COP 1 - 5 and removing the bar for new players to participate in the raidgame
- Thread starter Glamrin
- Start date
Its the nature of EQ or any mmo rpg that you have to play more then 1 hour a day to get anything done, this isn't a facebook app.
It takes more then an hour just to clear to some raid targets, gees this topic went from CoP being revamped to people crying that gear/tomes/platinum don't rain from the heavens upon login.
It takes more then an hour just to clear to some raid targets, gees this topic went from CoP being revamped to people crying that gear/tomes/platinum don't rain from the heavens upon login.
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Yale1
Dalayan Adventurer
If playing time isn't a problem than CoP's are also not a problem. Aside from that Glamrin specifically said non hardcore / casual players. You don't need CoP's to raid. Thaz and ToT were raided successfully before they ever even came out. People scum in alts for loot in high tier zones all the time, there is no reason people cant still raid other than not having time (or if you are very under-tiered, but that is a different story)
If you going to be sarcastic at least be good at it.
DetroitIsCold
Dalayan Beginner
Otcho basically hit the problem exactly on point. I play a beastlord named Klamp and I found myself a guild so far(not a main raider but I will get my chance) and have done quite fine for myself. It isn't the CoP grind that cause new casual/hardcore people to get frustrated and possibly leave, it is the time investment required to even dream of catching up. Once I finish my Blackscale faction, I get to beg people to help me through Ikisith content because I cannot solo or duo most of it. Hopefully a month from now I will have my 100k charm which will be quite nice.
So far my biggest complaint about time-sink would be the Blackscale faction. So far this has been the worst questline I have ever done in any MMO. The amount of farming low end mobs that offer no xp/garbage loot tied with the long respawn of ground spawns that have a random chance of being Lore has been enough so far to question the insanity of the developer who made this questline.
Outside of the numerous tediously boring and long quests, I cannot really complain about much. Sure, I don't get into many pugs because I'm too low in gear/AA to do anything and some xp groups ignore me, but for the most part I can find stuff to do. I don't think the issue is CoP or charms or tomes. It is simply the amount of shit new players HAVE to do before they are considered worthy of pressing 1-0 on their keyboard and possibly clicking more than 3 spells. If I keep on track with my character, I could potentially have my 1mill charm by October and by then my AA's will be done and I could have CoP's already started/done. I just wish there were more people to xp with, soloing Elds is awful. But for all the people starting on this server now: Keep it up. You will meet cool people that help you out and hook you up with leach and even some solid gear. Just bite down on that pillow and close your eyes during the questing.
Edit to say 1 last thing. New players/people looking at SoD do read the forums more than people think. When all they read is how dreadful the journey to 65/raiding is, it gets placed into their mind that it is going to be a terrible transition onto this server.
So far my biggest complaint about time-sink would be the Blackscale faction. So far this has been the worst questline I have ever done in any MMO. The amount of farming low end mobs that offer no xp/garbage loot tied with the long respawn of ground spawns that have a random chance of being Lore has been enough so far to question the insanity of the developer who made this questline.
Outside of the numerous tediously boring and long quests, I cannot really complain about much. Sure, I don't get into many pugs because I'm too low in gear/AA to do anything and some xp groups ignore me, but for the most part I can find stuff to do. I don't think the issue is CoP or charms or tomes. It is simply the amount of shit new players HAVE to do before they are considered worthy of pressing 1-0 on their keyboard and possibly clicking more than 3 spells. If I keep on track with my character, I could potentially have my 1mill charm by October and by then my AA's will be done and I could have CoP's already started/done. I just wish there were more people to xp with, soloing Elds is awful. But for all the people starting on this server now: Keep it up. You will meet cool people that help you out and hook you up with leach and even some solid gear. Just bite down on that pillow and close your eyes during the questing.
Edit to say 1 last thing. New players/people looking at SoD do read the forums more than people think. When all they read is how dreadful the journey to 65/raiding is, it gets placed into their mind that it is going to be a terrible transition onto this server.
