The newbie experience

[SorkZmok]

So, people new to NC are pretty much fucked these days. Many classes aren't working at all, mob health at low levels is too high, rewards aren't enough.

What needs changing?

1) Fix the broken classes
Drones are completely useless at low levels. Melee damage output is a joke. Pistol range at low levels is pathetic. There's no chance to level in hacknet. Right now the only classes you could level properly are rifle and heavy users. The rest is wank and extremely frustrating.

2) Better starting equipment.
What's so bad about giving a newbie 2 guns to choose from, both with slots and at least 90% stats. Give them more starting ammo, medkits and boosters. Maybe some more money aswell. 10k should be cool.
And every class should get a recycling tool right from the start. And maybe a tooltip how to use it. Because you can't make any money at all if you're not recycling.

3)More mobs.
Remove the damn roaches and flies and all other mini mobs. There need to be mobs that you can actually see. Something bigger than a stupid snake or crawler would be nice. And more mobs. Half the time i was in MC5 i was just searching for mobs to kill.


That's all i can think of right now. If this won't get fixed, there's never gonna be more players. Post your ideas!

[unreal]

Well this is going to be a thread containing things that have already been mentioned many times, but as ever, looks like they need to be repeated, because nothing is currently being done about them it seems.

Low/mid level Tradeskilling
I've spoken many times about the low/mid level tradeskilling issue, or more specifically that I would prefer that area of tradeskilling not to exist at all. Unless you're in a clan it's painful to get hold of tradeskillers when you need them these days, which adds to the annoyance of most newcomers, and even existing players; especially during the early hours.

Low/mid level weaponry might as well be bought from vendors at a decent quality, very good stats, and have a fairly good chance of slots. It would help newcomers a great deal. Even mods themselves often cost a fair amount which can often halt a newbie in their tracks. I was about to suggest mods becoming TL0 so you can mod them yourselves, but that goes a bit too far I think. :p

General Tradeskilling
The majority of people playing already have everything they need, and they'll only trade something if they get a hefty profit, which leaves newbies shafted. Bringing up my old SWAT processor example again, I had to offer a Hawking in order to make someone get off their backside and trade me one. It didn't truly bother me, as I still have about 5 Hawkings left, but just how is a newcomer going to be able to afford one of those, not to mention get their hands on one? Those implants are crucial to your PvP setup, not to mention your ability to use better weapons while levelling.

As we all know those few implants are now truly 'rare' instead of being obtained from a database, meaning noone often wants to trade them. Instead they'll be stored away in a cabinet as spares, often not used for a long time. The same applies to most of the new rare weapons. How about creating a quest for at least one non-WoC rare weapon, in the same way you get a reward for doing the mass of WoC quests.WoC users get all their uber weapons handed to them on a plate, so why not spare a thought for everyone who doesn't have WoC (ie, new people) for once?

For most other general things that would be a great help, all you need to do is look at what other MMORPG's offer and emulate the important/nice bits. Low and mid-level mobs need to be more interesting, larger in size, and become more rewarding as you say. Wouldn't it be nice to include random amounts of ammo frequently in the loot? Medkits were mentioned and I think they need to be a must-drop-often type of item now that levelling solo is more difficult. Medkits also cost a lot which doesn't help newbies at all.

Everyone's pretty much complained about the other various problems already, such as low level drones being useless, and are just sitting around hoping someone pulls their finger out and does something about it. Unfortunately for drones though, someone created a thread in the bug reports section about that and Carnage closed the thread stating "You have to skill HighTechCombat for better aiming speed. And its intended that aiming, range and damage of low level drones is not as good as from the higher ones".

I really don't like the fact they've forced the requirement of teaming on everyone but droners. It's not the best thing to do when most people are already capped, and it's very difficult to find teams, particularly low or mid level ones, and has been this way for a good few years. This direction of the balancing is something that causes newcomers to stumble along even more. Even I had a hard time of it and ended up LOMing my Spy to drones just so I could level by myself, and get a nice amount of XP without being instagibbed by pretty much everything.

Something that will never happen.
I challenge two Reakktor staff members to each create a new character, no doubt a Private Eye or Spy; one of them on Mars, the other on Terra, and try to level up from scratch, with absolutely nothing. They would need to act as though they're completely new to the game (ie, not messaging people they know revealing who they are so they get items instantly constructed for them, handfuls of cash, nothing a newcomer would have the luxury of, etc). How about one person picking drones and the other picking pistols? Would be interesting to find out how long it would take one of them to press ALT+F4.

