Oh come on. How much is neccesary?

[Keridwyn]

Speaking from a perhaps unusual perspective, I think the "frustration" for newbies is over-rated. Granted, when I started in early 2000, I had plenty of times pulling my hair out trying desperately to find my corpse under Kelethin. But, that's part of what made it good. I believe that easy things are rarely worth doing, as I imagine a lot of you must, to invest time in the tradeskills! Everquest was fun for me because it was somewhat realistic, without the real-life repercussions of really falling from a 4-story high platform in a forest.

[Lilosh]

Originally posted by casala
http://forum.magecompendium.com/towe...r=asc&start=75

Halfway down on page 4, Absor responds...

You know, I read a little bit further , and I found a response that sums up a decent sized part of why I'm upset.

Originally posted by Aamen
I can appreciate the newbie changes, but the more I think about it, the more I zero in on why I don't like it.

Help the newbies, I'd love to see more genuinely new players. But do it after you fix the other stuff.

I mean, I don't neccessarily like the newbie changes, but it would be less offensive if they weren't dropping everything to make the game easier for new people.


-Lilosh

[Mongo]

Mongo ramble...

When I read about the proposed sense heading change, I thought about all the other recent changes to simplify things for new players and felt annoyed. There's a vague sense of 'well, I had to do it, why shouldn't everyone else'. There's also a feeling that Sense Heading is simply part of the game that tries to get you involved in the world. You practice and practice, and you can hardly call it fun...but it's an important tool to daily in-game life.

I wouldn't list it as a Top Ten Accomplishment of mine, but there was a satisfaction to finally seeing the skill maxxed out. Likewise, there was a satisfaction in finally figuring my way around Oggok, identifying where the food was, where the bags were, etc. These are minor accomplishments, but they helped me get into the game and learn some vary important things.

I understand the desire to remove frustrations, but do it in a way that still involves the new player learning their environment and some of the basic tools they need. Like Maevenniia (agreeing with Whizbang) talked about above, make the learning process involved and interesting. Don't just give everything to them, build a new tutorial into the game a la Gukta and use the opportunity to build on backstory and immersive content.

[Dunthor Warsmith]

Are these changes probably good for keeping real newbies ingame? Yes. As many others have mentioned, there aren't other newbies around to learn off of/with, and a frustrated newbie who got a free EQ Classic and is using the 1 free month to see if they should invest in all the expansions and subscription is a lot less likely to pay up than someone who enjoys their time.

That being said, I prefer it the old way more. When I've started my alts, I've enjoyed the money scrapped times, eatting food that's been looted because its cheaper than selling it and buying rations (or muffins, depending on location), and occasionally trying to hunt down bottles of milk to save a little more money (and hoping that I don't eat&drink away all my savings in the time it takes to actually find the milk). The huge investment in bags, and the debates over what sizes you really need (smaller slots and/or fewer slots = tons cheaper). The struggle for spell money, and the processes of prioritizing purchases. Not to mention any attempts at armor or reagent spells (like pets).

They've been progressively eating away at those. The stack of hearty meals and drinks negates the need to find food for a long time, usually until well after finances have stablized to the point that a stack of rations & water is trivial. The first bag is arguably the most important upgrade for a newbie, and now that's given free (the value of the quest containers as a first bag is debatable, because their weight can encumber one quickly, and because some cities have far fewer than others and plenty of people don't use them or know about them). Sure, there are 7+16( +2shared, for some) other base slots, and there are still the other expenses, and there are still a lot of things. But its just ... not the same as it used to be, and not as fun in my opinion.

I enjoyed being forced to learn the layout of each city, get it's "feel." With spawning on your guildmaster (dwarf paladins didn't used to even spawn in the same ZONE as the guildmaster ), the npc titles, and the Find (which seems to work for me only when I don't need it ... try finding the bankers in Qeynos - it always gave me errors), you really don't need to learn a city nearly to the same degree - just use the tools for the breif time you spend in the area, and then move on. Most people probably consider that better, but I personally feel it as a loss.

I'm just one of those freaks that liked the way things were. Sure, it was a pain and time consuming, but it was an enjoyable type of torment (heh) in a lot of ways. I miss the boats, GFay spam, the long, scary journey from Freeport to HHK during the day (post bloody Kithcor), reliance on ports, binds as rare things, and whatnot. They made the game far more like a world. Some of that inevitably fades with time and familiarity, but modern EQ has very few "world" aspects left in it. I just miss them.

