Pets - Feral pets to populate the game/help with player retention

[Kraufen]

I am remaking my old post, as people had been talking about it in the discord.

As some of you are aware, I have been getting a ton of people to try the game. Many of which quit pretty fast and since I know some of them personally they told me why.

One big thing they told me is the game seems empty and there is nothing to do. I had given them guides to read books and pointers, but they quickly grew bored of reading books. A lot of players want to jump into the action right away. I'd argue most players don't want to read books for days from levels 1-10, potentially 1-20. Most similar games I played did actually have a book option or something similar but it wasn't the main way to level. One could argue that these new people can join factions and heal people or do engineering, but most new players, especially ones that are inexperienced with these kind of games most of them will log in and search for something to fight. Maybe they will get into that other stuff after, also not everyone wants to join a faction off the bat either.

I propose feral pets for cordi. It would be good to have something populating the world. As it stands you log in, you find nobody(most of the time). You go to a library, you read some books then some random level 30 person comes along and kills you. Of course some players have uses for killing newbies (liches for example) but it is kind of a demoralizing first experience to encounter nothing at all, do something that isn't all that fun then die. If there were feral pets in cordi, new players will at least find something to interact with (even if those things kill them to)


It could be simple and we use existing pets, I think that for cordi though weaker pets should be used, maybe newly created ones, so newbies don't get steamrolled by them.

Stuff like rats (Not necessarily plague rats), some other creatures that might live or end up living in cordi, I don't why something like goblins or other fantasy-ish creatures wouldn't spawn in cordi.

Basically something new players who spawn can see and try to fight if they want. Plus gives older players something new to do as well.
Anyways, just wanted to get that down so there is an actual suggestion rather than just discussion in the discord.

Post whatever ideas you want below, somebody was talking about robots in disco

[tremor3258]

I'm going to suggest little cleaning droids that went feral just because then I can picture them as angry roombas.

[Badziew]

I think that feral pets, if implemented, should be not too much bloodthirsty, otherwise being killed over and over by random pets could also discourage people from playing.
Perhaps passive to T1 (unless attacked, of course) but aggressive to higher tiers? Or, perhaps, even completely invisible to higher tiers and only visible/interactible with mortals?

Another idea is to add some passive "tourist guide bots" to selected tiles, that could be interacted with by either:
- being nice and chatting with them, e.g. asking for directions to nearest [insert tile type here]
- or being naughty and punching them, which initiates colony's self-defence systems and spawns some aggressive security bots on tile

The strength/size of the security bot reaction could perhaps be automatically adjusted to character's level or build, to give them a "hard enough" challenge but not overwhelm them.

[Meric]

Hunting as it is I'd like to see more pets roaming Cord.

Malfunctioning robots sounds great and perhaps their attack level / hostility could depend upon the tier of player. So they leave the citizens of Cordillera (mortals) alone but attack the other-worldly T2/3s that are not protected by Asimov's laws.

[Kraufen]

I think that feral pets, if implemented, should be not too much bloodthirsty, otherwise being killed over and over by random pets could also discourage people from playing.
Perhaps passive to T1 (unless attacked, of course) but aggressive to higher tiers? Or, perhaps, even completely invisible to higher tiers and only visible/interactible with mortals?

Another idea is to add some passive "tourist guide bots" to selected tiles, that could be interacted with by either:
- being nice and chatting with them, e.g. asking for directions to nearest [insert tile type here]
- or being naughty and punching them, which initiates colony's self-defence systems and spawns some aggressive security bots on tile

The strength/size of the security bot reaction could perhaps be automatically adjusted to character's level or build, to give them a "hard enough" challenge but not overwhelm them.

I agree. I don't want them overly aggressive go new players. So maybe one or two types that maybe do very low damage that might be aggressive to everybody, and stronger ones only aggressive to t2 or higher unless attacked by new people

[Kraufen]

Hunting as it is I'd like to see more pets roaming Cord.

Malfunctioning robots sounds great and perhaps their attack level / hostility could depend upon the tier of player. So they leave the citizens of Cordillera (mortals) alone but attack the other-worldly T2/3s that are not protected by Asimov's laws.

That sounds neat. Is cordi known to have robots though?

[Goliath]

Hunting as it is I'd like to see more pets roaming Cord.

Malfunctioning robots sounds great and perhaps their attack level / hostility could depend upon the tier of player. So they leave the citizens of Cordillera (mortals) alone but attack the other-worldly T2/3s that are not protected by Asimov's laws.

That sounds neat. Is cordi known to have robots though?

Cordillera is a space colony, so why not.

