Hmm.. seems a little premature.
Sure wish we could get at least a minimum level of 'why?'
I think Jokken's post is a major part of that. Also, starter goblins are too easy to farm to have them dropping loot.
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The "why" is probably because of people like me who have always farmed starter goblins for loot.
I'm totally in favor of this move, part of the reason I farmed was to highlight the issue. They just need to improve the starter quests a good deal so they hold the newbies hand, and make sure they get some starting coppers and a full set of basic gear, or point out where they can get it.
Goblin Squad Member
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I have been farming "Goblins" and "Bandit Recruits" out away from the starter areas. Mostly because I know what to do and there are almost always other people around farming in close. I always feel like I am getting in new character's way and don't want to discourage them.
I hope that "wilderness" Gobs, etc... will still drop lootz.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Well it shouldn't. The mats are out there to make the gear, let the players do just that.Note "low level"
Armour will still drop. It will just mean taking on some yellows to get it.
Fine for heavy armor.
Have you tried making Robes :D
If they drop armor from loot drops for the newbies they should have a starter quest where you choose a single role quest and get one single set of armor appropriate to that role.
Even EVE gives new players a freighter, a destroyer, several mining frigates, an exploration frigate and a few other random ships for free when they start out.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Better late than never... After the ridiculous amount of goblin harvesting that has been going on, this is a long overdue decision.
Regarding robes, the starter versions that woul drop are no better for a mage than the starter rags every new character starts out with. If you'really hurting for those, you can just create a new toon, trade its clothes away and delete it again...
Well that kinda does bring up the other point. Who on earth is going to bother making starter gear when +1 is only very very slightly harder ?
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Goblin Squad Member
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If this is to stop the ridiculous recipe farming from starter goblins then just take out the recipes, tokens, and coin from their tables so there is no point to killing them except the tutorial quest and if you're a new character after starting gear.
As an armor smith I *KNOW* I'm not going to make +0 for the market - the raw inputs have a minimum value for their use in T1+2 armor which makes +0 armor way too expensive for first day players who start with no copper. T1+0 is entirely separate from the blossoming economic system. The only reason to take an unlimited +0 spigot out of the game is if there was scrapping for crafting materials, which there isn't.
Armor +0 is already incredibly hard to find with just a club/wand/focus/shortbow as it is. If you take starter gear off the starter mobs, you'll be leaving new players without a source of +0 gear unless you put it into the tutorials (where I think it should have been all this time anyway).
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Goblin Squad Member
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I agree with Proxima Sin's approach.
If the starter town goblins only have weapons (including ranged weapons, melee weapons, wands, staves, battle foci)and armor in the drops , I don't think that you will see anymore farming going on, and it will allow new players to equip themselves.
It only takes 61 experience and 1 category point of the appropriate type to acquire Rank 2 of an armor feat and unlock the second minor keyword, so there is not really any reason a newb couldn't wear T1+1 armor and get the full benefit within the first 5 minutes of creating their character (well, ok, that wouldn't be newb, but you get idea).
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Goblin Squad Member
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It only takes 61 experience and 1 category point of the appropriate type to acquire Rank 2 of an armor feat and unlock the second minor keyword, so there is not really any reason a newb couldn't wear T1+1 armor and get the full benefit within the first 5 minutes of creating their character (well, ok, that wouldn't be newb, but you get idea).
But the question remains, what will the new player use to pay for the T1+1 armor?
It is a bit of a challenge to get the weapon and armor that you need for your role even with the current armor and weapon drops. If new players can't get those armor drops, then they will be at a disadvantage to those of us who started right when EE started (let's not get into the amount of game mechanic knowledge that some of us have).
Leaving weapon and armor drops on starter goblins will help new players master their initial fighting skills, without experienced players hanging about to farm for recipes and copper coins. I prefer that approach to the one of giving players a "free" set of gear - you tend to appreciate what you earn more than what is given to you.
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Goblin Squad Member
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My concern is the poor UI to the Auction House. Trying to find equipment that I can use and available is tedious at best. Also I am not sure how fluid the AH market is right now.
But it should not be too bad. I think most of the armor I found was at least two hexes away from the starter town.
At this point most characters have full back dated XP. This means it is very easy to jump to +1 equipment. But we need a little longer for people to start seeding the market with +1 equipment.
I still need to do my market analysis, but I am curious to figure out profit margins for various pieces of equipment.
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Fair point. That goes back Proxima's. I would modfiy her idea, though, so say that the effective drop rates for armor, weapons tokens and implements are unchanged on starter goblins; only the recipes and salvage are removed. So if armor drops 5% of the time right now, then it should drop 5% of the time after the changes are made. Copper should no be dropped from starter goblins, though. If new players want that, they can go kill regular goblins, omega wolves and bandit recruits.
