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Gate all alerts at level20-30 for accounts without a level 40 character
gradii
Posts: 11,717 Arc User
This would greatly improve the success rate of grab alerts. Very new players should learn to play on missions, when they've achieved level 40 once, they can discard the increased level gate.
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Join Date: Aug 2009 | Title: Devslayer
However, my complaint towards higher level gates has always primarily been that it affects me because I don't wanna do more mission junk... sooo with the caveat that it only effects brand new players, I'm okay with higher alert level gates.
Yes, lower level players don't technically cause alert failures; only some lower level players cause alert failures. And yes, having a single level 40 is no guarantee that a player is in any way capable of anything (moot point since we're not talking about restricting alert access until after the player has leveled to 40). There's no guarantee that implementing this will actually cause less alert failures.
On the other hand, it might, and in some cases it might allow new players to get just a bit better handle on things before they end up in a team situation where they're basically a dead slot, and the only downside is that brand new players will have to do missions for a few extra levels. Personally I'm okay with that... if you just started playing this game and you're only level 10 on your first character, then you have a bit of time left before you can use the "I'm tired of repeatedly doing these initial missions" story.
Brand new players get a higher gate, the rest of us "sour on Westside" folks retain the level 10 gate. I'm cool wit it.
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The game gates quite a bit of content from new players though. Think about all the things in the game you still can't do at level 15. For something we never ever want to do... we're sure doing it.
One thing we might want to consider gating new players off from is frustrating experiences where they feel useless and powerless.
They're new though.. they wouldn't even realize it. The interface button wouldn't even be there... they likely wouldn't even know about the higher gate until their second character. Players can't be annoyed by something they don't know is happening.
That wouldn't actually happen... there would be no point where we suddenly have a bunch of Level X players showing up in alerts, unless there's reason to believe that we would get a huge number of players starting the game on the very day that the new gate was implemented. It would be just like now, where you constantly have players of every level showing up in alerts - the only difference is that none of the new players would be lower than level X anymore.
You can either have a level 10 player who doesn't know what they're doing, or a level 20 player who doesn't know what they're doing in regards to team play but who likely knows a bit more about how the game mechanics work and is more comfortable using them. Sure, maybe your response is "I don't think there is any positive benefit from that player being level 20", but you'll have to agree there's definitely no benefit to them being level 10.
This might actually get those new players to explore Canada and the Desert. Currently the game requires you to do about 4 or 5 quests in west-side, and then right to alerts you go. I'm sure there are a lot of new players who are under the impression that those 4 or 5 quests are some sort of extended tutorial, and that there's no mission content after that.
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Steel Crusade is not an alert. Which is new content. Like, none of it is Alert based. At all. Foxbat Con was missions. F&I was a new Rampage Alert. Before that was the Socrates thing (I think) which had part alert and part missions... Um... I'm failing to see this new content that is focused around the alert system. Seems like some missions and some alerts.
I don't remember the last time I failed a Grab Alert, even with all these level 10 ATs I've been trying out in them. Is there that much failure and I'm just super lucky to never be a part of it? Aren't Grabs practically impossible to fail now that they don't have a time limit? It seems like more hand holding for those poor new sods who are too dumb to decided if they want to do alerts from level 10 or not. If there's anything wrong with the early game, it's the part that happens before players can do alerts and how alerts fit into the rest of the game. And... a whole bunch of other things that have nothing to do with Grabs being at level 10.
Basically, I don't see how having the devs spend the time to add this into the game would have any kind of positive impact on players. It seems like it really won't matter one way or another and is just a waste of time when there are much better solutions to what I think the issue this topic is trying to address.
[at]riviania Member since Aug 2009
Around 25, it picks up again, so that's at least an hour of low entertainment potential that Alerts can act as a bunch of 'filler episodes' until the action starts again in the plotlines.
Still, it seems like a bad idea. You need avatars in queues to make Alerts work. And the only way to do that is get them trying to join as soon as possible so they're familiar with failure early on, and strive to succeed in future, and learn what is appropriate behaviour.
Or, "No, Logan Fighting Claws, do not go into the Powerhouse portal on A Day At The Mall, not until Ao'TPKoff is defeated or we all give up, that is bad form, dude."
I'm happy with the current Alert restrictions.
I think the current gating of Alerts is fine.
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Lemuria, Canada, Queen City, Desert are all quest buckets you can begin to use to shower at lvl 20...
"Good can be found in heights, even in the deepest pits of evil" but "The valleys of evil always exist in the mountains of good."
~me
The reasons you give for being for this are essentially the reasons I'd be against it. It wouldn't really affect me in any way either, but making an arbitrary change to game mechanics for a proposed purpose without any clear guarantee it would serve said purpose, doesn't seem like a good idea.
Also I generally question the belief that whenever an alert fails it's due to some "other" faction of theplayer base that needs to be gated out. At one point it was Silvers ruining alerts, then when it was possible to get in at level 6, every failed alert was conveniently the fault of those players, and we're now here at this thread where you're apparently not good enough at this faceroll loleasy game to be in alerts until you've played to the level cap at least once.
This brings up an interesting point. By pushing that initial Alert gate back (the one that will only affect a new player's first character), we might actually get new players exploring those other zones. Right now the game actively grabs their attention away from that concept way before they would have any reason to explore it.
