My day in MC5

[Comie]

Im gunna tell yu a story about my day in MC5, and hopefully it will relay information to those who make this game to fix it quickly (the noob one it is) its not a flame or a "OMFGZ SEYRIOUSLY FIX TEH MC5 COS IT SUXXORZ TEH NUBLETS R TEH PWNED THERE" but hopefully it will give yu an insight.

I thought to myself, well i have a terminator i built sitting here gathering dust, what shall i do? well i loved the PE's so i'll make me a noob PE and see what MC5 is like lvl the little fella up and then give him the terminator, i tried to use my old PE's name of Hutch, but found it to be taken... oh well it happens... i'll name him Crockett instead (miami vice).

So i roll up crockett, resplendant with porn tash and jacket, and load up MC5.


a small window pops up infront of me, saying something along the lines of "yu awake with a headache...." i thought oooh setting the scene this is nice...
so i turn to speak to the MC5 commander, and he goes thru his spiel about yey reza we love him, aint dictators great yada yada, i agree thoroughly (crockett = CA so hey) and then he says to co speak to the head technition, and my personal advisor, so up the grav lift i go, and thru to the next zone.

Hey its MC5 but this time the guards are loving me and not trying to stick their rifles up my arse for a nice plasma collonic... which is nice. So i speak to my personal advisor, which i misclick and speak to the PSI monk advisor, and instead of him telling me "piss of PE yu is no monk" he is very nice and tells me that my greatest weapon is my mind, and that i can be either passive or agressive, and so on, yet i get the feeling that maybe i am a psi monk, and not a PE after all...

i speak to the right advisor, and he tells me about all the things i can do and my strenghts and weaknesses, which is very informative. I then go speak to the head technition and see what hes got to say for himself... he tells me, in a very "i have a mission for yu" style, that some of the cyberguards have malfunctioned and that if yu could retieve their chips for him to study he'd be greatful... they usually stay around power generators as they like to saturate themselfs with energy, as the chip has malfunctioned and makes them use more energy, so i click ok... and check my mission log (me thinks its a mission) no mission... hmmm it sounded like a mission... i'll go thru it again, no no mission, maybe i just collect them and see if he'll take them from me.

off i trott, outside MC5, and wonder around, i stumble upon the energy generator, and theres someone outside of it, i think nothing of this pass him pull out my very badly made lazar rifle and head in...

First mob is downed very quickly... i loot him... no chip, kill another and he almost kills me, still no chip... no more medikits for me... now what?

The guy i passed outside comes in and says "hi in mew to this game, can yu help me? i played the tutorial but it crashed midway thru" well i did chuckle to myself about this, and said nothing to him about crashes...

he was a 0/2 spy with his dagger out
"no ammo?" i ask him "no i ran out" was his reply... "how do yu heal in this game" was his second question... i sighed to myself and set about walking him thru the game mechanics, he came from CoH and therefore stat based games were foregn to him, i took him out of MC5 as it was dangerous to his gaming needs, and took him to Neocron, walked him around viarossa and plaza and explained to him where to get ammo, how to heal, what the stats are, how to tell how powerful a mob is etc... 40 mins later he was in the sewers killing rats.

i felt as if i was being tested when i was walking him thru it, either he was a games journalist, or a GM or a Dev trying to play as a noob... i get the feeling me may of been a journalist cos some of the questions seemed too knowlegable.

what assumptions did i make from this?

every class needs to be able to clast their Tl 3 heal from the start
every class needs more ammo when they start out with
MC5 needs to be more linear, less open plan
Character creation should start with yu picking yur model and stuff... but class creation should happen after a tutorial, like System shock 2, its a virtual world while yur lying on the cyro bed having who knows what done to yu, thats when yu pick to be PSI monk/Tank/PE/Spy yu get to play with mid lvl weapons of each class so yu can tell what yu like... then once yu choose that yur character setup is done for yu... so that every class can from start heal themselfs... (i cant stress the healing yurself enough).
The personal advisors should only talk to those of their class... and have a nice reason why such and such isnt one of them... i feel that if i hadnt been there (which was lucky for him) he would of logged off and uninstalled the game disgruntled and unhappy.

in summery

MC5 will lose Neocron players... its nice and all for someone who knows the game, but its too informative and less linear for new bloods

apologies for the grammer/spelling, im at work and the big boss is on the prowl, just had to get this out in the open


oh and the newbs name? "methlabinmypants" i still say journalist

[Bugs Gunny]

There's allready a new mc5 version in the patches.

