Time investment, the new player, and the casual player

[Rorne]

So in that terrible Opus thread this guy touched on a really poignant point.

For those there is nothing to do and nothing to hope for? What you are saying is once you retire from the raiding scene you might as well retire from the game.

I would say this applies to early 65 players who can't even get on raids or get groups. I think this reality is probably part of what has made making Adept alts so popular; It's a little microcosm where the goal posts aren't as far apart and the investment is not as large and established players are more willingly to take someone "undergeared" relative to them because the content they are fighting (Adepts) is built around those players anyways so you don't get that feeling of not measuring up as much.

I like to play my alts still from time to time but without committing hours of my evening to a raid (if I can get in one) I have nothing to do other than tread water , do MMO chores, or AFK. If faced with the option to solo or do some kind of faction quest that is of nebulous benefit to me usually I just log off. Maybe this is just a problem with me. Some would say this means that SoD not a game for my kind of playstyle but I think it's getting to the point where some concessions to that end may need to happen judging by the lopsided population.

So what can be done to provide a satisfying experience for those people with less time to play or those who are fresher players without all the advantages that come with having been around for years without cheapening the experience?

Immediate Access and Lessening Barriers
One of the most daunting things about this game is the aspect of group making and then buffing, it's not unrealistic to assume you will spend 20-30 minutes just constructing and buffing a group and that's if all the pieces are in place and you're not sitting there hunting down group members/specific classes for longer. Certainly you don't need every buff in the game but to go without at least Aegolism, KEI, and some form of haste has a huge impact and many would consider it a waste of their time and choose to hold out for something more optimal to invest their effort in. There is some screwy psychology at play there, sure, but this game isn't the place to try and fight the irrationality of the human mind. So what can we do about this?

-Alter the dependence on buffs. Reduce their power and give a portion of it to the player innately. Aegolism is an increase of like 40-100% hitpoints for a fresh level 65, why would anyone in their right mind want to ever go without this buff?

-Introduce some kind of exp method that allows fresh characters to fight alongside veteran characters on a leveled playing field, whether this is through some kind of augmentation of the fresh characters or having both fight through some kind of proxies (ie: taking control of NPCs)

-Develop exp methods that don't use the standard grouping model. Zonewide forced hardraids with afk timeouts, more allowance or ways to mitigate for "suboptimal" combinations, allow access from multiple (city) points for the maximum influx of players at all time.

-Avenues to augment experience or gain it outside of combat. World events ie: collect and turn in items for experience or to put worldwide or zonewide EXP bonuses in effect (with some careful consideration this could be tied to things like pitting opposing factions against each other in a race to collect more items and receive a greater bonus). Vastly increasing the amount of experience quests give, doing quests granting a temporary EXP bonus to encourage people to do them, so on and so forth.

 

[Rorne]

I didn't touch on gear and feeling like you are improving your character outside of exp just because that's a whole other can of worms but obviously there should be avenues for that interwoven.

 

[Nebi]

What you are going to do is screw every single other person on the server with your innate buffs. Whenever I make a group on my shaman I buff Raego and heal the group on my Shaman. (You would know this as you where there the last cmal clear I did on your beastlord when we were killing cmal 3). Should that group have been penalized because I wanted to heal on my shaman? No.

Also I am of one who believes that there are more people single / dual boxing then waiting around for hours in Athica looking for a group. (HI IM LOOKING AT YOU GERICK). You will also screw those guys too who ask cool dudes with duration 1 million like myself for buffs.

I personally loved LDON when it was on live and I'm sure it got people to stick around for longer periods of time. There needs to be a way to get augs such those from refuge but without having to turn in tomes. Make some bounty augs that cost a good amount of points so people have to actually farm them and wont be complaining about something else a week after they're released. Also make them poof when you remove them from gear or you upgrade your gear.

 

[Daffie]

Once the client upgrades: I would suggest turning on bots for sub 65 players, and making them easy to access and cost nothing. Make the bots not as good/powerful as real players to encourage grouping, but give the sub 65s the ability to fight in a group instead of duo the whole way up. Again, have spell books auto populate to 60 and have skills auto earn 1 point while leveling. Reduce town time and make life a little easier to lower level new characters.