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My concern is the poor UI to the Auction House.
This.
If they are going to force people to trade to get the starter gear they need, then they need to create a trade chat channel, or stop badgering people for using Help as global, or fix the Auction House UI so it isn't a complete pain in the *@# to use.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I think most of the armor I found was at least two hexes away from the starter town.
At about 10 o'clock on your mini-map, there's an icon that tells what type of hex you're in. If it has a grey background and some squiggly lines, that means you're in an NPC-Controlled hex and the loot will be minimally valuable. Once you get into the Wilderness (green background with a hill/mountain and a bushy tree), you'll get better loot.
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Goblin Squad Member
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My concern is the poor UI to the Auction House.This.
If they are going to force people to trade to get the starter gear they need, then they need to create a trade chat channel, or stop badgering people for using Help as global, or fix the Auction House UI so it isn't a complete pain in the *@# to use.
I was one of those that really revel in all the tools and graphs presented in the EVE markets. Finding items that had good volume with good stable prices was always a game in itself.
I am of the option that EVE stands for Excel versus Excel. Any successful trader/manufacturer had their own heavily modified spreadsheets. Now I am starting to work on my own this game.
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Goblin Squad Member
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is there a list that details those icons?
Dazyk might have something on the wiki.
The key thing to understand about them is that they do not indicate Terrain Type. Instead, they indicate Hex Type.
- NPC - grey with squiggles
- Player Settlement - yellow pyramid
- Wilderness - green with mountain and tree
- Badlands - checkered dark and light green
- Monster - yellow hills
Slightly unrelated, but useful to know, is that Resources are generally the same for all Terrain Type / Hex Type combinations in a given Region. You can see the Regions by checking the "Geographic Regions" option on the Unofficial PFO Atlas.
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Goblin Squad Member
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But the question remains, what will the new player use to pay for the T1+1 armor?Harvested Resources.
How is that going to be done at an Auction House?
This requires that the new player find an armorer and weaponsmith (or articifer or iconographer or bowyer or etc) to trade with them to get the weapon and armor that they need/want.
I don't see this as being fun for new players - running around and asking (having to beg) for an experienced player to make them an item when they are new.
It is much more challenging for a game to thrive if new players don't enjoy themselves in the first few hours of playing - they simply move on to something else.
In my opinion, having to beg/ask experience players for gear isn't fun. And if you do find one willing to make you gear in exchange for resources, you have to your first few hours gathering resources, then trying to hook up with that experienced player (and potentially wait while they refine and then make the gear), which again doesn't seem fun.
When my gatherer lost his armor due to a wolf mob being next to the shrine, I had more trouble gathering, as mobs of goblins that I used to wade into without any trouble now killed me. I ended up going back to base and getting another suit of armor (one gotten from a starter town goblin mob - as has been all of my armors to date). It was annoying and not really fun, but it was only a small blip on my enjoyment of PFO.
TLDR: keep weapons and armor drops on starter goblins
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How is that going to be done at an Auction House?
Well, ideally, IMHO, it would work like this.
New player gets quests to go gather materials. They turn in quest and get some copper, plus some basic gear or potions.
They are then instructed by the starter quest line to go sell their stuff on the Auction House, using their quest coppers for listing fees.
They'll learn how the system works, and get advice from the starter quest to check prices and see what is in demand.
They can then gather more stuff and sell it on the Auction house for more money.
Then, they would use that money to buy better armor and weapons from the auction house as well.
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Of course, this whole system hinges on people using and being able to find stuff easily on the Auction House without 500 clicks.
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Goblin Squad Member
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How is that going to be done at an Auction House?But the question remains, what will the new player use to pay for the T1+1 armor?Harvested Resources.
New Players gather Resources and sell them, along with any Recipes or Expendables they're lucky enough to loot, on the Auction House to get Coin to buy better Gear.
This is the exact system Ryan described in Adventure in the River Kingdoms.
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Goblin Squad Member
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How is that going to be done at an Auction House?But the question remains, what will the new player use to pay for the T1+1 armor?Harvested Resources.New Players gather Resources and sell them, along with any Recipes or Expendables they're lucky enough to loot, on the Auction House to get Coin to buy better Gear.
This is the exact system Ryan described in Adventure in the River Kingdoms.
Don't the Auction Houses need to work a wee bit more smoothly before that will work (and the experienced players will actually put items in the AH)?
