Making the game better for the newbies

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ChrisCooper
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Making the game better for the newbies

Post by ChrisCooper »

Egg, some time ago you stated that you'd rather be doing updates that are geared towards new players than towards the old ones.

I decided to make a new character, a monk class, and not use any gear or items that would give me an advantage over the real newbies. I'm level 19 so far, with a couple of hours put into the character. There's an immediate obvious problem at this point: gear.

All the way to level 19, and everything that I've found is unusable by my character. Usually because of the weapon/armor type, sometimes because I'm not high enough level to use it. But mostly, it's because with the completely randomized gear drops, there are too many types of gear to have a good chance of finding anything your character can use. So far, I've found a katar +1.



There's too much possible gear to drop for it to be entirely randomized anymore. I'm not here to post ideas, because frankly, I don't have any that could provide a fix to this problem. I just wanted to express my opinion about it and shed light on this problem. Discuss?
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Re: Making the game better for the newbies

Post by Turtle »

You're basically doing lotl for gear... have you tried merch search for items that you could reasonably afford as a newbie?
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Re: Making the game better for the newbies

Post by eggmceye »

9/10 newbies don't get past newbie island due to ugly old gfx, terrible controls, etc, and that's what I'm worried about at the moment. If someone can last 10 mins they generally stay on.
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ChrisCooper
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Re: Making the game better for the newbies

Post by ChrisCooper »

eggmceye wrote:9/10 newbies don't get past newbie island due to ugly old gfx, terrible controls, etc, and that's what I'm worried about at the moment. If someone can last 10 mins they generally stay on.
Good point. I guess the first impression on visual appeal IS really important to a fresh player.
Turtle wrote:...merch search for items that you could reasonably afford as a newbie?
IMHO, 90% of what you find on merch search isn't affordable as a newbie.

More importantly, though, you shouldn't have to rely on the community to get halfway decently geared.
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Re: Making the game better for the newbies

Post by Turtle »

ChrisCooper wrote:
Turtle wrote:...merch search for items that you could reasonably afford as a newbie?
IMHO, 90% of what you find on merch search isn't affordable as a newbie.

More importantly, though, you shouldn't have to rely on the community to get halfway decently geared.
Although I agree that 90% of what you find isn't affordable, I have geared up a mage with 3 sets (one for each stage of leveling, until I could no longer find what I needed on merch search around level 64), and a monk with a full set, all via merch search. Basically until you get to mr +4 gear, stat gear +30, and tinted +8s, it's on merch search... usually.

Right now, for example... vamp brass knuckles +2 for 1000 gold. Silver brass knuckles +3 for 1k. Vamp katar +1 for 500 gold.

There is a shortage of UA mr gear. That I will admit.

Anyway, I agree the game could be more newbie friendly - perhaps an exhortation to check merch search? Maybe when you can equip a +3 weapon, a message comes on-screen that says, "check the merchant search for some new gear" might help. Ultimately, I think the "newb hump" of difficulty comes down to quantity and availability of information. Tons of newbies don't check the forums, merch search, or manual.
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ChrisCooper
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Re: Making the game better for the newbies

Post by ChrisCooper »

Turtle wrote: perhaps an exhortation to check merch search? Maybe when you can equip a +3 weapon, a message comes on-screen that says, "check the merchant search for some new gear" might help.
Those are actually both really good ideas.
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Re: Making the game better for the newbies

Post by Grunkk »

Does that mean you're going to change the gfx?
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Re: Making the game better for the newbies

Post by Arkhan »

eggmceye wrote:9/10 newbies don't get past newbie island due to ugly old gfx, terrible controls, etc, and that's what I'm worried about at the moment. If someone can last 10 mins they generally stay on.

Ugly graphics?

The game looks as good as real life, IMO.


EDIT: Message alerts would be useful, but what if the person misses them in the window? The controls being so 1986 are probably more of a concern than gear. Though, it's one of those sink/swim scenarios, honestly. There's no great solution unless you'd want to change the interface to be more like Ultima VI or VII than Ultima V.


Sink or swim! If the controls aren't your thing and you don't dig it within say, 2 hours of trying... you probably won't enjoy yourself.

It'd be funny to have a 1980s looking player reference card done up online for people to use and/or print out.


The controls aren't bad for this game. They're just different than what is now the standard (mouse centric). I've found this stuff to be pretty streamlined, honestly.
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Re: Making the game better for the newbies

Post by Keighn »

Ugly gfx, please.... (well maybe compared to what the younger generation like I do admit my brother in law only plays PS3 and xbox). I could post some really ugly gfx if you wanted to see games of older years that are just ugly. And hell, my last few months of PC gamer showed many ugly gfx pixelated games worse than this one. Some were ascii, some were 4x4 pixels, 8x8 pixels, and others I just can't describe.

Uber special gfx like effects might bring people to this game (aka lightning bolt and the priest fire spells are neat more stuff along those lines). The core gfx are awesome IMHO.

