New Players

[Amoenotep]

at about lvl 7 going to formians is mega xp if you can find a way to kill them effeciently.....then you move to dwarves, cuz their super easy to kill at lvl 1

[Elagneros]

Start the player with a little more gp. maybe 1000 to buy whatever basic gear they want.
Start the player with say 10 heal kits? or put heal kits on the quartermaster for sale.

Giving the quartermaster some +1 heal kits or even cure light pots might be a good idea. I don't know if newbies need more gold though. The most gold is typically going to be spent by a fighter paladin or cleric, since they'll more likely to start out with heavy armor. That eats up a big chunk of the starting money. Wizards don't spend much of that money since they're limited in weapon and armor choices. So maybe adjust the starting gold by class?

Give an xp bonus for completing a job level.

That could be useful.

RK - Make a shortcut from the start area to the outskirts.. Portal or something.. one way. That walk take forever if you do it over and over.

There are the pech tunnels already. One goes right out to the Black Hills and you can skip the mines.

As for the grind around level 15, I think we just need more areas for that range.
Perhaps NS City could be weakened to give a good palce for that. The npcs are all 16-19 range right now but could have some gear/abilitys downgraded to get them right at 16 and thinned out to make a nice leveling ground.

We can also beef up the sewers and maybe the ice road bandits to give a good 10-15 area as well.

The old LA sewers are gone, the old entrances were removed. Actually, some of the areas around NS City could use some reworking since we don't need a lot of lower level spawns there. We'd need to keep a relatively easy path to Avendell open for SL though. I'd say maybe rework Silver Road Bend and the area just outside the city, maybe the small bandit outpost off the bend (not the camp with the locked doors, the other small area south of that), the lower Fallow Downs and the Old Forest. SL players can still go up to Old Town North, and then over through Evenshire to get to Avendell, the distance is about the same.

Old Wyrm Road could use some improvements too. There's little there that's worth the trip out there except maybe some of the dragons. The bandits in particular should be made tougher and given a better CR.

Last idea for now would be to put quick travel to Avendell from each newbie area for say levl 5 and up. and leave give 5-10s some good areas surrounding Avendell.

SL and RK can get to Avendell fairly quick on foot now, and TC can make the journey without too many problems though it's a bit longer. AO and NC can go through mostly the same route as TC, with AO going around Melencia and NC using the Crevasse. Those factions shouldn't need more than about 15 minutes to make the trip (I can get to Ave in about 5 from RK).

MA has the longest and most difficult trip. They have to make their way over to the caves to the Ash Mountains, then across either Old Wyrm Road or Redhorn, then from there through Evenshire. It's a pretty long haul. Then there's the enemies. There's CR 18 Mezzoloths in the Ash Mountains to make things nasty. There's some tight spots in Old Wyrm Road, particularly on the bridges in the Bottomless Pit which makes it tough to avoid enemies. Redhorn's a bit easier, but there's the big dire bears in the Overgrown Forest. It's not easy unless the player has stealth or invisibility, unless there's an MA shortcut I'm unaware of.

The worst part about xp at NS city is Ghaele. He has II, Ethereal Vision, and DC 25 or something color spray vs death. Not very 16-19 CRish

And the resurrections. That's the worst aspect of the ghaele IMO, it'll just res whatever you kill unless you take them down first.

Snake Pit is just about doable as a paladin, CoT, cleric, ranger, bard, etc. with neutralize poison. Just annoying, is all.
Re: NS, I like levelling evasionless toons there instead of FD. Could probably use a CR bump.

Snake Pit looks like it should be good for a more or less pure druid actually, since they get poison immunity at 9. I think the area is good for what it is, the CRs are fine considering the snakes spawn in fairly large numbers.

[mining]

From recollection MA has a shortcut to the frozen wastes map.

[Nyeleni]

From recollection MA has a shortcut to the frozen wastes map.

Yep, there is a portal in one of the houses that goes to the frozen wastes south of silverroad bend. Still, you have to be careful not to die to fireballs and the halberds there. Although a simple invisibility spell might get you safe to Avendell.

[Rufio]

Man, how did I not know about that? I always ran through ash mountains with the help of invisibility potions.

To be fair though, if I was a newbie and ported there, I would have no idea where I was.

[Bargeld]

"Ice Flats" I think...

Personally, I think the quests should run toons through 1-10 or 1-13, if you are playing naturally (no pLeveling). SL seems to do this well, and it also tends to slowly move you farther and farther out of town with each advancement, and relatively in the direction of avendell-ish, kinda. At least it gets you to the road.

Other factions are mostly the same from what I know/remember. They seem very well thought out, as far as the tasks, advancement, and movement on the maps towards somewhere 'else'. And some of the jobs DO give XP already, and items. Not all of them, but some do.

I understand it requires development time, but my best suggestion would be do address the concerns in this post with jobs/quests that may be more elaborate and numerous. I think that changes the flavor of the server a bit though, away from the PvP and more towards the PvM and RP aspects. Right now, PvP isn't real strong nor does it occur as often as it has in the past. Guild attendance is low on 4 of 6 factions. It hasn't quite been the same since the most recent server move. The downtime seems to have hurt the population a lot and we never recovered to those previous numbers. Bioware getting hacked and the master server being down doesn't help attrition either. It's a rough time my friends, but if your local faction goverment could help you out and put you to work, it might become a bit more bearable

[DeputyDog]

Great comments.