It'll be activated once int release hits.

[Spermy]

Heal - while not immediatly castable (that'd take away some of the effort!) Needs to be easier to reach. I'm SICK of doing 40 odd roach missions to get my heal!

>_< <---- annoyance face

I could do the easy missions but I can't seem to find half the stuff I have to kill...

Small diseased rat? I can find every rat BUT that.... same goes for plants. and yep, checking the bunkers, sewers (all the way in!) and sidestreets...

Is it possible to get some kind of input as to where all the mobs reside? cos that would rock so much, or maybe, not so much as where they reside... just what mobs are in the dome sewers/sidestreet thingies, just to check em off against the missions? cos I have a sneaking suspicion that some of the missions you get to kill low level mobs are buggered on account of the mob doesn't spawn anywhere in the dome... 8|

Anyhow - sorry for the mini thread but yeah...

Excellent readup on MC5 showed the good, the bad and the buggy...

(really likes the idea of adding a bit of scripting to the NPCs to check class so if it's the wrong NPC for thier class all you'll get is "piss off you moose"....)

[Obsidian X]

Hehe I remember my first day as a noob in MC5. I was so disoriented, I had a mate (who introduced me to the game) talk me through it. He gave me very clear and concise instructions on how to leave MC5 as quickly as possible :p

The new content sounds good, hope its more noob friendly.

[Torg]

starting area MC5 is really nice, but really useless as well. i raised quite a few chars in my 2,5 years of neocron, so whenever i get to make a new one, i'd go straight to the GR and lvl near my app instead. there's no fun in MC5, except maybe talking to people without any clue.

[CMaster]

Its worth pointing out that one of the nomad traders even now in MC5 sells medkits and ammo....

[Comie]

Its worth pointing out that one of the nomad traders even now in MC5 sells medkits and ammo....

not really... whos gunna tell the noob, if yu've played the game before thats great news, otherwise... its like giving a Holy lightning to a melee tank

[BradSTL]

My imagination boggles at the idea that there are people who come out of the MC5 building and can't find ammo or medkits, and who can't find even one of the Energy Cores. For crying out loud, not 30 feet from the bottom of the ramp there are gigantic yellow neon directional signs that say "Trader Camp," "Genetic Replicator," and "Energy Core"! How much more obvious could they make it? And yet the other day I had to talk someone through it.

People who are that averse to the idea of walking 20 yards towards an objective they can't quite clearly see from where they're standing are not going to enjoy this game. If you don't enjoy exploring, then Neocron City or the Dome of York is going to be even more frustrating to you than MC5 is, and the gods help you when you get out into the Wastelands.

There are things that need to be fixed about beginner MC5. The traders need to be relocated slightly again so they stop slam dancing. They need to be updated to the correct inventory they were supposed to receive four patches ago. Mob spawn areas need to be widened, and frequency and respawn rate need to be adjusted. New hackers need their HackNet software instead of the gun that they're not specced to use any more, and the MC5 Hacknet terminal needs to work. They need to remove the Bright & Clean "vehicle parts" mission, since vehicle parts no longer spawn as loot. But these are all known problems, fixes are in progress or so we're told. We'll probably even get them this week.

But already I can't imagine any place in the game being made easier to level in. Until you get halfway to the edge of the zone or halfway into Strange Cave, there are no aggressive mobs. There are almost no mobs with ranged attacks. There's a good mix of ground-based mobs up to level 12. The storage cores mission pays huge money compared to its difficulty, which makes it trivially easy to afford to buy rather than clone first aid kits and ammunition. There's no reason for characters not to walk out of MC5 with a skill rank of at least 10 and a bank balance of at least 100,000 credits.