Is the game harder to learn today than back on live?

[Snarky]

49 minutes ago, BasiliskXVIII said:

Is it really, though? We're literally talking about finding and editing text strings. It's always at the end of the mission dialogue, almost always in a mission arc or badge mission, and for the most part should be findable with search. I'm not sure how contact dialogue trees work, but if multiple contacts are referencing the same dialogue sheet, then changing one should change them all. Sure, it's not *no* work, but I doubt it's nearly the amount of work that writing a story arc is. It seems like it should be at least feasible. In theory, it shouldn't even be necessary to get rid of all of the warnings all at once, just sneak changes to a few missions into each release as you find them. Maybe throw together a thread on the suggestions board asking players to submit missions with unnecessary warnings.

And honestly, if bringing in new players is part of the intended goal of this server, then filing down pain points to getting them enjoying the game should be a fairly high priority. 

I am currently soloing every contact in the game, for every single mission.  Red Blue Gold.  Not my first time at it, so far my most "complete" at what I guestimate is a 99.9% completion of every possible mission 1-29.  Now working on 30-34.  

 

Blue missions are especially tough.  They obscure the true mission goals as part of the way they were written.  Save 17 "hostages"  (this is real) you stealth through and find them all.  On rescuing the last one, the goal changes to "kill all..."  Blueside was written to be near indecipherable.  Part of the "charm"  If, and that is a big if, you change that you will find a vocal sub group who will tell you that you ruined it.  I have no idea why, but I guarantee it will happen.

 

Red is more straightforward.  Then Gold.... has evolving missions.  And it's own set of issues.

 

But beyond the theme of each side, is the scope.  Just running those missions is taking forever.  Going through each one line by line and editing it....  Do you know how hard editing is, and how much good editors get paid?  I am not talking coding.  I am talking about communicating.  It is hard, and it costs a lot.  

 

Find the qualified volunteers for the hundreds and/or thousands of hours this will take.  HC staff might take you up on the offer.

Edited Friday at 10:55 PM by Snarky

[BasiliskXVIII]

5 minutes ago, Snarky said:

I am currently soloing every contact in the game, for every single mission.  Red Blue Gold.  Not my first time at it, so far my most "complete" at what I guestimate is a 99.9% completion of every possible mission 1-29.  Now working on 30-34.  

 

Blue missions are especially tough.  They obscure the true mission goals as part of the way they were written.  Save 17 "hostages"  (this is real) you stealth through and find them all.  On rescuing the last one, the goal changes to "kill all..."  Blueside was written to be near indecipherable.  Part of the "charm"  If, and that is a big if, you change that you will find a vocal sub group who will tell you that you ruined it.  I have no idea why, but I guarantee it will happen.

 

Red is more straightforward.  Then Gold.... has evolving missions.  And it's own set of issues.

 

But beyond the theme of each side, is the scope.  Just running those missions is taking forever.  Going through each one line by line and editing it....  Do you know how hard editing is, and how much good editors get paid?  I am not talking coding.  I am talking about communicating.  It is hard, and it costs a lot.  

 

Find the qualified volunteers for the hundreds and/or thousands of hours this will take.  HC staff might take you up on the offer.

Ok, but that's several orders of magnitude more that what I'm asking for. All I want is for the contact dialogue not to outright lie to you, saying "this mission will be harder than most, you may want a team" when there's nothing about that mission that is more challenging. A good example of this is the "Take the Shadow Seed from the Council" mission, which warns "I'd really recommend gathering as many allies as you can before you enter this one." in that exact text colour, and the only reason I can think of is because it features two named bosses (not in the same group), which do downscale appropriately to LTs if that setting is enabled. The following mission does exactly the same thing. I recently did 1-50 on a character solo and ran into a handful of these. Some make sense, while others don't.

Along this same token, cleaning up the missions that say you need a teammate to activate multiple glowies at the same time should also be tidied up.

The flipside of this is the newer content, which is deliberately tuned to be a bit harder and a little more unforgiving. And it's just handed out blithely as one contact among many. Sure, some legacy missions will be more difficult because it comes from before standardization, but when the intention is "this contact will offer more challenge than average", adding a little warning doesn't seem unreasonable.

