Bird Thoughts: New Player Impressions
Posted: Tue May 18, 2021 3:40 pm
Hello! I've been here for a couple days now, and have some thoughts to share. I have played some Clok, so the commands are at least somewhat familiar to me. Unless otherwise specified, everything here is an observation and not a complaint. Yes, even the negative things!
Before you proceed, I am not a concise person. This is a warning.
* Documentation
- There are as many things documented as there are things not documented, and the wiki has many dead links. There is something weird going on with the pages that do exist, too: 'Help multi-throw' doesn't seem to work but 'help main-gauche' does. Multi-throw's page has to be brought up from the wiki.
- Aim and the container command are especially obtuse.
- Container is one of those things that would have been great to know long before you stumble on it. Two-handed inventory management is a little tricky.
- Aim is particularly egregious: the increased roundtime isn't mentioned anywhere, and 'aim stop' is syntactically obtuse. If I hadn't played Clok, this would have frustrated me a lot. A help file, or even a mention of the increased roundtime / aim stop when you use aim would be nice to have for future new players.
- Guilds mention a monthly fee, which looks and feels hefty to new players, but you don't have to pay it upon joining. This is not immediately clear, and I held off on joining until I had the funds.
* The bucket, and new player experience
- (from help files) The experience bucket is a concept meant to pace experience gains and discourage "power grinding", with the additional intent of encouraging players to occasionally take a break from grinding experience to roleplay with one another.
- Mechanically, the bucket holds 750 EXP and drips in 15 (2%) every minute, and reflection therapy bumps that to 17/minute.
- You have approximately 50 minutes of idle-time from 100% EXP. The bucket can be filled in like 5-10 minutes' time by an inexperienced player, and even faster later.
- The bucket is a major malefactor when it comes to the new player experience. My thoughts on it in the mid-late game haven't fully formed.
- A new player's skill point total and skill caps are low enough that they might as well not have points in anything, and they are locked in to this state for approximately five hours of idle time. I spent some of this familiarizing myself with the game, but having played Clok it didn't take that long-- plus the existing documentation is good and the commands are (mostly) intuitive. The rest of the time was spent covering myself in horse dung and waiting for the bucket to trickle. I expect a lot of new player loss happens right around here, before they ever get to level 2.
- In short, the lack of points and resources at the outset makes it difficult to interact with the game. The bucket exacerbates the issue by gating progress behind a fairly hefty idle-wall (that you have to babysit every hour) before the newcomer decides they want to stay.
- Being the patient sort, I toughed it out for another three or four levels (~15-20 hours). It was immersive, in that I really felt like I was covered in horse dung. I'm kidding; it wasn't that bad and I just checked in for my EXP every hour for like, five minutes each time. Duelist caught my eye since it seems to be developed as well as criminally underpopulated (I should be the seventh duelist once the demographics update!). With that in mind, I made a rough skillpoint budget and decided to go all-in on combat skills.
- I warmed up to the bucket (a little) at around level 4-- I had room to grow at this point and it wasn't just a waiting-babysitting game anymore. Not so coincidentally, this is when I became a duelist. Combat is fun. Duelist/combat will have its own little section right after this.
- The bucket is a bit strange, fills quickly, empties slowly, and feels small, but after the initial hurdle I don't mind it that much.
- The initial hurdle really could stand to be remedied just a little, and there are many options for that. Lower EXP totals for the first few levels, faster EXP, more generous initial skillcaps, as well as some guidance and direction would go a long way. Note that I'm not suggesting all of these things at once but rather presenting a short list of options.
* Duelist and combat
- Nightblade seems to stand head and shoulders above the other warrior guild entries, in that it has the most features, most versatility, and clearest identity. There's like twenty of them so I'm not interested, but I still often think, 'A nightblade could probably do this better.' I will make a lot of comparisons.
