Has Perfect World made it impossible for new players to start playing?

2

Comments

  • nightmare201
    nightmare201 Posts: 50 Arc User
    kyoske wrote: »
    @nightmare201 and you my friend go back to the fact that money is hard to make in this game and as i clearly stated im a f2p person, so if anyone has that complain, trust me i do, but the point is spirit though a major factor in pvp, is one of the easiest things to get in this game. take out card sets out of it even though they are easier to get these days and starcharts even though most people can get atleast 1 spirit stat on a chart. It doesnt change the fact that spirit is far more easier now to get than before. I mean he said he is mirage sky that means he should even be able to access neverfall, the vitae from quest there is pretty sweet; wasted on most Ts10 persons but still sweet, older players didnt have that, so here you are defending this dude when for one this post was originally about making money to make or buy gear that he himself admitted he already had. All he needs now is the spirit which is an easy 1-2-3, If anything this dude somewhat derailed the post and you should see that seeing you are the OP

    Well the thread is about money and how it would relate to newer players...that's the whole point of it lol. I personally have found spirit to be quite difficult if you don't have a lot of luck with cards. I've seen people with 1k spirit still get oneshot easily. And honestly I'm not sure what else to say then. All I really wanted to see by making this thread is other peoples thoughts on how money making for non-cashers works and if that has effectively killed most of the ways people could join the game. The barb who posted above is a newer player, and while we can't be sure of how much he has cashed or farmed his gear, he obviously has put a large portion of time and effort into making his character, only to find out that RNG is what will dictate his gear from now. Yes he can level his sky levels, but as he points out he doesn't have a bunch of friends to use the ancient gift system, so he can't level as quickly as others who have been around for a long time.
  • kyoske
    kyoske Posts: 163 Arc User
    @nightmare201 here is it as straightforward as possible expecting to join a game and in four months be able to stand toe to toe in pvp with others isn't a valid expectation. You mentioned being lucky with cards but what if he had to open 1Apack per day right now pwi giving away A chest in login events. He is going to get 5 a chest in the current event and 2 s packs, as far as I'm concerned he is just in a hurry and I can only imagine how much he would rage if he had to go through what older players went through. The only advantage older players had was the slower addition of content
  • yoabu#2667
    yoabu#2667 Posts: 50 Arc User
    Some of you folks are making a lot of assumptions.
    • I played this game in the past. I know my way around. I might have been unfamiliar with some of the new stuff when I started here, but I knew the rest like the back of my own hand. That's one of the things that allowed me to jump in and solo farm TT 3-3, Lunar and WS with my g16 barb when no guildies were available to help.
    • I used no pills. 3x103 in 4 months of honest levelling.
    • Most of the gear is obviously CSed. I did earn a fair share of coin through farming and merching, though.
    • There's quite a bit of a gap between expecting to go toe to toe with the top players and expecting not to get one/two-shot by pretty much anybody and everybody. When I said "getting closer to being on equal terms" I meant "getting closer to being on equal terms", not "being on equal terms".

    I wanted to give a different perspective on the new player experience - one of somebody who puts in quite a bit of time, money and effort. Now take this and consider how much more daunting it has to be for those who choose not to CS.
  • dregenfox
    dregenfox Posts: 713 Arc User
    yoabu#2667 wrote: »
    Some of you folks are making a lot of assumptions.
    • I played this game in the past. I know my way around. I might have been unfamiliar with some of the new stuff when I started here, but I knew the rest like the back of my own hand. That's one of the things that allowed me to jump in and solo farm TT 3-3, Lunar and WS with my g16 barb when no guildies were available to help.
    • I used no pills. 3x103 in 4 months of honest levelling.
    • Most of the gear is obviously CSed. I did earn a fair share of coin through farming and merching, though.
    • There's quite a bit of a gap between expecting to go toe to toe with the top players and expecting not to get one/two-shot by pretty much anybody and everybody. When I said "getting closer to being on equal terms" I meant "getting closer to being on equal terms", not "being on equal terms".

    I wanted to give a different perspective on the new player experience - one of somebody who puts in quite a bit of time, money and effort. Now take this and consider how much more daunting it has to be for those who choose not to CS.

