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Post by dante2377 on Oct 5, 2016 23:30:04 GMT
Just wanted to give some feedback from a player who's new to HG, but not new to NWN (played lots of action servers including several with post 40 systems [Awakening and Aventia]). I've gotten my first PC up to lvl 38 and all under-38 tags, just for reference.
Players - everyone who engaged with me was nice and helpful. Multiple people helped with gold, one guy gave me 8-10 items between level 32 and 40 items (I forgot your player name, but thank you!), helping with runs and tags, etc.
Builds - I'm glad I started the thread in the build section about what build was good to start and what would be good/useless later on. I know many people start with melee or fighter/rogue type builds for exploring and I think they would definitely run into the "Oh I made immortal but now my PC sucks because I dont have tons of super rare gear and I'm not a caster, bye bye!" issue that Poli mentioned in a separate thread. I'm the kind of guy that plans every build out down to the feat and skill all the way through to 40 or 60 or whatever the end level is before ever starting, but not everyone is going to research like that. Obviously, making non-cores much more endgame viable is a large server type change (and may not be admin desired or dev possible), but maybe there's some items that could be added (or scrolls for UMD PCs, see scrolls below) not usable if you have caster class, that would help out, because even as you get into the 20s, I can see it becoming very tough on new players that choose a non-caster.
Dying - I'm not sure what the chance is, but I've died 8 times and lost an item every time. Several times it was a key item, one of the few good random loot items I'd found or been gifted, and that really hurt my ability to play (this was in the 20s and 30s) for 24 hours. At one point, I'd stayed up later than I should have (past 1am for me) and died from a boss. This now meant I had to wait 2 nights to get it back, since I wasn't going to get it back the whole next day. I understand that if death doesn't have any penalty, you don't fear it, but for a new player with no bank gear, it really knocked down the fun level for me several notches having to either not play or play gimped for a whole day. I think you want new players to explore and find things for themselves, but the item ghosting penalty punishes new players for exploring (as it's inevitable you explore beyond where you can survive).
I'd like to suggest altering it so that under a certain level (20 or 30 maybe), there's no chance of ghosting an item. I mean are the low level PC's really what the item ghosting was designed for (maybe it was, but it seems to me it's more designed for post-40 penalties). Or maybe if the PC has less than 5 items with rarity greater than or equal to rare, then they don't have an item ghosted.
scrolls - again, there are scrolls all over, if you know where to look it seems. Why not just have them in the shop? Is it to limit UMD? Is the point to make people "earn" the scrolls (e.g. you must level a wizard and scribe them yourself)? If so, it seems to be a low barrier since people will just ask in-game.
glossary - put the glossary in the newbie guide instead of immortal guide. Also, include all the common abbreviations and slang that you'll see in shouts/run shouts. e.g. calling dis, 4/10 full need ACD, can drag leechers. "grab" include all the LL/Hell/Abyss slang for areas and bosses.
anyway, just my thoughts from the last bit here .
Dante
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Post by chirality on Oct 6, 2016 2:00:43 GMT
Dying - I'm not sure what the chance is, but I've died 8 times and lost an item every time. Several times it was a key item, one of the few good random loot items I'd found or been gifted, and that really hurt my ability to play (this was in the 20s and 30s) for 24 hours. At one point, I'd stayed up later than I should have (past 1am for me) and died from a boss. This now meant I had to wait 2 nights to get it back, since I wasn't going to get it back the whole next day. I understand that if death doesn't have any penalty, you don't fear it, but for a new player with no bank gear, it really knocked down the fun level for me several notches having to either not play or play gimped for a whole day. I think you want new players to explore and find things for themselves, but the item ghosting penalty punishes new players for exploring (as it's inevitable you explore beyond where you can survive). Essentially the same thing has been repeated over and over in the past. It's unfortunate to have game activity stifled as punishment, rather than the death consequence impacting some other "meaningful" part of a player's/toon's identity. Do you have any suggestions? This is a difficult issue to address, and it's hard to come up with alternatives. XP and gold loss are both poor options: even if the loss was tweaked to hit harder, neither of these factors are very important until the cost hits a really high mark. For gold, there's already been yearly complaints about how punishing LL gold loss is for unghosting echoes; for xp, there's reincarnation which with the advent of PLs made losing anything under a million inconsequential on the one hand, while anything approaching a couple million is very hard to let go of. I think the best solution is to leave the system as-is for LL toons, but at this time in the game's life it would probably be helpful to address issues with lowbies: I'd like to suggest altering it so that under a certain level (20 or 30 maybe), there's no chance of ghosting an item. I mean are the low level PC's really what the item ghosting was designed for (maybe it was, but it seems to me it's more designed for post-40 penalties). Or maybe if the PC has less than 5 items with rarity greater than or equal to rare, then they don't have an item ghosted. Good feedback and recommendations. I think it's safe to say that lowbie mortals ghosting items has zero impact on veterans, and disproportionately painful impact on new players in terms of gear loss and replacability. As far as losing a critical item and not wanting to play a toon goes, a more experienced player likely has another toon or 2 that they can play while grumbling about setting aside the one they were focused for a day or 2, but a new player is probably going to just say "welp time to play other game now".