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Yale1 one clearly missed donfolstars post that suggests 500+ hrs a year is a lot of time. If your gonna try and critic someones post at least read the thread.
If you can't invest more then 1.5 hrs per day you will not finish anything in this game and ever hope to catch up, that's how it is. Tomes take time, quests, raids and so on.
Yeah sure there could be more casual stuff but the rewards will never be close and the reason to leave is not catching up then problem still isn't solved. If casual easy quick stuff gave anywhere near the same rewards that would turn off the players that worked for it.
Long story short you don't need tomes till T10+, you want gear and quests done get ready to time sink.
If you can't invest more then 1.5 hrs per day you will not finish anything in this game and ever hope to catch up, that's how it is. Tomes take time, quests, raids and so on.
Yeah sure there could be more casual stuff but the rewards will never be close and the reason to leave is not catching up then problem still isn't solved. If casual easy quick stuff gave anywhere near the same rewards that would turn off the players that worked for it.
Long story short you don't need tomes till T10+, you want gear and quests done get ready to time sink.
Also just gonna put this out there.
People keep saying CoPs are a wall blocking them from raiding
Its countered with you don't need tomes till T10+.
Then its oh well no one raids the lower tiers, then several players from a few guilds reply saying uh we raid them.
That's countered with oh they break up or isn't consistent.
Okay well on this thread and from previous someone from HBM, FTW, EXO, CW, SB, and prophecy have stated you don't need tomes. Just show up to raid, do quests, farm charm money and be social aka cool people
P.s. I've been on the 2.5 beta test server and new playwrs have waaaay better stuff to start with these days, and on 2.0 live server its super easy to buy BoE T5 gear for cheap.
People keep saying CoPs are a wall blocking them from raiding
Its countered with you don't need tomes till T10+.
Then its oh well no one raids the lower tiers, then several players from a few guilds reply saying uh we raid them.
That's countered with oh they break up or isn't consistent.
Okay well on this thread and from previous someone from HBM, FTW, EXO, CW, SB, and prophecy have stated you don't need tomes. Just show up to raid, do quests, farm charm money and be social aka cool people
P.s. I've been on the 2.5 beta test server and new playwrs have waaaay better stuff to start with these days, and on 2.0 live server its super easy to buy BoE T5 gear for cheap.
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Daffie
Dalayan Pious Diety
Catching up is tough. All the things related to catching up makes it tough especially since the population is so top heavy. maybe CoP is one of them /shrug. Additionally, raid progression is tough on causal players hear because raids are restricted to 18 man instead of larger raids.
There are a TON of good things about SoD, but here is my honest opinion on why it is hard to retain population: The big reason new people are hard to get/retain is the client, and current low population. Let me expand:
1. The client we were on sucks. I've tinkered around with several of the other EQ clients, and played extensively on p99, and you really take how well things work for granted until you come here. Hell, auto stand even works elsewhere... Most of the other clients don't crash when I zone... Target ring bugs... Clipping bugs... Etc... I know the upgrade is in progress, I'm just saying.
2. Our low population level makes it tough to get groups at all levels. Let's not bull shit. Trying to get groups while leveling up is really tough if not impossible. Ask the new guys. Even at 65 it is hard to get groups a lot of times, and if you want to group in ikisith it is a total pain in the ass even getting there. Population issues are a vicious cycle. This game revolves around being social and it is currently tough to be social because of the low pop. If 1000 more chars were in game, the CoP thread wouldn't even have been posted.
I think this whole CoP discussion revolves around, "How do we get more dudes to play this cool game so we can have people to play this cool game with???" Maybe this question should be another new thread on the topic...
A little off topic, but why hasn't the neg area penalty wording just been removed? The numbers literally wouldn't even have to be changed at all. Just change the wording and that would almost be enough to kill off a huge chunk of posts on these boards. It's like 90% perception. I guarantee most of the server wouldn't even notice the difference if the same xp they get now that they hate when it says -25% penalty just said yay 1000% bonus. I'm no coder, but it seems like such a simple fix to clean up so many future bitchy posts at the very least, lol.