    I was in the same boat as you when I first came back form the game. Mind you I've been playing or keeping up to date in one way or another for 7+ years. Even with full JoSD R9rr +10 gears I was getting one-shot by pretty much any sin, when only a year before I could tank multiple sins without issues.

    Spirit simply contributes way too much to damage dealt/taken, and it really adds nothing to the game aside from being a number that you can only raise by spamming routine dailies.

    Even now after months of catching up I'm still missing 120+ spirit from cards, and that is totally dependent on luck opening up chests. Its frustrating since I can already RB every single warsong card except incacerate but can't get a ghost wing to save my life.
  • ch40tic
    ch40tic Posts: 8 Arc User
    so you're saying its impossible for new players in what way? in making money ingame? or just playing/enjoying the game such as leveling, learning the character's class and learning the game?
    as a person who played this game from 2007 (malaysain version but same game) it is now easier for new players or returning players with new characters than ever imo. all the low and mid level quests had been redone and streamlined A LOT. whereas before a quest have you kill 30, 40 or 50 mobs, now its 10, 15 or 20. the best part, the quests actually gives good amount of exp and coins now. a few months ago i made a new barb character when i returned to the game after about 4 years away and i got the barb from level 1 to level 93 with ONLY questing and bounty hunting (absolutely zero grinding) in exactly 1 month and 1 week. that is with about 4 hours of play time daily on weekdays plus the weekends. i never had the problem of not having enough spirit and/or coins to get my skills either because, again, the quests actually gives enough. so just starting and playing the game is easier now than ever for new players. i said this because if you've played this game early enough to remember what "zhen" is then you know how much pain it was to progress in this game back in those days.
    if the problem is with making money ingame then, well, it has always been the same: you gotta spend a lot of time to farm a lot or start putting real cash into the game. yes, you might not be able to farm coins at low levels with dq items and low mats anymore but you don't need to anymore, really. like i said before, the quest rewards gives you enough now at low to mid levels. for higher levels and end-game, whether its for coins or standing a chance in pvp, its still the same game of either: finding a helpful faction to help you farm a lot, beg/cheat/scam people, or start pulling out the credit card. its how the game was built to be.
  • nightmare201
    nightmare201 Posts: 50 Arc User
    ch40tic wrote: »
    so you're saying its impossible for new players in what way? in making money ingame? or just playing/enjoying the game such as leveling, learning the character's class and learning the game?
    as a person who played this game from 2007 (malaysain version but same game) it is now easier for new players or returning players with new characters than ever imo. all the low and mid level quests had been redone and streamlined A LOT. whereas before a quest have you kill 30, 40 or 50 mobs, now its 10, 15 or 20. the best part, the quests actually gives good amount of exp and coins now. a few months ago i made a new barb character when i returned to the game after about 4 years away and i got the barb from level 1 to level 93 with ONLY questing and bounty hunting (absolutely zero grinding) in exactly 1 month and 1 week. that is with about 4 hours of play time daily on weekdays plus the weekends. i never had the problem of not having enough spirit and/or coins to get my skills either because, again, the quests actually gives enough. so just starting and playing the game is easier now than ever for new players. i said this because if you've played this game early enough to remember what "zhen" is then you know how much pain it was to progress in this game back in those days.
    if the problem is with making money ingame then, well, it has always been the same: you gotta spend a lot of time to farm a lot or start putting real cash into the game. yes, you might not be able to farm coins at low levels with dq items and low mats anymore but you don't need to anymore, really. like i said before, the quest rewards gives you enough now at low to mid levels. for higher levels and end-game, whether its for coins or standing a chance in pvp, its still the same game of either: finding a helpful faction to help you farm a lot, beg/cheat/scam people, or start pulling out the credit card. its how the game was built to be.

    I can say with all confidence that the game was not built to be a credit card swipe away from end-game gear. Until the anniversary packs came out, the most anyone ever had was tt99 and that took a lot of work and a fair bit of luck. TT100 was considered even rarer, and rank 8 gear rarer still. But I'll be honest I haven't had the time nor the patience to level a character from 1-100 and gear it without outside influence (Transferring coins from my main I mean), so it's good to hear that you have managed to get your toon geared and leveled! I must ask though, is this toon ready for end-game PvP? Because, as I have stated in the past, there's not much of an end-game besides that and I fear that is where most new people would leave after finding it's very difficult to get into.

