Topic: Increased EP points/minute for new players

Game needs more players to survive, but just like in the similar mmo many are held back to start the game because they feel they can never catch up with the old players. This is an inherent flaw of this skill system, it won't get any better later. It's mostly a psychological thing, no need to start arguing how "usefull" a new 20k ep account anyway.

What I'm suggesting is to give increased ep/minute to new players and not just a fix amount, but until they get close to the possible maximum (to someone who plays from day 1).

the increase would be like 20-25% up untill 80-90% of the day 1 player's ep points.

Re: Increased EP points/minute for new players

Seridur wrote:

Game needs more players to survive, but just like in the similar mmo many are held back to start the game because they feel they can never catch up with the old players. This is an inherent flaw of this skill system, it won't get any better later. It's mostly a psychological thing, no need to start arguing how "usefull" a new 20k ep account anyway.

What I'm suggesting is to give increased ep/minute to new players and not just a fix amount, but until they get close to the possible maximum (to someone who plays from day 1).

the increase would be like 20-25% up untill 80-90% of the day 1 player's ep points.

TBH I agree with this, encourage new players. Make the game look attractive.

Re: Increased EP points/minute for new players

Let's just remove all skills from the game and give everyone everything instantly. That way theirs no barriers to entry and no reason to subscribe to the game for long periods.

Re: Increased EP points/minute for new players

GLiMPSE wrote:

Let's just remove all skills from the game and give everyone everything instantly. That way theirs no barriers to entry and no reason to subscribe to the game for long periods.

I think removing the skills and and giving everything to everyone instantly is not really good idea because it would remove the incentive to play the game, but if you feel otherwise then open a new suggestion about it-but please do it in a different topic this is unrelated here. Thank you.

Re: Increased EP points/minute for new players

Can then in general all to distribute identical quantity EP?
I have bought the preorder and have started to play this game only from that I will have a greatest possible level EP

Re: Increased EP points/minute for new players

Big f* NO.

There should be a difference to when you started playing a game and when your char started developing. As we're talking about mechanical beings here that accumulate "ram-like" EP points over time, this can go indefinitely and in 10 years a 10 year vet should have a LARGE head start compared to a noob.


Motivate new players some other way.


Also it's only been 2 months since the game got out and you think new players need morale boost? Get real. The game will survive for a few years i'm sure, players then won't notice 2-months difference in EP. And if players want to have every bloody thing the first month, they can by all means go play star trek online and see where it takes them. Where no man has gone before for sure.


o/

This is the xxx spot.

Re: Increased EP points/minute for new players

1. Glimpse trolled you.

2. Getting skills faster would be great, who wouldn't want that, but this game is not balanced around the individual player like a FPS or games with rated PVP. Accelerated EP may be a good psychological boost for new players, but it will ruin the game not save it. Specifically trying to 'equalize' all the players will make the game top heavy.

3. Yes, when the game is more mature (in 2 years) it would make sense to give new character more EP to start the game with, maybe 40k EP instead of 20k, or even a staged entry where they add 1K starting every month after the first 6 months. This will allow new characters to get into the advanced content a little faster without unbalancing the top end.

8 (edited by Seridur 2011-01-03 20:44:19)

Re: Increased EP points/minute for new players

Triglav wrote:

There should be a difference to when you started playing a game and when your char started developing. As we're talking about mechanical beings here that accumulate "ram-like" EP points over time, this can go indefinitely and in 10 years a 10 year vet should have a LARGE head start compared to a noob.


Motivate new players some other way.

I can see that you would enjoy your 10 years worth head start over a "noob".. He might not enjoy it enough tough to stay in the game.

I'm not saying that everyone should get the same ep.
Let's assume the game is up for 9 months so the day 1 account would have like 400k ep. In every month this player gets 40k more, the new player would get 50k until a point. It's still around 3 years till it gets close. So yes it is a morale boost, but why shouldn't we give it to new players when new players are needed for the game badly?
Yes the game is quite new now, I'm not talking about a few months difference, but there will be players who will not join the game because of how the skill systems works-and I think that's bad.

Re: Increased EP points/minute for new players

As the last 2 months have shown, the game is VERY playable and fun with low EP count, and i believe that in time it will become even more varied, so that a 9 month or 10 year old vet will be able to distribute those points into areas that today we cant dream about.

Now this fact is important: a new player will be able to put the same amount of points in the same amount of time into A NEW area, that today doesnt exist yet, so those players will be equal in that area at the time.

If a new player got their EP faster, then you effectively say that old players become stupid with time and accumulate EP more slowly and are thus less able to adjust to new game content. Thanks but no thanks. I dont want to create a new char for every novelty that's put into the game so I can have it as fast as the new guy.