(not that I'm not personally on the un-nerf xp in general train. (tbh not that I've ever really even paid enough attention to know that it actually ever got really nerfed... (I love being around such parsey, researchy types here to put forth all that effort for me) (I hate that I'm mindless enough to take these guys' word on everything...)))
(not that I'm not personally on the un-nerf xp in general train. (tbh not that I've ever really even paid enough attention to know that it actually ever got really nerfed... (I love being around such parsey, researchy types here to put forth all that effort for me) (I hate that I'm mindless enough to take these guys' word on everything...)))
i think if SoD had a population of raiding people over 400, it wouldn't because the amount of things to kill T7-13 with the current respawns wouldn't support that. Im a big fan of giving fresh 65s a 25% bonus to XP while doing CoP, uping the respawn on things, or introducing a few instanced zones.
http://forum.shardsofdalaya.com/showpost.php?p=288015&postcount=10
I know this sounds like a taboo thing but little bit of a "soft reset" could be used to help boost population, so new people don't have quite such a wall.
http://forum.shardsofdalaya.com/showpost.php?p=288015&postcount=10
I know this sounds like a taboo thing but little bit of a "soft reset" could be used to help boost population, so new people don't have quite such a wall.
The raid game here really can suck you in. I remember doing Vharsos Roc in Plane of Nightmare for the first time and thinking how much more fun it was to participate in that event with other e-pals than to go through the painful adept attempts and duoing AAs in sorc's lab and whatnot. We had at least one ringer (actually now that I think about it, I think all three clerics were boxed/retired toons that happened to have full codex).
I was going to make a long irrelevant post but I decided to do a short irrelevant post instead.
* Tomes were always a kind of crappy idea put in as a stop-gap when more than a few people started finishing their AAs. If raid guild people can't grind for hours a day they'll stop playing, right?
* Tension between "excuse to do thing with e-friends" and "MMO players won't do anything that doesn't offer advancement". Excuse to grind blurred with obligation to grind. Inevitable "I put lots of time into this therefore it must be valuable" contingent.
* Rewards issues: SoD is painted into a corner as far as giving people incentive to do content. Items are the #1 avenue for continuous advancement, but main items are pretty much limited to overfull Raid Progression and augs are pretty much a no-go outside of mainline quests and boring tradeskill filler. (P.S. probably #2 reason not much content is made these days -- lots of ideas fizzle out at the "what should players get for doing this?" stage.) Infinite grinding the only "sustainable" option left.
* Lots of lessons learned but no real willingness to take a chance on making big fixes. Too much baggage from Live and from Wiz's ideas of how things should be. Inconsistent concern with preserving nostalgia elements versus making the game less stale. No solid foundations - lots of half-baked/half-fixed stuff built on other half-baked/half-fixed stuff. No passion left.
Will I get chewed out for this post? 50/50.
* Tomes were always a kind of crappy idea put in as a stop-gap when more than a few people started finishing their AAs. If raid guild people can't grind for hours a day they'll stop playing, right?
* Tension between "excuse to do thing with e-friends" and "MMO players won't do anything that doesn't offer advancement". Excuse to grind blurred with obligation to grind. Inevitable "I put lots of time into this therefore it must be valuable" contingent.
* Rewards issues: SoD is painted into a corner as far as giving people incentive to do content. Items are the #1 avenue for continuous advancement, but main items are pretty much limited to overfull Raid Progression and augs are pretty much a no-go outside of mainline quests and boring tradeskill filler. (P.S. probably #2 reason not much content is made these days -- lots of ideas fizzle out at the "what should players get for doing this?" stage.) Infinite grinding the only "sustainable" option left.
* Lots of lessons learned but no real willingness to take a chance on making big fixes. Too much baggage from Live and from Wiz's ideas of how things should be. Inconsistent concern with preserving nostalgia elements versus making the game less stale. No solid foundations - lots of half-baked/half-fixed stuff built on other half-baked/half-fixed stuff. No passion left.
Will I get chewed out for this post? 50/50.
DetroitIsCold
Dalayan Beginner
If only we had more posts like yours and actual discussions on where to go from there.