    However Kyosuke mentioned several times that spirit is far and away easier to get nowadays so perhaps I'm wrong on that as well! I'd be curious of others input on that matter, if spirit is or is not fairly easy to come by in a way that would even the playing field enough to fight.
  • kyoske
    kyoske Posts: 163 Arc User
    @nightmare201 as someone pointed out these are the glory days for new players, the only complaint a new player should have is the money aspect and what the outerlands look like. Older players didnt have the luxery of getting a geographical map, i remember back then being lvl 80 and got lost in an area with mobs over level 100, but thats what made this game fun. Now you asked about spirit, so let's break it down first ways to get spirit. Nuemas, cards, sky levels, starchart and ornament shards. Ill talk about old vs nowadays

    Now let me point out that ancient gifts werent always around so while some players did manage to save some from the event, you need to keep in mind that, it isnt really a valid point in the issue. Now older players cash shopper or not didnt have the luxery to purchase those nice vitae pills from boutique, we did out primal dailies though hectic and boring we did them anyway so we could raise sky levels. Nuemas were a pain in the **** and we were limited to 20 per week and though we knew which boss had nuemas there was no control over which nuema we got so sometimes you end up with 4 or more useless nuema or we had to be on for rw to get soldiers pay which we could trade for nuema. Ive already mentioned throughout this post how we did 1 fsp daily and we could get 1 A pack which may or may not give A card. Starcharts and ornaments didnt come about till later on and Ornaments is pretty much based on how much you have to spend and starchart is based on luck and how much you can spend to increase your luck.

    Lets talk about current times primal dailies are still lame and boring, but now we have Neverfall which gives a nice boost, it may not give bloods but the vitae gain is much better plus there is no limit, well not yet. Ran some mirage sky alts in neverfall they became Astral sky in 2hrs or so. Yay neverfall. We now get vitae pills in boutique so if you have money to spend it then do( keep in mind money was the issue of the post, now it has strayed). Wait for nuema you no longer have to do runs, you easily trade lucky coins and there you go a nuema of your choice. i wont mention cards because those are being given away now like crazy not to mention those chest going around now. To be honest complain about the economy but not spirit.
  • tetraem007
    tetraem007 Posts: 129 Arc User
    kyoske wrote: »
    [... but now we have Neverfall which gives a nice boost, it may not give bloods but the vitae gain is much better plus there is no limit, well not yet.

    You can even get blood in Neverfall. Because you can exchange "Neverfall Squire's Badges" for "Barbaric Blood" or "Primoridal Blood" at "Royal Night Hector".
    One can obtain "Neverfall Squire's Badges" by new main quests and new daily quest.
  • dregenfox
    dregenfox Posts: 713 Arc User
    edited April 2017
    One positive thing to come from all these expansions is that since most of the endgame content is not working, it lets the newbies catch up to the vets. There's really nothing else to do after getting 15 arena matches except some random 3's since every endgame farming instance has not been fully enabled yet, so the vets really aren't making that much progress.

    This gives a chance for newbies to make a lot of progress while vet players are unable to grow their chars due to content being temporarily disabled to protect the longevity of the game.
  • ladiec
    ladiec Posts: 10 Arc User
    i am an old player 2008 !!! i seen the economy go crazy.... i seen the genies patch and the tideborn patch..... I see the cash shop sell the mysterious boxes containing the phenonix feathers or hear ( items). I am recently thinking of playing again (downloading as i type) but i have no interests in an ugly herc.... i just want to play and enjoy a break from studying. I heard thats the coin for gold exange is now 4mil!! the coin to gold exange rose because of the cash shop hercs..... serious cheat for venos.
    i am affraid to see how bad anything is in game now.
  • jadasia
    jadasia Posts: 520 Arc User
    edited April 2017
    PWI is in the business to make money. F2P people do not keep the servers running.

    The amount of free stuff PWI gives to new players is beyond belief. If you want more than that then you need to pay up and stop whining.

    F2P people are getting far more than what they are paying for.
  • ladiec
    ladiec Posts: 10 Arc User
    jadasia wrote: »
    PWI is in the business to make money. F2P people do not keep the servers running.

