Objective Analysis of PG for now.

Although there are bugs, many things are obviously under development, and constantly changing I for one thoroughly enjoy this game... something I have not done with a MMO in many years. This game does not follow the cookie cutter layout that almost every game since WoW has created... it is truly unique. I intended to do my best to help the developer improve the game by report bugs, possible exploits, and give suggestions to things that I see could use some work. I am thrilled to have the PRIVILEGE of being able to play while these three developer work hard to build the world around me. If I am stupid or whatever for optimistically enjoying this game then so be it.

You have had MANY criticisms and MANY negative views very plainly posted. This game is not for everyone, which is fine by me. My suggestion to you is that if you do not like the game, or since you cannot see anything but failure for this game than why don't you go find a game that will better suit your needs. If you are so unhappy with this please leave and allow us (the people who are excited and hopeful) to enjoy this game. By what I have read in the posts here your negative view points and harsh unwarranted objectives will not be horribly missed.

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Originally Posted by LaRaj

Although there are bugs, many things are obviously under development, and constantly changing I for one thoroughly enjoy this game... something I have not done with a MMO in many years. This game does not follow the cookie cutter layout that almost every game since WoW has created... it is truly unique. I intended to do my best to help the developer improve the game by report bugs, possible exploits, and give suggestions to things that I see could use some work. I am thrilled to have the PRIVILEGE of being able to play while these three developer work hard to build the world around me. If I am stupid or whatever for optimistically enjoying this game then so be it.

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UO, Entropia Universe, EQ, EVE, etc... Just saying. Is the idea of PG good? Yes, it is. Is it unique? No, it's not unique. Get over it.

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Originally Posted by LaRaj

You have had MANY criticisms and MANY negative views very plainly posted. This game is not for everyone, which is fine by me. My suggestion to you is that if you do not like the game, or since you cannot see anything but failure for this game than why don't you go find a game that will better suit your needs. If you are so unhappy with this please leave and allow us (the people who are excited and hopeful) to enjoy this game. By what I have read in the posts here your negative view points and harsh unwarranted objectives will not be horribly missed.

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Because critcism and negative view is something a game in Alpha needs. Actually, in Beta and RC and after the release too. If the developers want to make this game successful they need to get the negative feedback.

What this game absolutely has no need for are the fanboys who play it for a week, ok 3 weeks tops and protecting it for no reason and with 0 objectivity. Personality bashing is cool, I get it, but you (do not worry you are not alone) are making this community look bad. Not the game, but the community, the players. Makes a shitty impression, really. But don't you worry, because idc. People on Steam, however, might care and they won't play this game because of people like you. Adequate, realistic people know that there are downsides to everything and they will speak about them, if they want to.

At least raise a couple of skills to 70-75 before trying to psychoanalyze other players.

P.S. If you'll keep telling people "this game is not for everyone, shut up and gtfo" you'll be stuck with the online of 200 kids or fanboys. Which could, in theory, result in fail to live up to the devs expectations.

I intend to stay for the long haul despite what you think of this game and its community. I think you have gone a long way to show exactly what Silvonis was talking about;

"I do want to mention, Grobyd, that I often notice that in-game chat you are mostly negative and harsh on the game in general. It is one thing to have constructive critisism but is totally another to be cynical and I think that sometimes you skate that line too much. Why am I bringing this up? Just because, to me, it taints feedback when someone seems to be negative on almost everything while never really highlighting anything they like."

All I was suggesting was that if you are dissatisfied with this game, its direction, or its community that perhaps you should move on to something else and allow the people who do enjoy and who do offer a variety of constructive feedback to play it in peace.

Thank you!

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Originally Posted by LaRaj

I intend to stay for the long haul despite what you think of this game and its community. I think you have gone a long way to show exactly what Silvonis was talking about;

"I do want to mention, Grobyd, that I often notice that in-game chat you are mostly negative and harsh on the game in general. It is one thing to have constructive critisism but is totally another to be cynical and I think that sometimes you skate that line too much. Why am I bringing this up? Just because, to me, it taints feedback when someone seems to be negative on almost everything while never really highlighting anything they like."

All I was suggesting was that if you are dissatisfied with this game, its direction, or its community that perhaps you should move on to something else and allow the people who do enjoy and who do offer a variety of constructive feedback to play it in peace.

Thank you!

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Silvonis was wrong and now you choose to go the same route, fine. Go reread the first post. The part about Anagoge, Serbule and Eltibule.