[Lychwood]

Vermin, like rats! Give them abysmal accuracy and a max hit of 1. Something you can still have a shot at killing even if you just spawned for the first time and all you've got is a pipewrench. Make them worth 0 xp unless you're a T1, and maybe even give them carve-outs vs things like Soul Vampire so they're not getting farmed off the map to generate resources. Have a few NPC varieties(robots as mentioned above, wildlife that spawns in the "empty" areas like plains, mountains, and lakes) that so that there is a natural difficulty scale you can work your way up.

I've been in favor of this idea for a long time, and I think that scaling down some of the combat gameplay to be accessible at those early levels would be huge for people who are just dipping their toes in. The best way to get someone hooked on an RPG is to make sure they feel their progression from level to level. You want them to feel the results of their grind so that they're encouraged to keep going toward the bigger and cooler skills. Currently, since there's nothing really appropriate to attack during T1 most new players are pushed into bookgrind, healgrind, or other grinds that don't really scale with any of the skills they're buying in T1 and are also a little boring. Killing near-harmless mobs is a great way to feel your progression as you buy your way up your accuracy tree and get better gear.

There should be a sort of treasure-trail of content that leads you up to the endgame meta of hunting/raiding/support, instead of the current "Ok so you grind for two weeks, and then we might be able to take you on an outing and spoon feed you, if you're lucky." Up to that point you still basically haven't even played the game yet!

On the other hand, if you've been training on NPC mobs throughout T1, by the time you hit level 10 you should be:
-Familiar with your preferred attack style and gear setup
-Used to maintaining/repairing your gear or contacting the right facmates to do so
-Getting the hang of pet ticks, retaliation attacks, aggroing and de-aggroing mechanics
-Learning how to "gear up" for combat and utilize potion/heal/buff resources to maximize effectiveness and survivability vs. tougher targets

These are all basic concepts that will feed into your first raiding experiences in T2 and prepare you for some of the mechanics you're going to be dealing with. Right now, brand new raiders are usually completely overwhelmed by all the different mechanics being thrown at them at once. The learning curve for this game is basically a flat line running into a cliff. A more gradual curve would do wonders for retention.

[Kraufen]

Vermin, like rats! Give them abysmal accuracy and a max hit of 1. Something you can still have a shot at killing even if you just spawned for the first time and all you've got is a pipewrench. Make them worth 0 xp unless you're a T1, and maybe even give them carve-outs vs things like Soul Vampire so they're not getting farmed off the map to generate resources. Have a few NPC varieties(robots as mentioned above, wildlife that spawns in the "empty" areas like plains, mountains, and lakes) that so that there is a natural difficulty scale you can work your way up.

I've been in favor of this idea for a long time, and I think that scaling down some of the combat gameplay to be accessible at those early levels would be huge for people who are just dipping their toes in. The best way to get someone hooked on an RPG is to make sure they feel their progression from level to level. You want them to feel the results of their grind so that they're encouraged to keep going toward the bigger and cooler skills. Currently, since there's nothing really appropriate to attack during T1 most new players are pushed into bookgrind, healgrind, or other grinds that don't really scale with any of the skills they're buying in T1 and are also a little boring. Killing near-harmless mobs is a great way to feel your progression as you buy your way up your accuracy tree and get better gear.

There should be a sort of treasure-trail of content that leads you up to the endgame meta of hunting/raiding/support, instead of the current "Ok so you grind for two weeks, and then we might be able to take you on an outing and spoon feed you, if you're lucky." Up to that point you still basically haven't even played the game yet!

On the other hand, if you've been training on NPC mobs throughout T1, by the time you hit level 10 you should be:
-Familiar with your preferred attack style and gear setup
-Used to maintaining/repairing your gear or contacting the right facmates to do so
-Getting the hang of pet ticks, retaliation attacks, aggroing and de-aggroing mechanics
-Learning how to "gear up" for combat and utilize potion/heal/buff resources to maximize effectiveness and survivability vs. tougher targets

These are all basic concepts that will feed into your first raiding experiences in T2 and prepare you for some of the mechanics you're going to be dealing with. Right now, brand new raiders are usually completely overwhelmed by all the different mechanics being thrown at them at once. The learning curve for this game is basically a flat line running into a cliff. A more gradual curve would do wonders for retention.

Haha you wrote this way more eloquently than I could

[Klapaucius]

Really well put Lychwood, agree completely.

I only have one thing to add, which is that wandering pets are an absolute smorgasbord for petmasters. It's such a rich-get-richer situation in terms of xp gain and stat gain, and I don't know whether it's a problem that needs solving.