Help cRPG grow!

[Tydeus]

(click to show/hide)

Actually skilled player are the primary reason that new players will leave. If every new player that logged onto EU1 was faced with other players with low skill level just like them then BOOM problem solved, they start to actually get some kills and have some fun.

Think about it. Your average new player is facing a horde of skilled veterans that can block so well it makes it look they use auto block while the new player is lucky to block maybe two hits in a row. Many of these skilled players are lv 35 with fully loomed gear that know the game inside out. They have a skill advantage, a gear advantage, a knowledge advantage and what does the new player have?... about 1000 hours of playing ahead of them if they want to even begin to compete. And naturally this daunting challenge causes most people to leave, with only the extreme grinders with hours to kill being left which is maybe 1/100

Right know CRPG only caters to a very dedicated type of person who is willing to invest huge amount of hours into the game.

so Tydeus, Skilled players are our PRIMARY concern were the interest of attracting new players to CRPG is concerned.

This is why I hate tldr's. I was talking about new players, meaning a new player that is skilled versus a mediocre/novice one, not a skilled veteran. Clearly a skilled vet with looms and levels will be harder to kill than an unskilled vet and thus poses more of a challenge, thereby increasing the height of the "hurdle" one has to overcome. I thought this had already been established. 

[darmaster]

i'd rather use arming cap or woolen cap but seriously, every build is complete at level 31, gief level 31 STF at least for the tournament

[Enver]

Ban skilled players, they're a bunch of assholes anyway.

Or lock them out of EU1 and make a new elite server for skilled players. (you could measure it by k:d ratio or hours played but neither are ideal)

Whatever happens. Skilled players and new players have to be seperated effectively otherwise new players will just stop playing

[Grumbs]

Actually skilled player are the primary reason that new players will leave. If every new player that logged onto EU1 was faced with other players with low skill level just like them then BOOM problem solved, they start to actually get some kills and have some fun.

Think about it. Your average new player is facing a horde of skilled veterans that can block so well it makes it look they use auto block while the new player is lucky to block maybe two hits in a row. Many of these skilled players are lv 35 with fully loomed gear that know the game inside out. They have a skill advantage, a gear advantage, a knowledge advantage and what does the new player have?... about 1000 hours of playing ahead of them if they want to even begin to compete. And naturally this daunting challenge causes most people to leave, with only the extreme grinders with hours to kill being left which is maybe 1/100

Right know CRPG only caters to a very dedicated type of person who is willing to invest huge amount of hours into the game.

so Tydeus, Skilled players are our PRIMARY concern were the interest of attracting new players to CRPG is concerned.

In order to have a game that people want to play the skill side of it can't really be touched too much.

Alternatively we can do a shit tone of things to level the playing field. Artificial difficulty is the issue, whether the game is made artificially easier for some people or harder for others. At the same time some people need a sense of progression to stay interested in the game. Its a judgling act that favours the old guard too much atm

Oh and there are a lot of things that make the game simply less fun to play than it ought to be. Random projectiles flying around that insta kill, unlimited kiting while shooting, having your cake and eating it (shooting then doing melee, or riding around then being a strong melee player etc)

[jtobiasm]

Oh and there are a lot of things that make the game simply less fun to play than it ought to be. Random projectiles flying around that insta kill, unlimited kiting while shooting, having your cake and eating it (shooting then doing melee, or riding around then being a strong melee player etc)

Hahaha, you really do hate range don't you.

Keep mirin brah

[Grumbs]

I don't like people artificially making the game easy for themselves. HA/HX especially just leap frog over anything people learn in the game and just left click while go karting around

Same with foot ranged (except the genuinely good ones). They make the game easy for themselves and still want to have good melee capability. And they do it while knowing how unpopular they are because that just makes it more fun

[no_rules_just_play]

There seriously is no need to seperate new players from old players or to take down old players to the level of new players. As everybody already mentioned a 100 times, we didn't keep playing this game because it was easy and because we could fight off people that have been playing for 4 years easily. We kept playing because one day we wanted to be one of the skilled players.

cRPG is known for it's "elite players", and sure there is a bit of level crunching in there but I couldn't even block when I came from native to cRPG. I was absolute shit and staying in native wouldn't have thaught me anything because everybody there was like me. The current 'vets' didn't learn from fighting fair fights, they learned from falling and getting up again. Learning from your mistakes.

[Enver]

The state of the game was completely different 4 years ago to what it is now.
Very few new players are going to invest the years required to get good in 2014 into such an old game.

You can talk all you like about CRPG being an elite game for skilled players and all the grinding you
did to get good but I'm telling you, that's exactly the reason why its player base is not growing.