Yeah, sure, I'm bad and cynical and "totally hate the game", yet I do try to lvlup ALL the skills in the game and I have a couple of them over 70. Go find a dedicated "hater" who'll invest that much time into the game.

Truth is, some people leave after 1-2 hours of playing (not even a day), some people leave after a day or two. And not, they're not "taking a break", because they don't even get to the Eltibule yet. I guess there are some reasons for that, unfortunately we do not know what they are. Out of, let's say, 50 players I've met in the last couple of months and helped to get the Necromancy I see maybe like 3-5 online tops. so 45 left without saying anything. You expect some kind of valuable feedback from where again? people who leave in 2 hours?

Harsh? Negative? I just don't bother with wrapping up bad stuff into a nice package and I'm telling exactly what I feel. Maybe, sometimes, a bit too emotional...
Point is, if something is bad i'm saying "that's bad" and if something is shit I'll say "that's shit".

IDC about the community, communities rarely provide any valuable objectivity. If a pesron loves this game for whatever reason, they can't be entirely reasonable and objective.
People who leave the game in 2 hours and the number of players online on the other hand are much more objective than any person in a "community".

Fine, forget me and my feedback, I'm just a useless hater. Go read feedback from people who say that the storage space is a problem, or animal forms, or graphics, or lack of the story atm, or that the game won't lead you, whatever. Tell them to enjoy other games, etc, lol. Wait, these things are mostly subjective, they don't do any harm to the gameplay of 1 character. Now the nerf of the mutated toes DOES.

P.S. I also absolutely loved the mutated toes before they were nerfed to shit.

P.S.2. Game is in Alpha, I give my raw feedback. This game can and I sincerely hope will be SO MUCH better in terms of gameplay. That's about it. You don't like it? Pass by, move along, you don't have to defend the game.

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Originally Posted by Grobyddonot

The new player experience is amazing. Anagoge and Seruble are fun to play through, they're full of content, you learn the game, nothing prevents you from having all the fun in the world. The Eltibule is also great in terms of content and fun, but that is usually the point where you start to learn about some of the flaws.

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If you don't mind me asking, what made you like Anagoge and Serbule? What flaws did you have problems with in Eltibule?

I've been interpreting your posts as you wanting to skip over low level content as fast as possible, get to max level and then run around enjoying being invincible. Because that doesn't sound like a lot of fun to me, I've really not been paying much attention to your complaints. Since I apparently fail at reading comprehension though, do you mind explaining which parts of the game work for you and why? It might help me figure out if we have some agreement on what "fun" is.

As far as players trying the game and leaving goes, I'd expect that, regardless of how fun a game is. I don't have the stats on how often this happens in MMOs in general vs Gorgon in particular. Anecdotally, here's why three people I know aren't playing the game right now:
1. EQ player who was looking for an EQ replacement but didn't want to deal with an alpha state game. With the future of EQ looking better now, he's happily playing EQ and doesn't really have time or inclination for another game.
2. Player who tried out PG and had a blast fireballing pigs. He couldn't get any of his friends interested at the time, had some real life stuff come up and mostly quit. He'll be back at some point, for some time.
3. Player who tried out the newbie island and had a long list of complaints, half of which amounted to graphics problems I've never noticed. He very much enjoys pretty scenery and character dress-up, so I think he probably won't be back unless PG gets a major face lift.

My fuzzy point is that the reason those people aren't playing doesn't have all that much to do with PG itself. Except for the graphics, of course, but since I'm a person who basically never notices graphics or animation, I'm pretty happy that the current development energy focuses on more important (to me) stuff.

Indeed there are many people who try the game and leave. Some people can't get past the graphics, also I am sure some don't like tab target or maybe the classless system and random loot. However there are plenty that leave or only come in every so often because it's alfa and want to wait for the game to be complete. As I said the newer areas will have more content added to them and Eric has said as much. So I am not to worried about the old areas having more to do than the new ones do. In short a lot of you problems with the game will be fixed in the future. Just read over the old blogs.

I don't really want to add more fuel to the fire, but to complain about grind in a MMO? That's a little strange. I don't know any MMOs without grind - there's always levels, quests, whatever, to grind in some form or other - and that's where you meet players.

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IDC about the community, communities rarely provide any valuable objectivity.

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If that's the case, then maybe you're playing the genre for the wrong reasons. Single player games have a lot more flexibility, a lot less grind, and can have a lot more content. There's literally no reason to play a MMO if you don't care about the community.