-Introduce some kind of exp method that allows fresh characters to fight alongside veteran characters on a leveled playing field, whether this is through some kind of augmentation of the fresh characters or having both fight through some kind of proxies (ie: taking control of NPCs)

After hitting 65, I think this is the biggest problem in the game. No high tiered guy is going to group a fresh 65 and expect that player to preform any significant roll other than leeching (or maybe some healing.) This wouldn't be a problem if the population was +300 more players, but it is a problem now because it hurts the ability to group. A lot of cool guys run groups and allow sub tiered players to soak xp, but leeching isn't fun if you want to play the game. Also, how many threads have we seen where people ask what class/race to play and the suggestion is 'don't start a tank.' It always comes up, and it is true because new tanks have a horrible time on this mature server.

I don't know what the solution is to this problem. Maybe some sort of option to temporarily power boost 1 member of the group based on other members' gear/aa/tome average. I don't know. I do know that encouraging grouping between tiers will be beneficial to the server.

 

[Rorne]

What you are going to do is screw every single other person on the server with your innate buffs. Whenever I make a group on my shaman I buff Raego and heal the group on my Shaman. (You would know this as you where there the last cmal clear I did on your beastlord when we were killing cmal 3). Should that group have been penalized because I wanted to heal on my shaman? No.

Why would it penalize healing on your shaman? I'm proposing that things like the raw HP benefit of buffs at 65 be reduced, let say (for the sake of discussion, not as any sort of actual proposed number) by 2/3rds and that 2/3rds removed from the buff itself be redistributed directly to the base HP of players over the course of leveling up to 65.

So to fully illustrate this idea with completely made-up numbers

Current System
Buff 1=900hp
Buff 2=600hp
Buff Total=1500hp
Level 65 base hp=2000
Total buffed HP= 3500

Proposed System (hp buffs reduced by 2/3rd, once again completely made up don't get hung up on the numbers themselves)
Buff 1 (reduced by 2/3)=300
Buff 2 (reduced by 2/3)=200
Buff Total=500hp
Level 65 base HP= 3000 (portion siphoned off from buffs has been redistributed over the course of leveling 1-65 directly to the player)
Total buffed HP= 3500

All this does is reduce the overall contribution of buffs, especially hitpoint ones, bringing them down to a point where they are still nice to have but not as crippling to go without while suffering any net loss.

 

[Rorne]

^*While not suffering any net loss

Also Deein I think you misunderstood and thought I was talking about buffs you don't have to cast that are like auras or something, that would take way too much of an overhaul and would just be a balance mess.

 

[Rorne]

Oh another thing that could be done, increase the EXP bonus for partially full groups (Above 2 members). Not all members of a group contribute equally, give duoing players a less dubious reason to actually take on a third

 

[Vitali]

I used to think a lot more people just picked up random 65 players to fill exp groups and have fun. I am starting to think that is not the case. When I make a group, I send out an OOC "65 exp LF4M. DPS/ Utility" then I wait to see who sends a tell. Typically it is people who just weren't picked up and have been LFG for a while. I form them all up and I just go to a place I enjoy (Kaesora, Everchill, FR [Bloodfires OR Sivakians, whichever], Mielech C) and can be done with said motley crew.

Playing we literally anyone LFG is pretty fun, and leads to fun conversations. Sadly I see maybe 2/5 people I group with stick with SoD a few months later, but either way it was a good experience all around imo. But I am starting to see maybe I am one of the few who does this? Seems more people are of the mentality "If I can't get a group with characters my tier or better, I would rather do something else" and it is, for lack of better terms, a shitty attitude to have.

The argument could be made "I have X amount of time to play, and want to maximize the exp/time gain", but still. Just sucks. I remember what it was like when I started (although things were very different back in 2006 compared to now I s'pose) and just having experienced people to chat with for an exp group worth of time helps direct what someone new should/ can do.

TL;DR - Be a mentor, help new players!

 

[Nebi]

Haloria and Ludovician were my most recent help a friend projects. I also am one who helps low dudes.

 

[darksabbath]

But I am starting to see maybe I am one of the few who does this? Seems more people are of the mentality "If I can't get a group with characters my tier or better, I would rather do something else" and it is, for lack of better terms, a shitty attitude to have.