    The amount of free stuff PWI gives to new players is beyond belief. If you want more than that then you need to pay up and stop whining.

    F2P people are getting far more than what they are paying for.

    i am waiting on the update atm to see how this game changed
  • nunuator
    nunuator Posts: 455 Arc User
    To be completely honest what drove me to quit this game is the massive amount of cash that you have to spend in order to make up for the lost dailes that you didn't do...
    I had a full +10 R9R3 DB and full +10 R9R4 seeker one with CF set one with warsong set and what drove me to quit is the stupid amount of dailes you have to do.. sure you can auto point them but, that still leaves the issue of spirit...

    A +40 Hp shard sin can wreck my seeker and my DB cause he has 600+ or so spirit on me that is just plain stupid to me...

    PWI has made no attempt to even make it slightly easier on the player to max out on passives and sky lvls. What pissed me off the most is having saved up coin in game and holding off on shifting sky boundary quests for 3 months so I can "cash" the shifting sky quest line in some hopes of hitting Twilight sky 10 with the shifting sky and twilight sky boundary quests just to have a quest line break on you and loose out on the boundary quests for shifting sky 3-10.

    That was 3 months of saving coin etc that I could've used on my toon but, instead took that route. Yes I have submitted 4 tickets regarding this and all I get told is that it requires a patch from China... So goodbye 400 gold on shifting sky pills with nothing to show for it..

    TBH this is what drove me to quit the shiet the heck support and the absurd spirit system that exists in this game and after spending so much you would expect better treatment but, nope welcome to PWI

    From a retired DB/Seeker Duckblades/Prespire
  • dregenfox
    dregenfox Posts: 713 Arc User
    edited April 2017
    nunuator wrote: »
    To be completely honest what drove me to quit this game is the massive amount of cash that you have to spend in order to make up for the lost dailes that you didn't do...
    I had a full +10 R9R3 DB and full +10 R9R4 seeker one with CF set one with warsong set and what drove me to quit is the stupid amount of dailes you have to do.. sure you can auto point them but, that still leaves the issue of spirit...

    A +40 Hp shard sin can wreck my seeker and my DB cause he has 600+ or so spirit on me that is just plain stupid to me...

    PWI has made no attempt to even make it slightly easier on the player to max out on passives and sky lvls. What pissed me off the most is having saved up coin in game and holding off on shifting sky boundary quests for 3 months so I can "cash" the shifting sky quest line in some hopes of hitting Twilight sky 10 with the shifting sky and twilight sky boundary quests just to have a quest line break on you and loose out on the boundary quests for shifting sky 3-10.

    That was 3 months of saving coin etc that I could've used on my toon but, instead took that route. Yes I have submitted 4 tickets regarding this and all I get told is that it requires a patch from China... So goodbye 400 gold on shifting sky pills with nothing to show for it..

    TBH this is what drove me to quit the shiet the heck support and the absurd spirit system that exists in this game and after spending so much you would expect better treatment but, nope welcome to PWI

    From a retired DB/Seeker Duckblades/Prespire

    Wow, that really sucks. I wish CS could compensate you with maybe a bunch of vitae pills or something, at least. I think CS is simply too scared now because their past incompetence has resulted in giving a lot of free items away.

    Sad thing is because of that they treat the paying players who support the game with lots of money the worst - the ones who just want to spend money and get a decent experience and don't have the time nor desire to come up with "schemes" to game the system.
  • nunuator
    nunuator Posts: 455 Arc User
    @dregenfox
    Yep support has gone down the drain and I appreciate the forums becoming more active with mods etc but, when you get told in a ticket to post on the forums and your issue gets buried by 4 different people it pisses you off..

    I am giving pwi 1 last chance to fix this for me and if not oh well everything was already given away.

    Ticket was submitted a few minutes before posting this.
  • implode
    implode Posts: 82 Arc User
    If someone new starts game (genuinely new, not an alt of existing player), and they get to 100 (whether by exp pill or the slow way), reawaken, get to 100 again, reawaken again, get to 100 again... what then? They can farm passive skills and improve somewhat, but chances are they're still wearing TT90 or TT99. They can show up to NW and get beat to a pulp, get some raps and cannies and get as far as s2.