Perhaps we do need to dumb down the start a little more, and make the jobs more obvious and accessible.

I have been playing an MA wiz for a couple of days. By far the easiest to level with a good hvy cross bow, darkness and a pet. MA has so many areas to level in that their only drawback is their isolation.
Might be that we steer new users towards them.

Id like to see some work put into the ancient road areas and have them scale better for AO players. Its a pretty big jump from goblins and cr 1 stuff to bears and gargoyles.

The Pech tunels for RK are great, but unless you know they are there, a new player will never see them. Maybe a sign..

NS City, the entrance could be depopulated or moved away from the road so you can safely pass by.
I think the Halflings should either get a bump in cr and equipment or remove their shields as they are a pain in the [censored] for their cr.

Im ok with removing the rez from Ghael and maybe the shields from the guards if we want to keep crs where they are for NS City.

One other idea.

What about adding the gear from each factions guards to the random artifact drops. Since there is no real way to get the gear from you own faction's guards, it might make a nice way to aquire it.

[Tsavong]

I have been playing an MA wiz for a couple of days. By far the easiest to level with a good hvy cross bow, darkness and a pet. MA has so many areas to level in that their only drawback is their isolation.
Might be that we steer new users towards them.

Garagoth and MA are not that isolated any more there is a 2 way MA only portal in the abandoned house to the north of the temple and the Guild of Death and Strife's hall which will take you to the ice flats. Which is another good low lvl area that is step up from the other areas outside the city and you can walk to Avendell from there too.

Regards
Zerg

[Elagneros]

From recollection MA has a shortcut to the frozen wastes map.

Ice Flats. It's off to the side, and there are the bandit guards and higher level bandit spawns to contend with though. And when you get to the Bend, the are some more guards right near the transition. It's still easier than the mezzloths though. And I haven't found where the other end of that portal is.

Personally, I think the quests should run toons through 1-10 or 1-13, if you are playing naturally (no pLeveling). SL seems to do this well, and it also tends to slowly move you farther and farther out of town with each advancement, and relatively in the direction of avendell-ish, kinda. At least it gets you to the road.

RK is similar. The Sentinel jobs start at level 1 for the easiest with the hardest being doable around level 10. MA I think is similar. I can't speak for the other factions because I haven't done their jobs. The old jobs for LA were all noob stuff though, you could do all of them by about level 5 or 6.

I understand it requires development time, but my best suggestion would be do address the concerns in this post with jobs/quests that may be more elaborate and numerous. I think that changes the flavor of the server a bit though, away from the PvP and more towards the PvM and RP aspects. Right now, PvP isn't real strong nor does it occur as often as it has in the past.

That really doesn't bother me. NS4 was supposed to have a nice system of quests but none of them got much development. The faction jobs aren't bad, but there's a lot of stuff that could be fleshed out, what with various named NPCs in neutral areas that don't really do anything. I've suggested in the past that neutral rift shards with the exception of Avendell and Frostdale require the completion of a quest to use.

What about adding the gear from each factions guards to the random artifact drops. Since there is no real way to get the gear from you own faction's guards, it might make a nice way to aquire it.

I remember suggestions in the past that requested a faction merchant for selling faction gear to faction members. We could always put that in, and combine it with faction jobs. For RK, it could go like this:

The final Minemaster job involves a fetch quest to the Duergar Stronghold. By completing that, Chief Irontop gives the player the privelege of buying duergar equipment. (Duergar gear is level 5 for guards, 9 for named NPCs.). Finishing the Sentinel path give the player the right to buy the equipment the Stronghold guards use, which is all around level 13. Since Sentinel needs around lower teens to complete, this should be pretty balanced. Most of the other faction have gear sets that break down in a similar way, though TC only really has the guards around the "city". MA doesn't have a lot of low level guards either. And AO has no jobs...

[DeputyDog]

AO has jobs.. the exterminator one. Very annoying.

I like the idea of giving the player the ability to buy the gear.

Since that requires the most time, maybe both. Add the faction gear to artifact list for now and into the jobs as time permits.

[Bargeld]

[Rufio]

MA has so many areas to level in that their only drawback is their isolation.
Might be that we steer new users towards them.

Generally, people stick with the first faction they play when it comes to pvp and joining guilds. You can't play favorites without damaging the player balance of the server.

Personally, I'd just start people out at level 3 with a little more cash and some cure light wound potions, or adjust the exp system to give a lot more exp at levels 1 and 2. It is really only the first 2 levels that are hard and discouraging for new players.

[DeputyDog]

Starting at 2 or 3 may be an option.

The thing I noticed with my son playing is that he didnt read much of anything and just wanted to jump in. There is a lot of info that you need to know to make a class/race selection. Maybe we need to put a big sign saying goto the wiki as part of the intro lol. Or something in the initial cutscene that would allow them to delete and start over. Or an angel/devil in the initial entry area as a choice instead of joining a faction..

[DM Ireheart]

A devil angel located in the planar rift room with the ambassadors would be nice. That way if the toon is jacked from the onset it can be easily deleted without having to go through the rest of the process of selecting an ambassador ect, ect.........

[Amoenotep]

what happened to the devil angel in the start area?