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Post by condude on Oct 6, 2016 3:16:05 GMT
I'd like to suggest altering it so that under a certain level (20 or 30 maybe), there's no chance of ghosting an item. I mean are the low level PC's really what the item ghosting was designed for (maybe it was, but it seems to me it's more designed for post-40 penalties). Or maybe if the PC has less than 5 items with rarity greater than or equal to rare, then they don't have an item ghosted. Good feedback and recommendations. I think it's safe to say that lowbie mortals ghosting items has zero impact on veterans, and disproportionately painful impact on new players in terms of gear loss and replacability. As far as losing a critical item and not wanting to play a toon goes, a more experienced player likely has another toon or 2 that they can play while grumbling about setting aside the one they were focused for a day or 2, but a new player is probably going to just say "welp time to play other game now". Agree 100% with this. On a low-level toon (non-HC, obviously), if I fugue it's completely inconsequential. I'll slap on some slightly inferior piece of gear (or store-bought gear), and keep chugging along. It is a serious detriment to newer players though, since they don't necessarily have the luxury of having another haste item, for example, on hand. Is there a reason the item loss needs to be in effect pre-Immo? Or at least make there be no time limit on when you can un-slag an item. It seems unnecessary and counter-productive to make newer players wait a day to keep playing when they die.
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Post by thomascovenant on Oct 6, 2016 5:33:00 GMT
We all had to face of ghosly echo soon are later, but a thing you dont know the ghosly echo date since only few years ago , when i started on hg if you fugued or limbo the gear was not to go ghosly echo for 24 it was lost for ever.
Your point of view is undestandable but if there no risk this mean players was able to just leroyyyy and the baddest thing who could happen was to be send back to town after fugue, a kind of penalty but not so much.
Even if we are not legion on HG since a couples years this is a bunch easyer for newbies to start as us old players we try to give hands to newbies, sure we have different way , gold, gears, help on tags , informations etc but we all give hand in different way.
Most of the time when i see a new player i am use since years to give him 50 million gold to start ( and i am far to be the only one who help newbies in gold ) and if i partyed with him a few time there this happen i give more and also i always try to give hand on gears when they are around lvl 30 and over and also when them toon become immortal.
To help a newbie on gears have a double way, first sure you help this player to enjoy more the game and to be able to succeed on runs, but also and this is for my part important thing, if you help a newbie with gears you also help your party in many way, with good gears his toon have more chance to survive on the run then you help him to enjoy more the run but also you dont have to rez him xxxx times during the run, also he will be more helpfull and he will be able to focus more on how the vets play then to have his concentration on healing himself and to flee sometime. Sure when you give gears to a player it's form the player own inventory, but this worth to give them help, also this show them to help each others is good for all. Gold, gears etc on the game is virtual then IRL you lose nothing at all and this will not change your budget in RL.
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Post by Retribution on Oct 6, 2016 6:12:14 GMT
How about making item fugue time scale with level? Say at level 10 and below it's 1 hour, level 20 and below it's 2 hours, 30 and below 4 hours, 40 and below 8 hours, then 24 hours past that. At low levels you level up so fast the gear isn't relevant in 24 hours anyway, but if it really cripples your build the wait isn't that long (at the most one session of play time)
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Post by thomascovenant on Oct 6, 2016 6:14:10 GMT
Realy good and wise suggestion you did Retribution
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Post by desocupado on Oct 6, 2016 12:21:21 GMT
-On fungoing and echoing Personally I find gold, xp and tag progression (time) plenty. Maybe allowing one to pay an extra fee to recover a just echoed item is enough.