    But then they're absolutely stuck. They can't farm s3 because nobody is going to invite a clearly new char to a full WS run. There's barely any non-spawn WS runs anymore so to do spawn runs you need very good gear. So basically they are completely reliant on either friends or faction to do runs for them or just donate gear to them. I regularly collect molds from WS and just make and give gear to new players who are trying hard but just can't get ahead (as opposed to the ones who just endlessly whine about it).

    That to me is really where the block is, its not about the ability to earn coins, its about that chars should be able to start, farm what they need to advance, and keep progressing. You used to be able to farm TT60 in NPC gear, then farm TT70 with TT60 gear, and so on and so on. That's still true to a point, but sooner or later you just need instances that nobody will invite you to because you don't have good gear, but you can't get good gear without doing those instances, you get in a catch 22 and get totally stuck.
  • orangebloom#1191
    orangebloom#1191 Posts: 1 New User
    They have made the game pay to play no such thing as free,they are actively removing everyway to make coin in the game,god help new players i know i wouldnt stay if started now not 6 years ago.

    When removed DQ with promise of new system=spend real cash and get rewarded,was clear then and even clearer now they dont want ingame earnings they want your money nothing more.

    I couldnt really see anybody new staying on this game as you need to pay to catch up,or heck years of dailies+tons of alts to get to what will be then......STILL behind.

    F2P try another game.
  • dregenfox
    dregenfox Posts: 713 Arc User
    edited April 2017
    implode wrote: »
    If someone new starts game (genuinely new, not an alt of existing player), and they get to 100 (whether by exp pill or the slow way), reawaken, get to 100 again, reawaken again, get to 100 again... what then? They can farm passive skills and improve somewhat, but chances are they're still wearing TT90 or TT99. They can show up to NW and get beat to a pulp, get some raps and cannies and get as far as s2.

    But then they're absolutely stuck. They can't farm s3 because nobody is going to invite a clearly new char to a full WS run. There's barely any non-spawn WS runs anymore so to do spawn runs you need very good gear. So basically they are completely reliant on either friends or faction to do runs for them or just donate gear to them. I regularly collect molds from WS and just make and give gear to new players who are trying hard but just can't get ahead (as opposed to the ones who just endlessly whine about it).

    That to me is really where the block is, its not about the ability to earn coins, its about that chars should be able to start, farm what they need to advance, and keep progressing. You used to be able to farm TT60 in NPC gear, then farm TT70 with TT60 gear, and so on and so on. That's still true to a point, but sooner or later you just need instances that nobody will invite you to because you don't have good gear, but you can't get good gear without doing those instances, you get in a catch 22 and get totally stuck.

    You guys are looking at this the wrong way. Progress in PWI is not made by farming. PWI expects the newbies to CS for R9 to make progress, that's why all these barriers were put in place.

    You can level up to 100 for free, but the Gold cap/difficulty buying gold and difficult/slow instances with no level/gear restrictions are basically paywalls people are expected to CS through.
  • nightmare201
    nightmare201 Posts: 50 Arc User
    dregenfox wrote: »
    implode wrote: »
    If someone new starts game (genuinely new, not an alt of existing player), and they get to 100 (whether by exp pill or the slow way), reawaken, get to 100 again, reawaken again, get to 100 again... what then? They can farm passive skills and improve somewhat, but chances are they're still wearing TT90 or TT99. They can show up to NW and get beat to a pulp, get some raps and cannies and get as far as s2.

    But then they're absolutely stuck. They can't farm s3 because nobody is going to invite a clearly new char to a full WS run. There's barely any non-spawn WS runs anymore so to do spawn runs you need very good gear. So basically they are completely reliant on either friends or faction to do runs for them or just donate gear to them. I regularly collect molds from WS and just make and give gear to new players who are trying hard but just can't get ahead (as opposed to the ones who just endlessly whine about it).

    That to me is really where the block is, its not about the ability to earn coins, its about that chars should be able to start, farm what they need to advance, and keep progressing. You used to be able to farm TT60 in NPC gear, then farm TT70 with TT60 gear, and so on and so on. That's still true to a point, but sooner or later you just need instances that nobody will invite you to because you don't have good gear, but you can't get good gear without doing those instances, you get in a catch 22 and get totally stuck.