But the fact still remains that level 1-5 extensions are so goddamn cheap in this game that a newbie at any point in time should be able to have fun playing this game.


o/

This is the xxx spot.

Re: Increased EP points/minute for new players

Arga wrote:

1. Glimpse trolled you.

I chose not to acknowledge that smile

11 (edited by Seridur 2011-01-03 21:02:24)

Re: Increased EP points/minute for new players

Triglav wrote:

Now this fact is important: a new player will be able to put the same amount of points in the same amount of time into A NEW area, that today doesnt exist yet, so those players will be equal in that area at the time.

Yes, this would be somewhat helpful for the problem, not entirely tough.

Triglav wrote:

If a new player got their EP faster, then you effectively say that old players become stupid with time and accumulate EP more slowly and are thus less able to adjust to new game content. Thanks but no thanks. I dont want to create a new char for every novelty that's put into the game so I can have it as fast as the new guy.

It's very unlikely that you would make a new char for any fancy new content, I can't imagine what could that be anyway. And I said in the OP that no need to argue about how useful a new char can be, it's not the point (it might be the topic for a future discussion tough-how useful the lightbots will remain in the future-but that's really a different story)

Re: Increased EP points/minute for new players

I agree with your working assumption that the dev's want to the game to be self-sustaining, but there seems to be a misconception that they are making this a mass market game; I know I made that assumption myself.

It may not be terribly obvious, but the game is being allowed to grow organically. We have been dropped into a persistant sand-box world with a very basic rule set. How the world develops is up to us, the Dev's are there to make sure the 'rules' provide a fun playable environment.

This game play concept is different from content drivin MMO's. If the new player comes into Perpetuum expecting a content driven game, the EP rate would be only 1 issue of many they would have.

The point, if a new player is turned off the game because they can't 'Catch Up', then they will not enjoy the game even if that part of the system was adjusted.

And to repeat, changing the EP rate would break the balance of the current world, and require so many adjustments to fix it would no longer be the same game.

Re: Increased EP points/minute for new players

Replying to op:

Then you have a limited imagination. If you don't do it, that doesnt mean that I or 1000 other players dont do it.

Also for the heck of it since I have currently nothing better to do, let's analyse your math.

You want to allow 20-25% boost to people until they reach 90% of hypothetical day1 char.

Ok, now example:
Game is 5 years into the future, 2015, novembre 25th.
People have ca 2.6 mio EP. You want to give a noob 25% boost, which they'll have to play with for 20 goddamn years to catch up to older players at which point they will have 10.5mio EP and they wont give a flying duck about older players anyway.

So you want to implement a feature that gives a sheep's d**k more points of EP/time to new players, so they get more encouraged? And they'd have to pay 20 years for it?


Now unless you want to make sense and give at least coherenet numbers when you post your ideas into a new thread and suggest it to the devs in public forums, please don't post any more. And i mean that in a most offending way smile



And find other ways to get new players motivated.


o/

This is the xxx spot.

14 (edited by Artem Blue 2011-01-03 23:21:11)

Re: Increased EP points/minute for new players

Since spending EP on anything costs more and more EP the more you spend, new players do catch up to existing players.

However, if the devs wanted to change the looks of the EP system for psychological reasons (not changing anything real, just the numbers people see) so that players get newEP at a varying rate, rather than EP at a fixed rate (e.g. total_newEP would correspond to sqrt(total_EP) or some other similarly-shaped function), that would be fine - so long as they also flatten the extension cost curves correspondingly.

However, I believe the population this change would be targetting (people who would enjoy catching up with newEP but who don't see that they're catching up in real capabilities with EP), would be smaller than the population turned off by being confused by it.

15 (edited by Seridur 2011-01-03 22:06:17)

Re: Increased EP points/minute for new players

@ Triglav
So why are you crying for you 10 years vet status? Just make up your mind already. I never suggested that new players should be "equalized" instantaneously .. now until you have something constructive to say please don't post anymore. And I mean it even more offending way tongue

Actually the math could be more complicated: more bonus if the difference is bigger whatever

Re: Increased EP points/minute for new players

Quite agree with the OP, but the math would have to be a bit more generous towards veterans, 20% extra until 90% of max is just way too much. I would say something of the following type:

30% extra until 20% of max
20% extra until 40% of max
10% extra until 60% of max

This would allow veterans to always have an advantage, but would still make new players converge towards the average.

Re: Increased EP points/minute for new players

Here's how I'd do it:

EP represents an allotment of bandwidth from earth through the wormhole, uploading data to each player's spark.

Each player has a 'skill storage', which works as normal. However, when deploying into the field, they have to select a certain amount of EP to load into a spark. Maybe each player can buy additional sparks, and loses a spark when their robot explodes?

