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I'm doing a New Player Test
- Thread starter wowGalluccio
- Start date
- Watchers 6
My all time favorite "new player" experience story. This still makes me laugh to this day. Thanks Shinobi. (reposted from UOTHIEF http://uothief.com/tales/ep0264.html):
Episode 0264: Poor, poor trammy...
Well, i have recently x-ferred to Great Lakes just for the heck of it. But, today i logged onto my newb char on Atlantic to hang out with my guild.
While there, we went to New Haven. Upon opening a moongate to the Fel guild house, we had two trammies follow us through. One left soon after, while the other, King Alan, stayed. We killed his hoarde minion, and drank the liquor it had on it. For 10 minutes, he stayed outside the doors to my house. I opened the doors to let him come loot his hoarde minion, and he attacked me. Being that i was on a newb char, i quickly closed the doors.
He wore regular platemail armor, and was as new as you could get without being considered young. I logged onto my red, and killed him quickly. He got rezzed by a nearby healer, and stayed outside for another 10 minutes. When we asked him what he wanted, he said he was after the 8k gold we took off his hoarde minion. I let him in, and took him down into my dungeon. I tossed the 8k gold into a cell, and he went in to grab it. That's when i slammed the Owner Only gate shut. He stayed there for about 45min, with us just throwing explosion pots at him.
After a while, we'd go into the cell to talk to him, and he'd attack us. So me and my friend, who was also on a newb char, kept letting him kill us. We then would count him. After 5 counts, he was red. We told him that this meant that he could not return to trammel. I gave him a proposal. I said that he could live in my dungeon and use the thief training room to become a thief. When he was a thief, he could join us. He agreed. I set all the doors to the dungeon as Owner Only, and let him out of his cell.
I then tried to have him read the book i wrote about training a thief, but he didn't understand it. It turns out that his native language is Indonesian, and he couldn't understand English very well. After knowing this, i felt bad. We tried to show him how to train stealing, and even lured a gypsy halfway across Fel to my house, so he could train Stealing from the NPC to 30 or so. He couldn't even understand how to train Stealing from the NPC drop-down menu. That is when he asked me this:
I felt bad, so i agreed. I did warn him that he had to wait 40 in-game hours to return to trammel. He still wanted to leave. I opened the gates to my dungeon and let him free. He then asked to be sent to a populated area. We warned him that people would now kill him on sight. He said, and i quote:
"I will fight like a true warrior."
Poor roleplaying newb, lol. I couldn't talk him out of it, nor convince him to stay. So, we opened a gate to the only moongate rune we had, Fel Yew. He told us goodbye, and went through. I honestly didn't even care to go and check to see how fast he died. It didn't need confirmation, it was just inevitable, lol.
He was a nice guy, and i feel bad. If he would've understood English better, then he could've had an awesome story to tell later on down the line about how he became a thief. A trammy forbidden to return to trammel...what a sad story, lol.
-Shinobi
Episode 0264: Poor, poor trammy...
Well, i have recently x-ferred to Great Lakes just for the heck of it. But, today i logged onto my newb char on Atlantic to hang out with my guild.
While there, we went to New Haven. Upon opening a moongate to the Fel guild house, we had two trammies follow us through. One left soon after, while the other, King Alan, stayed. We killed his hoarde minion, and drank the liquor it had on it. For 10 minutes, he stayed outside the doors to my house. I opened the doors to let him come loot his hoarde minion, and he attacked me. Being that i was on a newb char, i quickly closed the doors.
He wore regular platemail armor, and was as new as you could get without being considered young. I logged onto my red, and killed him quickly. He got rezzed by a nearby healer, and stayed outside for another 10 minutes. When we asked him what he wanted, he said he was after the 8k gold we took off his hoarde minion. I let him in, and took him down into my dungeon. I tossed the 8k gold into a cell, and he went in to grab it. That's when i slammed the Owner Only gate shut. He stayed there for about 45min, with us just throwing explosion pots at him.
After a while, we'd go into the cell to talk to him, and he'd attack us. So me and my friend, who was also on a newb char, kept letting him kill us. We then would count him. After 5 counts, he was red. We told him that this meant that he could not return to trammel. I gave him a proposal. I said that he could live in my dungeon and use the thief training room to become a thief. When he was a thief, he could join us. He agreed. I set all the doors to the dungeon as Owner Only, and let him out of his cell.
