Some thoughts form a newbie

[Greylock]

I just joined this game and i have been enjoying it so far , although it seems comments and perhaps criticisms on this game are welcome (i fully understand this is a work in progress)

I enjoy the fact that this is a rp game , and i am sure once i get the knack of things i am going to begin to immerse myself. For now though i am in that what to do next stage , and in the learning curb stage.

I think there is a few things though that could have been added to the tutorial area / quests to help prepare me for the game.

1. show me how to gain skills, i actually did it right when leveling up my first skill tonight , but once the bar turned green i didn’t fankly know what to do. thankfully their was a kind person in-game that explained it to me in ooc.

2. show me how to mine and use some of the skills. or at-least show me were to mine , not nessicary what locations in world , but perhaps what to look out for wile exploring.

3. Tell me a few of the materials i can look for , not all of course maybe just a few so i know what to put next to /dig.

the next thing just would like to say , its about the economy and what i noticed at the very beginning of the game. It seems rather expensive to buy repair kits for my swords. they always seem in disrepair and i can only get 4 to 6 coins for my kills (if the rat drops anything at all) . and frankly keeping my swords in good condition is costing me so much i frankly dont have any money to buy skills , better weapons , armor , so that i could kill some foes that drop more valuable loot so perhaps i could get ahead. I dont know this just may be me , and perhaps i am doing something wrong. Perhaps if dropping the cost of repair kits is not a option , maybe making them work more then once ?

The last thing i just wanted to mention , perhaps somehow when training , indicate the cost of the training ... i thought i would have enough banked to get a level in swords tonight and perhaps some spare coinage (going form level 2 to 3) i am not sure how much it costed but it did drop me to 2 coins in the pockets .. perhaps i would have thought twice about doing it if i had a clue how much it would cost me ... what to do with a saber with a 5/50 .... i hope turning to mining for some money will net me enough to repair my sword in a few days .... i don’t want to go back to hand to hand with rats.

Though i would like to say the community in this game is great, I am enjoying it alot so far and i hope that i will sometime soon get ahead a little so that the game will seem more rewarding.

[neko kyouran]

We appreciate the feedback.  It allows the team to see where there are areas for improvement. 

[Taniquetil]

While i fully understand what you are saying, and i totally agree with it, i can see both sides of this. On one hand, new players are almost completely lost when they finish the tutorial and some poke in the right direction would help a lot. On the other hand, it is good for the game, players, community, and RP for people to have to ask around a little to get information. Getting help from players is relatively easy, as just about anyone will at least tell you what you need to know, if not go ahead and show you. There's a happy medium in there somewhere and  think we are currently pretty close to it.

Again, good points.

[Rizin]

Thank you for the feedback...to answer what I can....

1. show me how to gain skills, i actually did it right when leveling up my first skill tonight , but once the bar turned green i didn’t fankly know what to do. thankfully their was a kind person in-game that explained it to me in ooc.

2. show me how to mine and use some of the skills. or at-least show me were to mine , not nessicary what locations in world , but perhaps what to look out for wile exploring.

Your number one and two will be addressed in an update to the tutorial when it is ready.

3. Tell me a few of the materials i can look for , not all of course maybe just a few so i know what to put next to /dig.

This will also be addressed in the updated tutorial, at least for the more common materials.

the next thing just would like to say , its about the economy and what i noticed at the very beginning of the game. It seems rather expensive to buy repair kits for my swords. they always seem in disrepair and i can only get 4 to 6 coins for my kills (if the rat drops anything at all) . and frankly keeping my swords in good condition is costing me so much i frankly dont have any money to buy skills , better weapons , armor , so that i could kill some foes that drop more valuable loot so perhaps i could get ahead. I dont know this just may be me , and perhaps i am doing something wrong. Perhaps if dropping the cost of repair kits is not a option , maybe making them work more then once ?

The last thing i just wanted to mention , perhaps somehow when training , indicate the cost of the training ... i thought i would have enough banked to get a level in swords tonight and perhaps some spare coinage (going form level 2 to 3) i am not sure how much it costed but it did drop me to 2 coins in the pockets .. perhaps i would have thought twice about doing it if i had a clue how much it would cost me ... what to do with a saber with a 5/50 .... i hope turning to mining for some money will net me enough to repair my sword in a few days .... i don’t want to go back to hand to hand with rats.

The economy is an ever changing working in progress right now, and it will hopefully keep improving as time progresses. Hmm...knowing the cost of training sounds familiar, though I can't remember from where at this time. If it's not a feature request in the bug tracker you may want to consider adding it.

Though i would like to say the community in this game is great, I am enjoying it alot so far and i hope that i will sometime soon get ahead a little so that the game will seem more rewarding.

I am glad that you're having a good time here, and welcome to PlaneShift.

[Mythryndel]

I apologize in advance if I am spoiling something, but on the subject of skills and their cost...

1 PP spent on training requires 30 trias (at least for skills, it might be more for stats... i haven't studied this too closely). If you click the buy skill, instead of buy skill level there is a dialog that pops up with a slider. If you slide this all the way to the right, this is how many PPs it requires to buy your next level.

This is a work-around in my opinion, but I had the same frustration starting out.

[Mordraugion]

has it changed then? it always used to be 42 Tria per PP and somewhere on this forum is a calc for basic stats and the cost per level

[Tuxide]

It's 30 tria now, Mord.

[Mathy Stockington]

It is nice to hear constructive criticism from a new player. You wrote your thread with kind words and that is the way to get things done. Good job. I hope you enjoy PS and welcome.

[MustangMR]

I'm always scared to answer these for the spoiler rules, but as far as money goes and fighting... pick your fights wisely.  There are other creatures out there that are killable early, and they drop loot that will solve most of your problems.  You just have to find them. 