[Niellya]

Copy of what I posted to my guild's board on a very similar discussion:

I've finally found something that I believe summarizes how I feel about all these "dumbing down" changes.

Verant, in creating EQ, was creating a world. SOE, in changing EQ how they have simply been making it more of a game that has an interesting backstory.

When I started playing, EQ was my first MMPORG. Pretty much the only computer game I had played were X-Wing and X-wing vs Tie-Fighter. I was basically the quintessential newbie:

I died in the Erudin harbor to a shark and lost what little gear I had at the time. I didn't quit playing, I accepted that actions have consequences. If you swim in an ocean with sharks in it, you will be attacked and may die.

I had trouble getting through the tunnel from Erudin to Toxxulia Forest. I didn't quit playing or change race, I bought a torch as soon as I could. (and later replaced it with a Fire Beetle Eye)]

Adventuring in Tox, I didn't really care which way was North or South or East or West. All I needed to know was which general direction I had just come from. As in, "I just came from off to my left" or "I just came from the direction of that hut". That way I could find my way back to my home city. If I did want to know, I could just by the compass from the merchant.

After realizing that I needed to hold more than 6 items (aside from food and drink) I saved all my coppers until I could afford a belt pouch. Eventually, I had enough to buy a small bag, then a large bag, etc

Back then the only way off of Odus aside from a "high-level" wizard or druid,was to take the boat. Did I quit in frustration over how long it too? No, I took the boat from Erudin to Qeynos and marvelled at how the water rippled and I explored the boat. Of course, I still think they should put merchants on the boats down in the hold.

I forgot to hit "Enter" before I talked to an NPC and got killed. I didn't quit, I called myself an idiot and made the run/ride back from Erudin to Qeynos.

I learned that certain NPC's would talk to you and ask you to do things. Did I quit in anger after they didn't answer if I just said, "taxes"? Nope, because what I actually said, was "I will collect the taxes for you". Why? Because you're talking to a person. More importantly, I realized that some of them even gave you free containers!

You would think that by now I would have quit because I had very little to show for my efforts aside from some bags. But wait, those gnoll pups sometimes drop cloth armor! Wow, that is so cool!

Adventuring in Qeynos Hills, I didn't really care which way was North or South or East or West. All I needed to know was which general direction I had just come from. As in, "I just came from over that hill" or "I just came from the direction of that cabin". That way I could find my way back to the road. If I did want to know, I could just by the compass from the merchant.

Not to say I hadn't been diligently clicking the "Sense Heading" button all this time, I had. And got excited everytime I saw a skillup.

Ahh, then there was that day that will live in infamy... The day I discovered the fishing vendor at the Qeynos docks. Who says you can't make money from tradeskills? With a 2 gp fishing pole and a stack of bait at 6 cp each, I could (usually) make a nice profit selling back the rusty daggers and the fish scales. The fish I kept for food. And the first pair of sandals I caught went right on to my bare feet. That right folks, fished gear out of the river that I could use.

I did not quit because I died a few times.
I did not quit when I lost my training tunic, a few copper and maybe a fire beetle leg or two.
I did not quit because I did not know which direction was South-east immediately upon zoning into West Karana for the first time.
I did not quit when the Qeynos guards at Tower 2 killed me for casting one of my spells on someone I was grouped with. (Don't ask)

I have many more examples if anyone wants to hear them.

I'm not saying things couldn't have been easier. I don't believe as many people would object if they were starting new characters off with Sense Heading (25) {and raise the dwarven innate Sense Heading to (75) from (50) to compensate}. I for one would not have a problem with that.

As a matter of fact, here is my suggestion (in addition to the newbie food, water, bandages, weapon) :

- Sense Heading (25) {Still level restricted, but scaling from the starting point of (25)}
- One large bag
- One fishing pole
- One stack of fishing bait
- Starting them out at the Guild Master is fine, that's where parents dumped their kids off when they couldn't feed them in the olden days.
- Make the starting cities simpler. No, not most of the original ones. (Take a look at Shar Val (sp?) as an example, it is way more complicated than it needs to be. It's too convoluted. The guild masters are all the palace's labyrinthine tunnels not in their own guildhalls, or even in a communal simply laid out guildhall. The registrar and the tax collector are, for some reason, not in the palace.)