On the other hand, there is an item called stone of rebirth - it basically revives you after you'd die (while being consumed in the process, if you have more than ones, those additional ones have 50% chance of being consumed in the process). // fixed
-On classes If you want to go melee, pick a class with self buffs - Paladin, BG, battle Cleric or Staffmaster (and their variants/quasiclasses). I must warn you it becomes worse as you get 35+
-Glossary I suppose one item could be useful, but there's also the !newbie
ABCD - the 4 core classes Arcane (sorc and wizard) Bard Cleric and Druid Tia, Dis, Min Phleg, Stygia Malbo Malad Cania Nessus - 1th-9th layers from Hells - for 55+ characters All welcome / leechers - Run formed by someone who doesn't expect any help or intervention from other players (i.e. free xp) //not really fun
MoaD - non imortal level 40 tag with key requirements Drow-xul-Matriarch - non imortal level 40 tag with extensive key collecting Immo - immortal the normal last level 40 tag Drowned Academy - a pre-LL tag without a level requirement (I think), usually done after becoming immortal Immortal Kings - another level 40 tag with extensive key collecting (and tough undead mobs)
As a rule of thumb, any run is called by it's nickname, if you don't recognize it, it's a Legendary run (45+). When in doubt use !newbie to ask questions
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Post by chirality on Oct 6, 2016 17:20:38 GMT
I think it would make more sense to just disable echoing for lowbies, period. From newbie run chats over the last year or so, it seems like new players don't even know what's going on or how to fix it when it happens the first time, and despite posts in this thread to the contrary, there really is not "always a vet online" to make their pain go away, nor was there usually one online before the fugue to hook them up with a bunch of free gold and stuff so they can echo worry-free, and obviously they were never properly tutored in the first place if they don't know basics like how death works, how banks work, how tags work, etc. I think people would probably rather deal with even a full level loss and still feel like they can continue playing and earn it back. Scaling time duration is interesting conceptually but anything past 1 hour might as well be 8 or 24, and 1 hour would still just make me go do something else tbh, while 2-8 hrs is like "ok well that's my daily freetime session, guess I'll check back on hg tomorrow". This doesn't do anything to solve the problem of people just not wanting to play for X time. On the other hand, there is an item called stone of rebirth - it basically revives you after you'd die (it has 50% chance of being consumed in the process). Bit of a simplification, or you forgot how it works. The first carried stone has a 100% chance of being consumed in the process. Each additional stone has a 50% chance of being consumed as well. Anyway, it's helpful to tell a player this item exists, in case they don't know about it, but saying "here's a way you can avoid death" is not a good answer to the discussion at hand, which is about about leniency in regard to 24hr echo window.
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Post by dante2377 on Oct 6, 2016 19:00:58 GMT
desocupado - thanks; I know what all those abbreviations are for now (I jot them down and look them up later), but it would be good to have seen them in the newbie guide beforehand. Like chirality mentioned, not all questions get answered in-game (for me about 75% get answered) if there's no old-timers or they're busy during a run and majority of people if they read anything beforehand, will probably read that and nothing else (e.g. they won't dig into the forums for 6 hours beforehand). Also, stone of rebirth is nice and helps (especially now that I have Gr Sanctuary), but if you got wiped the first time with buffs, unless there's a long enough safe time after the stone rez's you to use a TP gem, you're just going to get wiped again most likely. And still doesn't change the fact that you'll get echoed and lose something important.
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Post by Deleted on Oct 6, 2016 21:37:47 GMT
Or maybe if the PC has less than 5 items with rarity greater than or equal to rare, then they don't have an item ghosted. I think that this is probably a good idea. Sometimes there is a tendency for older players to start the "when I was your age I walked 20 miles to school, uphill both ways!" in terms of comparing today's system to the past, but it's worth noting that new players have to solo a lot more than they used to (due to lower server activity). This makes it 1) more likely to lose an item in the first place (since they have to try soloing harder bosses with little knowledge), and 2) more punishing to lose an item (since there isn't a party to help out, the reduction in relative strength is greater).
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Post by desocupado on Oct 7, 2016 1:20:48 GMT
On the other hand, there is an item called stone of rebirth - it basically revives you after you'd die (it has 50% chance of being consumed in the process). Bit of a simplification, or you forgot how it works. The first carried stone has a 100% chance of being consumed in the process. Each additional stone has a 50% chance of being consumed as well. Anyway, it's helpful to tell a player this item exists, in case they don't know about it, but saying "here's a way you can avoid death" is not a good answer to the discussion at hand, which is about about leniency in regard to 24hr echo window. Actually I mixed up... It has been a long time since I used one. There is so much content beyond 1-40.
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Post by arek on Oct 8, 2016 5:00:30 GMT
I actually think it wouldn't be a bad idea to reduce the time an item is "lost" to Fugue/Limbo to (at most) 18 hours. This keeps it so that you can't re-use the item on another run the same "day", but makes sure you have it available the next day if you need it. -- arek
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Post by dante2377 on Oct 11, 2016 2:04:52 GMT
Some of the items in Lazar's other thread (not related to his multi-boxing point) got me thinking about some feedback, so I thought I'd point it out here.
1. length of runs - someone mentioned 1+ hour runs, which are fine with me. But from what I'm gathering at higher levels, it's more like take 45 mins to organize, then a 2 hour run. that's a pretty steep time investment. If that's what a lot of the LL runs are like, that could be off-putting for me.