[ashley watts]

Something that will never happen.
I challenge two Reakktor staff members to each create a new character, no doubt a Private Eye or Spy; one of them on Mars, the other on Terra, and try to level up from scratch, with absolutely nothing. They would need to act as though they're completely new to the game (ie, not messaging people they know revealing who they are so they get items instantly constructed for them, handfuls of cash, nothing a newcomer would have the luxury of, etc). How about one person picking drones and the other picking pistols? Would be interesting to find out how long it would take one of them to press ALT+F4.

Damn i would love to see the outcome on that.

Things do need changing mostly on noob levling atm :\

[=REMUS=]

You only need to repeat this a few thousand more times for it to be corrected, might be harder than getting parashock nerfed for example because there are less users on the forum now :(

Still I can copy and past the appropriate generic comments into all relivant/non-relivant threads in the futile hope that kk will heed the calls I guess :rolleyes: :p

I'm going to make a new character if and when I rejoin, I won't make the name public and i'll see just how hard it is as a newbie without funding to make it in this game these days.

[Flipshot]

As a newbie here the first thing I find lacking is a tooltip. There is little information on stats, skills and items leaving one guessing as to it's true intented use. Example, Agility and Atheletics pretty much mean the same thing to me. Flexiblity, run speed, jumping and dodging is what comes to mind with these two abilitys. There are also skills that need to be used together, that I only found out about by looking at the forums. If I never came here, how long far would I have gotten blindly guessing and placing skill points here and there.

So in short, the games needs more ingame info or an ingame manual. The Cityterm or ingame mail box interface would be a good place for that.


my 2 cents anyway.

[StevenJ]

Low/mid level weaponry might as well be bought from vendors at a decent quality, very good stats, and have a fairly good chance of slots.I really do think this is absolutely essential, perhaps a noob weapon smuggler (arti plus slots please!) a few sectors out of the main cities, near a GR and Gogo, and near some low level dungeons (just three or four storage halls at each smuggler, packed with big scary mobs as Unreal suggested would be great), so it becomes a dangerous yet fun place for low-level runners to congregate.

Even sexier would be a mission that led new runners around the city, took them into the OZ, then the last mission directed them to this smugger. First well defined goal after the Jones missions: level enough to be able to fight your way to these areas.

NC is a superb, open-ended game, but some direction is absolutely essential if you're starting alone. When I first started playing, a very nice guy called WedgeAntilles (not the guy who still plays NC2 :p) took me under his wing, and without his help I don't think I'd have kept on playing. Give a little guidance, get new players exploring, get them decent weapons.

Also, something I haven't really given much thought to - remove XP loss from loms if you're under level 20?

[Eternal Pink]

Low/mid level Tradeskilling
I've spoken many times about the low/mid level tradeskilling issue, or more specifically that I would prefer that area of tradeskilling not to exist at all. Unless you're in a clan it's painful to get hold of tradeskillers when you need them these days, which adds to the annoyance of most newcomers, and even existing players; especially during the early hours.

Reason there is no tradeskillers about is becuz nobody is actually paying (tipping) anymore, i had some guy thank me for like 3 minutes the other day becuz i tipped him 25k for 5 pokes ( which for me is about usual when i tip ) which doubled the money he'd got for the last hour he'd spent in TH.

Personnally when i'm on my poker/constructor/repper/reccer i'll do nib stuff for free but i expect capped/near capped runners to pay for my time and at the first one that don't i just GR out of TH to TS HQ where i can make 13k every 2 minutes doing cst missions.

So until runners start opening there wallets so trade skilling is actually a way to make money again theres gonna be a shortage, and if ya don't believe me tip someone 25-50k when they poke ya and i bet they'll magically appear every time you need something that night.

[SorkZmok]

I really do think this is absolutely essential, perhaps a noob weapon smuggler (arti plus slots please!) a few sectors out of the main cities, near a GR and Gogo, and near some low level dungeons (just three or four storage halls at each smuggler, packed with big scary mobs as Unreal suggested would be great), so it becomes a dangerous yet fun place for low-level runners to congregate.

Even sexier would be a mission that led new runners around the city, took them into the OZ, then the last mission directed them to this smugger. First well defined goal after the Jones missions: level enough to be able to fight your way to these areas.

NC is a superb, open-ended game, but some direction is absolutely essential if you're starting alone. When I first started playing, a very nice guy called WedgeAntilles (not the guy who still plays NC2 :p) took me under his wing, and without his help I don't think I'd have kept on playing. Give a little guidance, get new players exploring, get them decent weapons.

Also, something I haven't really given much thought to - remove XP loss from loms if you're under level 20?
This sounds great.
But i wouldn't really want artifact guns from a smuggler; 80 to 90% quality with slots would prolly be a good start. So there was still a market for constructors and researchers if people really wanted a good gun.

And don't remove the xp loss of loms below level 20, just reduce it some more. That should already do the trick.