[SC] Dark Orbit - Dying but not Dead.... Yet :(

Hello All,

So I'm an old player returning to the game after a 4 year break, during my break I formed a multi gaming clan called 'Momentum'. On my return I attempted to entice some of my clan members to give DO a shot, in which they did. Sadly it didn't go so well and after about 4-5 days and some long play sessions these clan members decided the game wasn't for them. Going by the major decline in player population on most servers I thought it was worth sharing there experience as feedback in the hope that Bigpoint will make some necessary changes to keep new players.

In order to give my clan members a boost I gave them each 5 mil creds and guided them through which stuff to buy to give them the best advantage as a newbie, after setting them up and explaining about the game and its features we were on our way. From the first few hours of playing doing starter quests and getting a general feel for the game they really enjoyed it wanting to progress and explore what else DO had to offer.

However once they progressed from the starter missions onto the normal missions that took you too x-3, and x-4 maps things took a turn for the worse. Even with me (FE goli) trying my best to protect my 4 clan members UFE players would simply 2-3 shot them constantly while trying to do quests. Even when kiting NPCs to portals for extra safety these UFEs could still pop them before they jumped, at first they didn't mind and carried on with the quests but after this happening 50+ times well it would get pretty annoying for anyone. They also refused to play without me by there side as it got even worse without protection, atleast with me being there I could deter anyone below UFE and did so 90% of the time.

The thing that really annoys me here is I dont understand while high level FE and UFEs would go after newbies like that where's the game play satisfaction in that? Sometimes these guys would purposely go for the weaker player out of our group completely ignoring me. Some players would camp portals cloaked waiting for newbies to come through and sit there for hours. Literally I camped 2-3 to 3-3 portal and the same guys would come through cloaked and go after newbies the second I shot at them they would run bk to portal, not even give me a good fight just run away.

Anyways they still stuck it out managing to get them themselves some fully decked vengys making them as fast as they can go (speed gens and resources) pretty pleased with themselves that they can now outrun most players and at least have a chance of surviving... well actually no they cant lol, all that happened was players would hit them with a slow rocket which completely negates the reason for a new player to go for a fast ship (the only real chance they have at not getting wrecked by strong players) and within a few seconds they would be dead. It doesn't help that players seem to have an unlimited supply of this surplus ammo so it would literally happen every time and for newbies buying this surplus ammo is a waste of what little Uridium they have.

Other than dying all the time the quests become repetitive and boring seriously we killed so many bloody salmon (saimon) we felt like space fisherman, and the rewards are complete lack luster, creds and exp everytime. This is one area I feel could make a huge difference they should be giving out much better rewards from these quests that give newbies more incentive to progress, make the quests less boring knowing you'll get a better payout, and give them a better chance of making it in DO. Rewards like ships, lf3s, speed gens, shields, better ammo etc. All would help newbies survive and feel like there progressing.

So the last thing and ultimately the one that pushed them away was once they become familiar with the game and understood everything about DO they realised that the games incredibly PTW, if you want the best things in the game and stand a chance against other players you need to fork out some cash, which for a FTP game isn't a bad thing but with DO its not just 50 or 100 pounds you need to put in wayyyy more if you ever wana roll with the big bois and do the fun stuff and once they realized this and the whole dying over and over again then had enough and called it quits. Simply things cost way to much uridium and theres too many things that cost Uridium in the game, the amount of grind you would have to put in to achieve these things without putting in too much cash is just too much. Even though they knew about the auction where you can obtain 95% of the things in game for credits it doesnt matter because the billionaires will always outbid you for the good stuff.

I know a lot of people say joining a big clan will help and everyone should do this to have a better chance but it seems like players don't have an option to do either, some players want to go solo for awhile or like me and my group we wanted to start together as our own clan and progress at the same rate without being boosted to much or rely on people protecting us, especially when these guys probably have better things to do.

Anyways onto some suggestions from myself and feedback from my clan members experience to improve this situation and return DO to its former glory... (Apologies if these have been suggested already I haven't spent much time on the forums).

The first thing could be too make the home maps have the same restriction as the x-1 maps but up until a certain level this way newbies can happily carry out quests without the frustration of being popped all the time and high level players will spend less time hunting newbies and more time pvping with people they should be in the uppers, understandably this could require some quest and events restructure but for the greater good of DO is totally worth it.

Alternatively you could impose an ammo restriction on certain maps so the home maps will not allow you to use x3, x4 ammo types or slow rockets etc... So strong elite ammo types can only be used on battle maps and uppers. (not on noobs, seriously why would you waste perfectly good x4 on a bigboi or leo :S )

Another would be to release a new ship obtainable by newish players thats super fast like faster than a goli or vengy can ever go but weak on firepower so they can easily outrun these guys, or even have an abiliity like the vengy design that increase speed for a certain duration, hell you can even charge for the ship like 30k uri or something, I'm sure newbies would be willing to fork out that knowing they will get away and not die all the time. you could package it up as a starter deal with some ammo and other minor goodies to sweeten the deal. however you do it, it must be much quicker than the strong ships.

Lastly I think Bigpoint need to make the game cheaper for people, I know this games been about for a long time and Bigpoint have made a ton of money off of it and probably hope to keep doing so but now is the time where the game is unfortunately dying out and something needs to be done to turn it around. Not necessarily by making everything cheaper but more ways to make uri in game, maybe increasing the amount of uri quests and NPCs drop, having x2, x3 NPC uri drop events, more in game ways of making uri. Bigpoint might make less money in the short term but these suggestons would most definitely increase player population which in the long term would make them much more.

Anyway this post has ended up way longer than I intended but as an old player returning hoping to play DO as it once was and with some buddies starting out I was pretty disappointed to see how significantly my servers population had dropped and how hard it was for my guys to get started. From what I've read its happened to a lot of the servers that were once thriving. Hopefully the devs are working hard and listening to the players to make it right and give something back. I honestly think with these suggestions in place new players would hang around for much longer and my clan would certainly come back and give it another go, which in return would also bring back some of the old players as well.