MC- player opinion

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Uhuru
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MC- player opinion

Post by Uhuru »

I'm interested in player opinion. We've had two requests opened in Mantis and closed regarding the need for some way to measure when a character begins having difficulty learning.

What are your observations and what would you prefer?

I have noticed, especially for newer characters, trying to learn different things (when everything they do is a learning experience) that the character seems to hit a roadblock and the PO gets frustrated. The character is working on their armor, weapons, parry, fishing, farming (gathering fruit), cooking (cooking fish), and odd skills, take mining and smithing as just two. This is quite a lot. Eight skills at one time, barring any others.

Had Slightly look at the MC on one alt character and it was well over 9 million and she is not even a crafter. Just learning to hunt only. She stopped leveling completely and learned nothing for many days. PO was ready to delete her and start over. Walked her for around 12 hours straight to get the MC down again to where the character could actually learn again within a reasonable timeframe.

Developers, I understand characters never stop learning, but the learning is at such a low pace that I am afraid new PO's will just get frustrated and give up. In my above scenario of trying to learn 8 skills at one time, look at just the learning of smithing. Learning to mine and smith is quite a lot. When the MC rises and learning slows, it takes more and more ore to learn, so the character mines his brains out, raising his MC higher and higher. So he knocks out more and more items, raising his MC more only to have to mine even more. He may stop to talk to someone, however, as I have learned, talking does not lower MC. A couple of emotes will help, but not if he is topping 9 mill in MC. So what does he do? He gives up on smithing and moves to something else, maybe finesmithing. Can't learn there either. So now our new PO is seriously frustrated. Hopefully, he asks someone for help. If not, he quits.

How many new POs have come and how many have we lost? I can't say this is the reason, but we do need to eliminate as many frustrations as possible. Some POs do like to come in and "figure" it out on their own.

Please, I am very interested in hearing other player's opinions on this.
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Djironnyma
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Re: MC- player opinion

Post by Djironnyma »

this is more a proposal to change something as a generel discussion, moved.
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Mephistopheles
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Re: MC- player opinion

Post by Mephistopheles »

to be completly honest the leveling is fine even for casual gamers, yes you will hit roadblocks, many will get frustrated with this. With some learning and powergaming when I wasn't doing quests or roleplaying, I got to a max character in armor,parry, slashing, and mining (on top of 92 stabbing) in about 7 months, this is fine by me. I say don't make it easier, if everyone could tell when its optimal to level, they might choose to step out of an rp situation and not to mention it would make things too easy.
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Re: MC- player opinion

Post by Ranwyln »

From my point of view the problem with the mc mainly is you dont know of it, unless you ask someone why you stop learning (and than its already to late cause you have to run around doing nothing as rp if lucky that someone is around). On one hand it does not really stop from powegaming (cause the pger normally uses loads of time to do so) so he just is forced to be online and when no one is around to talk with just runs around doing nothing as beeing bored, than levels a bit than same again. I really liked the old warnings e.g. its hard to concentrate and so on. I still have no clue how it really works, but aslong as you didnt mastered a gathering profession you will just need to be there,hope for someone around or just hang around move the avatar every few minutes, thats in my eyes not really casual friendly. I would like it if your mc recover too when you are offline (to prevent powergaming you still can say it starts to reg after 24h offline and only very slow after that), so still people only able to log in once or twice a week have the chance to learn something.

An idea would maybe be to add some sort of Bed/Inn you can rent in towns or at the hempties (for an ingame night for a decent amount of coins, maybe even different classes of beds, like dorm room to kings suite) where you reg in the amount of time of an ingame night a fix amount of mc (dunno of which numbers we talk but dont need to be much), if you log in earlier you didnt regged enough cause you didnt slept enough and you can only do it once per ig day or again after a fix amount of time spent online so it prevents from logging in every few hours paying some coins and going to bed again. And if its broken if you log in too early again people would only use it when they go to bed for real or know they wont be around for a decent amount of time. I still dont know if its true that you dont reg MC when you arent online. But after mastering one gathering profession it gets far easier (but still a hard way to do so ).
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Estralis Seborian
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Re: MC- player opinion

Post by Estralis Seborian »

While the MC system is rather simple, I realise it is not well understood and hence, these requests.
I have noticed, especially for newer characters, trying to learn different things (when everything they do is a learning experience) that the character seems to hit a roadblock and the PO gets frustrated.
Best way is to focus on one or two skills, indeed. This is intended. Mastering 23 skills is not intended player behaviour. While Illarion has no classes, jack of all trades will have a hard time compared to specialists. Again, this is intended by the game design. New players start with comparable low MC points and hence, learn a little faster than the average player. This is intended again. Who played 20 hours or more will notice a difference, depening on the player behaviour, but then it is about time the "noob bonus" is over.
She stopped leveling completely and learned nothing for many days. PO was ready to delete her and start over. Walked her for around 12 hours straight to get the MC down again to where the character could actually learn again within a reasonable timeframe.
I will tell you a secret: If you'd have skilled those twelve hours, you learn the same skill as if you idled around and then start skilling again. The learning speed is NOT decreased, the skill amount you learn by each action is decreased by a high amount of MC. But if you do many actions, you get the very very same amount of skill over time. Thus: your MC level does not matter in a long term observation. Another very secret secret: Long times of taking no skill related action and then skilling like a madmen for a short period yields slightly less skill than skilling at a constant pace.
How many new POs have come and how many have we lost?
I seriously doubt we lost a player because of the MC level not shown in the game. If you say the general learning speed is too low, that is a totally different aspect we can talk about.