I then tried to have him read the book i wrote about training a thief, but he didn't understand it. It turns out that his native language is Indonesian, and he couldn't understand English very well. After knowing this, i felt bad. We tried to show him how to train stealing, and even lured a gypsy halfway across Fel to my house, so he could train Stealing from the NPC to 30 or so. He couldn't even understand how to train Stealing from the NPC drop-down menu. That is when he asked me this:
I felt bad, so i agreed. I did warn him that he had to wait 40 in-game hours to return to trammel. He still wanted to leave. I opened the gates to my dungeon and let him free. He then asked to be sent to a populated area. We warned him that people would now kill him on sight. He said, and i quote:
"I will fight like a true warrior."
Poor roleplaying newb, lol. I couldn't talk him out of it, nor convince him to stay. So, we opened a gate to the only moongate rune we had, Fel Yew. He told us goodbye, and went through. I honestly didn't even care to go and check to see how fast he died. It didn't need confirmation, it was just inevitable, lol.
He was a nice guy, and i feel bad. If he would've understood English better, then he could've had an awesome story to tell later on down the line about how he became a thief. A trammy forbidden to return to trammel...what a sad story, lol.
-Shinobi
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A good reason I play this game, is that it does not conform to the 'level' system. I'm sure that the level system is appealing, and has good things going for it, but the skill system in UO suits my fancy much more than the level system.
The level system is a good 'basic' way to tell a player what things are relevant for them to go 'grind' on. You can't expect to grind on Quilboars in the newb areas of WoW and be a max level Tauren warrior, same as grinding lots of skeletons and expecting to be the best fisherman UO has ever seen before.
If you are paying for this guy's account, and he's asking for more money than that, what exactly was he expecting?wowGalluccio said:
Honestly to me, this seems weird.
This game is a niche game, most of us know it, the devs have to know it, it's been niche for a decade now. At least. What I see though, is that the devs do not cater to the niche, it's like they want to fight out of the niche market and try to climb up and compete with so-called triple A games that have all the staying power of a flat red bull in a meth addicts mini-fridge. And that's being generous. F2P does not instantly solve things. It just doesn't There are F2P games that die. Look at the recent Wizardry Online Game, came into being and flopped right off the market in the US, still big in Japan. Another game Vanguard Saga of Heroes, went F2P to try and eek out a few more years for itself, and it still went under. Granted these games were ran into the ground by Sony Online Entertainment, with a reputation for destroying its stable of Non-EQ games. In other games I have played that have gone F2P, I have seen suggestions on the forums for those games to have a P2P server, alongside their F2P ones because they do not like the flock of F2p'ers that swarmed the servers. I would almost suggest if they go to steam, they need to have a stable of STEAM servers, or only allow so many servers to be accessed by the steam client. I'm not sure that is possible, or not, but I get the feeling a lot of the current group of people will probably abandon ship when they meet PooDiePie youtubers from steam.
So my off-topic suggestion is that if EA/Broadsword does decide to cater to the F2P people, they need to open separate servers specifically for the F2P groupies, and maintain their P2P servers alongside them. And I'm sure there will be people who flip out over that suggestion, or there will be crowds of people who claim they won't come play F2P without their original characters.. etc.. these people will never be happy.
Overall, UO is a niche game. Cater to the niche crowd and do it well, I can hardly even think about other mmo's and I instantly start seeing reasons why I like UO more than any other on the market. Not just that it was my first, and looking like it will be my last, probably. I've tried to watch Shroud of the Avatar commentary and beta vids.. and it just doesn't do anything for me. At all. I hate to say that about Richard's new dive into the MMO scene but that is exactly how I feel. With all my rambling aside, I will say yes UO can exist and thrive for what it is, that being a niche game, and it can do it without a level system, steam, and all the F2P you can throw your wallet at. And it can F2P and not F2p at the same time, or if not, should pioneer and find a way if they ever decide to.