    You guys are looking at this the wrong way. Progress in PWI is not made by farming. PWI expects the newbies to CS for R9 to make progress, that's why all these barriers were put in place.

    You can level up to 100 for free, but the Gold cap/difficulty buying gold and difficult/slow instances with no level/gear restrictions are basically paywalls people are expected to CS through.

    I'd say that while you are correct in this being true, it's not a good thing and I'd hope it could be changed.
  • nightmare201
    nightmare201 Posts: 50 Arc User
    who is saying that you can reroll from scratch and be PvP ready in 4 months it's just fooling himself,

    takes like what 5-6 months JUST for twilight sky 10, and its just the last of the boundaries, takes 4 months to level, at least 5-6 months for passives morai and home skills... and i am not really mentioning all the rest
    even if you cash it hard you still need at least a good year

    so now who sane of mind, knowing he needs to spend around 4-5k$, would reroll to be competitive in a year?

    thats why, once again, china has an npc to buy\sell accounts, because on PW it's simply impossible to reroll from scratch in a reasonable amount of time at this point of the game.​​

    We've already had the person who was pvp ready in 4 months (gear-wise, not spirit wise) say he cashed. We're moving on from that.
  • jadasia
    jadasia Posts: 520 Arc User
    edited April 2017
    ladiec wrote: »
    jadasia wrote: »
    PWI is in the business to make money. F2P people do not keep the servers running.

    The amount of free stuff PWI gives to new players is beyond belief. If you want more than that then you need to pay up and stop whining.

    F2P people are getting far more than what they are paying for.

    i am waiting on the update atm to see how this game changed

    It depends on when you last played. The latest expansion is the best one in my opinion. Also I think merging the servers was a great idea except for the poor Harshalands people. They got screwed.
    implode wrote: »
    If someone new starts game (genuinely new, not an alt of existing player), and they get to 100 (whether by exp pill or the slow way), reawaken, get to 100 again, reawaken again, get to 100 again... what then? They can farm passive skills and improve somewhat, but chances are they're still wearing TT90 or TT99. They can show up to NW and get beat to a pulp, get some raps and cannies and get as far as s2.

    Perhaps not pilling to 100 x 3 is the best option for new toons, right?

    As my late Grandmother said, "Easy is expensive."

    New people should earn their gear and skills as they progress though the game in the normal way. Let those with established end game main characters use pills to level an alt. Not new people.


  • dregenfox
    dregenfox Posts: 713 Arc User
    edited April 2017
    Well, all f2p games need a paywall or else they would never make any money. Usually if the player is enjoying the game and wants to continue they will pay to progress further in the game.

    The issue with PWI is that once the player reaches that wall, they see that the wall is 4000 miles thick, made of titanium alloy reinforced with steel plates and barbed wires, and rigged with explosive mines and sinkholes designed to trap you every few feet. That doesn't encourage players to pay to advance, that just scares the player into running away as fast as possible.

    PWI is just not understanding that old content needs to be discounted heavily to take advantage of more price-sensitive customers. I am willing to bet the vast majority of current vets would have no problem with R9 gears being heavily discounted - it may even encourage them to spend more.

    New content should be expensive. PWI will make bank that way. But old content should be cheap. Pwi will gain new sources of income that way. It isn't about gold prices or the expensive nature of the game. Its about proper pricing.

    Sadly they don't seem interested at all in discounting older content (which has already recouped its initial investment cost 10x over and has very little marginal cost).
  • justdax
    justdax Posts: 94 Arc User
    Wow. Okay - my very limited not even two cents worth. I've been playing since 2008 so I know my way around. I've CS'd a little on TT server because i can afford to and was too lazy to farm everything I wanted (and I have a wing habit that I can't seem to shake). That said -- I recently started a new toon on Tideswell just for the fun of it and to play it. I don't know anyone there and I don't CS. I happen to be one of those weird people that likes the questing and the leveling process and wants to just lazily get through the game having fun and meeting people. That's me.