In conclusion: You cannot speed up your skillgain by observation of the MC points. Taking no action is as good as taking actions. So play in whatever way you like, unless we speak about the very first hours of the game, your skillgain over time will be the very same.
Ranwyln
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Re: MC- player opinion

Post by Ranwyln »

still it is a material factor..if i idle 12 hours and use one hour materials to learn i need much less as if i use materials for 13 hours ;)
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Re: MC- player opinion

Post by Tinuva Geogroda »

I'm actually fine with the system and it not having concrete numbers for it.
I feel like Illarion has become more of a level game already since the introduction of level numbers. By leaving you in the dark you are forced to stop thinking about that and live the life of your character. As Estralis said, if your character hunts all the time he/she will yield the same level as talking about a long time and then hunting a bit. This gives PGing less of an advantage over RPing. And RPing is the most important imho, levels are simple a means to an end.

So as I said, I like the current system.
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Jupiter
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Re: MC- player opinion

Post by Jupiter »

Ranwyln wrote:still it is a material factor..if i idle 12 hours and use one hour materials to learn i need much less as if i use materials for 13 hours ;)
Then do that? :P
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Uhuru
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Re: MC- player opinion

Post by Uhuru »

Estralis Seborian wrote:While the MC system is rather simple, I realise it is not well understood and hence, these requests.
I have noticed, especially for newer characters, trying to learn different things (when everything they do is a learning experience) that the character seems to hit a roadblock and the PO gets frustrated.
Best way is to focus on one or two skills, indeed. This is intended. Mastering 23 skills is not intended player behaviour. While Illarion has no classes, jack of all trades will have a hard time compared to specialists. Again, this is intended by the game design. New players start with comparable low MC points and hence, learn a little faster than the average player. This is intended again. Who played 20 hours or more will notice a difference, depening on the player behaviour, but then it is about time the "noob bonus" is over.
In my example, 8 different skills isn't so uncommon. Fighting, gathering and cooking food, and learning a marketable skill. Not unreasonable. Especially for a new character. As I indicated in my first post, this comes out to 8 skills, or rather, massive MC. I wasn't aware there was a "noob bonus" and had wondered why it seemed like they can learn for so long without a problem. Once that bonus disappears, this will only exacerbate the MC issue and make the learning wall the PO runs into even more massive. The character will seem to learn like crazy, barely having to have many resources at all to needing copious amounts, then suddenly no matter how many resources he gathers makes no difference, can't learn one level no matter how many helmets he bangs out, toiling away for days on end.

I'm glad some of you were able to figure it out and work through it.
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Uhuru
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Re: MC- player opinion

Post by Uhuru »

While I do think the noob bonus is great, because there is so much to learn, a noob isn't going to suddenly change his/her behavior when it comes to learning unless they know it is necessary. There is no "plan" in place to let the noob know of this need. It is all chance and circumstance now.

I'll point out the elephant in the room, we have an issue finding AND keeping new PO's in the game. I am not saying this is the reason, there may be many contributing factors, however, anything we can do to help remove possible obstacles from their path needs to be at least considered.

The learning code is great, Dev's did an awesome job. I do like it and work well within it. I think most of us have figured out how to work within it. We need to make sure that goes for our newest POs as well that don't even know there is an MC or that they can hit a learning "wall" so to speak. That behaviors first learned are actually bad.
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Re: MC- player opinion

Post by Teflon »

Uhuru wrote:I'll point out the elephant in the room, we have an issue finding AND keeping new PO's in the game. I am not saying this is the reason, there may be many contributing factors, however, anything we can do to help remove possible obstacles from their path needs to be at least considered.
They chance that one of ten new players likes Illarion after some testing is low. Not because our games sucks but that is more or less the same with all new things. I would therefore say, we just do not have enough new players. Our promotion is still very low. E.g. we have only 63 likes on Facebook although this Bieber Justin got more than 3.2m :shock: ...something seems to be very wrong here. :P
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Mephistopheles
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Re: MC- player opinion

Post by Mephistopheles »

I just made a new character and got 40 brick firing in TWO DAYS. There is no need for easier leveling nor anything that will tell the player when it is optimal to level, just need some common sense. And in these two days it can hradly be seen as powergaming as I've only spent a few hours each day on illa this week.
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Estralis Seborian
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Re: MC- player opinion

Post by Estralis Seborian »

One last remark: There is no "best" behaviour. You can play in whatever way you like. If you want to craft a lot - you get a lot of items. If you craft rarely and spend your time talking and exploring - you get few items. The skill you got is the very, very, exactly same. Every player can play in the way he/she wants and there is no "learning wall" you can hit. Sure, a new player who hits the anvil like a madmen might be spoiled a little by the fast skillgain in the beginning, but this is intended. The learning speed he will encounter later ("wall") is the normal learning speed. If you consider this speed to low, that is a totally different subject!