Sadly, this does seem the case lately. Try getting a group on a new/newer 65, and you will see. That, or some are afraid to take a less than optimal group set-up for xp. But those weird groups can lead to some silly fun, too. For example, the other day I grouped with Drakie and his bard, while on my bard, then we picked up a 61bard, and a mage/druid duo. We had a bunch of fun getting xp in deepshade and rust for a few hours, until people needed to log off for sleep. (That 61 bard was 64 by the end of it, as I recall.) Yes, I know a toon like Drakie is way over-tier, and probably helped cover the difference, but the same thing could be said of many others. Just need to get people willing to take a chance.

 

[Dinadass]

What you are going to do is screw every single other person on the server with your innate buffs. Whenever I make a group on my shaman I buff Raego and heal the group on my Shaman. (You would know this as you where there the last cmal clear I did on your beastlord when we were killing cmal 3). Should that group have been penalized because I wanted to heal on my shaman? No.

Also I am of one who believes that there are more people single / dual boxing then waiting around for hours in Athica looking for a group. (HI IM LOOKING AT YOU GERICK). You will also screw those guys too who ask cool dudes with duration 1 million like myself for buffs.

I personally loved LDON when it was on live and I'm sure it got people to stick around for longer periods of time. There needs to be a way to get augs such those from refuge but without having to turn in tomes. Make some bounty augs that cost a good amount of points so people have to actually farm them and wont be complaining about something else a week after they're released. Also make them poof when you remove them from gear or you upgrade your gear.

It sounds like you didn't read the OP or something because this response makes absolutely no sense.

Making characters innately stronger and buffs weaker has been suggested many times over the past few years and would go a long way to making the game a better option for people who can't always sit down and devote 4+ hours at a time. It's just unnecessary tedium for exping that everyone accepts as part of the game because that's how it's always been. Meanwhile every single other mmo I can think of has done away with buff systems being such an enormous crutch, and that's what should be done here.

 

[Breigon]

...
Level 65 base HP= 3000 (portion siphoned off from buffs has been redistributed over the course of leveling 1-65 directly to the player)
Total buffed HP= 3500

All this does is reduce the overall contribution of buffs, especially hitpoint ones, bringing them down to a point where they are still nice to have but not as crippling to go without while suffering any net loss.

Due to adepts and not allowing higher level buffs, I feel changing this either requires you to rebalance the adepts around the new gradient OR that the gradient should begin at lvl 58 instead of lvl 1. However, with the innate bonus starting at 58, then only the 58+ level buffs would need to be changed (all other lower spells stay the same, content wouldnt have to be rebalanced and (not sure about this next part, since it has been a while since I played a toon in the 50s) the impact for the 45-57 using raego or aego is just an accepted loss (or coded into the buff somehow?).

Edit - I suppose the gradient could start at lvl 1 which just makes the adepts easier all around? Unsure if that is desirable or not for the adept crowd (been awhile since I've done one personally).

 

[kallemur4]

Due to adepts and not allowing higher level buffs, I feel changing this either requires you to rebalance the adepts around the new gradient OR that the gradient should begin at lvl 58 instead of lvl 1. However, with the innate bonus starting at 58, then only the 58+ level buffs would need to be changed (all other lower spells stay the same, content wouldnt have to be rebalanced and (not sure about this next part, since it has been a while since I played a toon in the 50s) the impact for the 45-57 using raego or aego is just an accepted loss (or coded into the buff somehow?).

Edit - I suppose the gradient could start at lvl 1 which just makes the adepts easier all around? Unsure if that is desirable or not for the adept crowd (been awhile since I've done one personally).

No you just need to adjust all hp buffs, so buffs are less important at all levels but same total result max buffed with the buffs for the level.

 

[fxattack]

There are plenty of good games where your person can kill monsters without having to send a message to another person asking them to please sit down, memorize a spell, click your person, then cast a spell on your person where if your person dies it was just a waste of time, and you have to go around finding another high end person before you can kill as good as when that person first buffed your person. There used to be some naked, level 1 Froglok person hanging around Athica always asking me 'levi me pls'. I always said the same thing, I am a paladin with levitate clicky boots, I can't cast levitate on you, so you have to ask someone else. 'ok..levi me?', I don't think he cared about anything else in Dalaya, he just wanted to levitate real real bad. I wonder if he ever got the buffs he wanted or if it was just Inogen trolling me. Its a weird example, but buffs get in the way of enjoying the game when you don't have access to them. Self buffs are a cool concept that could be worked with or expanded somehow. The standard smattering of haste, mana regen, HP, should be standard or innate at this point.

