Nexus Clash

Edit: Wasnt made in the suggestion forum and as such isnt a suitably constructed suggestion. Was later moved.

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Following on from this thread here: viewtopic.php?f=9&t=2610 and the general discussion in NCG recently

Even if my recollection is rose-tinted af I still liked the intro The Pit gave for B3. Existing in Cordillera as a new player is just so daunting - the size, choices and scope is initially mind blowing let alone the wandering Lich making a mess of you in the library.

I remember the thing that kept me hooked in Nexus War was finding the All Your Souls safe house (not stronghold) and being supported in a small, helpful, relatively safe environment. I didnt join the faction for a few weeks and the wider Nexus opened to me. I doubt I would have stuck with it had that not happened and I dont think placing people in Strongholds alone is sufficient in the wider context of the Nexus.

The Port Hope opening to this breath was a blast and I think showed the fun of the nexus with people everywhere, emotes and chat, trading, easy orientation and easy spawns in a small controlled space. In terms of maintaining interest for new players I do think an initial scaled down small experience that strokes egos, rewards messing about and isnt punishing would be a good idea. Maybe for up to level 6 or 7 until they are deposited into Cordelia with a faction and have a skill tree under their belt and some grounding in the world. You could also give people an early exit if they feel they are ready for the world that starts at level 3-4 for the more capable players. You could also let people choose a path of Good, Evil and Unaligned that ensures their faction placement is congruent with their chars role playing.

I think the key to making such a place viable is to buff its framed weaknesses in the thread above and inflate the positives as best as possible. It would need twerking of course to balance it just right to be a reasonable learning-curve that isnt boring/non-engaging or OP / incongruent with the actual Nexus experience.

For example:

• A small bespoke pocket space (say 10x10) with all the resource buildings and variety the Nexus has to offer. Have it be a small village (like Port Hope) with mixture of experiences like a few water squares, a mountain, a mixture of buildings and outdoor squares. Maybe a two-way portal that jumps you ~5 squares away to give that controlled experience. The size of the space could flex with its player count so when there are fewer new players running around it drops to 7x7 etc.

• Fill the place with low/non-lethal pets. Give them ~5% attack or make them fire nerfs. Give them low MP / high AP so that whilst they can move around loads if they find someone to attack they will despawn before they actually kill someone. Or let them stop if a player drops below ~20 health. Maybe have a "higher level pet" that only targets +level 5-6 players and does abit more damage and provides increased risk

• pets that are healable (spawn with half health etc). Make some of them appear as mock-real players that have a bunch of stock emotes they spit out instead of just "pets" as we know them

• Toss a few experienced / helpful players a free char slot to only reside in that pocket space and walk around being a bunch of mentors, gifters (and targets). Im not going to name-names but I bet there is a tonne of players who would be happy to just run around and be accessible to new players on an alt. Maybe let a few of them be T2 demons, angels, transcendent so new players can see what they can become etc and let them blast out the occasional skill like a glyph spell or healing aura, or a low-damage EM. Obviously such players need to be vetted and limit their chars so they really are just guides (e.g no combat ability).

• Sprinkle in a bunch of respawning collectables (weapons, chunks of steel, books, faks) for easier discovery and skill usage

• Lower the cost of skill usage - to make it accessible such as 2 ap crafts, 2 ap harvests, depowering - 2 ap

• Buff search tables and let people find things easily and not much junk but generally fun things to play with.

• hints - everywhere that are skill / building specific

• Insert the odd accuracy buff unknown to the player. For example, every 10th swing the accuracy jumps from 35% to 75% until a hit connects then back to 35%

• High AP initially, I think this is already the case(?) but if not, start with 250ap and perhaps your max drops by ~20ap every level until you reach the norm

• On death maybe have a hint pop up in relation to where you died such as "You have respawned. You died in the hospital 3 squares North. There is a library 3 squares West" to help orientation or give them the option to spawn at a particular place

• Have auto-hints trigger when someone does a inefficient action or a learning event occurs- "You are searching at the night. Searching for things in the day light is much easier", "Oh no! Your weapon is broken! You can find a new <insert weapon here> in <building>", "Oh no! The powers gone out! You can try you hand at engineering to see if you can restore the power" etc