The way they're heading now, it's not, "You're in our world now." It's, "You're playing our game now." That just doesn't have anywhere near the same ring to it.

So basically when people say "immersiveness", do they want to be immersed in the game they happen to be playing at the time and not be distracted from killing mosters by other mundane tasks. Heck, you can do that with Super Mario Brothers or Dig Dug. Or do they want to be immersed in an entirely different world, complete with all the trappings of having to feed yourself (isn't it just tedious having to buy food and drink all the time and wastes space that could be used to carry phat lewt? Or did food only become acceptable when they added stats to it?), get lost once in a while, and have unexpected things happen to you?

Do you want to play a game or do you want to enter a fantasy land of dragons, centaurs, and pixies?

[Dunthor Warsmith]

Originally posted by Niellya
Verant, in creating EQ, was creating a world. SOE, in changing EQ how they have simply been making it more of a game that has an interesting backstory

I clumsily almost said in a long ramble what you {found} squeezed into a single sentence. Very nicely put.

Edit - couldn't think of a easy way to note your quote-in-quote bit, since I couldn't get the tags to nest. And it feels too silly to make another post just to say that, so editting this

[Niellya]

I clumsily almost said in a long ramble what you squeezed into a single sentence. Very nicely put

Actually, if you look closely at that quote of myself, it's me quoting someone else. I don't recall where I picked it up from, but it did not originate with me. I agree with you though that it's very nicely put.

[Shere Khaan]

Actually I like the idea of a visible target around the targetted mob if it is subtle. There are a few mobs in this game that don't have npc names above them. Some of the mushrooms in The Deep for instance; sometimes it take a little running around and not hitting various mobs to finally work out which one you should be attacking.

So fix it by making the names visible? I kind of like the idea of being able to turn mob names off and be able to see who I am targeting

Shere Khaan

[Takeshi]

A better way to change sense heading would be to make skillups easier, allow skillups on a failure, start at 20 ish skill, and increase the level cap to 20x level instead of 5(level+1). Then new characters would still have to work for it but it wouldn't be such a chore.

[Draggar]

Originally posted by Phabos
But the the thing that gets me the most is the sheer arrogance of the complainers. The attitude of "I had to do it this way so everyone else should to" is ludicrous. It reeks of jealousy.

I don't feel that way, I feel that it cheats the whole idea of roleplaying.

If they were going to boost it for some races and/or classes (such as rangers) and maybe give a few extra boosts (dwarves get either smithing or brewing kickup, start at 25) I wouldn't have a problem.

Its learning. You leave college you still don't know everything you need to know in the real world, and when your characters leave their guildhalls, they don't know everything.

Besides, where will it end? I got killed a gazillion times when I was level 1 by rats and bats, will they start everyone off at 25 in all melee and casting skills? Let a level 1 start off as a "master" in a tradeskill? Skill of 100 in bind wounds?

Learning is a big part of the game (I was happy to see the that items were no longer destroyed in non-combines, but I was also upset).

As for the newbie kits, I don't mind. A bag, a few stacks of food & drink, and as suggested before a fishing pole, a stack of bait, and maybe some other basic supplies (I would have even loved a stack of bandages) Give the level 1 a plat or two even, give them little tastes, but don't give them the whole cake.

[Faymar]

Originally posted by Draggar
I don't feel that way, I feel that it cheats the whole idea of roleplaying.

That's my point too. Do I find it frustrating when something that I worked hard for becomes trivial for other people to do? Yes, a bit, but I concede the fact that it was stupidly hard and needed fixing.

But to be "born" with a full sense of direction makes no sense to me. I am much happier with the idea of it going up like meditation ... no keypresses needed, emulates the trick of binding sense heading to a movement key, but you get some sort of sense of achievement when you face the North and know that you are heading north.

Looking at a mob and saying "I think I can take that" is what you do when you are green and starting out. Using your knowledge to decide whether you actually CAN take the mob (done in game by considering) is part of the learning curve, part of "growing up" within the fantasy world of EQ.

I don't have an issue with them trying to make the game more user-friendly at the start. It WASNT at all, I almost quit within the first hour or two of starting (yeah, I attacked my guildmaster first thing ... in Kelethin ... was lost for hours and needed that note to hand in as it was the only thing I knew to do ... starting a new character and starting over didn't occur to me) and wouldn't have if I didn't have friends telling me the game was worth it.