Eye candy is a treat for the eyes but if the taste of the gameplay tastes like sour grapes who really wants to play it. (not applicable to this game. This message brought to you by an insane luddite grognard)
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Re: Making the game better for the newbies

Post by Arkhan »

In all honesty, I think getting solid pixel art to work is more of a feat than fancy doodad 3D modeling, and just the flashing screen/etc are enough to make the spell effects seem real.


If you introduce jazzed up particle effects, the game might lose something in the mix.
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Re: Making the game better for the newbies

Post by Keighn »

I only saved a couple of pages from the magazines. I wanted to take a look at some of the games screenshots. One game was a Steam-Online-only game named BEDLAM. Realm o the Mad God

Another was You Have to Win the game. You Have to Win the Game

Reprisal made me think of populous from the screen shot. Reprisal

Hack, Slash, Loot

Apparantly there are a lot of people making very pixelated games. Hell we all know about Minecraft and Dwarf fortress.

BTW, this is not intended to draw away from EUO. If it does may this message self desctruct.
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Re: Making the game better for the newbies

Post by Arkhan »

A lot of the new games doing pixel art aren't really bringing back the style of gaming that matches said graphics.


They're just sorta cashing in on the gimmick and providing a pretty bleh game overall...
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Re: Making the game better for the newbies

Post by Keighn »

Yeah, the Mad God one I played was basically an advance type of gauntlet game. So a sort of mixed double of gfx and gameplay. There's newer stuff in it also. I still found it enjoyable for a mindless kill spree. Pity I died at lvl 12.
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Re: Making the game better for the newbies

Post by Axiom »

As someone who just ran through the newbie island, its not the graphics that almost put me off. Its the fact I did not know about the meditation skill.

I died like 20 times.. I ran out of red potions to cross the poisoned area. Eventually I had to remake a character so I would have potions and gear again. Eventually I read the manual to see what I was doing wrong, and learned about the meditation skill which made life a LOT easier.

There really should be something in the starting area about it, if there is and I missed it, it should be made clearer.

Just my 2 cents
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Re: Making the game better for the newbies

Post by brentoboy »

I've had a few newbies who seem to think that the way to get earn money in the early parts of the game is to collect all of the stuff that drops, and expect a town merchant to be willing to pay you for the items. Its the Diablo 2 mentality. I don't know how many time's I've been asked ... "where can I sell XYZ item?" by a newb who has this sort of expectation from the game.

They expect to be able to buy yellow, red and blue pots from the local potion shop, and be allowed to sell any and all pots they find as a way of paying for the other equipment. They also expect that they will be able to fully outfit thier character with basic equipment using the money they earn selling random crap they pickup.

If you want to introduce the player merchants, they need to make it part of nordhaven. Perhaps in the current nord hospital you could add a guy who answers questions about player merchants ... and next to the guy have a portal to a bartertown like area (like the glass coin shop).

The problem with bartertown today is that those who would benefit most don't even know its there. If it ain't in Nord, newb's never even see it before they quit.
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Re: Making the game better for the newbies

Post by AvatarAcid »

Thus far as a happy EUO nub, the only thing I have trouble doing is finding the targets for work. I don't want a quest marker, that is too nerf, but perhaps in the description of WORK > IMP you could include at least which level the target is on in Area X. That is all from my point of view thus far.

As for looks, I've never judged a game by its looks. Always by the content and/or feel of the game, and on that so far so good :)
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Re: Making the game better for the newbies

Post by Severian »

AvatarAcid wrote:Thus far as a happy EUO nub, the only thing I have trouble doing is finding the targets for work. I don't want a quest marker, that is too nerf, but perhaps in the description of WORK > IMP you could include at least which level the target is on in Area X. That is all from my point of view thus far.

As for looks, I've never judged a game by its looks. Always by the content and/or feel of the game, and on that so far so good :)
I think you'd miss part of the point of exploring if the quest giver told exactly where to find something. I believe part of the challenge is finding the target. That said, I still think adding "?", "!", etc. markers for quest givers/mobs would be a nice addition.
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Re: Making the game better for the newbies

Post by eggmceye »

I think the no yellow pots in nordhaven / player merch point is pretty valid - like I know this unconsciously because I put things like the shoppe and scav hunt in nord - but no player merchs. However there would be no QC for player merchs if they were in nord and expected to sell yellow pots.

Now that there are better than normal yellow pots (improved etc) I don't see why they couldn't be sold in nord by a regular merch.

Also that imp quest - those guard quests are really old and made before WoW and the ?! existed - and that dungeon is kinda hard to navigate due to it's non linearness
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Re: Making the game better for the newbies

Post by Keighn »

Tis considerably easier than it was before but then again us hard time addicts and players of puzzle games never minded much anyways. Young-uns these days sheesh. Any idea about what the betting ring could be used for and perhaps Nord needs a slight makeover in appearance. Perhaps have a new map contest for the town at least in design.
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Re: Making the game better for the newbies

Post by eggmceye »

I've had Nord open in maped all morning and even considered a contest, but a light makeover would probably do.
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