Wasn't there some thing in City of Heroes where players were complaining that new players never left a certain zone or something?
Actually, failing alerts does happen. Oddly enough, you can have situations where only some of the players in the alert fail it. Sounds confusing and weird right? It's happened. I've been in alerts that ended up succeeding, but because certain members of the group struggled and got slapped around at the start of it they left early on in the alert - those players failed the alert. Heck, I've had grab alerts where everyone else left and I finished it solo... so 4 players failed that alert, while 1 succeedeed. These situations occur quite a lot, and until recently I never actually considered the implication that those players who left are in fact failing the alert.
Now, get those 4 players together again, remove me and replace me with 1 more player who's like the 4 of them... and viola, you have an alert that will fail completely despite the lack of any timers.
Remember, since we have infinite respawn and often no hard failure conditions, failure here means that the players gave up out of frustration - nightmare fuel for game designers.
Actually the suggestion was not to prevent new players from joining alerts until they've hit level 40 once. The suggestion was to restrict their first character from getting into alerts until somewhere between level 20-30. From my view it's not so much about "keeping out those dirty casuals" as it is about insulating new players from what can often be an unpleasant experience.
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And I'll happily do them a thousand more times. You force me out into missions though and I'm done
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So, in your OP, you want to restrict the ability for new players to be able to decided for themselves when to do missions and when to do alerts. But here you think they should decide on their own.
New players don't need to be protected from level 10 alerts. I am 100% confident they can decide for themselves if it's fun or if they feel the need to wait a few more levels.
[at]riviania Member since Aug 2009
As a former COX player, the entire concept of alerts was initially baffling to me. In COX when they added AE, the forums were constantly aflame about how it was impossible to find low level teams because everyone was busy power levelling in custom created XP-rich cakewalk missions. Also it was totes "ruining the game!" (In that case the zone they never left was Atlas Park because it was the most common starting zone and there was an AE building in it)
But here we've essentially got dev sanctioned power levelling. When they first rolled it out, I thought it'd be nerfed to near worthlessness in short order...but then they modified it to make it harder to fail the most rewarding missions (XP wise)
For the record, I'm not complaining, though I don't generally team, so I haven't tested the theory that everyone's busy with alerts and uninterested in regular content.
Interesting point. I've had this happen to me as well, and I've "failed" alerts myself due to being uninterested in attempting to solo them (which would take a long time) when I could just quit and join another where players haven't all run for the hills after defeat.
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To be fair, new players also don't need to be jumping right into alerts. They can go slog through some of those missions that many of us had to do repeatedly for years. Not only am I comfortable with that notion, I find some amount of justice in it, and a part of me thinks it would actually be quite good for new player retention - also those guys who are always complaining that other zones are completely abandoned would have people to hang out with and talk to and mentor around.
Yes I still think missions are dreadfully boring and if I were forced to do them exclusively I would still quit. However, it is important to acknowledge that we are playing an mmorpg and that new players will be expecting quest-structure content.
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To me it feels like all PP bosses equally take way too long. Might be prudent to just cut out the entire outside portion of that alert and just start players inside the mansion.
No! The other GRAB maps should have MORE enemies! You know, since fighting the henchmen is actually the more fun part of those alerts. Most boss fights are the equivalent of the "cool down" part of a workout.
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Steel Crusade:
An exception to the rule does not break the rule. First non alert related content since On Alert. (2011)
Foxbat Con:
Fixed old content.
Fatal Error:
Requires alert to be completed. The missions can be started at level 6 but the alert can only be completed at level 20.
Sky Command:
Revamped to Rampage but still an Alert.
Fire & Ice:
You admitted that it is an alert yet "I'm failing to see this new content that is focused around the alert system."
I guess you want to also ignore Forum Malvanum, Hi Pan Fury of the Dragon, Harmon Labs, and Finkle Foundry (revamped into an Alert, mind you). Literally all content in the game, since On Alert went live, was focused around the alert system save for Steel Crusade. It took years to finally get around to not doing something that was alert oriented content.
Also the constant reminding from Cryptic that they are focusing all new content around the alert system.
Are you done tripping over yourself?
Fixed.
Personally, I find that CO has pretty much no direction at all. Especially now with the alert option. There really are no defined goals to accomplish, no interesting personal reason why a player should even bother doing any of these missions, and no encouragement to explore.
Why should I care about Kevin Poe? He hasn't done anything to me. I don't live in Westside. He seems like a typical gangster, which the cops can deal with. Hooligans shaking down the local restaurants is pretty ho-hum. Nameless, faceless, drab, dull NPCs whining for help isn't very convincing.
I'm sure a player can out level Westside and then be totally lost on what to do next even without ever doing an alert.
Your "fixing" of my post doesn't even agree with your rebuttal. I'm not ignoring content, I just don't feel like going back until the beginning of CO to point out that new content is focused on alerts when it isn't. I made a cut-off at a few years. And I'm pretty sure Forum Malvanum had some missions to go with that alert. Anemic missions maybe, but they where there. You know what? Lemuria Invasion had some missions too before the alert part.
How does Foxbat Con not count? Didn't they add new missions that didn't exist before? Maybe it's just you that can only see the alert content and not all of the other stuff too.
[at]riviania Member since Aug 2009