• You could even let them try out skills (like an easier buy back) before they "pick their path" and properly select their skills at level 6-7. This could be via easy skill purchase/exchange or gaining certain skills in certain locations or having certain items "You pick up a sword, try your hand at melee combat for the next 50ap", "You picked up a Portable Tool Kit and have been granted the Engineering ability. Go turn on those lights! for the next 50ap"

• Have a small section (say a 2x2 square have demonic, angelic, transcendent buildings to give a flavour for the larger world. Maybe place an inaccessible empty Stronghold to foreshadow the world outside

• Let their first spawn into Cord be a complete skill/MO wipe and allow them to choose their first 60-70cp with the knowledge they have learnt up to that point

• To introduce the faction play aspect that is at the core of the game you could start the players off in factions Red Team / Blue Team etc headed up by an experienced player alt with some components of faction/stronghold warfare seriously scaled down to be accessible - such as instead of a Stronghold have a Club House with no ward, a foot locker and a flag people can walk in and take for xp mimicking the wider world

IDK, some ideas that would need a whole mess of work to make it remotely viable.

You could also just have an offshoot neighbourhood of Cordillera like Port Hope that has a barrier T2/3s cannot pass through, but mortals can and when a mortal dies it allows them to spawn either anywhere or in that offshoot neighbourhood so they at least have a grounding space they know that is relatively safer than the wider Nexus.

I like the idea, though I do have reservations. I also liked the alternative 'spawn as a t3' tutorial proposal, since it facilitates the tutorial idea but also doesn't give you a taste of something that will never exist in the actual Nexus.

Thoughts:
- It shouldn't be too brutal leaving the starting area and joining the nexus proper. This will be a very tough balance to strike.
- Area effect that nerfs you (and your pets) as your level goes up? That way high level characters could visit but not really accomplish anything. Then anyone who wants to go hang out with new players can, and they're basically limited to buffing/healing/chatting/gifting/revealing/whatever.
- Don't bother making the pets mock players, just make inactive 'PCs' that are randomly put inside buildings (i.e. they are just player characters that automatically respawn). Should be a variety with different defensive characteristics: some hidden, some with an aura, some with some pets, some with a bit of soak or dodge. They should spawn with random HP.
- There should be characters of varying allegiance - factional, allies, hostile, enemy (n.b. more xp for killing hostile/enemy less for ally make it happen!). This is good preparation for getting put in a SH
- Make the pets non-aggressive but not too weak. People should be dying to them if they start a fight without a plan or on low health. The pets shouldn't go inside buildings, though.

Mechanic discussion is meant to discuss existing mechanics; this is a suggestion
Moving it accordingly

I've mused about new-player-only areas during commutes and such, but I don't think they're a good idea. It isolates new players, folks who you want to have interacting with others, who can offer advice and safety. T3s farming kills on Mortals is a bit of a thing, "losing" in your first couple of days can be especially frustrating. However, while that may be one of the things this suggestion tries to solve, I think there are other solutions outside the scope of this thread (in summary, incentivise helping new players more than the incentive to farm kills, such as building on the Penitent's Shield of Mercy).

Instead of a separate area, why not have them spawn in more defensible/walled-off areas that aren't completely locked away from the rest of the game? For example, we currently have "bubbles" on the west and north-east ends of Cordillera. If there were a couple more for Mortals to have an increased chance (or maybe guaranteed, with gradually decreasing chances as their level goes up) of spawning in, that would both give a microcosm of the wider game, allow interactions with factionmates, and most importantly they would get to see others going about so it doesn't feel so desolate (which, if there ever happens to be a slower trickle of new players, a separate area would be). The "bubbles" could also be connected to one another with the rapid transit network already present in Cordillera.

NearNihil wrote: ↑Thu Aug 11, 2022 8:17 am Instead of a separate area, why not have them spawn in more defensible/walled-off areas that aren't completely locked away from the rest of the game? For example, we currently have "bubbles" on the west and north-east ends of Cordillera. If there were a couple more for Mortals to have an increased chance (or maybe guaranteed, with gradually decreasing chances as their level goes up) of spawning in, that would both give a microcosm of the wider game, allow interactions with factionmates, and most importantly they would get to see others going about so it doesn't feel so desolate (which, if there ever happens to be a slower trickle of new players, a separate area would be). The "bubbles" could also be connected to one another with the rapid transit network already present in Cordillera.