In conclusion: A MC meter will only confuse players because they think it matters and influence the players' behaviour. The system was designed to decouple the skillgain speed from the players' behaviour. Every playing style should be treated equal and give the same skillgain over time. If you now add a MC meter, this goal would be nullified.
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Uhuru
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Re: MC- player opinion

Post by Uhuru »

But you don't learn to make anything new. After what could be days of trying. You make hundreds of the same item. Run to the mine, mining for ore like a crazy person. Raise the MC high as a kite. You learn to make nothing new.

You can't understand the frustration until you've experienced it first hand.
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Mephistopheles
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Re: MC- player opinion

Post by Mephistopheles »

its similar if not the same as building up to use a new weapon or armor, I do know how roadblocks feel, especially when you see others who are just better than you. But now that i have the experience of going through the fighting system I can now make a new character and build him/her up rather quickly. now I am confident I can do what took me 7-8 months to do in even less time. Honestly as an mmo Illarion makes it very easy to level up. Don't make it any easier. Please. If anything I'd ask for it to be harder.
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Re: MC- player opinion

Post by Quinasa »

Uhuru wrote:But you don't learn to make anything new. After what could be days of trying. You make hundreds of the same item. Run to the mine, mining for ore like a crazy person. Raise the MC high as a kite. You learn to make nothing new.

You can't understand the frustration until you've experienced it first hand.
This is exactly how I feel. I wonder why the MC is in place at all, or why anyone knows about it since it causes so much confusion and frustration. At least with the old EXP cap, you knew when you were hitting the road block that stopped you from learning.

I don't hate the MC system (though it is not my favorite method the game has employed over the years), I just don't understand it, no matter how many times it gets explained to me. And I'm not a stupid person. The higher your MC, the slower you learn. But from what I've gathered by listening to other players in chat, they can rarely - if ever - get their MC back to zero. And all of them have different explanations as to how the MC really works.

With each level of any skill, the required EXP to go up another skill increases. That is normal in any game (one can only hope). But in Illarion I just don't understand the whole MC thing. It doesn't make sense to me. I find I'm walking around for an hour and then 'skilling' for ten minutes, and then walking around or RPing for another hour just to use less materials than I would have to use if I didn't stop to reduce my MC. I prefer an EXP cap to the MC system, that's my opinion as a player.
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Re: MC- player opinion

Post by Teflon »

This is exactly how I feel. I wonder why the MC is in place at all, or why anyone knows about it since it causes so much confusion and frustration. At least with the old EXP cap, you knew when you were hitting the road block that stopped you from learning.
As Estralis said... you do not hit the road block that stops your from learning anymore. There is no cap anymore. So, you will always learn. MC determains only how much you learn from a single action. If you repeat this action very often, your MC will be high and thus you learn less from this action. If you don't repeat it often, your MC will be low and you learn more from this action. In the end, it does not matter if you do it often or only seldom, you will have the same progress.
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Estralis Seborian
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Re: MC- player opinion

Post by Estralis Seborian »

Quinasa wrote: I just don't understand it.
Sorry, I have to quote this. Teflon wrote it all. You never stop learning. It does NOT get "slower" as in "skill/time". What gets reduced is "skill/action" because you raise your "action/time". If you do the math, it turns out that skill~time. Nothing else. You have to invest time, not a number of actions. Thus, the more time you invest into the game, the more skill you get, no matter how many items you craft or monsters you bash. There is absolutely no need to idle to reduce "the cap" because during the idle time, you learn exactly nothing.

The material factor remains: You can learn the same skill from 10 crafting actions as from 100 crafting actions. So, do as many as you like to earn money or do a few for selected customers! The time of mindless crafting of junk is over, this is the reason why we have this system. You can play in any way you like and have absolutely no benefit from adjusting your behaviour to a weird system. Just play and stop thinking about MCs, caps, idle time and what else not!
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Quinasa
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Re: MC- player opinion

Post by Quinasa »

Thank you Estralis. I understand now. Mostly, I think, I was just frustrated with the materials required to craft, when gathering materials raises MC and crafting raises MC so that it feels like you're using far more materials to craft because the MC is so high, when I could just have to wait until my MC is lower to do the craft and use less materials.

Idling is dumb. Nobody should do it. At least not on purpose.
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