...Why is it I've done these survey 100th of Grobyd and have leveled into other zones but he hasn't?

Ok, so I asked a friend who works in game development about player retention stats. Short summary, player retention is generally pretty low, regardless of the game. Longer sidetrack for those who care:

- In a free to play game (non-MMO) that he's worked on, he thinks roughly 30% of people made it through the tutorial section to a point where they were actually playing the game. Maybe half of those people actually logged into the game again the next day. This game is still around 3-4 years after it launched, so I think it's doing ok.

- For free to play MMOs, there's some lovely discussion of retention statistics at https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/under...st-van-dreunen . To paraphrase some of the stats, roughly 1-6% of players who start a game will still play it a year later.

- For pay-to-play games, Valve was kind enough to post some statistics for Half Life 2: http://www.steampowered.com/status/ep1/ , http://www.steampowered.com/status/ep2/ep2_stats.php . My friend pointed out that: "In episode 1, 25% of players quit before they've even played an hour. In episode 1, less than half of all players even finish the game. In episode 2, more players play for longer, but still half don't finish. "

None of these games are exactly Gorgon's model, but I think it shows that player retention in general just tends to be low, so I wouldn't worry too much about not every new player coming back to Gorgon. This doesn't invalidate Grobyddonot's assertion that some new players may be leaving because they find the same aspects of the game frustrating that he is, but I don't think it's accurate to say the game isn't fun because a lot of new players don't come back. That's just the nature of gaming.

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Originally Posted by Oxlazr

I don't really want to add more fuel to the fire, but to complain about grind in a MMO? That's a little strange. I don't know any MMOs without grind - there's always levels, quests, whatever, to grind in some form or other - and that's where you meet players.

If that's the case, then maybe you're playing the genre for the wrong reasons. Single player games have a lot more flexibility, a lot less grind, and can have a lot more content. There's literally no reason to play a MMO if you don't care about the community.

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Community is not playing such a big role in any MMO as they (the community) use to think. Most players never even make contact with a lot of other players. Some, yeah. Even in PG, the game where grouping is encouraged, even a must in some dungeons, a lot of players just play with their own party. Comparable with a premade in mobas. I can give a small example, with the druid event (eltibule droaches) a couple of days ago... We made a party of 2 and went to farm them by ourselves, because I can actually solo a droach with my character (hello DC). Unlike some Ilmari Events we had no need for even a druid.
I do not complain about grind in the MMO. I do compain about the gameplay being not fun @ times and the grind is just a major part of it. Does it make sense? Continue to read under the next quote...

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Originally Posted by Tagamogi

If you don't mind me asking, what made you like Anagoge and Serbule? What flaws did you have problems with in Eltibule?

I've been interpreting your posts as you wanting to skip over low level content as fast as possible, get to max level and then run around enjoying being invincible. Because that doesn't sound like a lot of fun to me, I've really not been paying much attention to your complaints. Since I apparently fail at reading comprehension though, do you mind explaining which parts of the game work for you and why? It might help me figure out if we have some agreement on what "fun" is.

My fuzzy point is that the reason those people aren't playing doesn't have all that much to do with PG itself. Except for the graphics, of course, but since I'm a person who basically never notices graphics or animation, I'm pretty happy that the current development energy focuses on more important (to me) stuff.

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Gameplay is the most important part of any game for me. IDC about graphics at all.
PG is not a game where you'll become invincible by reaching the highest level. That is also not the goal. BUT, theres a difference between being invincible and not being a weakling, because raw levels give you almost no power-up at all.

When you level up, in any game, you expect the grind to become easier or more fun or automated, etc... That's the feeling of progress the games give you. You invest time in your character and your character grows stronger and more "able" by itself. Well, this is absolutely not the case in PG, because the gear matters too much and levels almost do not at all. Example: You can be a lvl 60 sword/shield, with bad gear, let's say blue-red lvl 50 or smth and have hard time to kill, let's say panthers in kur (just an example, cause they won't be i guess, never tried) And you can be a lvl 40 sword/shield with a full lvl 40 yellow set of max gear, who'll kill them in 2-3 hits each without any problems whatsoever.

Simply put: Gear > Level. That's one of my complaints, not the major one, I can live with that. This is however absolutely unoriginal and old. Take WoW as an example, a lot people in this community are not very fond it, but it has just the same mechanics. Two max level characters. 1 - just lvled up, has nothing, weakling. 2 - with the best gear is 10 times more powerful than the first one. Gear has to progress and make you more powerful, but not 10-20-30 times. It's like Diablo series, D3 especially, endless grind against random for the best possible rolls on the gear. This is "meh", imo. I wouldn't expect that from an "original, old school mmo", which is a game like the old versions of UO for me. Not the end of the world, but i'm just disappointed.

