3) Random Encounter 1: WOLVES AGAIN. Of course you get ganked by a big pack of them and can't fight them so immediately run for exit.
4) Get hat quest in Solania, head for Perrenial Coast.
5) Random Encounter 2: MORE WOLVES. See point 3.
6) Try Perrenial Trail. Get killed by bears.
7) Random Encounter 3: Roadisde Ruin. Oohh lets investi- aggro 10 skeletons - run for exit.
8) Random Encounter 4: (yes - right after): Bandits. Pretty much the same outcome as point 3.
9) Run around looking for something I can kill before giving up and just going to Greymark Forest on the Hidden Vale for the thrill of farming wolves there because that is about all I can do at level 5.

I don't want leveled zones like in WoW but a new player should have a reasonable variety of challenges they can take on right at the start. Most of my hunting consisted of going from one zone to the next trying to find some trash mob that was weak enough for me to be able to fight.

 

Verdantis Shardfall.

I'm now using magic and leveling up and eventually I'll make it through the two control points.

It's frustrating on several levels though. After a huge, long download, I'm now forced to grind through the same wolves and bears and nonsense that I've grinded through in some form or fashion during the last 19 releases. When all I really want to do is see my town, put my wizard tower up, and then ease into the combat system again.

Here I am grinding again, just so I can see what I paid for. It's really REALLY stupid. But not just from my entitled point of view, from the point of view of someone that is trying this game out for the first time, it's probably about the worst experience someone could have.

 

But its Immersion...

 

Well, like I said earlier.. I made it through Eastreach Gap without any fighting at all. Found the side passage and snuck around and straight to the back gate without being seen.

 

North Valeway is my spot.

Skeletons. Just agro one. Turn auto attack off. Make sure their hit box is lined up.

Gold, sword, residue, wax.

Not amazing but it will get you to level 10 and you can pay for your skills...

I must have wicked luck. Only 2 encounters in 2 days (one on QA)

I think we are north of Tazar. The world ends anyway.

Good luck on reaching your POT. It's relaxing and safe in there.

 

I'd like your post a lot better if you said "hey man, try this" instead of "hey, I didn't have a problem so it must be fine."

Do you see the difference?

I guess I'm just a crazy person for thinking that perhaps I would get to see my town I've been waiting months for, instead of spending the last 6 hours grinding away on one mob at a time, leveling, and generally being sucked into every random encounter in the game 20 times over.

The reason for this thread is FEEDBACK, btw. I'm not simply venting and crying about this. I'm saying "hey devs, this is really jacked up!"

 

I can't hit anything. I miss like 7 out of 10 times. I never seem to be lined up. Maybe I have auto attack turned on or something, I have no idea anymore. All I know is that it's painful, and I'm doing a lot of stuff I really don't care one bit about during testing.

 

Now wait when you get there you'll find your data hasn't been entered yet so you don't actually own it yet. You'll have a buttload of lot markers you can't do squat with. I'm still waiting on my data.

 

Well yeah.. except I didn't say "so it must be fine".. you're putting words in my mouth there. See the difference?

 

I'm not sure what that means.

 

It means that while most of the towns are in.. not all the ones that are have been completely configured. It's in the known issues list. Some of us.. (hopefully not you but I'm one of the poor souls effected).. can't place any lots yet cause our towns don't recognize us as the owner. Hopefully those will all be done before the weekend. So what I've got is huge open space I can't do anything with yet.

 

I see. Yeah that would be frustrating too.

 

And I pulled an all nighter to place lots in the morning. lol

 

When you're used to eating wolves for breakfast, it is certainly a shock to meet a pack of them who eat you for breakfast instead. In that respect, playing previous releases where I ended up being a match for most NPC mobs, spoiled me.

I have fond memories of playing Two Worlds, a single player RPG and one I loved for the inventory and weapon stacking system. When I started out, I had to walk down a road where I was attacked by a single wolf. I don't remember how many times that wolf killed me, but it was a lot!

Starting over as a new avatar in R20 I was reminded of those days, how frustrating it was starting out, and how rewarding it was when I was finally able to one-shot that blasted wolf!

For a new player who wants only to use melee weapons, the mobs in the random encounters are deadly. I never specialized in melee, so I don't know if there are new player tactics that would be successful against mobs. If you are willing to use magic, fire arrow is ideal for ranged hit-and-run combat. After being killed by both wolves and bandits in random encounters, I went back to the skills trainer and got me my old friend fire arrow. With that spell I was able to kill all the wolves and all the bandits in random encounters. It's ideal against zombies, too. Granted, it took ages because my (level 8?) character was very weak, but the satisfaction was great when I looted all the corpses. What I found more frustrating than the mob was the fact that most of the visible resources were already in a harvested state, so the rewards were limited.

To sum up, I don't think that new players should have an easy time of surviving in the wild. What would be nice would be some kind of help chat (discussed in other threads) where new players could get help and tips from more experienced ones. I think that would be a great community experience.

 

I found it rough going as well, so I went and did 3 quests and got to level 15. The quests didn't take very long at all and there wasn't any dying on my part LOL!

I did Morton's Ledger quest, the Beer quest and the herbs quest, all of which I got from Owls Head. Time spent about 20mins tops.