 

[andylinth]

[edit] I'm not really sure how I replied to this, it was unintentional, and I don't see a way to delete my post. Sorry [/edit]

 

[Slayer90]

I used to think a lot more people just picked up random 65 players to fill exp groups and have fun. I am starting to think that is not the case. When I make a group, I send out an OOC "65 exp LF4M. DPS/ Utility" then I wait to see who sends a tell. Typically it is people who just weren't picked up and have been LFG for a while. I form them all up and I just go to a place I enjoy (Kaesora, Everchill, FR [Bloodfires OR Sivakians, whichever], Mielech C) and can be done with said motley crew.

Playing we literally anyone LFG is pretty fun, and leads to fun conversations. Sadly I see maybe 2/5 people I group with stick with SoD a few months later, but either way it was a good experience all around imo. But I am starting to see maybe I am one of the few who does this? Seems more people are of the mentality "If I can't get a group with characters my tier or better, I would rather do something else" and it is, for lack of better terms, a shitty attitude to have.

Sadly I used to do this a lot to but as of late I have been farming for my supreme in places like OG/Cita there for I pick up the first 4 random people or guildies to let leech mainly cause if your a fresh 65 lets face it your not gonna be able to help in these places. Maybe ill shift my farming to other zones for a bit to help with the xp giving ><

 

[donfolstar3]

Yes, I know a toon like Drakie is way over-tier, and probably helped cover the difference, but the same thing could be said of many others. Just need to get people willing to take a chance.

In my experience a group with one or two overtiers can do just fine in most xp scenarios. Even in more intense areas one or two newbs is not going to break most groups. Any group not dragging along some woefully out of their element redshirt is doing the server a disservice.

The buff system as it currently exists is crap. This has been the topic of like a bazillion threads and some small changes have been made but it is still fairly craptacular. Things that seem like good fixes:

1. Move buff stats to natural stats thus lessening the importance of buffs AND giving fresh 65s a considerable boost. Both good moves.

2. Consolidate some buffs. Buffs with only one or two effects are lame. Does anyone genuinely enjoy constantly smacking their head against the buff cap? Now I think the cap should still be in play, especially for anyone using self/clickie buffs, but lets ease the fuck up on this annoying "feature".

3. Close the hybrid buff gap. Not completely, but give hybrids the penultimate buffs. Look, having a BST not slow like a Shaman, Paladin not heal like a Cleric, and Ranger not druid like a Druid makes sense. 100%. Sticking hybrids with laughably bad buffs that just waste space existing does not. Now I'm sure there are a lot of people out there who would rage quit this game and burn their own house down in protest if Ranger's could cast Cabbage but is it really a big deal? Or a deal at all?

 

[Daffie]

There used to be some naked, level 1 Froglok person hanging around Athica always asking me 'levi me pls'. I always said the same thing, I am a paladin with levitate clicky boots, I can't cast levitate on you, so you have to ask someone else. 'ok..levi me?', I don't think he cared about anything else in Dalaya, he just wanted to levitate real real bad. I wonder if he ever got the buffs he wanted or if it was just Inogen trolling me.

His body must have tingled when he finally got the lev.

This is a hilarious troll if it was a troll. Not really obnoxious but clearly goofy as shit, and the troll still didn't admit that it was a joke nor do you know who did it!

 

[Krugz]

It was really me lindstrom sorry.

 

[Expletus]

As someone who just recently tried to come back to the server, the problem for me was population. On my 65 cleric i spent 3 days in athica LFG and got 1 pug group. The problem with sod has and always will be population, not content. Granted this doesn't apply to people who have friends already in place, those people can get groups easy but when it comes to the solo player, who just started on the server its a different story. Now before people say just box, there is a huge playerbase that would rather be social in an exp group (this is what made eq fun) then to solo box for hours and hours. The server was amazing years ago when we had 300+ primetime and i have heard stories were Winter's Roar had 600+ active daily players.

Maybe when 3.0 launches people will join the server and have fun but i just cant see this happening without a wipe of some sorts, or a brand new sod server to launch with 3.0. New players who join the server with 3.0 will feel so outclasses by the current players, they wont have fun and before you say "i played sod when people were already high tiered" yes thats true but you knew what you were getting into when you looked into sod. For most players there is a huge competition to do server firsts and experiencing server content is what keeps players around and willing to progress.

Agree or disagree i dont really care, just figured i would throw my 2 cents in.