[UI] New Solution for a dying game

For the past 5 years DO has neglected the noobs and focused all of it's attention on the ufe's. The game is dying more and more by the second.

~ (#1) What i think you(The developer's) should do is make it more "Noob Friendly". the starter quests were very good, but you cant stop there... you need to have quests not just based on the lvl of a person but the strength of their equipment also. I know many people that are lvl 20 and are barely fe. Why? because you make quests that are very good paying in EP but not creds or uri. Bring quests BACK, we all loved the quests where you go pop 10 dev's and 5 sibs and get 100k ep 500k creds 750 uri and 1k honor.

~ (#2) Just like you've made Gates for strong people(Kronos, Kuiper, Hades etc...) you need to make some for weak people that still pay good. For example a gate that is 1/3 the difficulty of alpha but pays 2/3 as good. this gate would only be accessible to people with 15 > lf3's. then make another one that's 3/4 the strength and pays the same as zeta. this gate only accessible to people with 20 > lf3's. things like this will draw people back to the game.

~(#3) Clans play a big role in the development of an account, so i think their should be a donation system in clans. E.g. you can give 2 lf3's or b02's a week to someone in your clan weaker than you and 1 lf4 a month. Also ammo and uri.

~These are just a few of many things that could be implemented but i dont wanna put too much in here just yet. Think about it and put feedback and hopefully it will get noticed and implemented in the future

i know this is a lil rough around the edges but i wanna here your input on it and hopefully within the next couple days i will post a more detailed version

 

Issue here is that if a newb chooses not to make their ship stronger it is their choice and should not be rewarded for not trying to better themselves. My USA West account is level 16 and FE equipment just missing Pilot Points for Bio, so additional Log Disks is all that I am needing after 6 months of working the account, My lesser played USA East 2 is FE Leonov at level 10 needing BIO also. Getting more Log Disks is all that either of these accounts could benefit from as credits are cheap get a million from transfer 3 times a day in Goliath without premium on baby account.

There is a thread talking about weekly gates already posted in this forum and these could be done as a solo or a group and have good returns just from the NPC kills, and since they are GG's means the newbs are not being attacked while doing them. Making gates as suggested would create a major exploitation of the system just by equipping your ship with less lasers and more shields just to get the better rewards, too easily exploited.

Yes Clans do play a major role in the game play and as such giving them authority to hand out equipment is only going to help the strong get stronger as these items would be given to those who do not need them versus the ones that do. If items were going to be handed out like this it needs to be by D O in the form of Log In Bonuses. You reach a certain level, say 12, you log in religiously (after that date) for 30 days and get a LF-4 (maximum 10 per year). The fact that most clans now do not even help the newbs do anything is even more reason to not allow them to issue equipment to players directly. The restriction of amount of credits given was a needed step as people would join a clan be given credits for Auction and then leave the clan immediately afterwards, now for them to get a large amount of credits they have to be in the clan a while to get the most benefit from the transfer. A reward to clans who assist players to achieve movement up thru the levels would be more appropriate than issuance of equipment to players (say you have 25 members in a clan and during the designated time period the clan members increased level 25 times), the clan had a level movement of 1 level per member, average, making the clan an active clan and thus they get rewarded as such, granted this would have to have a starting level (say above 10 since this can be achieved in one day of play) and for those level 17 and higher would take too long to make the jump to the next level (327 Million ep is not easy to do).

Bumping the thread is not suggested but yes the thoughts are rough around the edges and it was not thought out very well and suggestions are not feasible so it is fairly hard to make decent feedback on what is said but I believe I pointed out the problems you want to push.

 

I agree that more push needs to be given towards getting the new players started. There is such a rush to get them into uppers and pvp, while not even having the equipment to do so. Personally I think that by the time the missions push them into uppers and/or pvp action, they should be level 14 or above. Why there are missions calling for them to go pop enemy players when they don't even know basic equipment for the ship is beyond me. These beginner missions should not only pay good but tell the player what to go get. Basic extra equipment should be secured before you even get out of x-2 maps. I am trying to remember what all they show us now. DO has shown that they are listening/reading our input, to include a beginner's gate. I have seen a lot of ideas that came out this past year for new players implemented. There is just not enough of it. They have shown great improvement, and if you think I am wrong, start a new account and look.

