Making Advancement Attractive to New Players

[Gerroz]

Couldnt agree more with this.

[Sidious]

Well thought out points and absolutely dead on.

One thing I wanted to note is that Lyra wanted to get away from art history art knowledge ask 10 dreamers tasks. It's outlined in the ul3d docs and to me is the most interesting part of reading back on them. Lyra recognized the weaknesses of the teaching system and sought to correct them in ul3d and there's no reason we shouldn't also correct them.

Early advancement is huge in retaining new players and should be a priority to be looked at even if not these suggestions.

[Clarity]

Thinky thoughts:

1. Identify should be a birth art for Dreamseers, and 1st sphere learn for everyone else, rather then a birth art for everyone.

I only say this because honestly no one really cares to much about talismans under first sphere, and even with the current system you're 1st sphere by maybe the end of your first week, second if your pokey. So yes to Birth Art, but in a way that makes sense. Dreamseers are naturally the "Talisman" focus, where other classes have to wait a little bit, but not terribly longer.

2. As for no plateaus till 40, I honestly think that particular thing would hinder instead of help. No plateau tasking at all until 4th will have people being to used to not having to do them, and getting frustrated very quickly with the system upon hitting 4th and suddenly being overwhelmed with tasks, rather then just the 3 or 4 required to learn new arts.

Instead, at 1st, they should only have to plateau flame/blade/focus to 10. Everything else should auto imp straight to 19. At 2nd sphere, it moves to any major arts learned and blade/flame/focus (with all learned major arts imping straight to 19 and all non-focal arts going right up to 29). Rinse repeat for 3rd sphere as well, with new learned arts going right to 29(along with all non-focal), and requiring plateaus to 30 for all focal arts.

That will give a gradual slope for learning how the plateau system WORKS, with out overloading new players. Combined with no sphere task for 1st or 2nd, just an interview by a single teacher at 1st and a "class" or something similar at 2nd, a sphere task-lite for 3rd, and now new players know how tasking works, aren't burdened by a sudden HUGE influx of arts to plateau at 40, and keeps the teachers with low train still active.

That would also help returning players with low level characters who maybe thus far haven't bothered to come back or bring back a secondary favorite character due to the horrendous task of catching back up to where they were.

[Dina]

I agree with it all. I brought up Identify a few times in SoT....it never went anywhere lol. I think it should be a birth art too.

[Venom]

Identify ==> Birth Art... do this now or I shall beat you with my eggbeater! No seriously you have no idea how many times I get confronted by new dreamers whom are angry they can't see the stats of items they pickup. It's just silly really. I know there is a color system but at this point in time it's just obsolete. They aren't going to sit there and memorize it. Just give them Identify already to make life easier for new players.

[Lu Chaos]

People have had suggestions but I couldn't agree more.. I've be ok with the new guys gaining mad love early on even though I had to grind to get to third sphere.. I will just be happy to get new players sticking around..

Seriously do something with this level up system.. It's getting old as hell now and boring.. Like somebody previously stated.. We are all old as hell with responsibilities now.. We can't simply spend a hundred hours on one simple task just for a sphere or plateau..

[Ghazgkull]

I saw a commercial for the new WOW expansion last night on MNF. At the very end of the commercial, they added "Start at level 90 instantly!".

Reminded me of this thread.

- Jared

[Tary]

I saw a commercial for the new WOW expansion last night on MNF. At the very end of the commercial, they added "Start at level 90 instantly!".

Reminded me of this thread.

- Jared

These amps go to 11.

[Gerroz]

I saw a commercial for the new WOW expansion last night on MNF. At the very end of the commercial, they added "Start at level 90 instantly!".

Reminded me of this thread.

- Jared



That commercial was exactly the reason why I suggested before the game launched that any freshly made character starts at orbit 30. Both WoW and UL are mature games now that have nothing to lose any everything to gain by giving new players/chars an easier start

I still think they should start at orbit 30 with flame, blade and focus art at 30. The rest they can learn and plat at their own discretion. The characters will actually matter slightly from the door, new players will get more engaged with the game, and those who dont like their character any more for any reason, can start anew without using half a year to go into Caudal rift.

Right now, it is just way too hard to catch up

[Tary]

I don't really want to throw anybody under the bus with this, but let me tell a little story that I think illustrates the point of all this pretty well. My 20 year old brother in law, Mark, was over a few nights back. He plays a lot of tabletop roleplay games, really likes the Elder Scrolls series, has played WoW and a few other MMOs but never for very long or seriously.

