1. #1
    freedom for neocron! Torg's Avatar
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    Default rebuilding the PvE experience



    as a long-timer NC player i witnessed a lot of changes in the PvE part of the game (and so did many of us). today, as we all would probably agree, the situation is not satisfying. there are mobs seemingly in the wrong places, for no known reason, limiting PvE to a small part of the map and a few crowded places. so here's my proposal:

    remove all doy- (except doy guards in the north), york- and y-mobs from the map surface and move them to caves (storages, mines etc), and add a few midrange caves (storages, mines etc) to the southern, "green" zone.

    map explanation: the grasslands (green) in the very south and the swamps (green zone) dont spawn mobs beyond rank 52 (cyclops). a zone for beginners. the very north (yellow) is a midrange area (warbots and spiderbots), the east (orange) upper midrange region with fire mobs and steppes reptiles, while the mountains (red) around Tech Haven have those pesky hoverbots.

    this is pretty much a NC1 setup.

    high-level (and team) hunting used to take place in caves (chaos caves, crystal cabe, swamp caves, el farid, regants, ceres storages, etc) - i dotted that in light blue. additional caves (storages, mines etc) with doy- york-, y-mobs would greatly aid the fun of PvE - given there's appropriate loot to have (tech parts, trophys, weapons and equipment). adding some midrange caves (storages, mines etc) with 50-70ish mobs wolud id levelling up for lower mid chars. these additional caves would easily fit into all thos lost dwellings in the wastelands (like old greycore, calida, tawkeen) - i added a few light purple dots to illustrate that.

    expected results: exploring the land would be less of a hazard, areas would be easier to understand. players would be able to spread out, or go in teams for new loot items.
    expected dev workload: low, as removing mobs as well as setting up caves/storages/mines is easily done.

    please discuss.

  2. #2

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    The following is my personal opinion.

    In my mind, tougher and higher level mobs should be found in more areas of the Wasteland. Implementation should be done in such a way that travelling is still possible for low and mid level characters though. You should be able to fairly safely traverse the roads to reach your destination but venturing off those beaten tracks could get you eaten by a bigger nasty. Local factions should protect the roads nearest their home, giving a justification for the roads remaining safe. This would allow new characters to get around where they need to go but also prevent them just sidling up to the home's of their enemies. It would also make life far more interesting. Having to think about travel rather than point in a direction and hold down W.

    The Wastelands should be interesting and accessible for low and mid level characters but more areas must also be useful/fun/interesting for high level and capped characters. Most of the Wasteland remains under utilised a lot of the time due to the established levelling tracks used by players and the lack of stuff to do by those at the end of those tracks.

    We need to spice up both sides of that coin.
    Trivaldi
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  3. #3
    Registered User Agent L's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Trivaldi View Post
    The Wastelands should be interesting and accessible for low and mid level characters
    There is absolutely no reason why Wastelands should be accessible to low lvl characters.

    The Wastelands are supposed to be a dangerous place. People that are not tough enough to live out there are gathering in the city.
    CM, TG and FA are faction for advanced players, deprived of that protection.

    Hell, even in the real, friendly world 99% of us would die outside of cities and settlements, without support from other humans.

    RP-wise, let me remind you about deadly radiation the Dome and NC's shield was built against. IMHO Players could even receive constant DoT while in wastes, so chars of weaker posture would die just because of it while trying to limp to the nearest shelter.

    Besides that, leveling is so fast in NC that it takes just few hours to get out of noob stage. Why waste precious devs time for smth that players would use in than 1% of their char life? Why waste limited world estate for that?

    And yet another argument: noobs are powerless without tradeskillers to poke them, res and cst their weapons. And where are all tradeskillers? In Plaza 1. And this is where all noobs will go. Noone will ever level outside city just because of that. And that's something you can't change, and should not even try to mess with - as the massive DoY fiasco has proven.

    This is something very, very bad you've done in the new patch. You've not only wasted your time for things that are not necessary, contradicted by RP-lore and would lie unused. You've broken the First Commandment of any engineer: If the stuff is working, don't mess around with it.
    You've took the cycrows zone, which was one of the few that *worked* and messed it up. It doesn't matter that you've tried to make it better - it was good enough.

    Quote Originally Posted by Trivaldi View Post
    We need to spice up both sides of that coin.
    You have 2 coins. Noobs in sewers, capped players hunting rares. You can't even make them click on their own, yet you're foolish enough you're trying to make them click 2 things at once?!?
    Last edited by Agent L; 16-09-13 at 17:10.

  4. #4

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    Quote Originally Posted by Agent L View Post
    There is absolutely no reason why Wastelands should be accessible to low lvl characters.
    Perhaps accessible is the wrong word. There's a delicate balance at play here. Those who have played the game for years (the vast majority of our player base) and have always been able to walk from Neocron to Military Base as a ~/10, would absolutely crucify us for any attempt made to prevent those low level characters from traversing the Wasteland. My opinion above is to simply make them work harder than they do now in exchange for more to do once they get to a higher level.