I think that the AH needs to work better before they completely cancel the drops on the starter goblins.
Suggestion would be to keep weapons and armor on the starter goblins until the AH is working sufficiently well that it is being used by both new and experienced players.
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Goblin Squad Member
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There will not be any settlement that does not offer starter gear, if not Tier 1 +1, to recruits or even possible recruits. Any settlement that doesn't or can't will be at an extreme disadvantage in recruiting. There will not be any need to farm them. It also reinforces behaviour GW wants - make social ties, make them early.
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Goblin Squad Member
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If more experienced players are farming all solo goblins around the starter settlements and new players need to score some goblin kills, the brand new players will grow frustrated and argue with the more experienced farmers. That means the newb will probably end up attacking a farmer who will then get a consequence-free kill.
I would strongly recommend Nihimon's solution of keying the odds of a drop to starter town proximity. Let the weak mobs that spawn away from a settlement still yield loot to encourage the new player to expand their hunting area and horizons even if they haven't settled on joining a company or prefer to learn the game basics alone where they won't embarrass themselves in front of others.
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Goblin Squad Member
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The Goblin harvesting will still take place, for all newer characters, up until you have your Martial, Subterfuge, or Devine (this is a tough one) up to 250 kills per weapon type or 30 Combined points in the achievement category.
Example:
Short Bow Expert 5 (250 kills) = 15 Subterfuge Points
Light Melee Expert 5 (250 kills) = 15 Subterfuge Points
Goblin Slayer 6 (500 kills) = 6 Adventurer Points
Total = 30 Subterfuge; 6 Adventure which is more than enough to reach level 8 or perhaps even 9 or higher in Rogue role.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Yes, I am doing goblins for the easy recipes, the coin, the salvage resources and the Martial and Goblin achievements. I trash the armors. I even got 2 spells and a great Manouver from the gobbies.
Going out in the Wild doing camps takes a lot more time and yields much less loot for a guy solo. I still do it when I go gathering but I much rather buy those on the AH (which is too empty still).
I currently do not have need for tier 2 stuff so no incentive yet to go Ogre hunting or doing escalations in a group.
Personally I think it is ridiculous that starter gobbies drop spells.
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Goblinworks Lead Game Designer
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To give the people all the information from the relevant posts on the Goblinworks forums:
Just to warn people there are some loot changes on the next update:
1. The tutorial goblins will no longer drop any loot of any kind.
2. No low level monsters will drop armor. The weapon drops will continue for the short term but will likely be ending in a few weeks as well.
So stockpile your +0 tier 1 gear so you can sell it to the people who come later.
To add some transparency to this, as several folks said, this is a change that designers can make without using programming resources. Designers cannot fix desynching, floating nodes, aggro issues, etc. We can only use the tools that already exist, and those tools include the drop tables. Us working on this in no way conflicts or impedes with other work getting done on the game. They are two completely different resource pools.
Now, as to why we want to make this change:
1. Farming the tutorial goblins is way, way to easy and we don't have a way to make them harder without taking up non-design resources or defeating the purpose of them being tutorial monsters. Also we don't want people standing around in town farming them as that just adds to server loads in starter towns, which are already going to be heavy population areas.
2. Right now the number of +0 tier 1 gear in the game is very, very high. Check out the threads where people post what they got for killing some number of hundreds of goblins and you'll see that all tier 1 +0 gear has effectively become trash loot. The encumbrance value of items can get ridiculous, so people are just destroying them. In my own experience on my non-cheater character I get actively annoyed with all the armor drops.
3. We have no economy for +0 items. People make them, they have to for achievements, but there's no reason to buy or sell them.
4. In the experience of the design team thus far by the time we've been killed enough to be near losing our starter gear we're really needing that +1 gear.
Also we are modifying the quests in the starter towns that previously gave you shortbows, focuses, etc, to give you a basic set of tier +0 gear for a given class if you buy some skills associated for that class. So the quest NPC who previously gave you a shortbow if you talked to him twice will give you a shortbow, light armor, and rogue kit if you go buy the proficiencies for all three. So players will be able to get a set of starter gear, and one tailed to their class, but not an infinite number of them.
Cool. Thanks Lee!
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Goblin Squad Member
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Giving out basic starter gear in quests removes any objections I had to "delooting" the goblins.
Minor point - people will still farm them for achievements. The first thing I did with each of my characters was kill 100 starter gobbo with a shortbow and distant shot, then a wand (or staff if I found one) and then with whatever martial weapon I had looted, and fianlly once i had picked up armor a cleric focus just to get a head start (10 achievement points in subterfuge, arcane, divine and martial) on the core achievement types. Any loot I acquired was simply a bonus.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Indeed, Neadenil. And the temptation to accumulate large numbers of achievements for items that will later require ammunition is a powerful force. Why not kill 500 starter goblins right now, when I won't need at least 500 arrows later (or 1500 if I want to do it with a shortbow.)