http://www.bigpoint.com/darkorbit/board/threads/sc-who-would-have-thought.112272/

You are right about the roll that clans can play in bringing up a new players. However, instead of giving a fellow clan member a piece of equipment, guidance should be given. Players come in guns blazing, or try to anyways. I get shot at by "barely got to exit x-1 map company players." Trust me, its a two way street. DO needs to fix the chat so a new player in the company starts in company chat and not global chat. Maybe they can announce themself, that way, or the game announce them. New Pilot X has joined the company. No telling how many new players try the game on a daily basis but I am sure about 99% of them are willing to say anything in chat on day one. Even if they join a clan that week, the first thing they do not need is your LF3. They need to know which way to the next goal. They need to know somebody is there to watch that they are doing the right thing, and to know that the NOOB-Shooting-UFE are not going to knock the wind out from beneath their wings as soon as they step foot into x-3 or x-4 maps.

To the OP, your heart is in the right place, I am with you. Its just all about how it is implimented. What I am doing with my new account helps me to see what is and what is not being done to help the new players and lets see, 3 pops today, they still need protection.

 

Your ideas are ok but they sounds like a pie for people with 2 accouts,1 ufe,1 almost fe... people can cheat more easy with your suggestions

 

I just recently got back into darkorbit and was shocked at just how dead USA East 1 is. It really bums me out because I put a lot of time into my account, and over the years payed about $160. I started in 2009 and have been playing on and off since then, so I've seen Darkorbit go from very active to hardly a few players in lowers. I created a new account on USA West 1 and did notice more activity, but players there are also complaining about their server dying. I hear Global America 1 is very active, and I want to start an account there, but I also do not want to just give up all the time and energy I have put into my main account on USA East 1. I think some sort of server merge will be the best way to go about dying servers, because otherwise more and more players are going to leave the game because there is no one to play with.

 

What is your name on East 1?

 

Merges are difficult and as most people have accounts on more than one server it is going to cause more possibilities of accounts being "pushed" because of choosing to log in on 2 computers and killing one account to progress another. There have been other threads about the merged servers and there are too many problems that need to be worked around, these are not just file servers that can be copied to each other and still be active. Each account is a ton of files that interact by looking at different files with every tab selected, thus every account has hundreds of files that need to be corrected when they make a change to the account and now take the 1000's of players they have to do this with and it is just astronomical the amount of work needed to merge just one server to another server. They may need to adjust the portals and combine the UPPER MAPS between servers to get more people active, but making the game more noob friendly would be the first step to re-generating the populations on the servers, keeping the VETERANS active is what is causing the problems as they are bored with doing anything except killing players too weak to defend themselves.

The Events getting people to open their wallets to pay for the game is fine but they have to remember that without the FREE Player the WALLETS have nothing to do and thus won't open the wallets anymore as they are not enjoying the game without having noobs around to kill. Once a ship is UFE and Level 23/above NPC killing is just out of the question and they only kill "GANG BANG NPC's" that attract noobs trying to get rewards from an Event before they get discouraged from the game and quit. I understand the reasoning for creating the UFE portion of the game, but it is also the reason for the depletion of the servers as the goal of getting FE was fairly easy (could buy the equipment either CASH or in game credits) but now it requires CASH to become UFE without a major amount of work farming Gates hoping to get the LF-4's needed and the Uridium to Upgrade everything to get max damage/protection. More quests giving LF-4's to noobs are really needed, (numbers used have a Hangar with a Phoenix for fun, Leonov, 2 Vengeance {Pussat and Lightning}, Goliath, Aegis, Citadel, Spearhead, DefCom, & Yamato ships) even Veterans could use more LF-4's as to UFE all Hangars (ready to fly) require over 296 LF-4's fully upgraded not to mention the BO-2's (> 381) that need taken care of, 11 - HS-2 Rocket Launchers, now add the G3N-7900 (> 111 suicide config) speed generators along with all the extras wanted for the style of play you choose. I know everything except the LF-4's are available from the AUCTION fairly easily but the Upgrades are not cheap and until the LF-4's become easier to accumulate the noob stands no chance of seeing the "light at the end of the tunnel" and finally enjoying the game we used to as an FE player, where it was the Pilot Bio that made the difference between NOOB and Veteran.