    Quote Originally Posted by Agent L View Post
    The Wastelands are supposed to be a dangerous place. People that are not tough enough to live out there are gathering in the city.
    CM, TG and FA are faction for advanced players, deprived of that protection.

    Hell, even in the real, friendly world 99% of us would die outside of cities and settlements, without support from other humans.
    When did I suggest removing that danger?

    Quote Originally Posted by Agent L View Post
    RP-wise, let me remind you about deadly radiation the Dome and NC's shield was built against. IMHO Players could even receive constant DoT while in wastes, so chars of weaker posture would die just because of it while trying to limp to the nearest shelter.
    I am a big fan of the lore and history of Neocron, personally I would love to add such a feature.

    Quote Originally Posted by Agent L View Post
    Besides that, leveling is so fast in NC that it takes just few hours to get out of noob stage. Why waste precious devs time for smth that players would use in than 1% of their char life? Why waste limited world estate for that?
    Every area of the Wasteland already has low level (and in most cases medium level) encounters. Time would only be spent creating more higher level challenges which are desperately needed.

    Quote Originally Posted by Agent L View Post
    And yet another argument: noobs are powerless without tradeskillers to poke them, res and cst their weapons. And where are all tradeskillers? In Plaza 1. And this is where all noobs will go. Noone will ever level outside city just because of that. And that's something you can't change, and should not even try to mess with - as the massive DoY fiasco has proven.
    So you'd prefer I didn't fix the broken dungeons available in Military Base, Tech Haven and the Canyon Facility and make those areas of the game actually usable? I've not stated I think new low characters should be able to level in the Wastelands, I'm actually suggesting we make it more difficult for them to survive out there but not sledge hammer it to the point we piss off our more experienced players. A key counter argument is that most characters spend their medium levels at Military Base.

    Players entirely new to Neocron, who choose a faction outside the City, should be able to level naturally in their starting locations. If someone tells them to go to Plaza 1 and hop on the normal levelling tracks so be it, but that shouldn't mean they're knackered just because they thought Twilight Guardian or City Mercs (or previously Fallen Angels) sounded cool.

    Quote Originally Posted by Agent L View Post
    This is something very, very bad you've done in the new patch. You've not only wasted your time for things that are not necessary, contradicted by RP-lore and would lie unused. You've broken the First Commandment of any engineer: If the stuff is working, don't mess around with it.
    You've took the cycrows zone, which was one of the few that *worked* and messed it up. It doesn't matter that you've tried to make it better - it was good enough.
    First of all I have to thank you for testing that experience, this has been a guinea pig for working on the rest of the Wasteland. You'll notice I've taken some of your feedback on board and this should lead to some changes in the next test patch or two. I certainly do not consider trying something new to be a waste of time, especially under my remit within the team.

    Please list your concerns regarding the contradictions of the lore, it is certainly never my intention to deviate from that. Evolve it and follow the paths set out by my predecessors yes but never deviate to the point of causing a contradiction. Neocron's lore and atmosphere is the reason I voluntarily continue to put so many hours into the game, if an oversight has violated that lore, I'd like to know your thoughts on where that oversight has occurred.

    Cycrow and its surrounding Canyon Sectors still work, they are just different to the roundabout you've been riding in those zones for the last half decade. Those zones were a lot more like the proposed changes in R#184 prior to the release of Neocron 2. After so many years another bit of a refresh is certainly needed. As far as I can see, a lot of people have grown tired of playing exactly the same game over and over.

    Quote Originally Posted by Agent L View Post
    You have 2 coins. Noobs in sewers, capped players hunting rares. You can't even make them click on their own, yet you're foolish enough you're trying to make them click 2 things at once?!?
    You'll have to explain that bit for me. None of what I said above aims to negatively impact either of those two groups. Low level and high level PvE are two sides of the same coin. Not separate ones.
    Trivaldi
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  5. #5
    Dream Cast Cursed Shadow's Avatar
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    I think more time needs to be spent sorting out the high level areas than the starter areas like Canyon.

    I mean look at the following, which I agree are untouched, but I believe it's more to do with no incentive to go there!!

    Swamp Caves
    Crystal Caves (Rarely)
    Worm Tunnels
    Village Storage/Cellars
    Warbot Facility
    Graves (Only droners can go here, and even then it's a deathtrap)
    Gaya Mines
    Even Canyon Caves are quite underused now, how useful is the place when Regants exists, the boss doesn't drop anything worthwhile.


    **Please correct me if I missed any decent/unique leveling places above which have become almost completely redundant.**

    Outzone is inaccessible at times for noobs due to that stupid Dragon's Wrath mission which leaves guards all over the place that don't de-spawn soon enough.

    I've already moaned about DoY becoming completely irrelevant and re-purposed for one WoC quest that nobody wants to run.