Anagoge and Serbule are so good, because they give you a sense of progression, you go from fighting a pig or a spider, to oneshotting it in a day. You get the impression that it is because of you leveling up and skills, but it's not. It happens if you're lucky enough to get some decent low level gear and still it doesn't feel like grind or anything. I mean, you do grind, but it doesn't feel like a job yet. Plus Anagoge, Serbule and Eltibule have great monster spawns. In packs. You know, tigers, skeles, mants in Serbule, Dinos, bears, spiders, mants, snails in Elti. Although I would like to see every spawnpoint/zone in the game like that of Dinos in Elti or Panthers in Kur, the best outdoors spawns in the game right now, imo. Plus, you can always get to Serbule/Eltibule and grind, grind, grind there, till the end of the days, really.

And here comes the Kur. So, you were having your fun in a sandbox (Anagoge, Serbule), then Elti and then the game all of a sudden goes lke: Oh, you are not allowed to just grind in Kur. You have to, but you won't be able to before you grind more favor, more crafts, more meditation, more alchemy, whatever. Now I also have to say, that this is the part most players (who leavve in 2 hours) don't even come to, they don't even know of it at all. But this is something that ruins the fun in grind, because (as Kha said) it DISRUPTS the gameplay. So there you are, thinking, well, I can skip Kur, I can probably grind some dungeons, but it's not very rewarding to farm in Kur most of the time. So from a players standpoint, not only you won't become decently more powerful by grinding up to lvl 35-40, you also have that additional pressure on you, which makes you even weaker. Begs the question, what did I played this game for before? all that grind? Did I achieved exactly like nothing at all?

If the Kur would be a lvl 100-125 level locations with 3-5 warning signs "Go get some winter gear first, noob! You won't be able to farm/grind here, that's for the hardcore lovers!" I wouldn't probably mind it at all. First of all because there would probably be an alternative, secondly, because I would know why do I want to grind more to be able to grind in Kur at all. But nope, you get thrown into it @ lvl 40 without any gear, meditation whatsoever and you just have to deal with it. With the disrupted gameplay, you have to endure it as a player. Why? Just Why? If the max is 125, 40 is a third of a character and that poor lvl 40 already has to endure DISRUPTED gameplay.

Speaking of character progression in MMO's, high-levels usually have the best fast travelling options (I mean teleportation here), the can automate some farming or have it easy. Again, not the case here in Gorgon. We had a kinda "experienced players option: BC and Mutated Toes" that made surveying much faster and the game through that much more enjoyable. But no, let's nerf the mutated toes to shit, because the players obviously don't run around enough. Make them grind slower @ higher levels, because it's much fun for a lvl 70 to collect redwall crystals to lvl-up crafts faster and more effectively. Right.

The game is not bad. But the GAMEPLAY suffers a lot. If I have to grind 24/7 (which I actually do, because favor, councils, skills, etc), at least give me the options to grind faster and easier when I level up. Because that is what makes it fun. That's the progress, it makes you want to grind certain stuff to achieve smth, anything, really. Example: Why would I grind for a BC/Shield gear set? Why would I level up BC and Shield @ all? Right, because I knew that it will make my life in the game easier, doing stuff like Surveying, that I will enjoy it MUCH more.

And then, figuratively speaking, came the angry dev and said: "You're having too much fun, let me nerf this and that, because frankly you shouldn't have it easier when you level up, you should have it harder, because you know, you character becomes weaker and weaker as the game progresses". And that just doesn't make sense to me. Killing higher level mobs, leveling favor, etc is already a challenge of sorts in the new zone, especially in PG, where, If i recall the older blog post correcty "Killing one monster of the same level should take 15-30 seconds". Begs the question again, 30 seconds in Kur or Gazluk? How disruptive and not-fun-at-all is that?

And the biggest Issue I have with it, is that the game gives you no option to beat that cold "once and for all". Like, so that I will be able to grind Panthers in Kur for an hour without ever paying attention to the Body Heat. Ok, even half an hour. No, theres no such option. You can raise the "time" by having winter gear and the meditation buff and the universal mitigation from BC and the alchemy potion, but that is too much grind and skills and not even half an hour in Kur outdoors. So, what's even the point?