Back semi on topic, if that dude/dudette asking for more money to play this game, I'd say the experiment should be concluded, and pay me instead for typing this post. Thank you.
Yes, because he never answered a single question any of us asked, only wanted to give his own opinions. I think you have every reason to be skeptical.
lol it's obvious BS, for whatever bizarre reason, but the actual "outcome" wouldn't actually surprise me at all if the "friend" were real... if that makes sense. 
Ultima can hit to retro gamers (people who do not care about graphics and release dates of games), if it would be advertised enough and had a bit better interface (at last better look). But this will not create a huge audience. Rest will not care about something so outdated in look.
Maybe he's just trying to make a point: For the average WOW player or average gamer, UO has a huge learning curve that most new people don't want to tackle.
We all know that already
Starting to wonder if OP is an actual troll, because this thread is absurd.
To begin, we all need to accept a certain premise: not everyone can get into sandboxes. I've introduced a number of people to games like Ultima Online as well as EVE Online, and the majority of them don't stick around, not because the game is good or bad, but primarily because they're theme-park-addicted WoW junkies with no patience for games that don't tell them where they need to go next. This is not an insult to them. It is what it is. But the fact is, those that are incapable of appreciating the finer aspects of a good sandbox simply have no meaningful criticism to offer for these games. I realize at this very moment I run the risk of coming off as some close-minded fanboy who is unwilling to hear any criticism for his favorite game at all, but when I see absolutely ridiculous statements like this:
Can the new player experience be improved? Sure. But when players talk about "getting to the content quickly and easily" or throw around phrases like "endgame", this is a huge red flag to me that they don't know the sandbox. The real "content", or purpose, of a sandbox isn't the big bosses or dungeons, it's who you meet and what unexpected journey you experience while going to that dungeon (or anywhere, for that matter). It's the competition, the camaraderie, and the (good-natured) drama between players that really drive it. In a theme park, the content (and purpose) is the dungeons and the big bosses designed by the developers, and who you experience it with is often times irrelevant (proof of this is WoW's dungeon finder that matches you up with random people who aren't even on the same server). Obviously, this doesn't mean you can't have unexpected journeys or comrades in the theme park, but I absolutely guarantee that you will not experience a fraction of what you can get in a sandbox, in a theme park. So why listen to some theme-park-addicted carebear?
I mean honestly, is the game not watered down enough at this point? Is there not enough things like bags of sending, chests of sending, repair deeds, crystal portals, lighthouses, commodity deed boxes, 100% LRC and other easy mode crap to coddle the players, remove useful limitations, mitigate the risk and challenge that ought to be present in a video game, and in some cases destroy potential player interaction? Do players really need to have their hand held every step of the way?
Sure, I'd like to hear some interesting feedback. I'd love to hear about what potential players think about the client, the graphics, the UI, the rules of the game, the community, the quality of the experience, etc. The game is not without fault. But don't push some WoW ***** in front of me and expect me to take him seriously. I don't give a damn.
To begin, we all need to accept a certain premise: not everyone can get into sandboxes. I've introduced a number of people to games like Ultima Online as well as EVE Online, and the majority of them don't stick around, not because the game is good or bad, but primarily because they're theme-park-addicted WoW junkies with no patience for games that don't tell them where they need to go next. This is not an insult to them. It is what it is. But the fact is, those that are incapable of appreciating the finer aspects of a good sandbox simply have no meaningful criticism to offer for these games. I realize at this very moment I run the risk of coming off as some close-minded fanboy who is unwilling to hear any criticism for his favorite game at all, but when I see absolutely ridiculous statements like this:
..without even so much as an acknowledgement of the client he was using, I have to wonder about the mindset of this individual. To be honest I'm more upset with myself than anything for allowing myself to think that this thread might actually provide some kind of useful, interesting, intelligent insight and instead all I get is some half-baked suggestion for a magical easy-mode "orb" idea that is only fit for an unimaginative low-tier freeshard. At the end of the day, a lot of players are going to come and go and some players will go because the game doesn't give them a foot massage, or it doesn't satisfy their addiction to swift advancement or immediate rewards. Their feedback means nothing.