    Newbie friendly or not? Much more so than it used to be. It's super easy to level and, as others have pointed out, uber gear is provided practically from level one. I also found that it's not that hard to get coin as a baby -- use the bot function with pickup all. Very low mats - red jade, animal fur, organic glue (which has never yet had any use in game ever), and some of those all sell for 50-60 coin each. No - not a lot, but for a baby toon it's decent coin, especially with no coin cost for skills and free gear. My recollection is that coin rewards for quests were significantly increased at lower levels (although I've never actually looked closely at this). An hour of botting on my baby toon netted anywhere from 10k-20k. No, not a fortune, but no effort and it's something.

    Pet peeve -- PWI doesn't tell you about jolly jones. Ever. There's no "go see Mr Jones" and no find quest item and I don't know if it's even in the encyclopedia, even assuming a newbie would know to look at that or what to look for. JJ starts at 21 and continues all the way through 80. While some of the sets are godawful because they send you all over the freaking map on a 1.0 speed baby flyer, others are a serious coin source. Posters are correct that few newbies will think to make multiple accounts or put the time into JJ alts, but this is truly easier than it may seem - especially if you bot that newbie through Celestial Vale and then use the check-in for any leveling. I can tell you exactly where to park any toon and which JJ to do for each level set. Multi-client and let the JJ account do its thing while you play your desired toon. No - not as easy as farming DQ used to be; not as easy as some of the old ways to make coin; and yes, it takes a little effort, but you can fund an awful lot of G16 gear just off JJ -- I've done it.

    I think it really comes down to what you want from the game. Do you want to enjoy the leveling or do you want to be end-game in 4 months? Either is a perfectly valid approach, but each has its pro's and con's. If you are a PvPr, then it's going to take cash or a lot of patience to farm (I think this has been mentioned). If you are a PvEr, then it doesn't have to take cash unless you want it to. My recent experience with baby toons on Tideswell have shown there are a lot of players willing to help; a lot of factions willing to take all levels; and certainly more than enough people who will take baby toons on high level runs. Use a WS badge run to learn to solo a pav (or use BH metal/WS/snake for that). You should always be able to find people willing to give you pointers or let you tag along while they farm an instance - helping you to learn it. I think you just have to be honest about your capabilities and experience and be willing to listen to instructions and advice (something I've noticed some players have a hard time doing).

    For what it's worth.....
  • kalystconquerer#0876
    kalystconquerer#0876 Posts: 1,421 Perfect World Employee
    So I've said this before, but I think it bears repeating so people understand exactly where I come from -

    I started playing in '09, right before the first chance packs hit, just shy of being able to qualify for the new Anniversary gifts for the years every single year. I was F2P practically right up until I started working here. I was on HT and then rolled onto Archo server when it opened. I've seen and lived though alot of what players are talking about here. I rolled a Cleric then rolled Mystic so alot of my gameplay time is through the lens of an AA class.

    That being said, it's nice to see players who come out and who post more lengthier posts and who engage, so I'll try to see if I can hit all the points brought up in the OP -

    1) There still seems to be a market for this, at least on Etherblade. Generally speaking, people ignored the direct sale of mats in the boutique in favor of having dedicated faction crafters or friends to get all the masteries. This sort of coexistence faded a bit with the ability to get your masteries.

    That being said, I do not have fond memories of trying for the 2 star weapons you needed.

    2) The DQ system is one of the few extremely touchy subjects on the forums, especially those with long memories. The response to the removal of DQ was to do the point system while CN developed a way to fix this. I'm unclear as to why that system was phased out, but I know that that system repeatedly had issues and I'm sure Customer Support was marred with tickets about it. The nerf in DQ was a response to a botting problem in CN that, to my knowledge and memory of the time, that we didn't have at such a severe level.

    Because I'm well aware of the history of DQ (as this was one I lived through), I specifically tell people who bring this up or ask for solutions to it that I can't discuss anything regarding this, so as to not set unrealistic expectations.

    3) I would say over farming as well as the constant bonus events also contributed to this. Sins farmed whatever they could for coin for their gears or to fund their alts. I'm not sure when Warfront Crates entered off the top of my head, but I doubt that it solely caused the TT market to be strained.