  6. #6
    freedom for neocron! Torg's Avatar
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    all this talk about new players (chars) vs high-level ones doesnt add up. right now you can level into a 40ish rank (4x/4x) within city limits, as theres plenty of mobs up to launcher cyclops (52/52). but after that (and for doing your epic) you need to leave the city (except CM, TG who already start in their respective home bases) to level up further. heres where the zone concept (see above) comes in: players should have the chance to get a rough idea at least what kind of mobs would live in what regions, so low-mids, high-mids or high-level chars would find the right area to have a fun time while hunting.

    Trivs idea of dangerous mobs staying away from the roads comes in quite complementary (*imho). more 120ish mobs would be welcome anyways. in their own home areas, that is.

  7. #7
    Dream Cast Cursed Shadow's Avatar
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    I think the only way you'd get more people to venture out of known levelling areas is if the exp stopped like it does in other games e.g. WoW. Where it just becomes absolutely redundant to attack a 32/32 at a certain level.

    That would force people to get creative and pick other places to level.


    Well, it should, but instead they'd just run TL150 Res missions because the rest is too much effort, then they'd just take a Droner Spy or other class to El Farid, Bunker or Regants to cap out.

  8. #8
    Roger Ramjet Fanboy Number 1 RogerRamjet's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Cursed Shadow View Post
    I think the only way you'd get more people to venture out of known levelling areas is if the exp stopped like it does in other games e.g. WoW. Where it just becomes absolutely redundant to attack a 32/32 at a certain level.

    That would force people to get creative and pick other places to level.


    Well, it should, but instead they'd just run TL150 Res missions because the rest is too much effort, then they'd just take a Droner Spy or other class to El Farid, Bunker or Regants to cap out.
    That woud stop characters in power armour ruining MB bunker at least.

  9. #9
    Registered User Agent L's Avatar
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    First of all, sorry for short post, I have no time atm and I'll address rest of the issues later.
    Quote Originally Posted by Trivaldi View Post
    Cycrow and its surrounding Canyon Sectors still work, they are just different to the roundabout you've been riding in those zones for the last half decade. Those zones were a lot more like the proposed changes in R#184 prior to the release of Neocron 2.
    Previously it was a challenge to kill a Persy with a group of hoppers as bodyguards there. Now it's just hold down fire button to kill singled out, supposed-to-be-most-dangerous mob.
    Every sector sector is always in fragile balance between spawn that's too easy so it'll become overcrowded and spawn too hard so noone stays there. Cycrows was one of few that HAD this balance.

    My point of view is that this was area frequented by players, therefore it was "working". And your biggest concern as devs should be to NOT MESS UP things that players use. Even more, you should copy as much as possible and try to replicate this very behaviour in places that are not visited by players aka "do not work".

    Quote Originally Posted by Trivaldi View Post
    After so many years another bit of a refresh is certainly needed. As far as I can see, a lot of people have grown tired of playing exactly the same game over and over.
    In my opinion, it's very stupid move to change things just because I can.
    More importantly, you have many wastelands sector that noone visits. Why not play with them?

    We have much more important issues, like fixing TG and NEXT epics, or repairing Symp autoregen, issues that people ask about on HELP almost every day. The last thing is very important, because it's something current dev team broke. Now please try to look at it from player perspective: instead of just fixing it and releasing the patch you're wasting your priceless and very limited time for some completely irrelevant non-issues.
    And now let's think about how KK had habit of postponing everything for the next huge patch supposed to end world hunger. Culminated with Doy expansion and how it broke way more things that it fixed.
    Can you now see my concern?

  10. #10
    Registered User eNTi's Avatar
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    how about creating a survey for (semi) active players where they can rate zones and give reasons as to why they think they are broken?
    Last edited by eNTi; 16-09-13 at 19:46.

  11. #11
    Xpertz William Antrim's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by eNTi View Post
    how about creating a survey for (semi) active players where they can rate zones and give reasons as to why they think they are broken?
    Better still just make one thread per zone and comment on critically with screenshots. Probably the best idea in this thread.
    "dulce et decorum est pro patria mori"

  12. #12
    freedom for neocron! Torg's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by eNTi View Post
    how about creating a survey for (semi) active players where they can rate zones and give reasons as to why they think they are broken?
    start telling us right away. devs are listening (reading).

  13. #13
    Registered User Agent L's Avatar
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    J01, J04, F12, F13 - these do work, don't change anything. Others should be modeled after them (except j01, because n00bs need to stick together, so more than 1 n00b area will do more harm than good)

  14. #14
    Registered User eNTi's Avatar
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    the point of a survey instead of an open discussion would be the fact that you can get some metrics. finding similarities in the given reasons from different people. its far more difficult to compile useful data if you have to wade through several hundred posts where people keep discussing over more or less important issues instead of stating their opinion uncontested.

  15. #15
    freedom for neocron! Torg's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by eNTi View Post
    the point of a survey instead of an open discussion would be the fact that you can get some metrics. ... to compile useful data...
    i totally understand your point, enti. i just doubt our current small player base will yield enough comparable data, thats why i prefer posting opinions into a related thread like this one.

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