NeoReloaded
Dalayan Elder
Daffie
Dalayan Pious Diety
Great to hear your opinion!
I am curious, if you were given the reigns of SoD at current state and with the current population, what sort of changes do you think you would make to try to satisfy the following criteria and improve the game:
1. Keep the game fun for, and not alienate, existing players.
2. Make the game inviting and fun for new players.
3. Allow new players the ability to play and be valued with/by existing players. (Basically, keep SoD social.)
4. Keep that intangible thing that is the feel of SoD. (Not making it a totally new game that is totally unrecognizable.)
5. Implement a framework where SoD can easily continue to grow/scale through new content and development ideas.
Is it even possible to satisfy all of these?
I ask the above questions because I think you are very innovative, and often have an out of the box approach.
It's not worth having ideas. Anything I come up with would be too different anyway. To wit:
<serious = "off">
Leave SoD as it is and start something new but related from scratch. Try to work from lessons learned and avoid long-standing issues before they have years to become entrenched.
Example: automated events, like the War. Events are great in theory but always come up against the issue that low levels are flat out incapable of contributing to anything that's worth higher level players being involved in. There's no fundamental reason that large level differences need to make all attacks miss/get resisted. Take that out. Maybe change heals to work in the vein of "heals for 75 or 5%, whichever is higher" to allow lowbie healers to contribute relatively small but non-trivial amounts when high level players are taking the lead. (Probably crib % mana costs for heals to make that non-exploitable and fix the "high end healers have infinite mana" issue at the same time.)
In the future, Kaezul's forces have taken over almost all of Dalaya. Only <city> remains free, and members of all races have fled there, but even it is in jeopardy. The skies are an endless sea of grey -- the city is always darkened, remnants of Kaezul's twisted magic. Raids on the city are commonplace; everyone knows it's only a matter time before a proper assault is mounted. The guilds that once defended the city are in tatters, splintered after recent failed retaliatory campaigns. Few people openly wander the streets. The economy is ruined -- even beetle eyes are considered worthless. Shops that once sold fine goods now offer only rations and rumors.
In the midst of all this, the remaining Guild Masters -- many from regions now under occupation -- are working in secret to recruit and train a new resistance to strike back at the Kaezulians any way they can: attacking patrols, raiding outposts and caravans, liberating cities; perhaps even fighting wild powers not even the Kaezulians have been able to contain...
* Centralized hub zone where new players all start, so they can find people to group up with as easily as possible, even when low level players become scarce. Lots of quests can go there, making all of them more accessible and making working on quests more attractive as a dev (sucks making a quest only a handful of people do for years). Easy theme for quests and lore too: war tensions, rising in ranks, missions, etc. Zone difficulty can fan out naturally from the starting city zone. Lots of zones can just be reimagined from current SoD versions.
* Rewards: change reward structures to allow more room to grow. Give items tons of aug slots. Maybe have aug slots segregated by source: tradeskill-sourced-only aug type, grinding/dungeon-sourced aug type (both zone specific drops and wide-ranging/global random rares), augs type that only comes from events and quests, etc. Main slot items would be mainly from raids and tradeskills and maybe droppables, as now.
* Non-farming, non-grinding tradeskills. Tradeskill items are made out of random rare wide-ranging/global drops. No combine failures, no skill grinding; creating items mainly gated by skill requirements and scarcity of dropped supplies. Non-"trivial" combines always increase skill. Tradeskilled gear should never become completely irrelevant; very rare drops from super high-end zones make super high-end gear.
* Change how money is obtained. No more market for rat fur. Using Kaezulian currency considered treasonous. Would need to consult someone whose eyes don't glaze over thinking about "virtual economies" to work out a specific idea, but in general: non-farmable. Maybe some kind of stipend depending on quests/"rank"/level. Or something really out there like a strict limitation on how much money exists in game at any one time, increasing at a slow rate.
