Questions About The Trial Island

MChavez

Is it true that once this newbie isle is implemented, will all players have to start there including active subscribers who create alts?

If this is the case, what do they intend to do with all of the newbie areas in the world right now? There are quite a lot of starter areas that would effectively go to waste. What are the plans for them?

I realized yesterday wandering around northern Qalia how much space is given to mobs and quests for levels 1-12. IMHO, it is far too much for levels that a player can get through in one day of playing. I keep thinking about how higher level content would better utilize the space in which lower level mobs and quests currently occupy. It seems to me that the up and coming trial island will further exacerbate this problem. Have the devs come up with any solutions? Or even talked about this at all?

sepher

The developers have said a few times the current newbie areas will be revamped to low- and mid-level hunting areas/dungeons once the Isle of Dawn is released. 



So yeah, there'll be one newbie area. No mention of whether theres only one starting point on the island, and one arc of quests leading up to the dungeon that supposedly exits players from the island. 



So while there's only one area, no tellin' if that means nothing race and class specific in terms of how everyone begins.

morpin

The best hint about what  trial island is going to be was in this thread:

http://forums.station.sony.com/vg/posts/list.m?start=15&topic_id=29189&#343339

Silius responds to a poster's conjecture:

VGPlayer wrote:

The last approach, locking the old starting content for the account until at least one character has completed the starting island content seems a viable solution and may in fact be what the team plans to do.  The only real drawback I can see is that a player's first character will be missing out on starting cultural content that helps provide flavor to the game.  This is bad, but with a suitable alternate story-line - i.e. some logical premise as to why the character must begin in the world of Telon in some other land than his homeland - I could actively support such a solution.  Heck, this would actually add richness to the game because it is a whole nother starting area - first goblin char sees Isle of Dawn, second tgoblin char sees his homeland.  The lockout would not be an undue strain on the programming team, as this needs to occur anyway if the island is to serve as a free "trial island".  One can imagine a scenario in which there would be no way off the island except via ship or teleport (ship would be cooler) and you would NOT be allowed to take a boat out untill you had completed the final quest on the island.

This is pretty close to the plan for the island VGPlayer, naybe you should apply for our design opening.

Lead Game Designer (Vanguard)

Orphes

Originally posted by MChavez


I keep thinking about how higher level content would better utilize the space in which lower level mobs and quests currently occupy. It seems to me that the up and coming trial island will further exacerbate this problem. Have the devs come up with any solutions? Or even talked about this at all?

Is under the impression that they will have new content towards a higher level then it is today in the existing starting areas. The areas would still be there but is made towards higher leveled player then the lvl 1+ today.

What level it would be is not something I have heard.

But would that not be a remedy to what you see as a problem?

MChavez

Thanks for the responses. I personally think the trial island is a big waste of resources. However, something must be done to keep new players and if surrounding them around other new players helps, so be it. It is unfortunate that so many aspects of this game were developed with large populations in mind, hence the myriad of starting areas. From a cultural standpoint, I would hate to see these starting areas get wasted. At the very least, give the new player some reason to return home so they at least get an idea of where their character comes from and what their culture is like.

Torak

 

Originally posted by MChavez


Thanks for the responses. I personally think the trial island is a big waste of resources. However, something must be done to keep new players and if surrounding them around other new players helps, so be it. It is unfortunate that so many aspects of this game were developed with large populations in mind, hence the myriad of starting areas. From a cultural standpoint, I would hate to see these starting areas get wasted. At the very least, give the new player some reason to return home so they at least get an idea of where their character comes from and what their culture is like.

I agree.

 

The value of placing a starter area to level 5 is minimal at best. You are looking at 2 to 3 hours of gameplay. Hardly enough time to make a difference.

A better plan would be to just release a free trial as is. There are teleporters ingame now and continental chat. This pretty much eliminates the need to meet other avatars pixel to pixel.

But starter islands are one of those SOE traditions like raiding. They gotta put one in regardless of the fact it screws things up for already existing areas and it provides no real long term benefit.

Anyone remember that starter island from EQII? How about as far back as when you started on the pirate boat with Capt Feathersword yelling "Ah Hoy me hearties"...what happened there? They switched to racial starting areas....In fact they pulled out that entire starter thing with the citizanship quest and all of that. What a waste, spoken dialog and everything. I'm sure it wasn't cheap to make. And don't get me started on the amount of times they changed SWG starter areas. In the end, they always give you the option to just skip them.

What they should do is improve what they already have. Rewrite some of the opening quest or something. Move some of the NPC's around so they are more obvious in the starter areas. There is no need to invest all this time / effort / resources to something that is going to provide 2 to 3 hours of gameplay for a new player and ZERO for the current player when it basically already exist. They should be working on NEW content, new art, polishing...