- Quick bit on combat: combat is fun, but growth is tied to mob rolls and not mob danger. You get the same skillgains for killing a crow (~20 HP, 3-5 damage on hit average) as you do an infested laborer (full human HP, armed with weapons that can and will put you out of commission on a bad roll.). This means initial combat is best raised fighting birds, preferably after you purchase a suit of armor, and then unarmed skeletons. I still have an easier time with skeletons than I do infested, and they roll 160-180 vs the infested's 100ish flat. Skillgains are also... Manageable, but pretty slow.
- A duelist's bread and butter is combat analysis, which is a total gamechanger. It's the inverse of nightblade tactics, where the longer you fight something, the more rerolls you get. Quick strike and feint pair beautifully with this, since you get a new reroll about every 3-4 attacks. You can immediately build a stack in the time it takes for your opponent's first strike to resolve.
- Quick strike is beautiful. It just feels good to club someone fast, and I can see it having a lot of mind-game potential in a PVP situation. It has a short cooldown and immense utility when it comes to adjusting your timing.
- Sweep currently feels like the most major portion of my power budget, and sadly it's not duelist-exclusive. We share it with nightblades. Constant feints and sweeps will destroy an opponent's balance, which (hypothetically) prevents them from counter-sweeping you. It also protects you, and renders them vulnerable, dispensing a very large number of negative rerolls. In the current game climate, if someone got off a tackle or sweep before me, I would immediately flee.
- There's a trio of skills that sounds very cool, but have functional issues: cloak parry, main gauche, and tactical dodge.
- Main-gauche: if your dodge is equal to or higher than your melee, you will almost never parry. If you intentionally sabotage your dodge by encumbering yourself or having it at a lower value, then yes, you will parry, but what's the point of sabotaging your own defenses? It also says you can get a free attack if you use a shield, but if you use a shield, you will almost never dodge. This is because you only roll your best defense, and generally speaking, shield > dodge > parry.
- Cloak parry has the same issue in that a cloak parry is better than a normal defense, but you will never parry and it only has a chance of activating if your defense fails.
- Tactical dodge is great, but shield-incompatible. You have to actively sabotage your own defense to use these abilities. I don't want to do mathematical gymnastics to lower my defenses to the point where my parry is better than my dodge is better than my block. Tactical dodge is already something of an ability tax to get main gauche / cloak parry to work with dodges. Either allowing tactical dodge to work with blocks or a duelist shield-centric ability that does the same would go a long way. It's mentioned in main gauche, and thematically, bucklers are very much a duelist thing. At any rate, it's kind of silly my class identity gets thrown out the window because I'm just too good at blocking.
- I'm looking forward to multi-throw, but I can't fit it in quite yet.
- It could be that tumble's dodge enhancement is what makes tactical dodge viable, but I can't afford that yet either.
- All in all, duelist looks strong, feels strong, is strong. It looks like a class designed to destroy armored opponents, and ramps up very quickly through its rapid attacks and balance control. Unfortunately, it shares a lot in common with nightblade, minus the lockpicking, hard crowd-control that shuts down dodging, cool magic, stealth...
- Where is the nightblade join room? I didn't want to play one but I couldn't even find the room in the warrior guild hall.
- For further ability development, I'd be interested in seeing more battle control (debilitating balance-spenders like sweep and tackle), some kind of qol adjustment for main gauche / cloak parry / tactical dodge, and maybe something like an enhanced combat precision (Even more aim accuracy, remove the time penalty on aimed shots?). Some kind of skirmisher trait that reduces your odds of being fended off by weapon length might be a nice add as well. Maybe some buckler or firearm-specific abilities, once those become more of a thing.
- These are my thoughts, and not a request for immediate buffs or attention. While duelist looks at a glance to be a discount nightblade, it does still handle and play well. It's not like I've been conned into taking half a class. The content here is for future consideration, whenever development rolls around to it. Ultimately, I'm happy with my choice and willing to see where the ride takes me.
-As a closing note, I'm somewhat concerned about ranged stealth, which was overwhelmingly powerful in Clok, where stealth gains came easy as breathing and perception gains were like pulling teeth and sneak attacks turned a defense roll of 3000 into 30 and you could just spam them and rehide. This existing trend is a big part of why I'm so wary of nightblades, who I notice have pretty deep stealth and ranged capabilities.