Lets get the game back into balance, keep the FREE player enjoying the game, and rebuild the populations of the servers where the 3 company plan can once again be enjoyed instead of being controlled my MCC's killing everything they see, whether friendly or enemy. And to make the MCC player happy create their own company where they are RED to all companies and get quests from the original company they signed up with.

 

ЯΔIĐΞN™
I was in ICE before I stopped playing and right now am flying solo, not trying to get involved in the whole JD thing.

I wasn't aware of the difficulties a server merge entails, so thank you for that info. I do agree that more focus needs to be placed on the free player to attract more players who can actually have a decent time playing with other more experienced, UFE players. The game has become such a grind, pallying to farm galaxy gates over and over till you get full havocs or hercs. Currently a free player can become FE pretty easily but it will be next to impossible to get a solid pilot bio and LF4s and enough uri for upgrades without either paying a lot of cash or devoting your entire life to playing DO around the clock.

 

Sever merge is not hard but there many factors that go into the discussion rewards example boxes,cubing,bks servers that are full will be negatively affected by the swarm of a rush of players.

 

Plus its been going pretty bad for the other games that server merge is being tested on botting increase is a major factor.

 

Well maybe if they merge the servers, they won't have to split up the attention in as many directions.

 

If the server is already active it would not be looked at for merging, you would think it would be low populated servers being merged to bring numbers to an acceptable playing level.

Don't know how a merge makes any difference with the botters, the numbers are there whether on 1 server or a dozen. Yes you have combined the numbers but they are not having to look at all of the servers to find them now it is just the one (or however many they have). Problem with botters is, once a botter always a botter, if computers have an actual fingerprint (specific IP address) and the botters are found using the same device/s instead of banning the account BAN THE IP ADDRESS and close the accounts associated with that address. Otherwise, the botter says "oh well they caught that account time for a new one, I had fun while it lasted and look how far I got before they caught me" or have several accounts already and losing one is no big deal to them. The only issue here is the falsely accused player that got swept up because he was boxing for Upgrade Bonus Hour (or whatever his objective was) and was swept up by the botting program and not researched properly before being banned.

This is why they have such large numbers of SUSPECTED cheaters and so few are actually banned, they get false readings and need to review the results before acting on the findings of the report, but yes you would assume the fewer servers the fewer reports to decipher and thus less time needed to review them all.

Another method of dealing with the cheaters, would be to create a Temp Server where suspected players are placed before elimination of account. IF activity continues on this server as seen in the original then the server is shut down (restarted as NEW) and then next batch of suspects are transferred in. This prevents the need for support to be imploded with wrongly banned accounts and makes the reports deciphering a single server report instead of 58 reports having multiple hits from the same IP Address.

 

just add more boxes, cubes and bks for a bigger population...

 

Although the cubes will likely stay the same, everything else should be proportionate to the amount of players in the map at the time.

 

I agree that some attention should be given to the new players and lower levels and missions could be made better to give new players a better feel for the game, one of the biggest mistakes that new players make is they rush to complete the new player missions and in a matter of 2 hours they have lost there protection and try to do missions on the x3 and x4 maps with out the equipment to do the job rather than concentrate on getting there sky lab running to earn credits or boxing on the x1 map between missions for ammo, uri and credits; the jump from lvl 5 to lvl 7 is very quick and at lvl 7 the advantage of boxing on the x1 map as gone. Making things like gates and missions based on equipment is not the way forward as I see it education in the game would be far better. One thing that I think should be scrapped is the offer that pops up for new players is the skip missions start with 2 weeks prem a pirahna and some basic equipment this gives a false sense of security and just makes mission fodder for the big fish.

 

simply adding more things wont fix the problem could also increase lag and Im always hearing people tell me your lucky because im lagging so imagine more npc to much lag and not to mention the more players the more lag that happens also like yesterday and today theirs been a mega back to back with booster and special ammo sales it was impossible to play literally wallet warriors kept bugging me pooping me scaring off people cubing was set to nothing the maps where empty as hell you would see a few players but they would quit fast so if this type of thing keeps happening I don't see a sever merge doing any good to free to play players as all there effort and work will be for nothing because they will keep getting shot down till it turns into pushing and all the wallet warriors either play less or suffer the ban for a few days. And I know full well wallet warriors will give me lip because they feel more entitled then anyone but these are the facts keep this up and even ill stop playing and I really don't want to because I do enjoy the game but if I cant play it then I wont bother logging on anymore.

