If I could make one wish for the future..

[Tapakah]

I genuinely wonder. For example, PMD has quite a lot for the smaller folks to kill, and I understand the myth would feel a bit bored about that, but this time it's more for a titan/champ taking Adv/Ade/GA for a ride.

In addition, storyline for an area which is rich in decent mobs that don't care you're killing someone of their own isn't easy

[nils]

A wise man once said "the game begins at myth", subsequently any level below myth are considered newbies in this context.

1) I fail to understand why the newbie's size matters, or the fact that a high brute is somehow problematic, especially considering it's an inevitable result with low quest experience - spending some time on an "xp-train" will certainly expedite it, but again - why is this a problem? The experience will be gained at some point anyway, yes? *gazes at his brute being extremely violent*

2) During teaming, conversation usually happens (which is good). Teams provide teachable moments, and "How's your brute?" is a natural question after a while. If the newbie informs of high brute the answer is usually: "You should go quest, bro". But now, unlike before the teaming began, the newbie might have grown a little and is able to train a skill or kill a mob to progress further on a specific quest, learned a piece of information which is vital to survival, got help to achieve an item necessary to solve a quest or even supplied with a weapon otherwise unavailable to him/her. This is help given at little to no cost, help the newbie wouldn't have gotten if the option was to kill sparkle orcs. Cause while I applaud Quantum's efforts and almost envy his altruism, expecting everyone to follow this model is wishful thinking. I should go fly-swatting for hours purely out of the goodness of my heart? Preposterous!

If there's nothing in it for me, I won't do it, and if this is true for me - assume this is true for many others.

3) The size of the newbie does not matter in this case, as they're just as likely to die (well, not be able to participate) whether they're titan or wanderer as long as the mobs attacks the smallest one in team as a rule.

4) The newbie's ability to assist (see self-discipline) does not seem affect the newbie's experience gain in any significant way. Unless titan-champ or higher, the tickling provided when assisting is of no consequence either.

Anyway,

I've always taken pride in understanding the mechanics and idiosyncrasies of the individual grinds, and knowing what tactics to apply in order to protect the team/keeping the aggression on me. The level of this mastery is one of several metrics I use to gauge someone else's leadership skills and ultimately determines whether or not I'll allow being led by them.

As mentioned previously, this does indeed make the game easier, more predictable, safer. The problem (if it can be called as such) is that after reaching a certain size these dangers are of no personal concern anymore, and at that point they serve only one purpose: hindering one or several young ones' participation. While I appreciate difficulty and danger, it's a matter of choice, specifically what direction the developers wish to take going forward, especially in regards to player retention, but maybe more importantly: How social should the game be? Should the game de facto prevent new players from teaming with old ones?

While many areas auto-attack either specific races or alignments, living/undead or anything that moves, there's usually a way to circumvent it (see tactics above). But off the top of my head, the current newbie hostile areas are:

Terel Trolls (Blocks progress for small players while letting the rest of the team move, will attack smaller member on team seemingly at random)
Avenir Ogres (Massive ogres spawn out of nowhere and attacks random team members)
Thanar Cathedral (Explicitly attacks smaller members of the team, and will do so again even after tank rotator is applied)
Saurians (Same as Cathedral)
Dunlendings (Attacks random members of the team)

So to my two initial questions, then

*Do we need to make newbie un-friendly content?
*Can content deemed newbie un-friendly be made newbie friendly?

Creating the newbie hostile mechanics was a choice. Changing them is a choice. Keeping them is a choice. Admin creating rules that dictate newbie hostility in new content is also a choice. Neither choice is mine to make, and frankly - all I really wanted to achieve was to point out inconsistencies between perceived vision and a recent trend that I think is in direct conflict with the idea of a social game.

[gold bezie]

Man i really love this wish... actually i could not agree more...

I remember us hunting with Grampal all the time in Faerun lizards. It was the perfect place to bring a young one. These days it seems more difficult. I dont know what changed, but as i remember in the past they only attacked the teamleader, now they attack everyone it seems. And there is nothing more boring for a young one to hear that he or she can not assist in a team.

I have no problem with the new area's for the supermyths, i mean we have a lot of those, and they always seem to be in eachother ways. But if you want my suggesting, make it so that in faerun the lizards or bullywugs only attack the leader. Let that place be a good place where we can return our graditude to our old grandpa of the Donut.

Now for the other things that where mentioned, or other area' s: sparkle orcs dont give good xp. Shaws you need awareness to enter, and can also be dangerous. And it would be great for the older one to also have some advantage of the hunt so a little xp for him/herself would not be bad. Lizards are perfect for that. So make a small change there and we have Nils wish come true

[Tapakah]

Now for the other things that where mentioned, or other area' s: sparkle orcs dont give good xp. Shaws you need awareness to enter, and can also be dangerous. And it would be great for the older one to also have some advantage of the hunt so a little xp for him/herself would not be bad. Lizards are perfect for that. So make a small change there and we have Nils wish come true

The older ones get a decent benefit of carrying smaller people around, because the average used to compute experience for the kill is the average of the whole team in the room at the time of the kill. And the lesser the average, the more the exp.

Note that the smaller players will get penalized slightly. However this will be offset by them participating in kill of a mob bigger than they could deal with without the mentor.

I have my doubts that having newbies idly watch their champion kill mob after mob is an entertaining experience, though.

