New player view of game

Hi,

I am a new player and so far have spent 50 hours in game, which I know for this sort of game is not a lot, but it is enough to give a good feel of it.
Overall I really really like this game, it is great to find a game that has a grind element, so many games have had that removed. It is also challenging as it does not lead you through with quests, and the tutorial gives just enough to teach you the game mechanics.
That being said there are a couple of areas that I find a big turn off, and I have added a thread here so it would not be visible on Steam, as I would really want to give a positive review. I would really like to see this game become successful, without being nerfed for the dedicated players.

Combat is terrible. I am not good at moving and parrying while fighting, I am old, have bad eyes and slow reactions. So I speced Blades, strength and fortitude. Should be a good dps tank right? Wrong, blades are the lowest DPS. As I have seen in other threads this is a known problem, It really needs to be fixed soon. new players need to have some chance to kill something, a life and death battle with a hamster may be comical but doesn't make you feel good.

Consider that some players can only play weekends, planting a crop that is dead before you next logon is pointless. Increase the time that a crop remains at 100% to 8 real days. Likewise, food, and plants need to last longer.

Carrying capacity. In a game that is about collecting resources, not being able to carry them is a problem. Especially when carts are a relatively high level item. So far I have not found a way to increase my strength.
The solution I have which is terrible, is to take off all armour and weapons. As I cant fight anything it makes no difference to my survival, but does free 20% capacity.

In the crafting I think there are too many specialisations at low levels. An example is Wainwright. I think the low level cart building should be part of wood working, ie cart handles etc. This would allow a new player in a reasonable time make a basic hand cart. Then have the Wainwright for better wagons at the master and artisan level.
Similarly with armour, merge them so you start of with basic recipes using any material grass/cloth/leather. Then later specialise into the higher skills like pure bone armour.

Only one toon, being restricted to only one character is not good, being able to have an alt adds to the enjoyment of MMOs.

The ultimate turn off for me, which is what actually prompted me to write this, and has got me to the point of wanting to abandon the game is skill levelling. It kicks in far too early and is too aggressive. I really like crafting, and like to be self sufficient, at least to medium levels. So I started levelling my skills, doing a bit of everything. After a week of this, I needed to make a lot of rope, so spent hours grinding grass. I was happily watching my basketry go up, when i noticed my weaponcraft dropping. What is more it is now lower than when i started the game.
I have talked in game, and read up online. It now seems clear to me that the game actively stops you being able to everything. I was told one method of levelling most of your skills. You have to level every skill that uses INT, e.g. basketry. then wait a week so it doesnt have any usage and mark it as '-' in the skills menu. Then level your other skills and basketry will be 'consumed'. This is a lot of fuss, and knowing that hours of grind is being blown away is not great. It would be fine if it was happening to achieve something wonderful, but to just craft the lowest level items is very disheartening.

Overall I have mixed views, I really want to play this game, but for me the auto levelling breaks the game mechanics.

Regards
Catopia

Hi Catopia,

May I add some thoughts to your suggestions? In general, I agree with them, although I learned to accept that some will take very long time before being implemented.

I fully understand your problems because I had the same ones in beginning. I also started with blades and of course could not hit anything before being killed myself. Later I learned from others that shovels are the longswords in this game. It is possible, so I learned, too, to change the original stats like fortitude etc with one of the "+" signs under the green bar. So I could change my bad original settings with better ones. Helps a lot :) And I could do this up to 4 times. At the same time I learned e.g. that increasing strength is best done with leathercraft.

What was a real challenge for me was asking questions in the chat. I was so afraid of getting rude answers that I hesitated long time. I admired others who asked freely what I wished I dared to ask. And they got normal answers, informative and I learned a lot. Meanwhile I know that I can ask whatever I want, I get helpful answers from other players. The Xsyon community is most time VERY nice, so my advice is, ask in the chat whatever you need. If there is no immediate response, ask again some hours later. Someone will give you the answer you need.

Due to several handicaps I am a solo player. One of my handicaps is permanent trembling of my fingers so aiming or perfectly hitting animals is impossible for me. Every second hit goes anywhere but not to my target. So what? When I die, I am revived with still having all my items (except when a revenant got me). I de-installed several other games where I had to walk back to my dead body - and was killed again before I could grab the leftovers. Xsyon is different and I enjoy this fact. The first skill which I got to be 100 was the running skill. I am very good at running away from revs and animals :D

I am also old and slow and I hesitated to join a tribe because my playing times are not relyable, not constant, so I started my own tribe. Just wanted to know whether I can survive with that although the concept of the game is a different one. I tried to be an allrounder and it took some months until I realized that it is much easier to focus on a few skills only, so re-thought my choices and distributed the skills on several accounts. And I am still nearly every day in this game, still enjoying it very much. I found that other players were very helpful for me even if I am not in their tribe. Again this is a refreshing experience in Xsyon.

