Reviving Titan

[necrocon]

I enjoy Neocron, and most of the players, and since you guys are supplying Neocron for me to play, I believe I have to also enjoy your continued existence as well!

You answered like a billion things... so fuck you! (I mean that in a comical way... don't ban me for to long...)

Seriously wow. Don't get yourself all stressed already Trivaldi, that you leave the team again. That was great. I know time frames can't always be met. I am not a computer guy as far as designing, programing, and such. I am a machinist, and we have a time frame we expect things to get done, but sometimes the simplest things can get in the way. Like one of our owners who by accident cut the power to my co-workers machines, causing him to scrap 3 pieces simultaneously.

You guys have stated you have a real life, and real jobs outside of Neocron. So I speak for myself, but I don't expect you guys to put in an additional 40+ here. I'll take 36, and call it even!

Sadly the only help I can probably be.. is logging onto the test server, and asking stupid questions so noobs don't have to.

Lastly at the moment... Flaming doesn't get anyone anywhere. At least not my generation. Maybe flaming temper tantrums worked with some kids, or work today. I grew up in a different house, a flaming temper tantrum at my mom, got me a bloody nose, and spent the rest of the day, or week grounded from all but breathing. Flaming, screaming, yelling, furiously typing, and USING ALL CAPS.. doesn't get anything resolved ever. Go hit a punching bag if you are that pissed off, or go rub one out. Relax, and then come back. Video gaming is a hobby for me, as I assume it is for most gamers. You should never be getting so pissed off at gaming... you start breaking shit (like your hard drive - I've heard a guy do it... till he cut out because he smacked his laptop, and crashed his hard drive) Enjoy, and happy holidays to all!

[Zoltan]

I am very happy about the comeback of Trivaldi aswell (<3) that gives me a chance to take a breath again. I think he is the right man to handle community related stuff and fits his new position perfectly.

Back to topic:

Today we will "deliver" some of the new changes to Titan, I personally believe we need to have more testing on vedeena but I can understand that you guys are running out of patience.

I expect some critical feedback if anything goes wrong instead of flaming and trolling around here.

[Tino]

Don't worry Zoltan I will tell you the whole truth and nothing but the truth so help me Jesus! =)

[I See Blue]

Excellent post Trivaldi, lots of questions answered. Will be good to see a patch.

On that note, here are my points of views on some of the stuff you raised.

Beginner experience, I've made a post in the Brainport on simple changes (at least stuff I think could improve the experience and not be hard to implement) to the beginner experience. http://forum.neocron-game.com/showth...ner-experience Would be interesting to see someone from the team give some opinions on that thread.

When it comes to patches, I think saving up the changes and releasing a huge patch every 4-5 months is a bad idea. The only impression of the projects progress for the players is changes on Titan. So I would suggest making smaller patches more often. Even down to changing one or two weapons at the time and one or two pieces of improved graphics. Honestly, the players don't care if one weapon is slightly overpowered for a short period of time, as long as there is overall progress towards the balance goals.

When it comes to improving the beginner experience and recruiting new players, I'd love to see more focus on this. The reason is that it would benefit every single part of the game. The oldtimers who just want to fight get new players to fight (I think we are all tired fighting the same guys over and over), traders and PvE'ers get people to tradeskill for, people to hunt with and buy and sell stuff to, and people who just sit around chatting get more people to talk to. As for recruiting, If I was you, I would spend a couple of hours checking out the different free MMO-forums and sites, and just make sure Neocron is represented and properly presented, because my impression is that it isn't.

Now, I'm not a huge guy for testing stuff in general, so in general I'll leave that for others. I can try to contribute in other ways though. I can see I can force some of the guys in clan to help make some instructional videos, walkthroughs and guides for new players. I could also make an effort to post in some of thos free-mmo forums, with videos from Neocron PvP and PvE.

If numbers go up a bit, I can also try to do some stuff in game, events etc.

As for reasons to log on for us players, it's different of course, some old players play only for the PvP, some just tradeskill, some like PvP. As for me, I trade and build rares, I fight, I help out noobs and I do some endgame PvE like DoY mission, DoY tunnels etc.

I honestly believe that the easiest way to get people to log on is to try and get some new players in the game. New players have enthusiam and curiosity, they create need for tradeskillers, populate the zones and provide new meat for the PvP grinder.

Anyway, good post, Trivaldi, I'll post some more later.

[necrocon]

Blue, could... you possibly give a few of the links for Free MMOs, and MMO's that you think are big ones.. good ones? Anyone else also... that knows great places to possibly list Neocron...

[William Antrim]

I think the best move you can pull from here is to deputise the remaining playerbase and get everyone on-board and testing.