    4) PWCN decided this. Even I don't remember how this dungeon was prior to the rework and I don't remember how many people actually ran it for the materials. There's very little footage that I could find of the original instance and to ask it to be restored to it's old form is probably impossible at this point given the limitations on what they can touch regarding old content.

    FC was an interesting beast, because we had just as many players for it as against it.

    5) Ties into 2 a bit, as you've pointed out.

    6) Gears in this case can also be a hard gate, since people do ask for weapon links.

    7) Merchanters don't really share their secrets since if they find a good market they'll want to keep a hold of it. There's definitely some tried and true markets out there, but it's not really my place to tell you what and how to merch.

    What I don't talk about on the forums is the projects I work on in the background that addresses alot of these issues. It's something I touched upon in the DQ section, but one of the reason's being that I don't want to say "we're definitely doing x!", then have to retract it due to some last minute issues. But alot of these things are definitely being looked at and discussed.

    Some other points mentioned throughout the thread I'll touch upon :

    Dreamchaser Packs - First there was a shortage of this and now there seems to be too many. I can always cut the supply of them, but then anyone who comes in after a certain point or anyone makes a new character will be disadvantaged. I'm still floating the idea of a "started code" that can be redeemed for new characters.

    Pricing in the Cash Shop/ Old Content - There is a hard cut off on how cheap we can make any particular item and how long/frequently an item can go on sale. While I generally try to be as fluid as possible with the Cash Shop (adding requested items, cycling in sales of requested items), CN definitely has a say and will add/change/request things. Promos are our way of not only giving spending players something a bit extra, but it allows us to be more flexible with how items enter player's hands.

    Boundary Quests - I'll check this behavior on our test servers, but this sounds like a bug when asking surtr about the specific example by nunuator. I'll see what CN says about it (if I haven't already-if I have, I'll have to poke them again)

    Neverfall Content Issues - Progress is not being purposely gated (such as the instance, as that was not by design), unless you count Historical Phases. I've been assisting with checking and bugging issues and we should have these fixes coming in very soon!

    As a side note, I am curious about how Glyphs are working and how the economy is reacting to it. Is it creating a new line of merchanting?
  • implode
    implode Posts: 82 Arc User
    edited April 2017
    dregenfox wrote: »
    You guys are looking at this the wrong way.
    You are looking at it from PWI's point of view, we are looking at it from the point of view of players, especially new players. One isn't right and one wrong, they're just two different groups with very different goals and expectations.
    dregenfox wrote: »
    Progress in PWI is not made by farming. PWI expects the newbies to CS for R9 to make progress, that's why all these barriers were put in place.
    Maybe that's what PWI expects, but do they advertise the game like that? Come play this fabulous MMO where you get to pay us lots of money to progress? No of course not, so players expect to progress by farming. Essentially that's where this whole thread comes from, that PWI's expectations are very different from players'.
    dregenfox wrote: »
    You can level up to 100 for free, but the Gold cap/difficulty buying gold and difficult/slow instances with no level/gear restrictions are basically paywalls people are expected to CS through.
    For me this has been the essence of what the game has been about since about 2009 - trying to be clever enough to think ways around those paywalls, farm things nobody else thinks to farm where the market isn't flooded (like farming TT is pointless now), make money from merchanting if that's what you're into (personally I hate it, if I want to make money buying+selling I'll go play the RL stock market or open up an RL shop and not a catshop). Again people just view this very differently, you view those paywalls as something you have to CS to get past, I view them as being exactly the fun challenge that makes me still enjoy playing PWI after all this time, to figure how I can get past them without CSing.
  • dregenfox
    dregenfox Posts: 713 Arc User
    edited April 2017

    As a side note, I am curious about how Glyphs are working and how the economy is reacting to it. Is it creating a new line of merchanting?

    I think there will be a catshop economy springing up around this for sure but atm since no one can farm glyphs except thru badges no one is crazy enough to buy lvl 1 glyphs for 5m ea.

    Also waiting for arigora catshops to spring up. I'd wager they'd settle at around 20-30k/coin.

    I also don't understand the reasoning for PWI's unwillingness to discount r9. Do people in China not care that newbies have to spend 5 years or $5000 just to get to a competitive point?

    I guess there are so many players in China that they don't really give a damn about attracting new players.