* Wackier things like changing how leveling up works, how damage and stats work, etc. Redesigning spells and abilities from the ground up. Maybe giving classes more leeway to fill alternate roles while still preserving their expected specializations. Maybe make some lower level zones more dungeon crawl-y/raid-like, why not. Maybe keep the level cap extremely low (e.g.: 10 to start) while work is done doing all the spell and skill redesigning, content creation, etc. Keep people from getting super far ahead off the bat while still letting them grind augs and tradeskill items.
* Make some stuff instanced. Can keep open world mini-events like tmaps, but realize that Wiz's old justification of being able to stumble onto stuff happening and see that the world is "alive" doesn't really apply to out-of-the-way dedicated raid zones.
* Make stuff like meditating, buffing time, and downtime in general much shorter. Maybe minimize long-term buffs altogether. Raise base movespeed.
<serious = "off">
Leave SoD as it is and start something new but related from scratch. Try to work from lessons learned and avoid long-standing issues before they have years to become entrenched.
Example: automated events, like the War. Events are great in theory but always come up against the issue that low levels are flat out incapable of contributing to anything that's worth higher level players being involved in. There's no fundamental reason that large level differences need to make all attacks miss/get resisted. Take that out. Maybe change heals to work in the vein of "heals for 75 or 5%, whichever is higher" to allow lowbie healers to contribute relatively small but non-trivial amounts when high level players are taking the lead. (Probably crib % mana costs for heals to make that non-exploitable and fix the "high end healers have infinite mana" issue at the same time.)
In the future, Kaezul's forces have taken over almost all of Dalaya. Only <city> remains free, and members of all races have fled there, but even it is in jeopardy. The skies are an endless sea of grey -- the city is always darkened, remnants of Kaezul's twisted magic. Raids on the city are commonplace; everyone knows it's only a matter time before a proper assault is mounted. The guilds that once defended the city are in tatters, splintered after recent failed retaliatory campaigns. Few people openly wander the streets. The economy is ruined -- even beetle eyes are considered worthless. Shops that once sold fine goods now offer only rations and rumors.
In the midst of all this, the remaining Guild Masters -- many from regions now under occupation -- are working in secret to recruit and train a new resistance to strike back at the Kaezulians any way they can: attacking patrols, raiding outposts and caravans, liberating cities; perhaps even fighting wild powers not even the Kaezulians have been able to contain...
* Centralized hub zone where new players all start, so they can find people to group up with as easily as possible, even when low level players become scarce. Lots of quests can go there, making all of them more accessible and making working on quests more attractive as a dev (sucks making a quest only a handful of people do for years). Easy theme for quests and lore too: war tensions, rising in ranks, missions, etc. Zone difficulty can fan out naturally from the starting city zone. Lots of zones can just be reimagined from current SoD versions.
* Rewards: change reward structures to allow more room to grow. Give items tons of aug slots. Maybe have aug slots segregated by source: tradeskill-sourced-only aug type, grinding/dungeon-sourced aug type (both zone specific drops and wide-ranging/global random rares), augs type that only comes from events and quests, etc. Main slot items would be mainly from raids and tradeskills and maybe droppables, as now.
* Non-farming, non-grinding tradeskills. Tradeskill items are made out of random rare wide-ranging/global drops. No combine failures, no skill grinding; creating items mainly gated by skill requirements and scarcity of dropped supplies. Non-"trivial" combines always increase skill. Tradeskilled gear should never become completely irrelevant; very rare drops from super high-end zones make super high-end gear.
* Change how money is obtained. No more market for rat fur. Using Kaezulian currency considered treasonous. Would need to consult someone whose eyes don't glaze over thinking about "virtual economies" to work out a specific idea, but in general: non-farmable. Maybe some kind of stipend depending on quests/"rank"/level. Or something really out there like a strict limitation on how much money exists in game at any one time, increasing at a slow rate.
* Wackier things like changing how leveling up works, how damage and stats work, etc. Redesigning spells and abilities from the ground up. Maybe giving classes more leeway to fill alternate roles while still preserving their expected specializations. Maybe make some lower level zones more dungeon crawl-y/raid-like, why not. Maybe keep the level cap extremely low (e.g.: 10 to start) while work is done doing all the spell and skill redesigning, content creation, etc. Keep people from getting super far ahead off the bat while still letting them grind augs and tradeskill items.