[gold bezie]

Now for the other things that where mentioned, or other area' s: sparkle orcs dont give good xp. Shaws you need awareness to enter, and can also be dangerous. And it would be great for the older one to also have some advantage of the hunt so a little xp for him/herself would not be bad. Lizards are perfect for that. So make a small change there and we have Nils wish come true

The older ones get a decent benefit of carrying smaller people around, because the average used to compute experience for the kill is the average of the whole team in the room at the time of the kill. And the lesser the average, the more the exp.

Note that the smaller players will get penalized slightly. However this will be offset by them participating in kill of a mob bigger than they could deal with without the mentor.

I have my doubts that having newbies idly watch their champion kill mob after mob is an entertaining experience, though.

That is what i mean.... thats why i suggested this... its boring just to watch another one kill and dont assist... thats why i suggested immortals make the change at lizards that the lizards only attack the teamleader... this way the young ones can assist safely

[Tapakah]

Creating the newbie hostile mechanics was a choice. Changing them is a choice. Keeping them is a choice. Admin creating rules that dictate newbie hostility in new content is also a choice. Neither choice is mine to make, and frankly - all I really wanted to achieve was to point out inconsistencies between perceived vision and a recent trend that I think is in direct conflict with the idea of a social game.

This kind of tone and insinuation is what puts me, personally, ultimately off cooperation.

[Tapakah]

That is what i mean.... thats why i suggested this... its boring just to watch another one kill and dont assist... thats why i suggested immortals make the change at lizards that the lizards only attack the teamleader... this way the young ones can assist safely

I understand, but my point was that the Sparkle orcs exp yield isn't as bad for a myth carrying a couple of GAs, as for the myth alone.

[zizuph]

Creating the newbie hostile mechanics was a choice. Changing them is a choice. Keeping them is a choice. Admin creating rules that dictate newbie hostility in new content is also a choice. Neither choice is mine to make, and frankly - all I really wanted to achieve was to point out inconsistencies between perceived vision and a recent trend that I think is in direct conflict with the idea of a social game.

Perhaps this is a chance to explain how things work upstairs.

We are a workforce of volunteers. Cherek does not dictate what is worked on, or who builds what. People offer to create things, and the Lieges/AoD approve the things to go live. There is no dictation. There is no rule that things must be newbie hostile. Mirandus coded the Saurian area, and he wanted it to be challenging for even myth teams. He built it, launched it, and then got player feedback on it to understand how the difficulty was once players started visiting it, allowing him to tweak it and try to find a reasonable balance for the type of area he wished it to be. He put in the work, and it is not right to strong arm him to do it in your specific newbie-friendly way. In the choice of something new, versus nothing, the former is better.

For the players that want to see more things like this, come help out upstairs. There will be little preventing you from creating newbie+myth friendly content. As long as you haven't broken rules that block you from contributing, Cherek is pretty open to giving people such an opportunity.

Second, we discuss quite a few things, in great detail. This 'inconsistency' you have identified has actually been heavily discussed. I personally brought up this exact issue a year ago, among many other ideas, on how to make the game more newbie-friendly. Exp growth curves for newbies, the impact of limiting how early brute can have an early effect, whether to limit the attack-behind-the-tank NPCs and the rest are not a new subject. Some of our limits involve lack of hands to do the work. Some of our limits involve challenges reaching consensus. Just because it isn't a public discussion, doesn't mean it isn't happening. These are constantly happening, as we want newbies and myths both to have great experiences in the game, and things like this are actually obvious to the ones who give thousands of hours of their time to make this game run.

In the newbie-myth case, there is another concern that you have neglected. Areas that are newbie friendly, also end up being more idle bot friendly. Many active players do not enjoy the experience with botters, particularly inattentive ones. There is no communication like you mentioned. Instead, they arrive at an area, find it empty, and end up with nothing to do. Or they find their kills stolen - this one has been made a number of people I talk with infuriated. So when deciding whether to make everything uniform - newbie friendly everywhere - we need to keep in mind that this also means more areas that bots will run through easily.

Many things are not as black and white as you lay them out to be. You keep taking extreme approaches in your forum letters, you work to foster a stronger us vs them mentality between wizards and players, and you are constantly congratulating yourself on your immense genius for pointing out things we are already well aware of. I hope you can understand that these things do not actually benefit the community, even if some of your suggestions themselves deserve merit. I wish it did not need pointing out, but this keeps on coming up in thread after thread, and Tapakah's response to yours is very much emblematic of this issue.

[Snowrose]

I do like the idea of the game including more ways and places to team in general, and i definitely also understand anti bot tactics,

I like the thought of maybe more areas not auto targeting the lowest person in the party. that shouldn't promote bots to much, though standardizing all areas may be a bit extreme,

some areas should be experienced players only, such as pvp zones that could wreck a newbies alignment, or make them an outlow or unwelcome in quest hubs. those places should NOT be newbie friendly.
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there may be other ways to make the game more newbie friendly without changing combat or experience at all.

For example as a tactic similar to what you did recently with stats.

add more levels

just add them half way in between existing levels. so noone feels like they went backwards.

especially quest levels. it's difficult to do several fantas in quests and not see ANY changes. in explorer lever,

or if thats to difficult add explorer to meditate to see how close you are like you can mortal levels

[zelie]

Well said, zizuph.