 

MChavez

 

Originally posted by Torak


 
Originally posted by MChavez


Thanks for the responses. I personally think the trial island is a big waste of resources. However, something must be done to keep new players and if surrounding them around other new players helps, so be it. It is unfortunate that so many aspects of this game were developed with large populations in mind, hence the myriad of starting areas. From a cultural standpoint, I would hate to see these starting areas get wasted. At the very least, give the new player some reason to return home so they at least get an idea of where their character comes from and what their culture is like.

I agree.

 

The value of placing a starter area to level 5 is minimal at best. You are looking at 2 to 3 hours of gameplay. Hardly enough time to make a difference.

A better plan would be to just release a free trial as is. There are teleporters ingame now and continental chat. This pretty much eliminates the need to meet other avatars pixel to pixel.

But starter islands are one of those SOE traditions like raiding. They gotta put one in regardless of the fact it screws things up for already existing areas and it provides no real long term benefit.

Anyone remember that starter island from EQII? How about as far back as when you started on the pirate boat with Capt Feathersword yelling "Ah Hoy me hearties"...what happened there? They switched to racial starting areas....In fact they pulled out that entire starter thing with the citizanship quest and all of that. What a waste, spoken dialog and everything. I'm sure it wasn't cheap to make. And don't get me started on the amount of times they changed SWG starter areas. In the end, they always give you the option to just skip them.

What they should do is improve what they already have. Rewrite some of the opening quest or something. Move some of the NPC's around so they are more obvious in the starter areas. There is no need to invest all this time / effort / resources to something that is going to provide 2 to 3 hours of gameplay for a new player and ZERO for the current player when it basically already exist. They should be working on NEW content, new art, polishing...

 

 

While some people say that a trial would be too big of a download, I disagree. I bought this game via Direct2Drive and the file size is 6GB. While that is a big download, it took me maybe less than two hours to grab the file. However, there is the subsequent patching of the game which took about another hour. Are people going to be patient enough to wait  from 3-5 hours just to play a demo? I don't know.

I think a retooling of the low level areas would make more sense than developing a trial island. You are right. With riftways and chat, a new player is never alone. I keep thinking the same thing. There is so much already there that creating new land or a new starting area is kind of pointless. They should retool what they already have.

If anything, they should decrease the amount of starting areas, consolidate them. Why have two or three starting areas on Qalia when there's enough of a low level area around Khal alone that would easily accommodate them all? The same goes for Thestra. Martok is understandably Orc/Goblin and that works for them. Consolidate the Tanvu/Cai'al Brael starting areas. They could take much of that newbie area and retool the quests/mobs for higher level characters.

The greatest thing Vanguard has going for itself is its size. However, the utilization of the land sorely needs optimizing. I won't even go into the amount of wasted space up in the mountains. While it is not a waste in terms of exploration, there is absolutely zero content when exploring along the ridges and valleys of the games many mountain ranges.

But, yeah, anyway, like I said, I hope this move works out. If it brings more players to the game, so be it.

Torak

Originally posted by MChavez


 
 
While some people say that a trial would be too big of a download, I disagree. I bought this game via Direct2Drive and the file size is 6GB. While that is a big download, it took me maybe less than two hours to grab the file. However, there is the subsequent patching of the game which took about another hour. Are people going to be patient enough to wait  from 3-5 hours just to play a demo? I don't know.
I think a retooling of the low level areas would make more sense than developing a trial island. You are right. With riftways and chat, a new player is never alone. I keep thinking the same thing. There is so much already there that creating new land or a new starting area is kind of pointless. They should retool what they already have.
If anything, they should decrease the amount of starting areas, consolidate them. Why have two or three starting areas on Qalia when there's enough of a low level area around Khal alone that would easily accommodate them all? The same goes for Thestra. Martok is understandably Orc/Goblin and that works for them. Consolidate the Tanvu/Cai'al Brael starting areas. They could take much of that newbie area and retool the quests/mobs for higher level characters.
The greatest thing Vanguard has going for itself is its size. However, the utilization of the land sorely needs optimizing. I won't even go into the amount of wasted space up in the mountains. While it is not a waste in terms of exploration, there is absolutely zero content when exploring along the ridges and valleys of the games many mountain ranges.
But, yeah, anyway, like I said, I hope this move works out. If it brings more players to the game, so be it.

Well personally, I don't even think reducing the amount of starter areas is a good idea. The amount of time you spend in them is negligible. They all drive you to regional cities anyway. Its all already there.

The main issue with VG is the world is designed to support a huge player base. If they had a free trial these past few months, at least since they improved it, this may not be such an issue. In all honesty to many people got burned by VG at launch and no one is going to re-up. Especially since most players are not forum trolls like us. No one knows. It bombed, people moved on. The interest was there at launch. This was pulling something like 200k players and ranked in the top ten most played MMO's on xfire for about 2 months before people dropped off because of tech reasons.

Trial and advertising will do the trick. SOE has done ZERO to promote the game at all. They are waiting for this miracle patch which could be a while yet. It works, trial it.

But as usual SOE will do it the hard way and the least efficient...just so they can give you the option to skip it 3 months down the road.