 

I do agree that free players have it rough. I just started a new account on GE1 and got to level 8 in 2 hours, got a leo in action along with the +10 slot chip, rep bot 3, and other essentials, skylab started, and have 3.5 mill creds and 20k uri. But I keep getting popped by UFE and I can see new players quitting pretty quickly. I love the game and I know that if I grind I'll have a decent account, and maybe I'll buy some uri during mega, but honestly can't do much as a free player nowadays.

 

Adding more NPC's could be as simple as changing the spawn rate, every time one is killed another is spawned. Best example for this is the Cubes (x-6) or Battlerays (5-3) where you are supposed to have 4 all the time yet you can enter into the map and have none available because they have all been destroyed and not respawned. I can understand no Cube if the Protegits are still there but they do not hang around very long after the Cube is destroyed, or the Interceptors spawned as protection, for the Battlerays, are usually killed after the B-Ray is so another B-Ray should be spawned before another can be killed by the same person. These are easy to solo as a FE pilot (knowing the proper procedure) and using Kami and a UFE makes even easier work of them thus a UFE can kill all 4 of these and leave the maps without the major prize NPC for others to enjoy. Changing the timer for spawning to 30 seconds instead of 5 minutes (just an assumption here) would help this issue. The other issue in x-6 map is that the Kristallin get low HP and fly to a resting point to regenerate shields, if a player is searching and destroying these they will respawn otherwise they just sit there and you can not find any NPC's to be killed in the map, some noobs do not realize this is what is happening and think they got lucky finding an almost dead LK/SK, this is something else that could be changed so when the NPC gets low HP it stops moving forcing you to work harder at killing it because you can not stay out of range to get the kill, this will also force the player using Kami to use it again and kill the trash they tried to get rid of to begin with, or change the damage dispersal so if Kami does not kill the NPC with one shot it will not drop the HP to a low enough threshold to make it run away from the attacker forcing a second Kami to pop it.
With the changes made to the Streuners in x-1 and x-2 they need to increase the numbers of these, especially since they like using these for Event Missions, it is bad enough trying to find 50 for the daily quest where you get hardly anything towards (the Quest completed*100, honor/100 and ep/1000) increasing your rank for killing them, whereas any other NPC (except Lordakia) also have points/2 for killing them. I understand the reasoning behind removing the NPC Kill Points (exploited by FE/UFE one shot killing in protected maps) from these 2 NPC's but I do not understand why they are so strongly used in different Event/Daily Missions if they are not going to have a decent value for the effort.

In closing.

So not to increase lag, but to increase NPC numbers in the maps, change the spawn cycle of the NPC's in the maps so there is always at least TWO of everything (normal to the map) in the map at all times (many times using locator NPC is not listed for the map), change the damage dispersal from Kami to either KILL with one blast or not drop the HP to critical, if it takes more than one to kill them, thus forcing the player to wipe them out instead of leaving them sitting around the map not moving (Boss Saimon, LK/SK and Boss Sibelonit seem to be the ones I see the most) others seem to be ones that attacker was popped before death (Boss Mordon, Devolarium, Boss Devolarium, Sibelon, Boss Sibelon, BK, BBK, Boss Lordakium, Ubers) and are just easy kills for the lucky to find, but usually do not effect the map population like on the smaller NPC's.

 

Even changing the spawn rate would not even matter because with more players more wars and things are already tight in ga1 since them two megas back to back and another mega sunday and I would not be surprised if theres another one Tuesday and weds day again maps are empty so the spawn rate can stay the same since it seems things wont change much.

 

The change in spawn rate was because there were people saying we needed MORE NPC's in the maps and others were using LAG as an excuse for not having the additional NPC's. This action gives the best of both worlds, extra NPC's available (spawning faster after being popped) and no additional LAG caused by extra NPC's in the map. In the case of the cubes, if a person took care of the Protegits they could claim ONE Cukikon as THEIRS and leave the other 3 alone, or at most be able to kill two of the four and others could be killing one of the four while the Protegits of the third regenerated back to the Cubikon of the 4th, this way more people could do Cubes and would not have people being called leaches because they are trying to complete a quest or trying to gain some extra's from HELPING kill the Cube.