* Make some stuff instanced. Can keep open world mini-events like tmaps, but realize that Wiz's old justification of being able to stumble onto stuff happening and see that the world is "alive" doesn't really apply to out-of-the-way dedicated raid zones.
* Make stuff like meditating, buffing time, and downtime in general much shorter. Maybe minimize long-term buffs altogether. Raise base movespeed.
donfolstar3
Dalayan Master
Central hub, yes! Spreading out newbs is just a waste of player and dev time. Also a cooler story.
Lots of other good ideas too! I like the gear idea (+fewer gear slots, just enough to cover appearance), limited instances, and less wasted time especially.
I have always thought "levels" were ridiculously overvalued in MMOs. Whenever I check out a new game I always think of 'the lvl1s versus endgame' test. How many lvl1s would it take to defeat Bango? A hell of a lot more than the server can support is my guess. How about lvl10s? Probably the same. That is quite simply ridiculous. So many levels make each level pretty damn unmemorable and having such exaggerated power scaling really limits events and player interaction. I would like to see a game try something along the lines of levels requiring exponentially increasing xp with the first 20 levels taking about a year of "average" gaming. Each of the first 20 levels would offer something meaningful- new spell, ability, zone access, whatever- with everything thereafter giving some minor stats and that great epeen feeling. XP cap would be nonexistent and no amount of nolife grinding would possibly be game breaking, or even very damaging, on a human timescale.
Lots of other good ideas too! I like the gear idea (+fewer gear slots, just enough to cover appearance), limited instances, and less wasted time especially.
I have always thought "levels" were ridiculously overvalued in MMOs. Whenever I check out a new game I always think of 'the lvl1s versus endgame' test. How many lvl1s would it take to defeat Bango? A hell of a lot more than the server can support is my guess. How about lvl10s? Probably the same. That is quite simply ridiculous. So many levels make each level pretty damn unmemorable and having such exaggerated power scaling really limits events and player interaction. I would like to see a game try something along the lines of levels requiring exponentially increasing xp with the first 20 levels taking about a year of "average" gaming. Each of the first 20 levels would offer something meaningful- new spell, ability, zone access, whatever- with everything thereafter giving some minor stats and that great epeen feeling. XP cap would be nonexistent and no amount of nolife grinding would possibly be game breaking, or even very damaging, on a human timescale.
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quote Zaela:
"There's no fundamental reason that large level differences need to make all attacks miss/get resisted."
Yeah,this always bugged me,why not just take the attack rating,higher level people still would have an advantage because of better gear they can wear.
Generally I always felt the level thing was just a crutch,fortunatly there are AAs or I wouldnt
be playing EQ/SoD at all,make skills more important(and harder to raise then),something like UO style maybe.
quote Zaela:
"* Make stuff like meditating, buffing time, and downtime in general much shorter. Maybe minimize long-term buffs altogether. Raise base movespeed.
Its already in the hand of the players,do less challenging stuff when you feel you have too much downtime.I would even like some *more* downtime,as it is now I hardly can grab a
cake or snip the ashes from the cigarette without missing something (or missing the ashtray
)
"There's no fundamental reason that large level differences need to make all attacks miss/get resisted."
Yeah,this always bugged me,why not just take the attack rating,higher level people still would have an advantage because of better gear they can wear.
Generally I always felt the level thing was just a crutch,fortunatly there are AAs or I wouldnt
be playing EQ/SoD at all,make skills more important(and harder to raise then),something like UO style maybe.
quote Zaela:
"* Make stuff like meditating, buffing time, and downtime in general much shorter. Maybe minimize long-term buffs altogether. Raise base movespeed.
Its already in the hand of the players,do less challenging stuff when you feel you have too much downtime.I would even like some *more* downtime,as it is now I hardly can grab a
cake or snip the ashes from the cigarette without missing something (or missing the ashtray
)