03-12-2010, 02:13 AM
Personally I think what I suggested a few posts back is a middle ground between the people asking for all skills to be made easier to encourage new joiners who don't want to dedicate untold amounts of time before they can really play IN:X, and for those who want to leave things as they are and risk a dwindling playerbase (personally I think the playerbase is doing fine right now, it's just that a lot of people are in that exam/march break period of the year so they are away from the computer and studying or taking a 1-week vacation in the Caribbeans like a lot of people I know from school did).
I think if people get a better idea of what I'm suggesting they might be less resistant to it so here's a further explanation on what I was talking about earlier.
Part 1 - Crafting Skills:
Leave Alchemy, Blacksmithy, Bowcraft/Fletching, Carpentry, Inscription, Tailoring, and Tinkering exactly as they are. Why? Because once you GM a crafting skill, it's not *hard* to start a macro to make scrolls or pots overnight. Yes, it's long to train the skills, but it's not HARD in the sense that you as a player need to be skillful, clever, or good at a game to train them or to click a gump to make items.
I don't think it's a good idea to even make just Alchemy and Inscription easier because nobody should be self-sufficient unless they have put in TONS of time to train the skills. If everyone can train Alchemy and Inscription that's eliminating the roles other people like to perform (crafters).
Part 2 - Base Skills:
Anatomy, Evaluating Intelligence, Healing, Magery, Meditation, and Resisting Spells should be given at 100 or extremely easy to train. In addition to these, each player should be allowed to choose any 2 combats to get for free. This could be archery and swordsmanship, or archery and tactics, or fencing and parrying, etc. Any 2 combat skills.
Why should these be given or extremely easy to train? Because the majority of people currently playing IN:X or who will join IN:X are going to PvP and/or PvM. I don't think there are many people playing today that ONLY craft and never ever fight another player or monster, and I can't see someone joining a shard just to craft when it's already full of people with the craft skills trained and not making big profits off them (like others said, pots and even scrolls don't sell for much above cost price).
Like I said above, making Alchemy and Inscription easier eliminates the roles other people like to perform, but giving these base skills away doesn't take anything away from anyone.
This makes Anatomy, Evaluating Intelligence, Healing, Magery, Meditation, and Resisting Spells the base skills for just about every player who ever logs on to IN:X. So why force everyone to spend time training these skills when instead they could be given and players could instead enjoy IN:X for the shard it is from day 1 instead of spending 3-4 days training skills?
Personally, I don't want to install a game, let it run for 4 days waiting to train skills and then finally be able to play. With every other game I have ever played this is unheard of dating back to when I played on a console called Socrates.
I made a character from scratch not too long ago so I know how long it takes to train one. As my 3 starting skills I took Magery (90), Resisting Spells (100), and Healing (100). After that it took 24 hours to train anatomy, 26.4 hours to train evaluating intelligence, and 9.15 hours to train meditation, so ~60 hours total. But I hope you realize this didn't include getting money so I could finish training Magery using MA scrolls, or training ANY combats, or training skills like Detecting Hidden (22.5 hours), Hiding (2.45 hours), or Stealth (30 hours) which just about everyone uses but I don't consider base skills. Nor did my ~60 hours include Musicianship, Discordance, Peacemaking, or Provocation which are very very helpful in PvM.
Detecting Hidden, Hiding, Stealth, Musicianship, Discordance, Peacemaking, and Provocation should all be left as they are however since they make your life easier for you so you should have to work for them.
Part 3 - Gathering skills
The gathering skills like Mining, Lumberjacking, etc should be left as they are since you are mining to get ores anyways so who cares if it's long? If it took 3 hours to GM mining you'd still mine to get ores anyways. Yes, you'd be able to get higher ores sooner but on the bright side until you get to that point you can accumulate a lot of ores to sell or use to train skills.
Part 4 - Some other skills
All the skills I didn't cover above like Animal Taming, Fishing, etc I didn't talk about since I don't use them or I haven't trained them so I can't say how long they take to GM compared to the potential profits off them.