Regarding skill leveling, I fully agree that it is complex and a really heavy challenge in the beginning. If I raise a skill by about 3 points, another one will drop by 1 point, so in total all can still be managed to increase. It takes a lot of time, true, but in theory it is possible to get all skills to a very high level. I am a pensioneer, so I have time, why should I hurry to skill to max and then be bored because nothing more is to be done? I got used to the skilling system - and I asked myself, "Isn't it the same as in real life? I am not perfect allrounder talent in RL, why should I be ingame?" I would wish for you that you can get used to the skilling system as I got used to it. Xsyon is worth being played a lot even though this system is complex and challenging.

The developer designed the game on purpose in a way that players have to work together, trade and walk around to buy items. He does not want a bunch of soloplayers, each in his own tower with power-levelling. It was a bit of learning curve for me, but meanwhile I think he did it right. The game was meant that new players join an existing tribe and learn in this safe area how to do things best. The developer is one single person only doing all by himself, so players suggestions take long time until they appear ingame. We need a lot of patience, but for me it is still worth playing.

Now when I re-read what I wrote I realize that even with my handicaps I am now able to kill revs, and some of the larger animals like dogs, mule deers, and those awful coyotes - - - as long as I have a safe place nearby to which I can run when my hit points are low. :D This means that I learned to cope with some of the challenges of Xsyon, and I still have a lot of fun. :D

In total, a huge "I like Xsyon" from me! :D

What a great and insightful post Catopia! I love it.

I agree with you on almost off of it and I can totally see why you are having the issues you are having. Rework needed in those areas for new players something fierce.
Leveling up a stat? That takes a long long time at the start, which it should be much later in the game. Having to make 10000 rope to see maybe 6 or 7 points in a stat that is 20 or 30 starting out is very depressing.

Combat needs a lot of work. I've been asking for power type of special move attacks for a while and use a targeting system instead of the basic Mount and Blade one we have now. At first I was behind it, but after I saw how it worked in action way back in alpha, it's been needed to be updated for 7+ years.

Couple of things I would like to point out that is not really true for end game players, but I can totally see it for new players is the "I cant do everything thing" this is wildly untrue. Solo players are rewarded greatly at end game of being able to do everything in the game without a real issue.
New players have a huge learning and skill curve. However, once you get past a few basic things you can do everything with ease. I would love to see more direction on support for trade and splitting up skill caps for toons, however, I also think with the population of what it is, that would be bad overall unless we got a huge spike in people playing to support it.

Right now I think the biggest issue would be some of the things you said with the slow grind at the start for players. Also higher end challenges for mid to end game players. Once you get past the feeding yourself, crafting a saw, and learning how to kill a few animals the game soon because super easy and no threats. Then its just a building a simulator with a massive grind.

@Wyry.
Note that you can use the + and - icons on skills and not suffer any skill decay when first starting out. It's only when you start getting more than 3 skills per pool trained up a little that you would suffer any skill decay whatsoever. Where the real problem I think for new players is, the grind to get to say 60 skill takes a lot longer than it should. I would love to see the curve of skill gain speed slow greatly after 60, more and speed up more before 60. Even though to me as a vet it would seem super fast, I can see how it feels for a new player making 5000 rope to get tailoring to 60, seems way to much. But to me it's superfast because for me to see just .1 stat change I would need to make (and have) 50000 rope at 124.8 in my stats.
I do feel like the newer players should be seeing the game less of a grind like that. When you make a few outfits of cloth, you should be well skilled it (25 or 30 skill), when you make 30 outfits, you should be easy over 50 skill and making 200 outfits you should be 75 skill. However, this is not the case you would need to make like 5000 outfits to make it to 75 skill. Which there isn't enough players playing the game that can use that, so you are stuck throwing 99.9% of what you make away.
Like tools. I've deleted on my new toon at least 200 baskets full of tools training toolcrafting to 100. (Yes I've counted, because I made the baskets full of baskets just to make tools in to delete)

It is good to hear all my comments were not in vain. I did not realise it is a single dev writing this, from what i have read so far it sounded like a small team. Much Kudos for his development skills.

Re the throwing crafted items away, that is one aspect I hate in any game. A possible solution could be as simple as setting up quest totems with repeatable quests that give XP boosts as rewards for crafted items.
Scatter them over the map, low level ones in founders isle, higher level ones in more dangerous places.
That would encourage exploration, and make baskets of tools valuable to a new players.

Combat for me is not terrible.

I like the way it is now, I like timing my swings to hit an animal after its tried to hit me, and then to move out of its reach, constantly moving, waiting for my time to attack it while it continues to follow me. it cant do a flanking maneuver or do a special move, it just runs behind, mostly missing, but hitting me sometimes. Its kinda of easy once you learn it but still challenging and
rewarding when you down a big animal, you accomplished something.

Crops, If I plant crops, I make sure i login to harvest them, If i forget or I cant login then i plant more, if im that desperate for food ill fish, takes only a few minutes to catch a fish and cook it.

Carrying capacity, increase your strength through leathercraft is all i can offer
Ive increased my strength so I can carry more, thats the reward for playing the game.

You should definitely have spoken up earlier in chat and maybe you could have avoided losing skill levels in craft because someone would have told you about the skill locks.