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Goblin Squad Member
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This news warms my heart. You start to wonder why one would craft a suit of armor at +0 when they drop so readily from starter mobs. This gives crafting characters more focus.
And why you would craft a +0 version of a armor when you need only a few more resources to make a +1?
I doubt anyone would want to make more than one of any kind in a crafter life, the one you need to get the achievement.It only takes 61 experience and 1 category point of the appropriate type to acquire Rank 2 of an armor feat and unlock the second minor keyword, so there is not really any reason a newb couldn't wear T1+1 armor and get the full benefit within the first 5 minutes of creating their character (well, ok, that wouldn't be newb, but you get idea).
And you would give him that armor out of the goodness of your heart?
And you would love so much to have newbies begging you for help?The second part will drive people away from the game.
But the question remains, what will the new player use to pay for the T1+1 armor?Harvested Resources.
Again, a great presentation for the game.
"What you have done dooring your first day of play? Harvested depleted nodes near the starter town to get enough stuff to buy a lousy starter armor. Very heroic"|
Goblin Squad Member
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A lot - a lot - of computer RPGs start the character off with minimal gear and in the course of the first chapter he needs to find/loot enough to actually make or buy something approching second-rate gear.
I think the start here isn't too bad. You died, find yourself in a new place with no resources, your old skills tapped out. How would you make your way? Odd jobs and grubbing for coin, maybe sell your poor sword skills as a caravan guard... Maybe mob together with a pack of club weilding thugs to claw some riches from a bandit captain...
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Goblin Squad Member
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I actually think this solution is a positive one.
New players get precisely one set of free starter gear. This means they can die 20 times (assuming the double endurance hit bug does not get them) before needing to source new gear.
That gives some leeway for mistakes and game issues but also means they need to take a little bit of care about cannot just go running around like a crazy idiot attacking everything in sight.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Giving out basic starter gear in quests removes any objections I had to "delooting" the goblins.
My experience is that the starting gear will last for a very short time, especially if you are a real newbie and don't know what you are doing.
A bit of bad luck, with your character respawning at a shrine near a group of monsters and you can end naked in no time.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Giving out basic starter gear in quests removes any objections I had to "delooting" the goblins.
My experience is that the starting gear will last for a very short time, especially if you are a real newbie and don't know what you are doing.
A bit of bad luck, with your character respawning at a shrine near a group of monsters and you can end naked in no time.
True.
One thing I am a little unclear on. If you get say a set of rogue gear and suck bigtime at being a rogue and wreck it, can you then do a fighter or cleric or wizard quest and get a new set for a different role?
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Goblin Squad Member
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For some reason one of my not so happy replies was lost, so I want to repeat it.
There will not be any settlement that does not offer starter gear, if not Tier 1 +1, to recruits or even possible recruits. Any settlement that doesn't or can't will be at an extreme disadvantage in recruiting. There will not be any need to farm them. It also reinforces behaviour GW wants - make social ties, make them early.
The starter town aren't settlements.
Your settlement will put a crier in each town advertising your settlement great offers to new players? you will be so eager to get inexperienced players even after several months of playing?
Or you think that the new players will learn of your offer by reading the forum, a forum whose existence they can even not know?
I don't see "I should beg you for my starting gear" as a healthy social tie.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Diego, now you just sounds like grumpy old dwarf. We as well as this game in itself need some time to find it self.
Lets wait a bit and see, ask some new players what they think and all towns will need all newbies they can for a long time, and when (or if) the settled one has grown to fat for that, there wil certainly be new towns setting up in the expanded areas.
By that time the starter towns probably has gone and everyone starts in the area around Thornkeep (if Ryan stays with that idea), so yea, a recruiter in TK will probably be a good idea.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I don't see "I should beg you for my starting gear" as a healthy social tie.
Some new players will go out and play the game. They'll kill some monsters, learn how to use their abilities, do a little harvesting, maybe get some gear maybe not, come back to town to sell the stuff they don't want on the Auction House and buy some stuff they do want. They won't be able to afford everything they want the first time.
Some players will ask for help, and they'll probably be likely to get it.
Some players will encounter recruiters who fully equip them.
The game doesn't put new players in a position where they need to beg. The fact that some players will be willing to give them free stuff doesn't mean that's the only way they can get what they need.