Call them PvM & PvP skills. This way you avoid the bias opinions from those who don't like PvP
By your own admission you might be quitting soon, and I completely understand why, but at the same time I have to ask why should IN:X cater to someone like you who might just quit soon, instead of the 12 year olds that will probably be around for a few years if we can give them reason enough to stay?
I'm not saying you're any less of a player because you might be quitting soon, nor am I saying you didn't contribute to this shard, I'm just saying we can't always make only what the 10 year UO vets want to see in the shard when this is the group of players that will probably be quitting slowly.
Not every skill is given at 100 or 90 Tiesto... Take a look at the skill stone and you will see some skills are as low as 55! Obviously these are the harder to train ones but what you said is plain and simply wrong. You're assuming everyone will take 3 of the base pvp/pvm skills which isn't always the case. If I were to join IN:X knowing what I did after my time at XUO I would take Magery and Resisting Spells since these were some of the harder skills even on XUO, and as my third skill I would take a crafting skill to help me make money. And this is what I suggest to every new player whenever the topic of what to take comes up.
The reward package was around for 2-3 days, it's not encouraging more people to come today, and I have to say I saw a lot of new faces while it was here.
As for the rest of what you said here, you're right these things will encourage people to stay, if thy can get past the point of thinking 'wow I'm still not done training anatomoy', 'wow I'm still not done training magery', etc.
I think if people get a better idea of what I'm suggesting they might be less resistant to it so here's a further explanation on what I was talking about earlier.
Part 1 - Crafting Skills:
Leave Alchemy, Blacksmithy, Bowcraft/Fletching, Carpentry, Inscription, Tailoring, and Tinkering exactly as they are. Why? Because once you GM a crafting skill, it's not *hard* to start a macro to make scrolls or pots overnight. Yes, it's long to train the skills, but it's not HARD in the sense that you as a player need to be skillful, clever, or good at a game to train them or to click a gump to make items.
I don't think it's a good idea to even make just Alchemy and Inscription easier because nobody should be self-sufficient unless they have put in TONS of time to train the skills. If everyone can train Alchemy and Inscription that's eliminating the roles other people like to perform (crafters).
Part 2 - Base Skills:
Anatomy, Evaluating Intelligence, Healing, Magery, Meditation, and Resisting Spells should be given at 100 or extremely easy to train. In addition to these, each player should be allowed to choose any 2 combats to get for free. This could be archery and swordsmanship, or archery and tactics, or fencing and parrying, etc. Any 2 combat skills.
Why should these be given or extremely easy to train? Because the majority of people currently playing IN:X or who will join IN:X are going to PvP and/or PvM. I don't think there are many people playing today that ONLY craft and never ever fight another player or monster, and I can't see someone joining a shard just to craft when it's already full of people with the craft skills trained and not making big profits off them (like others said, pots and even scrolls don't sell for much above cost price).
Like I said above, making Alchemy and Inscription easier eliminates the roles other people like to perform, but giving these base skills away doesn't take anything away from anyone.
This makes Anatomy, Evaluating Intelligence, Healing, Magery, Meditation, and Resisting Spells the base skills for just about every player who ever logs on to IN:X. So why force everyone to spend time training these skills when instead they could be given and players could instead enjoy IN:X for the shard it is from day 1 instead of spending 3-4 days training skills?
Personally, I don't want to install a game, let it run for 4 days waiting to train skills and then finally be able to play. With every other game I have ever played this is unheard of dating back to when I played on a console called Socrates.
I made a character from scratch not too long ago so I know how long it takes to train one. As my 3 starting skills I took Magery (90), Resisting Spells (100), and Healing (100). After that it took 24 hours to train anatomy, 26.4 hours to train evaluating intelligence, and 9.15 hours to train meditation, so ~60 hours total. But I hope you realize this didn't include getting money so I could finish training Magery using MA scrolls, or training ANY combats, or training skills like Detecting Hidden (22.5 hours), Hiding (2.45 hours), or Stealth (30 hours) which just about everyone uses but I don't consider base skills. Nor did my ~60 hours include Musicianship, Discordance, Peacemaking, or Provocation which are very very helpful in PvM.