[Xillix Queen of Fools]

Welcome to Planeshift!

[Greylock]

I am glad none of my comments were taken as flaming the game and were taken as constructive critisem as it was meant to be.

I would like to say though after a bit more time within the game , i do have a few more comments , although i have read somewhere in these forums that NPC’s are going to be improved upon and this will likely remedy the situations i have come across.

In the vain attempts to supplement my characters income i have attempted the third root i dident at first consider above , and that is quests. As luck would have it the first two quests were rather simplistic just courier missions , and thats great it had me go to both the Eagle Bronze doors , and Objavia. Although the next few is where frustration sets in a bit.

the next three quests i find ask me to donate more money then i have currently , (i am doing quests for money , and someone who can barley keep a coin in his pocket can hardly donate 1000 to do a quest) , but all and all thats fine , perhaps when i get enough money together i can do those quests. it is the next few that just really let frustration set in , although i know if i nag the experienced players enough in game (oh people that meet me probably are getting tired of me asking for directions already). I can not afford to buy 5 sabers , a Healing glyph , or donate 1000 to the church.

the next quest is a singer that wants me to deliver a flyer to “the broken door” i ask her where this place is , in as many ways possible , but i am told she dose not know where it is basically. Herm you want to sing there but you don’t know where it is ... or even a place to start looking .... The next is similar a person wants a object back form the guardian of the dungeons , but he dose not seem to know the location of these dungeons either .... but these two quests can be fixed by me continually asking around and hoping to find someone nice enough to tell me where to find them. Just as a suggestion for the npc dialogue with these types of quests , perhaps for us newbies maybe have the npc’s be able to give general directions to were we are supposed to go ?

the last quest of the day is the one i spent the most time of , and got nowhere on. I was asked by a npc to find out what his wife wants for a gift form him. So far so good , but no matter how i ask her she dose not seem to understand me what so ever. It seems likely to me that i have to tell her a very specific sentience, and sense the game dose not make use of dialog tree’s it seems almost impossible to figure out. perhaps having some kind of hint in his dialog with the quest (figured their was with the things he said in quotes , but she didn’t respond to that either) to give a player some hint on what to say.

anyways that is just a newbies two cents for now.

by the way to the poster above who said their is a killable creature which is more profitable , i am still looking but have yet to find anything that wouldn't kill me first.

[Rizin]

In the vain attempts to supplement my characters income i have attempted the third root i dident at first consider above , and that is quests. As luck would have it the first two quests were rather simplistic just courier missions , and thats great it had me go to both the Eagle Bronze doors , and Objavia. Although the next few is where frustration sets in a bit.

the next three quests i find ask me to donate more money then i have currently , (i am doing quests for money , and someone who can barley keep a coin in his pocket can hardly donate 1000 to do a quest) , but all and all thats fine , perhaps when i get enough money together i can do those quests. it is the next few that just really let frustration set in , although i know if i nag the experienced players enough in game (oh people that meet me probably are getting tired of me asking for directions already). I can not afford to buy 5 sabers , a Healing glyph , or donate 1000 to the church.

the next quest is a singer that wants me to deliver a flyer to “the broken door” i ask her where this place is , in as many ways possible , but i am told she dose not know where it is basically. Herm you want to sing there but you don’t know where it is ... or even a place to start looking .... The next is similar a person wants a object back form the guardian of the dungeons , but he dose not seem to know the location of these dungeons either .... but these two quests can be fixed by me continually asking around and hoping to find someone nice enough to tell me where to find them. Just as a suggestion for the npc dialogue with these types of quests , perhaps for us newbies maybe have the npc’s be able to give general directions to were we are supposed to go ?

the last quest of the day is the one i spent the most time of , and got nowhere on. I was asked by a npc to find out what his wife wants for a gift form him. So far so good , but no matter how i ask her she dose not seem to understand me what so ever. It seems likely to me that i have to tell her a very specific sentience, and sense the game dose not make use of dialog tree’s it seems almost impossible to figure out. perhaps having some kind of hint in his dialog with the quest (figured their was with the things he said in quotes , but she didn’t respond to that either) to give a player some hint on what to say.

Dialogue with npc's is improving, but as the game is developing, we have a mix of old and new and we work on upgrading the old.

As I've said before on the forums and on IRC - if you spend time with a quest trying to guess something, once you finally get it send me - via PM or email - 1) the name of the quest 2) what the npc said you were trying to answer and 3) what responses you tried that did not work.

For the middle example, if you'll e-mail me the names of the quests and basically the same blurb you said here, I'll take a look. For the last one, if it is the one I think it is (guessing) than you missed something in the previous dialog - but again I'm guessing however, we can discuss that via e-mail.

I'll be more than happy to look over and add anything that fits. We never turn down information.

[Prolix]

I believe the singer gives you the name (or occupation) of the person to ask for permission, look at your logs and see if that helps.
Also you should be able to collect 1000 tria fairly easily collecting herbs from the wilds, they sell as raw materials.
You may need to make several trips but it requires no skill.

[NirAntae]

collecting herbs from the wilds, they sell as raw materials.

How/where?  I have yet to see anything 'collectible' in the wild, herbs or otherwise.  Have I just not looked in the right place, or is there a trick to it?

[Kaityra]

How/where?  I have yet to see anything 'collectible' in the wild, herbs or otherwise.  Have I just not looked in the right place, or is there a trick to it?

Well, there are some areas where you can find herbs, fruits, plants, etc., which should answer your question. But since the herbal and alchemy skill are not implemented there is little other use for these than selling them. Some of the "ingredience" you can find are used in cooking/baking, though.