Rather than walled/defensible areas, I'd probably go for some sort of "dampened" areas, where high-end characters get their high-endedness reduced.
That'd probably translate into a non-linear reduction of offensive and defensive stats for characters, as well as some pet-specific penalties.
Probably would also involve some sort of search rate tinkering.
This should make the area less desirable for high level characters to play in.

NearNihil wrote: ↑Thu Aug 11, 2022 8:17 am I've mused about new-player-only areas during commutes and such, but I don't think they're a good idea. It isolates new players, folks who you want to have interacting with others, who can offer advice and safety. T3s farming kills on Mortals is a bit of a thing, "losing" in your first couple of days can be especially frustrating. However, while that may be one of the things this suggestion tries to solve, but I think there are other solutions outside the scope of this thread (in summary, incentivise helping new players more than the incentive to farm kills, such as building on the Penitent's Shield of Mercy).

Instead of a separate area, why not have them spawn in more defensible/walled-off areas that aren't completely locked away from the rest of the game? For example, we currently have "bubbles" on the west and north-east ends of Cordillera. If there were a couple more for Mortals to have an increased chance (or maybe guaranteed, with gradually decreasing chances as their level goes up) of spawning in, that would both give a microcosm of the wider game, allow interactions with factionmates, and most importantly they would get to see others going about so it doesn't feel so desolate (which, if there ever happens to be a slower trickle of new players, a separate area would be). The "bubbles" could also be connected to one another with the rapid transit network already present in Cordillera.

I suggest an off-shoot neighbourhood at the end that T2/T3s cant enter but T1s can pass through. Also let them spawn in there by choice as like a mortal safehaven. I do strongly support the mixing of new players and existing players as alluded to above with having experienced players essentially running/monitoring the space. The issue being is that new players need to have the right kind of early learning experiences from the experienced players that isnt silently dying or aloof faction mates. Providing a space where T2/T3s are dampened and less actively or inadvertently damaging to mortals sounds good or incentivise factions to set up safe-houses in dampened areas (I bet Foundation / RP would be all up for that).

The issues for new-player mortals now being:

• Cordillera is too big - navigation and orientation is hard.

• Cordillera is too empty - not enough people around, not enough people to kill, not enough people to bounce around with (because they are all in strongholds or hiding from the murder hobos

• Cordillera is too dangerous - inadvertently or not experienced players prey on mortals be it a Elementalist accidently killing a mortal when they walk into a building or someone going for their kill grind

• Cordillera doesnt share its secrets - the learning curve is a cliff and many skills need people to work with and feed off like healing or combat and generally combat isnt rewarding because the people you encounter to kill are resistant to it - people with pets, people with armor, people with dodge, people with auras etc

• Cordillera is frustrating - no early wins, lots of wasted AP, feeling feeble, weak, undervalued, dying constantly. Some players really enjoy this challenge and aspire to become the guy that just hit them for 43 damage. But I bet many others do not

Personally Id go hard on disincentivizing harming mortals:

• Completely wipe the stats earned from killing or damaging mortals - give the grinders no incentive to kill them

• Have them be members of factions but not actually count in stronghold defence so SHs can fall with them still be alive etc

• Have pets engage with mortal differently - reduced damage, only one pet retaliates if a mortal attacks yous, have mortals initially recognised as "allies" unless you select otherwise etc

• Have them be unraisable as ghouls or not buff the Necro etc

I just want to add that barricades, to mortals, feel like griefing. And T3 players have workarounds, so they usually don't care about them and don't waste AP destroying them. A safe and enjoyable newbie space should have no barricades.

Weirdomen wrote: ↑Fri Aug 12, 2022 1:36 am I just want to add that barricades, to mortals, feel like griefing. And T3 players have workarounds, so they usually don't care about them and don't waste AP destroying them. A safe and enjoyable newbie space should have no barricades.

Mortals aren't actually affected by barricades. But becoming a T2 and then being blocked off from large portions of the map is equally terrible. Honestly, barricades either need to be completely redesigned, or removed from the game.

Oh, my bad, it's T2 then. Yes, my opinion still stands that it feels more like griefing than something useful. Has anyone not gotten raided thanks to barricades?

Weirdomen wrote: ↑Fri Aug 12, 2022 10:14 pm Oh, my bad, it's T2 then. Yes, my opinion still stands that it feels more like griefing than something useful. Has anyone not gotten raided thanks to barricades?

Uhh re-reading my post and it came out a bit aggressive perhaps? Sorry, it was not my intention.