Can the new player experience be improved? Sure. But when players talk about "getting to the content quickly and easily" or throw around phrases like "endgame", this is a huge red flag to me that they don't know the sandbox. The real "content", or purpose, of a sandbox isn't the big bosses or dungeons, it's who you meet and what unexpected journey you experience while going to that dungeon (or anywhere, for that matter). It's the competition, the camaraderie, and the (good-natured) drama between players that really drive it. In a theme park, the content (and purpose) is the dungeons and the big bosses designed by the developers, and who you experience it with is often times irrelevant (proof of this is WoW's dungeon finder that matches you up with random people who aren't even on the same server). Obviously, this doesn't mean you can't have unexpected journeys or comrades in the theme park, but I absolutely guarantee that you will not experience a fraction of what you can get in a sandbox, in a theme park. So why listen to some theme-park-addicted carebear?
I mean honestly, is the game not watered down enough at this point? Is there not enough things like bags of sending, chests of sending, repair deeds, crystal portals, lighthouses, commodity deed boxes, 100% LRC and other easy mode crap to coddle the players, remove useful limitations, mitigate the risk and challenge that ought to be present in a video game, and in some cases destroy potential player interaction? Do players really need to have their hand held every step of the way?
Sure, I'd like to hear some interesting feedback. I'd love to hear about what potential players think about the client, the graphics, the UI, the rules of the game, the community, the quality of the experience, etc. The game is not without fault. But don't push some WoW ***** in front of me and expect me to take him seriously. I don't give a damn.
Make your point.
I'd hardly consider 50 item properties to keep track of "watered down." And to your examples, convenience is not watering a game down.
Even better..a governor of New Haven..who has a home near the entrance to the city and inside is filled with player made guides/books/free items/teleporters around the world/rune books..voted shard wide once every 6 months by the governors unanimously
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You all realize this is why they made "advisers" right? Newbs are supposed to try to get help and the advisers are supposed to come and advise them. However it is also why those silly tables and chairs are hiding behind the bank in Haven. Which IMO is a STUPID place for them and they should have been put on either side of that "helper" in front of the tailors/tavern there beside the bank NO ONE is going to be able to see new players or help new players hiding out BEHIND the bank.
You're right that imbuing and reforging add a lot of depth to the game, but I never even mentioned it, so I have no idea why you brought that up.
The provided examples absolutely water the game down. There is a difference between streamlining or simplifying a needlessly complex task, and altering the rules of the game in a way that neuters the challenge, risk and difficulty. Here's a new vet reward we can add to the list: a golden statue that gives you a million gold check once per day when you use it. It's convenient, isn't it? Why should I have to go through the process of having to zip to dungeons without any cost with my handy-dandy crystal portal, bypassing runebooks, an age-old item in the game, and then use my bag of sending to send back obscene amounts of gold, when I can simply get my daily check from the statue?
Repair deeds... kill player interaction.
Lighthouses... mitigate risk of boat decay completely.
100% LRC... eliminates the cost of using magic, not just partially, but *completely*.
Fire beetles are another prime example. The rule of the game used to be, you mine, you transport your ore back to the forge, then you smelt. Now you smelt on the go. These aren't merely conveniences. They're game changers.
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I just like that I can stick a small forge on a Brit Ship and Boat mine...
Of course you do. And people like that they can have repair deeds and never ever need a smith. And people like that they can have 100% lrc and eliminate the need for reagents. Point is all of those things take a lot more away from the game than they give.
Players never needed a smith... Used to get repaired or suits made at the old wbb forge UO the street from the bank.
NOW the smiths still make those deeds.. But yes some player interaction is lost BUT.. My crafter makes mills a week.. Off his own personal vendor.
Repair deeds and other craftables still do make money... His bank roll is that one vendor.. And i is that vendors profits to restock it.. And Im in the black as far as materials go. Lol its my own little experiment. And so far its going far into the plus side.
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Honestly, I ran a crafter back in the day, and made a good bit selling suits but... For my own characters? I did better taking a bard places wearing just clothing and looting enough invul armor to make a suit to make the need for a smith irrelevant.
Well really since they went from 5 to 7 character slots a vast majority of people have their OWN crafters and don't need yours except when farming things like PS and EM items from your shard... so more than likely they are making FAR more than you.