The failed PvP-server experiment

[yavimaya]

Long posts in here.
Sky is not blue, it is the way the light is dispersed by the atmosphere.
Sorry Doc.

[Drachenpaladin]

Long posts in here.
Sky is not blue, it is the way the light is dispersed by the atmosphere.
Sorry Doc.

And yet, its blue.

[Doc Holliday]

so we made it to page 2 with two huge posts which really didnt say a lot about anything other than a history lesson from dj and blue. Faster comes in and chips his part on about being an rper because he played venus which was a completely seperate entity from the main servers for a while and then we hop over to page 2 where we have descended in to some nitpicking :P

I guess this thread really did deliver.

[yavimaya]

Sky is clear, You bottle me some blue air Drachen, ill even pay you for it.

[Torg]

This is supposed to be a leisure activity, right? Something to relax by. Beyond that i'm fine with having started a discussion on what Neocron is, or could be. What we all agree on is that Neptune is neither. What we dont agree on is what Neocron should be instead. I say NC is a game still unfinished. Not fully developed. Plenty of space to explore, in game developing terms.

To me NC always was a theater stage to play on. Once i log in, i'm in-character. I never go there to shoot people, or to win a fight. I got plenty of competition in meatspace, so i wont need to compensate for that in the virtual world. To my understanding NC is lacking content. Dearly. And PvP is game content.

To a capped char theres not much else to do in NC but PvP, apart from WoC missions. So i sort of understand those chaps in the NC community insisting on PvP being "the only thing that matters". Of course its not, but it may appear to you that way, once you gained all the skillpoints and items you could ask for.

My solution for the "capped-char-problem" is to start a new toon. Going to new places, trying different weapons, playing along happily without a goal. You may want to do something different. Fine

As i've pointed out in various posts in this forum, it comes down to the basic question: "what do you want from Neocron?". If it's pure PvP, you'd probably better off with a pure PvP game. Have you tried Unreal Tournament's onslaught mode? Sometimes i wished Neocron could be like that. I'm really sure that Neocrons PvP is lacking, compared to other games - so why are people still coming to this world? I believe it's the atmosphere. So i believe we should care for enhancements of that atmosphere rather than faster levelling up to a status, where you PvP just to avoid the lurking boredom.

To my understanding we need more missions - and i'm happy that our Dev team took up the task. We need factions to be more significant, even faction NPCs and more background story to that. We need new items to struggle for, but what we need most is an upgrade to the story of Neocron. I don't think i'm only speaking for myself, but for quite some part of the playerbase: i need a reason for PvP. i can't be bored enough to just shoot. i did a good share of fighting in the past (both in NC 1 and 2), but those fights always had some story background, mostly faction tensions or city vs city (and i bemoan the loss of the Dome as a place to dwell).

But to bring back Neocron to at least some success, we need to have all kinds of players, all kinds of needs approached. concentrating on a single one will make this venture fail.

[Ivan Eres]

There arent any facts to discuss in your threads though Torg. You never post facts. You post loosely disguised opinions intended to have a dig at one or another individual or section of the community in your self-righteous crusade to prove that we are all categorised into some broad stereotype.[...]

Absolutely true.

To add something substantial to this thread: The rules for Neptune sound fucking awesome and I'd love to play a server like that. The only problem is that merely 1% of today's computer game players could take it. Not even the PvP guys would be in. Most of them only care for winning anyway, and not for the fight. That's the biggest problem for PvP, in my opinion. Not game mechanics.

[Cursed Shadow]

People do seem to be getting more impatient though. NC1 leveling was slower than it is now, partly because people know the game inside-out, but also because of things like regants. However it didn't matter so much as unlike now, PvP viability (or at least the ability to reasonably take part in PvP) was not limited to capped chars and there was no WoC. Plenty of people (mainly PEs) used non-rares and many tanks used the Speed Gat.
The level progression could do with altering, in many spots it is slow, but in others it's crazy fast. It also doesn't help that missions are not an effective way of gaining xp (and they are short and boring) and PvE is dull, it does feel like a grind at times because of the AI and the general ease of play.

I agree with most of the things you're saying here, but I must say, we need to accept that Neocron has an ageing population.
People don't have the time for tedious leveling anymore, and that's why there is demand for faster leveling or "weekend exp", people just want to get back to either high-end farming or PvP (let's remember, most returning veterans will have been poked until they return by another runner).
Most other online games have upped the ante for experience gain, with either 'rested exp' bonuses or some other method which enables those who cannot play often to catch up.

I really would like some more immersive stories and events added to this game, to justify some back to basics Faction love, and I'm one of those who misses the Dome.

However, if we're going to assess the strength of this game, it really is in the PvP system. It is an MMO world with an FPS style of game-play, and even today I'd be hard-pressed to find a game that delivers that aspect better. If a Fallout Online came out, that would probably do it.

I do think that RP is a horse that is dead on it's legs nowadays. I think most of the true RP'ers have moved on, probably because the devs have fucked with their Factions so much, moved them around and made them live in a boring, shitty part of the Neocron City - Pepper Park which is fairly flavourless.

Devs even created favoritism among the ranks by introducing Mr Jones who only appears for a handful of Factions. You may as well have said no Private Eyes should go Anti-City. (How else would you get a Stealth Tool?)

I don't know what needs to be done to fix this game anymore, I tend to drift in and out of the game when I miss the PvP, but then I'm reminded immediately that there is nothing else to do. OP fights pretty much need to be organised among clans now, shooting Warbots repeatedly gets tiresome, trying to RP and find people to kill around Military Base is a meaningless exercise.

[BlueRobot]

What we all agree on is that Neptune is neither.

[Torg]

...The rules for Neptune sound fucking awesome and I'd love to play a server like that. The only problem is that merely 1% of today's computer game players could take it. Not even the PvP guys would be in...

you're right. it didnt work. and probably never will. despite being more of a usual deathmatch-game than ever. to make NC a populated world it needs to be attractive not only to "hardcore players" but to all kinds. so?

[MayhemMichael]

Now that double XP is off we all get to enjoy 5% pop again

[RogerRamjet]

I haven't been in game massively lately but how are the Devs making Titan the new Neptune?

And the reason Neptune failed was not because it wasn't a good idea, but one which didn't come from the people who the community thought would use it. At the time FETISH was trolling the server (ah the good old days) and the OP scene was stagnant (in terms of clans), and there was much whine. The PVPers were for the most part happy as you could still get a fight any time you wanted, so why would they move? The answer wasn't a new server, but should have been to address the issue of content and RP potential which other parts of the community were unhappy with.

I can't remember any celebration of Neptune at the time, mainly because everyone I ran with (in NC Elite, R2K, FETISH on Terra, ATF on Mars and TNT on Mercury) ignored it. Part of the problem then, like you're doing nearly 10 years later, is trying to split the community into pvpers and non-pvpers. To improve this game both sides of the game needs to progress, they are not independent of each other.

But anyway, continue to drag up 10 year old ideas and follow your own agenda with regards the progress of this game. The reason the game almost went under is because of views of a narrow portion of the community and the exclusion of others, so I don't see why you're intent on repeating that.

[William Antrim]

Well I'm glad that got settled.

[Zoltan]

Plain PVP - SPARTA

[Torg]

Plain PVP - SPARTA

thanks for making that clear. the OP was on a different subject, but well, you just cant start a new thread for every additional thought.

[Doc Holliday]

The U-Turn in this thread from page 1 to page 2 by the OP was so good i can honestly say the only time i saw one better was by the black and whites in old episodes of TJ Hooker.