These are the facts. You can deal with them or you can continue to see no growth in CRPG.

[karasu]

cRPG identity crisis 3.0

[Jacko]

Seperating the playerbase with servers is not the solution. Skill will always be a factor, and should be. That's part of the appeal. But grinding levels for OP abilities shouldn't.

People seem to be under the illusion that a level 36 is balanced just because you can grind to it. It is not, and was never intended as such (it was considered unattainable initially). There has never been a long term balance goal. The mod has just happened. Do we want to keep going down a slow spiral of decline, catering to fewer and fewer players, or do we want to pull it up and admit that not all previous game design decisions were good?

Anyway people, keep in mind that all of this is only a discussion, we have not made any decision either way, and any dramatic change will go by you guys first.

[Teeth]

The state of the game was completely different 4 years ago to what it is now.
Very few new players are going to invest the years required to get good in 2014 into such an old game.

You can talk all you like about CRPG being an elite game for skilled players and all the grinding you
did to get good but I'm telling you, that's exactly the reason why its player base is not growing.

These are the facts. You can deal with them or you can continue to see no growth in CRPG.

So the playerbase is not growing because the game has a very deep and skill heavy combat system that is incredibly hard to master, and you want us to make the combat system more shallow so the game can grow? I am not sure you comprehend your own point here, because the implications are pretty dumb.

One thing to not forget is that even though it took me a good two years before I got decent at this game, and the top players have been slowly pushing the boundaries for 4 years, I have seen new players learning the game much faster than the time it took us oldies. I have seen new players reach the what was the average level of 2011 in the space of a few weeks. Simply because what they experience on the server is a much higher level and they are forced to pick it up at a much faster pace. In short, you cannot compare the slow increase of skill that many oldies have had over the space of 4 years to the process that newbies have to go through, they won't need 4 years themselves due to wholly different circumstances.

In any case, all the ideas in the poll suck. You really want to touch the ridiculous advantages you can still attain after like 200 hours of gameplay up until 5000 hours of gameplay. Glad the devs are thinking that way at least.

[no_rules_just_play]

Seperating the playerbase with servers is not the solution. Skill will always be a factor, and should be. That's part of the appeal. But grinding levels for OP abilities shouldn't.

People seem to be under the illusion that a level 36 is balanced just because you can grind to it. It is not, and was never intended as such (it was considered unattainable initially). There has never been a long term balance goal. The mod has just happened. Do we want to keep going down a slow spiral of decline, catering to fewer and fewer players, or do we want to pull it up and admit that not all previous game design decisions were good?

Anyway people, keep in mind that all of this is only a discussion, we have not made any decision either way, and any dramatic change will go by you guys first.

The reason people are getting to lvl 36 and 37 is because they actually kept playing. The reason why they kept playing is the grind. I think grind is such an important factor that I'm afraid that Peasants United actually does more bad than good. Maybe I make tons of new players lose interest because I took away the awesome feeling of buying your first real weapon or armour, I really fear that possibility.

Why would anyone keep playing to get nothing extra for it? I like to have fun trolling around a lot, but the main reason why I don't just play this game once in a while is because I still haven't reached my goal of lvl 35. This started when I was lvl 1 and I wanted to get to lvl 31, from there to 32 and so forth. It kept me playing with each generation I did, each loompoint I so badly wanted to get a new weapon. I think there isn't a better feeling than having something new every once in a while, either a new loomed weapon or a new addition to my build.

[Grumbs]

People play for the game mechanics..you know the actual gameplay. There are many many grinding games out there, this doesn't need to be one too. I'm 35 because I CBA grinding characters, especially when I know I will lose so much character power if I retire

I do agree that progression is a factor for a lot of players though, just the type of progression doesn't need to be character power. It can be all sorts of things that you grind for that don't make you artificially more capable at killing players

My progression when I started was as you say - being bad and learning how to not be so bad. That doesn't need to have anything to do with grinding for more levels. In effect it actually detracts from your real achievements because you don't know how much better you're getting as a player than if the playing field is more level for everyone

[Enver]

Separation of skilled players and new players is also known as matchmaking and its been a staple feature of many modern multiplayer games for quite awhile now. But alas, If the developers do not condone separation as stated above by Jacko then the next solution to make the game more accessible to new players is to cap max level at 30

With a capped level of 30 you take the painful grind away from crpg and even the playing field significantly for new players.

level 30 still takes over 20 hours of playtime, you can beat most games in 20 hours. That's still a significant time investment for anyone
and allows players of all ages and lifestyles access.

Looms will still provide players a reason to level characters over using STF even with a capped level of 30

[jtobiasm]

#RemoveLooms