2. I feel the 40 tags and immortal should be more accessible (e.g. easier for people without years of stashed gear). If I hadn't had two guys who'd been here 10 years drop a shit ton of lvl40 gear on me, I would have been dead weight getting dragged. As it was, with all the mana area drow having SR50 or better, a lvl40 cleric was basically reduced to running around with battletide and prayer, maybe a few implosions hitting occasionally, but otherwise it was less than stellar performance on my part. Same with doing the ruined academy run, though the lizardfolk were imploding, the revenants on the boss map I could't touch at all. It was basically save my destructions for Balors. Even some of the 30s, it seems kind of silly to require a specific damage type (aka mother of corn) and be not doable without arcane. For hells when you already have immos and have done some of the early 40s looting spots sure.
3. sitting at 40 but not having immortality, it's the same situation as Mother of Corn - waiting around to find a group of PCs at a very specific point. At least there's shackling so some vets have been willing to step in. But the run needing all the books and crown first, just to start it, might be fine if the vets have the books, but I only have 2 drow books. For a first time PC, it's a lot of just getting dragged. If I could get into Feywilds to do some solo looting, that might help, but from the wiki it looks like you need immortal to get the key from the person (wasn't a dialogue choice for me).
I realize it's a party server, but most people are partying at LL spots and in the 30s and 40 no Immo, it's real hit or miss about getting an actual party together.
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Post by desocupado on Oct 11, 2016 2:58:14 GMT
1. length of runs - someone mentioned 1+ hour runs, which are fine with me. But from what I'm gathering at higher levels, it's more like take 45 mins to organize, then a 2 hour run. that's a pretty steep time investment. If that's what a lot of the LL runs are like, that could be off-putting for me. I'm the one who keeps bringing that up. In actuality its possible to do an end game runs (sort of) in less than one hour. I think there was a Nessus (last layer of hell, a long run) today that took about 2-3h. I've been on some that took 1h. It's variable. That being said, runs only get so short due people doing them overleveled OR with a good balanced group that plays well (1 - druid drop SR 2- then cleric and bard drop saves and 3- everyone start killing thing left and right - like an oiled machine). However since people are used to longer runs, strong groups tend to chain runs (i.e. complete several tag from the same chain - just like people did several houses in mantakaloss). So it does often get into the 1-3h session. 2. I feel the 40 tags and immortal should be more accessible (e.g. easier for people without years of stashed gear). If I hadn't had two guys who'd been here 10 years drop a shit ton of lvl40 gear on me, I would have been dead weight getting dragged. As it was, with all the mana area drow having SR50 or better, a lvl40 cleric was basically reduced to running around with battletide and prayer, maybe a few implosions hitting occasionally, but otherwise it was less than stellar performance on my part. Same with doing the ruined academy run, though the lizardfolk were imploding, the revenants on the boss map I could't touch at all. It was basically save my destructions for Balors. Even some of the 30s, it seems kind of silly to require a specific damage type (aka mother of corn) and be not doable without arcane. For hells when you already have immos and have done some of the early 40s looting spots sure. Now do you see how the druid cold have been a better choice for the first time to bat SR? (actually cleric's battletide and prayer are very important to land spells, so were your class druid, you would suffer in a different way) Well as a cleric your are supposed to have epic spell penetration feat by level 40 - thus that SR 50 would be pretty easy to beat (1d20+(CL+6) vs SR 50) As a Cleric you could also use spells that ignore SR, like Blade Barrier and Earthquake. This is one thing I tried to bring up when I started that whole 3 servers in one thread - when it was just 1-40 content it would make sense to have tricky bosses (thereof way more people in the 1-40 range to deal with it). 3. sitting at 40 but not having immortality, it's the same situation as Mother of Corn - waiting around to find a group of PCs at a very specific point. At least there's shackling so some vets have been willing to step in. But the run needing all the books and crown first, just to start it, might be fine if the vets have the books, but I only have 2 drow books. For a first time PC, it's a lot of just getting dragged. If I could get into Feywilds to do some solo looting, that might help, but from the wiki it looks like you need immortal to get the key from the person (wasn't a dialogue choice for me). I realize it's a party server, but most people are partying at LL spots and in the 30s and 40 no Immo, it's real hit or miss about getting an actual party together. Let's see... Well the first character I played those level 40 tags was a staffmaster (boy I felt really powerful, damage wise) I didn't feel as much dragged, as much as lost inthe tag festival. Although that character was a glass canon. Maybe the whole aquire the immortal crown should be a tag (instead of an item drop that require pick lock - like a pixie at least), that allows people to start an immo run without so much hassle. The immortal is another tricky enemy - I know he takes negative damage (I don't remember how well he takes other types)
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Post by dante2377 on Oct 11, 2016 14:29:27 GMT
One other thought -why exactly does reading a subrace book need to wait until 50? Is there some sort of penalty for that, like a paying your dues thing? I have a bunch of thri-keen subrace books, just curious what the logic is behind not being able to reincarnate my open sub cleric to something better?
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