Your team as it stands is tiny and you need to find a way to utilise the people still here who know plenty about the game.

Communication is the best way to do that. Tell them what you want and tell them WHY you want it and what it will do to help. This will give them a reason to do it and motivation to feel like they belong to something bigger. This will encourage and empower them and help you get the game tested faster.

It has to start with some wide open posting though, as in brutal honesty like we saw above. That needs to happen now and forever. If this is nc the community edition then let the community build it together. Sorry if that sounds mushy to some of you but it's the truth.

A set of goals needs to be established with people knowing their place and their role and having the tools and the processes to make something of it.

[Massaker]

As you did see this evening the player count raised up to 134 so it will be nice if we just hit the 150 players (hopefully the server is not crashing with this high number :P

playercount.PNG

[Trivaldi]

We peaked out at 137 according to my numbers, inline with peaks from around August/September (and the beginning of) 2014. The refresh rate of the API just so happened to distribute the numbers before and then after the fact this evening.

Also, I know I need to revisit a few points in this thread still. Getting there.

[jvasquez33]

What would be nice (not just for me but for new people)

- 3x perma exp
- repeatable missions (aka you dont have to constantly go back to the citycom, it just keeps recycles until completion)

With the recent activity I almost got some of my guildies to come play this game (im in Lords of Death, big guild dating back to UO). We are all old now, small time to play, not enough time to simply grind out korean style with the stats hence why i'm constantly nagging for 3x exp lol.

[Dasore]

if you compare nc1 leveling to where its now its just a joke.

0/2 to woc on spy/tank and apu takes you 1 day if you got a bit of equip and money to start with.
even pe who used to take monthes to woc is now only a bit of grinding for like a week.

i mean if they even do more double driple or whatever xp then they could also just copy paste the testserver with the 1 minute to woc guy. The next problem will be showing up if it would be always 3x xp: no money for weapons, no parts for lategame equip, more people in forums who bitch bout that weapons etc should be cheaper and the drop should be like 10x

i miss the old times in neocron where you leveled a character for more then a months...

[‡ Stormlord ‡]

What would be nice (not just for me but for new people)

- 3x perma exp
- repeatable missions (aka you dont have to constantly go back to the citycom, it just keeps recycles until completion)

No.

Dont make this game to easy. We need competition in leveling as in pvp / pve as well.

xp events, like on holidays or double xp weekend event every now and then are great, but just dont make this cool game permanently too easy...

[Massaker]

i miss the old times in neocron where you leveled a character for more then a months...

THIS! only the old players that were active before more than 5 years want to get their char capped as fast as possible to play end game. As I started Neocron in 2003 it was fun to level the char by killing rats, hunt with great groups warbots next to the military base and compete with other groups. Now there are so many players that would like to have an NPC in the appartment that will spawn the items and full capp a char to start with op fights in less than 30 minutes... I think Neocron wasn intended to have a PVE part that nobody wants to play. Of course most of the missions did you do more than one time. But we got a new mission by the Christmas contest that got implemented by a new tool that hopefully allows the NST to create more further missions.

Please take more than 5 minutes to think about the results if you increase exp to triple. New players don't enjoy the PVE part before taking over to the PVP part...

[Divide]

There is more to PVE than leveling. You could actually greatly enhance the PVE game if you were to shorten the leveling ramp and recycle a lot of the environment and world into high-level content.

[jvasquez33]

No.

Dont make this game to easy. We need competition in leveling as in pvp / pve as well.

xp events, like on holidays or double xp weekend event every now and then are great, but just dont make this cool game permanently too easy...

Look around you chief, the game isn't blazing with population, so why not try to mix it up for a while?. I'm just going from personal experience that's been around the game from beta to now. And can honestly say that we (some of my friends that played) had a much better experience when the game was 3x exp than normal.

The double exp events are a perfect example of what i'm talking about, everyone that I know played a ton, even more than they probably should have lol. Seriously though, why not let it go for couple weeks longer (not everyone had a chance to play during that time you know).

[Dasore]

for example yesterday... close to 140 players were on the server, around 30-40 were op fighting. The rest was idling in plaza or pveing and i know of at least, over the half of them doesnt even want to pvp, they play neocron to trade and pve. The speed of the leveling is fast enough atm, 1 day per character is way to fast anyway, but you can also do it over a periode of half a months if you want to.

and like i said before, you need to pve anyway for rareparts/mc5s/woc disks and money, just do it while leveling so you can get your stuff when ur reaching cap. i had over 15 customers the last week who needed equip (imps, woc disk and mc5 implants) and told me they got like 500k and 10 rareparts... i mean.... wtf?