I started telling Mark about Underlight and he seemed interested so we make him a character. I set up a laptop for him and we both login. I show him how to go hunt and he gets to orbit 1 then goes to find a teacher to learn Flameshaft.

While this is all going on, I'm next to him playing my character and we're skirmishing off an on with HC. He finds a Gatekeeper teacher and asks him for a task for flameshaft, the teacher tells him that right now probably isn't a very good time since we might be fighting any minute. HC and OoSM do start fighting again so he waits around probably about a hour for it to end, mostly just watching me play on my screen.

He goes back to the teacher, who is still the only gatekeeper teacher I could locate dreaming, and asks again for a flameshaft task. The teacher tasks him to interview 3 members of each house and to get a 1 word opinion from them about what they think of the other houses. He asks me if he should do it or not and I tell him that interviewing 12 people would take forever, especially 3 AoE members. The teacher asks if he accepts it or not and so Mark asks if he could have something more challenging. The teacher sits around a couple minutes not saying anything, then wakes.

I'm not trying to make anybody look bad in this example, I'm just trying to illustrate the problem with our current system. Mark said that he thought the game I was playing looked like fun, but the game he was playing wasn't anything like that. It didn't sound like much of a desire to play again.

This post bothered me at a pretty deep level because fresh blood is exactly what we need, and a person from the tabletop RPG community is EXACTLY the sort of player who'd thrive here.

WARNING: WHAT FOLLOWS IS ONLY MY OPINION AND NOT REFLECTIVE OF MIRRORS OR OTHER LIGHT SOURCES:
I think the burden needs to be shared between players AND GMs:
1) Teacher players: tasking newlies should be given a wide berth and should be given "fluff" tasks.
2) GMs: We need to ease up on the lower level tasks to hook people.

I know, I know, Underlight is a niche game but it's also a game that ought to attract a lot more people and COULD if we make some changes. Some big, some small, some with code, some with policy. But we need to recognize that if you don't hook people with some immediate gratification they won't stay. I only stayed long ago because I was in high school and had a friend playing who basically kept telling me "it gets better, it gets better."

[Noidea]

Not really on topic, but something that would help with the burden of doing all these tasks is if more tasks were given that were "part of the action", i.e. fewer "Ask 5 dreamers about the history of X" (unless, of course, there's some immediate IC reason why the teacher, pupil or their houses actually need to find out the history of X) and more "Bring 10 Insight elemens for the spell we're brewing up against house X". That way, earning plateaus is something that happens as a reward for doing the roleplaying and taking part in the "story", rather than something that takes time away from it. There was a bit of a discussion of this: http://forums.clashofdreams.com/viewtop ... =630#p3083

Definitely not saying this means we don't need to look at whether the actual amount of tasking needed is too high - just thought I'd mention it.

[Ghazgkull]

... something that would help with the burden of doing all these tasks is if more tasks were given that were "part of the action"...

This is how I task. All custom, all connected to the character and their place in the game's events. I love it because I really feel like I'm a catalyst for roleplaying in the game. But I'll tell you there's a real downside - volume! My volume of tasks is super low because of making sure they're all "part of the action". And I've often thought that if everyone tasked the way I do, we'd simply run out of ideas. I wouldn't be able to task Belgereth to do something about the house mares or task Amante to break her connection to Sidious because other teachers would have got to it first. It would be much harder to find those tasks if everyone were looking for them.

I'm rambling now so I'll stop, but I just want to call that out... it's great making tasks meaningful but that can actually slow people down. I think there's a place for the "formula teachers" and I think it's the low-level arts and plateaus that new players need to come up to speed quickly.

- Jared

[Tary]

... something that would help with the burden of doing all these tasks is if more tasks were given that were "part of the action"...

This is how I task. All custom, all connected to the character and their place in the game's events. I love it because I really feel like I'm a catalyst for roleplaying in the game. But I'll tell you there's a real downside - volume! My volume of tasks is super low because of making sure they're all "part of the action". And I've often thought that if everyone tasked the way I do, we'd simply run out of ideas. I wouldn't be able to task Belgereth to do something about the house mares or task Amante to break her connection to Sidious because other teachers would have got to it first. It would be much harder to find those tasks if everyone were looking for them.

I'm rambling now so I'll stop, but I just want to call that out... it's great making tasks meaningful but that can actually slow people down. I think there's a place for the "formula teachers" and I think it's the low-level arts and plateaus that new players need to come up to speed quickly.

- Jared

This sounds awesome.
...If only Ghaz would be willing to task Tary...
(No I wouldn't bother having him ask: Tary's too much of a git to kowtow to Ghaz and I suspect Ghaz is much too proud to task Tary )