I do think that as a long-term goal, cleaning up the mission text and clarifying the actual objectives should be added onto the to-do list, and again, that's something that could be done 1-2 missions at a time as they come up. But just cleaning up the up-front text is low-hanging fruit that should be reasonably easy to fix in short order, it just needs the will to do so.

[Snarky]

47 minutes ago, BasiliskXVIII said:

Ok, but that's several orders of magnitude more that what I'm asking for. All I want is for the contact dialogue not to outright lie to you, saying "this mission will be harder than most, you may want a team" when there's nothing about that mission that is more challenging. A good example of this is the "Take the Shadow Seed from the Council" mission, which warns "I'd really recommend gathering as many allies as you can before you enter this one." in that exact text colour, and the only reason I can think of is because it features two named bosses (not in the same group), which do downscale appropriately to LTs if that setting is enabled. The following mission does exactly the same thing. I recently did 1-50 on a character solo and ran into a handful of these. Some make sense, while others don't.

Along this same token, cleaning up the missions that say you need a teammate to activate multiple glowies at the same time should also be tidied up.

The flipside of this is the newer content, which is deliberately tuned to be a bit harder and a little more unforgiving. And it's just handed out blithely as one contact among many. Sure, some legacy missions will be more difficult because it comes from before standardization, but when the intention is "this contact will offer more challenge than average", adding a little warning doesn't seem unreasonable.

I do think that as a long-term goal, cleaning up the mission text and clarifying the actual objectives should be added onto the to-do list, and again, that's something that could be done 1-2 missions at a time as they come up. But just cleaning up the up-front text is low-hanging fruit that should be reasonably easy to fix in short order, it just needs the will to do so.

Ah. We have different priorities. I view “ get help” as a weak joke. I view “free 17 people” when it is a kill all as hatred of my existence as a player

[BasiliskXVIII]

13 minutes ago, Snarky said:

Ah. We have different priorities. I view “ get help” as a weak joke. I view “free 17 people” when it is a kill all as hatred of my existence as a player

As you pointed out, whole overhauls of content are non-trivial. Adjusting text is simple. I do think they should take a good look at the legacy content to at least bring it to the standard of CoV, but that's a project that would need a whole commitment to take on. It's triage... Save the guy you can save with stitches rather than the one who needs open heart surgery.

[catsi563]

Absolutely not. 

 

the game today is still fundamentally the same as it was at launch in many ways and in some even much easier to learn. both tutorials are comprehensive enough to get you started and the twinshot arc takes you on a tour of atlas to introduce you to various concepts and places of interest. the community is vibrant and helpful and friendly as theyve ever been. 

 

the games powers have changed but thats more to the extent of balancing and adding new ones as always learning WHEN to use such powers and on what targets is an ongoing task that comes with experience and play time

 

the game still has one of THE MOST varied character creation systems in ANY game EVER. and while it can be overwhelming its no more so than many others out there

 

all told the games as recognizable to me today as it was the very first time i logged into atlas park so many years ago

[BurtHutt]

On 6/6/2025 at 6:23 PM, MTeague said:

I concede there is considerably more for new players to learn. 

 

And yet, past lvl 20, I can't remember the last time I felt in any real danger when levelling.  Team wipes feel far rarer than they used to be. The need to coordinate feels greatly reduced vs what it was in some early issues. Maybe some of that is having stronger enhancements right out of the gate, instead of having to make do with Training Enhancements and Dual Origin enhancements. Maybe some of that is people spending at the START vendor for status protection, or other temporary powers that weren't even in the game until the Veteran Rewards came along after the first several years of Live.  I remember being delighted when a Force Fielder joined the team in the early days. Now, it's ho-hum, sure that'll help some. 

 

It is what it is, and I can't say I haven't leveraged the heck out of low level SO's, I can't say I haven't stacked the heck out of set bonuses after lvl 25. But teams being in no real danger makes it much easier for new folks to rapidly level up compared to the old days, too. 

Tons of valid remarks here but I do like this one. There have been some missions where there is danger at lower levels but it often depends on team and how the group plays.

 

I have very little concern when I incarnate. I really hope we don't see stuff to OP our toons more than what we have. Add more options etc but they don't need to be more powerful.