And that's it for now. Thanks for reading!
Before you proceed, I am not a concise person. This is a warning.
* Documentation
- There are as many things documented as there are things not documented, and the wiki has many dead links. There is something weird going on with the pages that do exist, too: 'Help multi-throw' doesn't seem to work but 'help main-gauche' does. Multi-throw's page has to be brought up from the wiki.
- Aim and the container command are especially obtuse.
- Container is one of those things that would have been great to know long before you stumble on it. Two-handed inventory management is a little tricky.
- Aim is particularly egregious: the increased roundtime isn't mentioned anywhere, and 'aim stop' is syntactically obtuse. If I hadn't played Clok, this would have frustrated me a lot. A help file, or even a mention of the increased roundtime / aim stop when you use aim would be nice to have for future new players.
- Guilds mention a monthly fee, which looks and feels hefty to new players, but you don't have to pay it upon joining. This is not immediately clear, and I held off on joining until I had the funds.
* The bucket, and new player experience
- (from help files) The experience bucket is a concept meant to pace experience gains and discourage "power grinding", with the additional intent of encouraging players to occasionally take a break from grinding experience to roleplay with one another.
- Mechanically, the bucket holds 750 EXP and drips in 15 (2%) every minute, and reflection therapy bumps that to 17/minute.
- You have approximately 50 minutes of idle-time from 100% EXP. The bucket can be filled in like 5-10 minutes' time by an inexperienced player, and even faster later.
- The bucket is a major malefactor when it comes to the new player experience. My thoughts on it in the mid-late game haven't fully formed.
- A new player's skill point total and skill caps are low enough that they might as well not have points in anything, and they are locked in to this state for approximately five hours of idle time. I spent some of this familiarizing myself with the game, but having played Clok it didn't take that long-- plus the existing documentation is good and the commands are (mostly) intuitive. The rest of the time was spent covering myself in horse dung and waiting for the bucket to trickle. I expect a lot of new player loss happens right around here, before they ever get to level 2.
- In short, the lack of points and resources at the outset makes it difficult to interact with the game. The bucket exacerbates the issue by gating progress behind a fairly hefty idle-wall (that you have to babysit every hour) before the newcomer decides they want to stay.
- Being the patient sort, I toughed it out for another three or four levels (~15-20 hours). It was immersive, in that I really felt like I was covered in horse dung. I'm kidding; it wasn't that bad and I just checked in for my EXP every hour for like, five minutes each time. Duelist caught my eye since it seems to be developed as well as criminally underpopulated (I should be the seventh duelist once the demographics update!). With that in mind, I made a rough skillpoint budget and decided to go all-in on combat skills.
- I warmed up to the bucket (a little) at around level 4-- I had room to grow at this point and it wasn't just a waiting-babysitting game anymore. Not so coincidentally, this is when I became a duelist. Combat is fun. Duelist/combat will have its own little section right after this.
- The bucket is a bit strange, fills quickly, empties slowly, and feels small, but after the initial hurdle I don't mind it that much.
- The initial hurdle really could stand to be remedied just a little, and there are many options for that. Lower EXP totals for the first few levels, faster EXP, more generous initial skillcaps, as well as some guidance and direction would go a long way. Note that I'm not suggesting all of these things at once but rather presenting a short list of options.
* Duelist and combat
- Nightblade seems to stand head and shoulders above the other warrior guild entries, in that it has the most features, most versatility, and clearest identity. There's like twenty of them so I'm not interested, but I still often think, 'A nightblade could probably do this better.' I will make a lot of comparisons.
- Quick bit on combat: combat is fun, but growth is tied to mob rolls and not mob danger. You get the same skillgains for killing a crow (~20 HP, 3-5 damage on hit average) as you do an infested laborer (full human HP, armed with weapons that can and will put you out of commission on a bad roll.). This means initial combat is best raised fighting birds, preferably after you purchase a suit of armor, and then unarmed skeletons. I still have an easier time with skeletons than I do infested, and they roll 160-180 vs the infested's 100ish flat. Skillgains are also... Manageable, but pretty slow.
