On 2011-06-21 06:07, An Fiach wrote:
Spawning in Sag by default will not help. They will be blasted out of the galaxy by ships much larger than themselves and leave the game even faster. This happens already in scenario which is where the manual suggests noobie players go to in order to gain prestige by capping planets.

I know there are players who would take people under their wing but the devs cannot depend on the goodwill of the playerbase, all too often it fails no matter what gaming community. Some have already stated they will blast you as soon as they see you, your rank doesn't matter to them. The hard truth is that some people don't care if the game is successful or if it dies, they just want their ego stroked.

The problem is that there is no incentive to play in any other place once you can spawn the big toys. Naturally, the long time players will congregate where they can compare their e-peens and that is where the action will be. New players want to be where the action is, but they want the ability to be competitive. They won't feel like they are in Sag and there aren't enough players online to provide them with opportunities to help, gain rank and stay out of the way of El Leeto Idiota who will treat him like an altar boy.


Sagittarius isn't difficult to find, it's just that new players have no clue what you mean when you mention the Sag server. They log on and see only Orion, Kraken and Beta in the servers list. Star systems they can see on the map.

Many players these days aren't inclined or don't have the time to spend hours and hours pouring over the manual and the forums before playing the game or be beholden to some random clan leader they run into when they log in. They are either too lazy, or they are working folk with families and other responsibilities limiting their leisure time. They want to learn as they play, jump right in and have fun and later learn the intricacies. Ursa Minor is where they need to be.

From the devs, it will take a lot more than switching a spawn point to deal with the population issues. If the community wants to address it, I suggest doing what most clans/guilds/squads/fleets do in games that have designated starting areas and have representatives in the noobie areas. They can help new players, provide them with some action and maybe even recruit new members to their fleet. Heck, you may even enjoy fighting against smaller ships that you can't vaporize by pressing the space bar.

Just my 2 cents.

On 2011-06-21 18:01, Enterprise wrote:
I think I can narrow down the reason why every newbie is confused when they enter the MV, even if they did read the manual.

There are seven servers.

There are seven servers, with about 30 to 40 systems total, with about 300 planets to go with it.

Of all this, six of these systems belong to the one server cluster that actually gets fought over.

Of these six systems, only three of them see regular, day to day action. Hell, one of them doens't even count since it links to the MI systems.

Infact, just one system sees more action than the rest of the systems in the MV combined : Luyten.

When you narrow it down and realize that you are fighting over less than 10% of the MV consistently on a day to day basis for over a year, you see the issue.

When you are new, you don't know this. Once you play for a few days, you realize this. And then you stop playing because you're a scout trying to fight off a fleet of dreadnaughts and you don't have five years of combat experience to make yourself useful.

To be fair at this point I don't even know why we have so many systems in planets when its all concentrated to a single point, incidentally right in the center of the MV. You could probably cut out every other server but Sagi and relatively little would change. Its funny too because the second anything gets trimmed out of this huge MV someone starts talking about adding more systems - that never get used. Go figure.

Might want to start by streamlining what the MV is meant to be, that way when a newbie that joins actually can look at the map and know what he or she is looking at.




-Ent

On 2011-06-21 16:08, Marius Falix wrote:

Quote:

On 2011-06-21 06:07, An Fiach wrote: Spawning in Sag by default will not help. They will be blasted out of the galaxy by ships much larger than themselves and leave the game even faster. This happens already in scenario which is where the manual suggests noobie players go to in order to gain prestige by capping planets. I know there are players who would take people under their wing but the devs cannot depend on the goodwill of the playerbase, all too often it fails no matter what gaming community. Some have already stated they will blast you as soon as they see you, your rank doesn't matter to them. The hard truth is that some people don't care if the game is successful or if it dies, they just want their ego stroked. The problem is that there is no incentive to play in any other place once you can spawn the big toys. Naturally, the long time players will congregate where they can compare their e-peens and that is where the action will be. New players want to be where the action is, but they want the ability to be competitive. They won't feel like they are in Sag and there aren't enough players online to provide them with opportunities to help, gain rank and stay out of the way of El Leeto Idiota who will treat him like an altar boy. Sagittarius isn't difficult to find, it's just that new players have no clue what you mean when you mention the Sag server. They log on and see only Orion, Kraken and Beta in the servers list. Star systems they can see on the map. Many players these days aren't inclined or don't have the time to spend hours and hours pouring over the manual and the forums before playing the game or be beholden to some random clan leader they run into when they log in. They are either too lazy, or they are working folk with families and other responsibilities limiting their leisure time. They want to learn as they play, jump right in and have fun and later learn the intricacies. Ursa Minor is where they need to be. From the devs, it will take a lot more than switching a spawn point to deal with the population issues. If the community wants to address it, I suggest doing what most clans/guilds/squads/fleets do in games that have designated starting areas and have representatives in the noobie areas. They can help new players, provide them with some action and maybe even recruit new members to their fleet. Heck, you may even enjoy fighting against smaller ships that you can't vaporize by pressing the space bar. Just my 2 cents.

i disagree with you almost entirely. Sag isnt hard to get to, i agree however for a noob they dont even know how to jump, and trying to tell them to go to sag is hard since we dont even know they are there.

people play the games to fight with other people, if its an AI fest it gets boring real fast, and i do (whenever a noobie comes on) try to help them out whenever i can and teach teh basics and that they should stay in sag untill they can fly solo.

i really cant begin to understand why thats not clear.

Dreadnought: Reduce their effectiveness vs small ships (ie weapons unable to track corvettes and frigates changing direction a lot) and remove the fighter bays except from the command carrier types. Command carrier types can spawn Player controlled Corvettes and Frigates and Troop Transports (provided infantry are loaded on the carrier).

On 2011-06-21 18:01, Enterprise wrote:
I think I can narrow down the reason why every newbie is confused when they enter the MV, even if they did read the manual.

There are seven servers.

There are seven servers, with about 30 to 40 systems total, with about 300 planets to go with it.

Of all this, six of these systems belong to the one server cluster that actually gets fought over.

Of these six systems, only three of them see regular, day to day action. Hell, one of them doens't even count since it links to the MI systems.

Infact, just one system sees more action than the rest of the systems in the MV combined : Luyten.

When you narrow it down and realize that you are fighting over less than 10% of the MV consistently on a day to day basis for over a year, you see the issue.

When you are new, you don't know this. Once you play for a few days, you realize this. And then you stop playing because you're a scout trying to fight off a fleet of dreadnaughts and you don't have five years of combat experience to make yourself useful.

To be fair at this point I don't even know why we have so many systems in planets when its all concentrated to a single point, incidentally right in the center of the MV. You could probably cut out every other server but Sagi and relatively little would change. Its funny too because the second anything gets trimmed out of this huge MV someone starts talking about adding more systems - that never get used. Go figure.

Might want to start by streamlining what the MV is meant to be, that way when a newbie that joins actually can look at the map and know what he or she is looking at.




-Ent

On 2011-06-22 07:05, Inactive-001 wrote:
maybe make a permanent group of volunteer players within the game who will be notified when a new player logs into ursa minor? also add ability for new players to contact all members this group (whoever are active during that time).

this way the players willing to teach can immediately know when a newbie enters the game, and the newbie can ask the group for information and be confident of a response.

Quote:

Dreadnought: Reduce their effectiveness vs small ships (ie weapons unable to track corvettes and frigates changing direction a lot) and remove the fighter bays except from the command carrier types. Command carrier types can spawn Player controlled Corvettes and Frigates and Troop Transports (provided infantry are loaded on the carrier).

their effectiveness is low against scouts and frigates. dreads are slow and can catch upto the small ships only by jumping them. the small ships also have fast JD to escape dreads and high maneuverability (3x-4x of a dread).

most dreads in beta dont have fighters anymore. 2 ugto dreads, 1 icc dread and 1 kluth dread have fighters (compared to 4 ugto, 4 icc and 2 kluth dreads).

there are some coding problems which prevent a ship from spawning another ship (projectiles like missiles/mines/fighters are ok).