I've introduced new people to the game and watched them have real problems starting off.

But there is a difference between making things more user friendly whilst giving newbies that feeling of achievement and making things "instantaneous" from level one with no feeling of having progressed.

May as well just put /testbuff live the rate it's going, in my opinion. That makes it a lot easier ... but do you think this would be a good thing?

[Grenoble]

I'm not particularly in favor of these changes, nor do I think that constitutes arrogance on anyone's part. Some great ideas have come up here as alternatives.

A little more starting money, maybe. Maybe a starting skill of 20 or so in an appropriate tradeskill (ranger = fletching, for example). First couple of spells already scribed in the book, that's ok, too.

I personally love sense heading. It gives me a button to mash when I'm medding/fishing/chatting or the like.

I'm not saying I don't want people to have it easier than I did. I'm proud of my accomplishments, but hey...remember medding with the book in front of your face? Bleh. Anyone really sorry to see that go?

Only thing that does concern me is...its so easy to blast your way up to level 25 now. 30, even. A lot of things already contribute to this...why add more? There's some wonderful content for those levels that few see anymore. And for me it was a valuable time to learn such things as mana management, food/drink management, thrift, etc.

Just an opinion. I'll accept whatever they shoot my way, of course, for they've hooked me good.

[Nhin Impious]

And lo, the dwarf hath spoken, and he doth say, "Bring it."

Someone prove to me that a character who begins after this patch will necessarily, automatically, and irrevocably be a lesser player than I, or will cause my raid/group to wipe if I am with them, or will take away from my future gameplay experience in any way, and I will listen and debate.

GIVEN: There is a disparity in playing ability. Some players are better than others.

GIVEN: (a) Some players are less adept at playing their character because of inexperience or ignorance. They will gradually get better. (b) Some players are less adept because they don't care, they're here to chat and run around and play socially, and if they never ding again it won't matter. (c) However, some players are less adept because-- excuse my Dark Speech-- they are just plain dumb. They won't learn, they refuse to learn, and bless their hearts, half of them have the attitude that "it's only a game" and we should sit back and smile when their 30 seconds of stupidity costs us 4 hours' worth of experience and 50pp worth of buffs.

GIVEN: "Back in the day" it was downright impossible to go beyond a certain level-- let's call it X-- without, somehow, getting BETTER at playing the game. You could almost guarantee that anyone above level X was a darn good player, and you could group with them and not worry about having to fill your own group slot and theirs as well. Anyone below level X might be a member of class (a), (b), or (c) above-- you took your chances-- but you lived in anticipation of the day you reached whatever mystical level seemed to you to be level X, and suddenly instead of having to search far and wide for good group members, you would have to look pretty hard to find that one sheltered cleric who couldn't figure out why she kept pulling agro when all she was casting was stuns.

As a personal impression, when I started playing in 2001, level X was around 20. Maybe 30. Gradually, the improvements made in the game-- while they have made it easier for me and persistent people like me to level up-- have raised level X. Now that I'm 53, I notice that I'm surrounded by just as many people who are... um... "lacking in ability" as ever. Maybe 60 is level X now. Maybe it's 65. It's darn sure not anywhere I've been yet.

So-- is level X an illusion? It could be. Does making the game easier to play, removing some of the challenges, make people stupider, less creative, less adaptive? No. People are who they are. But dumbing down the game makes it harder to separate out those with abilities that they've never yet had to use and could, from those that couldn't. Who wants to bother training Bind Wound when you can pop up to PoK and get a Temperance from your cleric buddy, and have 800 HP that aren't even yours to throw against a level 5 fire beetle? Who cares about fizzling and training your abilities to cast when you can get a damage shield from a druid, poke the mob with your dagger, and get all the exp for almost nothing?

Well, Phabos, that's what I think. As if you married me for my brains, of course. *grin*

Nhinx "This'll sting a bit" Aphsion
194 Bind wound, 175 1 Handed Blunt, and not bad with a spoon either

[kiztent]

Originally posted by Nhin Impious
GIVEN: "Back in the day" it was downright impossible to go beyond a certain level-- let's call it X-- without >>>snip<<<

I disagree with this assertion. There never has been a level X. Classic players complain about 'bluenark' and the exp highway, kunark era players talk about how unbalanced Velious was (and people that never hunted in dungeons), etc, etc.