- A duelist's bread and butter is combat analysis, which is a total gamechanger. It's the inverse of nightblade tactics, where the longer you fight something, the more rerolls you get. Quick strike and feint pair beautifully with this, since you get a new reroll about every 3-4 attacks. You can immediately build a stack in the time it takes for your opponent's first strike to resolve.
- Quick strike is beautiful. It just feels good to club someone fast, and I can see it having a lot of mind-game potential in a PVP situation. It has a short cooldown and immense utility when it comes to adjusting your timing.
- Sweep currently feels like the most major portion of my power budget, and sadly it's not duelist-exclusive. We share it with nightblades. Constant feints and sweeps will destroy an opponent's balance, which (hypothetically) prevents them from counter-sweeping you. It also protects you, and renders them vulnerable, dispensing a very large number of negative rerolls. In the current game climate, if someone got off a tackle or sweep before me, I would immediately flee.
- There's a trio of skills that sounds very cool, but have functional issues: cloak parry, main gauche, and tactical dodge.
- Main-gauche: if your dodge is equal to or higher than your melee, you will almost never parry. If you intentionally sabotage your dodge by encumbering yourself or having it at a lower value, then yes, you will parry, but what's the point of sabotaging your own defenses? It also says you can get a free attack if you use a shield, but if you use a shield, you will almost never dodge. This is because you only roll your best defense, and generally speaking, shield > dodge > parry.
- Cloak parry has the same issue in that a cloak parry is better than a normal defense, but you will never parry and it only has a chance of activating if your defense fails.
- Tactical dodge is great, but shield-incompatible. You have to actively sabotage your own defense to use these abilities. I don't want to do mathematical gymnastics to lower my defenses to the point where my parry is better than my dodge is better than my block. Tactical dodge is already something of an ability tax to get main gauche / cloak parry to work with dodges. Either allowing tactical dodge to work with blocks or a duelist shield-centric ability that does the same would go a long way. It's mentioned in main gauche, and thematically, bucklers are very much a duelist thing. At any rate, it's kind of silly my class identity gets thrown out the window because I'm just too good at blocking.
- I'm looking forward to multi-throw, but I can't fit it in quite yet.
- It could be that tumble's dodge enhancement is what makes tactical dodge viable, but I can't afford that yet either.
- All in all, duelist looks strong, feels strong, is strong. It looks like a class designed to destroy armored opponents, and ramps up very quickly through its rapid attacks and balance control. Unfortunately, it shares a lot in common with nightblade, minus the lockpicking, hard crowd-control that shuts down dodging, cool magic, stealth...
- Where is the nightblade join room? I didn't want to play one but I couldn't even find the room in the warrior guild hall.
- For further ability development, I'd be interested in seeing more battle control (debilitating balance-spenders like sweep and tackle), some kind of qol adjustment for main gauche / cloak parry / tactical dodge, and maybe something like an enhanced combat precision (Even more aim accuracy, remove the time penalty on aimed shots?). Some kind of skirmisher trait that reduces your odds of being fended off by weapon length might be a nice add as well. Maybe some buckler or firearm-specific abilities, once those become more of a thing.
- These are my thoughts, and not a request for immediate buffs or attention. While duelist looks at a glance to be a discount nightblade, it does still handle and play well. It's not like I've been conned into taking half a class. The content here is for future consideration, whenever development rolls around to it. Ultimately, I'm happy with my choice and willing to see where the ride takes me.
-As a closing note, I'm somewhat concerned about ranged stealth, which was overwhelmingly powerful in Clok, where stealth gains came easy as breathing and perception gains were like pulling teeth and sneak attacks turned a defense roll of 3000 into 30 and you could just spam them and rehide. This existing trend is a big part of why I'm so wary of nightblades, who I notice have pretty deep stealth and ranged capabilities.
And that's it for now. Thanks for reading!