Robot-control skills need to be loaded into/out of a spark, and each spark can only hold a certain number of EP, so this way a new player, if they can max out a spark in - say - a month, will have potentially the same skills in a given robot as a veteran. However, the veteran will have access to more interesting robots - he's unlocked higher skill trees - and the veteran will probably have more sparks - he's got more sparks with specialist builds.

Maybe.

Re: Increased EP points/minute for new players

No

Re: Increased EP points/minute for new players

I never knew BizzyBeast was Hungarian.

Reactor......ONLINE
Sensors......ONLINE
Weapons......ONLINE
All systems nominal.

20

Re: Increased EP points/minute for new players

easy solution that give late joiner a chance to catch up:


u gain double EP as long as u joined after game release
but this double EP boost ends and never restarts once u let ur subscribtion run out


example

u join dezember 2011 when the game is running allready since dezember 2010

so u gain the next 12 months double EP

but if u choose after like 3 months not to renew ur subscription u lose that double EP bonus even if u reactivate later u still only gain normal speed EP


this way everyone no matter how late he join have a chance to catch up

but only if he stay a loyal customer

<<< REAL POWER CAN NOT BE GIVEN, IT MUST BE TAKEN >>>

Kyr - Perpetuum Online
Helios Norlund - Darkfall Online

Re: Increased EP points/minute for new players

While we are at it, give all the 6th graders high school diplomas, because they are disadvantaged.....or just give them completion of a grade every month until they "catch up".

Trying to make everything "fair" just dumbs down the game, turns it into Star Trek Online, WoW and other mass market pablum games where you can reach level 80, be flying the top of the line ship, etc. within a month or two.

If people would quit whining about how unfair everything is they might be out there getting something done and having fun.

The apparent "gap" between players is always narrowing, in two years the difference between what is now a newb and a vet will be pretty minor. The way that higher level skills take longer and longer to get means that in time, the only difference in a month of EP will be one point in just a few skills.

Ultimately the biggest difference is not how many points, grades, degrees, what-the-heck-else you want to compare you have, but what you do with what you have. This is one of the main draws of a game like this, a persons abilities as a player matter more than the skill points they have.

Who the $#@% is stEvE?

22 (edited by Triglav 2011-01-04 10:41:32)

Re: Increased EP points/minute for new players

Seridur wrote:

@ Triglav
So why are you crying for you 10 years vet status? Just make up your mind already. I never suggested that new players should be "equalized" instantaneously .. now until you have something constructive to say please don't post anymore. And I mean it even more offending way tongue

Actually the math could be more complicated: more bonus if the difference is bigger whatever


Eh stop trolling.

EDIT:

also this.

While we are at it, give all the 6th graders high school diplomas, because they are disadvantaged.....or just give them completion of a grade every month until they "catch up".

This is the xxx spot.

23 (edited by Seridur 2011-01-04 12:05:36)

Re: Increased EP points/minute for new players

Triglav wrote:

Eh stop trolling.

You started it-well actually Glimpse did, but i resisted quite long smile

and please don't bring rl examples to skill progression.. but even then in rl you have the chance to catch up if you do the effort, actually the younger sometimes more capable-but really this is irrelevant
This suggestion was made to lessen the barrier a new player might feel to join the game late. just lessen, not removing it. Would not be a drastic change and would not benefit me except I think we may gain more new players this way.

Re: Increased EP points/minute for new players

Dammit you're worse than M2S. They at least know they're trolling and enjoy doing it, you have no idea what you're doing. If you can't accept a simple mathematical example that i provided you to show you that your idea is flawed, only death and god can help you.


First you dont want me to bring RL into anything, then you do it... sigh. Oblivious trolls, best trolls i guess.


You do not lessen anything by adding 25% speed to EP. You lessen it by adding 2x, 3x or 4x speed. Which you yourself don't even want to do. I see no reason to implement this into game for such negligible amount of extra EP as there are other ways of raising newbies' interest in the game. If they want to play EP gathering online, there are plenty facebook games that do just that. Or they can play eve-online, gather isk for +5 implants and hope to god they don't forget to buy a new clone.


Done with bumping this post, go lie in a corner.


o/

This is the xxx spot.

Re: Increased EP points/minute for new players

WAIT... If new players get accelerated EP, what about the older players? We've had to wait weeks to learn up basic skills, I don't see why new players should be able to skip all that with their accelerated EP. That makes no sense at all.

As EVE has done, newer players were given more starting skillpoints which the older players never got. EVE still continues to grow despite this "I'll never catch up with the vets" mentality. You attract new players by offering new content.

Oh, and sandbox... You play it your way, you don't need to have as much EP as the vets to accomplish things. For a game of this type, I didn't feel useless with my 20k EP and I had tons of fun grouping with corp mates.