Detecting Hidden, Hiding, Stealth, Musicianship, Discordance, Peacemaking, and Provocation should all be left as they are however since they make your life easier for you so you should have to work for them.
Part 3 - Gathering skills
The gathering skills like Mining, Lumberjacking, etc should be left as they are since you are mining to get ores anyways so who cares if it's long? If it took 3 hours to GM mining you'd still mine to get ores anyways. Yes, you'd be able to get higher ores sooner but on the bright side until you get to that point you can accumulate a lot of ores to sell or use to train skills.
Part 4 - Some other skills
All the skills I didn't cover above like Animal Taming, Fishing, etc I didn't talk about since I don't use them or I haven't trained them so I can't say how long they take to GM compared to the potential profits off them.
p!nk dr@g0n Wrote:Like Eighty Swords said, just give us all the pvp skills... The ones who want to pvp will be glad, and the ones who don't shouldn't mind getting some free skills...
Call them PvM & PvP skills. This way you avoid the bias opinions from those who don't like PvP
Papa Smurf Wrote:This is how I feel about this: Chances are if you have been playing UO since day 1 and your still around then yes eventually you will leave because you are almost 30 years old like myself. As far as not being able to macro for 5 days to get these combats and magery to GM, that is simply lazyness or non commitment. I am a grown man and can leave my computer on for however long I want. I dont have my mommy telling me to shut it down. So if anyone will leave it will be the non commited 12 year olds who have mommy breathing down their neck. The skill gain in my oppinion is nothing less than perfect. I along with other players need that sense of accomplishment, not something handed to me. Thanks for listening.
By your own admission you might be quitting soon, and I completely understand why, but at the same time I have to ask why should IN:X cater to someone like you who might just quit soon, instead of the 12 year olds that will probably be around for a few years if we can give them reason enough to stay?
I'm not saying you're any less of a player because you might be quitting soon, nor am I saying you didn't contribute to this shard, I'm just saying we can't always make only what the 10 year UO vets want to see in the shard when this is the group of players that will probably be quitting slowly.
Tiesto Wrote:I dont get it......... we gave 3 skills : 2 at 100 and 1 at 90 for free......, we built and designed a Training camp especially for new starters so that they can macro their combats as fast as posible (It's been a complete sucesss and everyone knows it) people can macro all their combats in like 2-3 days.
Not every skill is given at 100 or 90 Tiesto... Take a look at the skill stone and you will see some skills are as low as 55! Obviously these are the harder to train ones but what you said is plain and simply wrong. You're assuming everyone will take 3 of the base pvp/pvm skills which isn't always the case. If I were to join IN:X knowing what I did after my time at XUO I would take Magery and Resisting Spells since these were some of the harder skills even on XUO, and as my third skill I would take a crafting skill to help me make money. And this is what I suggest to every new player whenever the topic of what to take comes up.
Tiesto Wrote:We gave a reward starting package when we went live.............. We designed and spawned SEVERALS new hunting/ride spots around the world..... seriosuly if you think hunting is hard i bet it is because you havent explored the world rather than destard or hytholoth, Theres tons of spots full of mobiles to kill and win easy and very good loot......... We have added severals Quest to do and win special and good items......The skillgain has been lowered and looked at like 2 or 3 times already since the shard began...
and you still complain it's to Hard?:eek:
The reward package was around for 2-3 days, it's not encouraging more people to come today, and I have to say I saw a lot of new faces while it was here.
As for the rest of what you said here, you're right these things will encourage people to stay, if thy can get past the point of thinking 'wow I'm still not done training anatomoy', 'wow I'm still not done training magery', etc.