Originally posted by Nhin Impious
So-- is level X an illusion? It could be. Does making the game easier to play, removing some of the challenges, make people stupider, less creative, less adaptive? No. People are who they are. But dumbing down the game makes it harder to separate out those with abilities that they've never yet had to use and could, from those that couldn't. Who wants to bother training Bind Wound when you can pop up to PoK and get a Temperance from your cleric buddy, and have 800 HP that aren't even yours to throw against a level 5 fire beetle? Who cares about fizzling and training your abilities to cast when you can get a damage shield from a druid, poke the mob with your dagger, and get all the exp for almost nothing?

And this is new to the game how? People have been begging buffs and PL botting for as long as the game has been around.

I'm going to take the opposite tack and say that LDoN has done MORE to reverse (or make evident*) the dumbing down of the game than any expansion to date.

I'll even say that any of the newbie changes I've seen will not make anyone a better player if they were not put in place. Yes, training sense heading does not make you a better person. Doing corpse runs is not character building. You do not become a better player staring at a book for 35 levels. Running from Qeynos to Freeport with no books was amusing once, then it became a massive pain in the ass and remained one. I am not a better player because I spent a half hour going from Qeynos to Freeport. The game didn't shrink to exping in 6 zones to get to 60 when they put in pok books. It just became less time consuming if that's what you wanted to do. Level 40 monks who can't feign pull didn't spring into being with PoP - they were running around the Dreadlands earning the "best exp" in the Velious era.

Sony's customers want to enjoy their game without dealing with pointless, retarded time sinks. Certainly they are 'realistic' from a RP perspective, but this isn't a RP game.

* - by that I mean the idiots are a lot easier to spot.

[Phabos]

Okay, me again.


From the looks of things, and this may be a bit of an exaggeration, although not much, we are being swarmed with "stupid newbie tricks,"what might happen if this "trend of dumbing down the game" continues, and other things that people do to get ahead that don't involve actually trying to learn the class. That's fine, that's all well and good, keep posting.

But you've missed the point.

Nice theories, but my colander holds more water. Let's step back and look at what is "in development."

First and foremost on the complaint list: Sense Heading (200)
Is this /testbuff? Is this a tradeskill, weapon skill, spell skill, etc? Is it a new buff that can be cast on a lower level player to give him or her "800 HP that aren't even" theirs? Heck, will it make getting to level 2, much less level X, Y, or Z any easier? Maybe in the fact that Newbie_001 won't get lost and die and spend a few seconds/minutes returning to the happy hunting ground, but any real, quantifiable data? Didn't think so.

Second, the lack of a need to /con. Will this make it any easier to kill a mob? Getting killed by something you shouldn't have taken may be a rite of passage. I'm level 50 (almost 51) and it still happens to me, even when I do consider the mob. How does making the information already available with a few keystrokes a bit easier to obtain change anything? If a character is going to attack any mob without checking the con, more than likely they would do it anyway. And, if not, what's the harm? One less corpse? One less new player (those are humans on the other side of that newbie, after all, with the same frustrations and anger that you get when something goes wrong) who might quit before even really getting started? Again, where is the harm?

The sky isn't falling, Chicken Little. No one has offered anything substantive (still) that shows SOE is dumbing things down with this patch and that these changes will have any impact. Nothing mentioned in these posts has even addressed the changes being made. There may be some legitimate complaints that over patches previous, SOE has allowed inferior players to succeed. Maybe that's bad, maybe that is even good (see earlier point about SOE needing to keep suscribers so that the rest of us can play). This is not one of those patches.

Rant and rave, but offer some hard evidence when you do. Kiz has made some excellent points that I don't need to repeat. The basic fact is that making the game a bit easier at other levels has no impact on future performance. Heck, it just may keep someone who would have quit in game longer, and that player may wind up being a valuable asset to your guild/group. That possibility is just as, if not more so, viable as the proposition that these changes will allow an inferior player to climb even higher than is currently possible.


Phabos Aphsion
Drunken Paladin of Brell
Tarew Marr

Note: Yes, there some other things listed in the upcoming message. As far as I can tell, they are fairly uncontroversial and there is no need to address them. The logic, however, is the same.