Feedback from a new player (long)

Hello,

So I’ve started playing Orbus via the level 10 trial (amazing idea by the way, I think this was a great business decision for you guys) and I wanted to compile my feedback in regards to my time spent playing.

  • The new player video is nice, but it needs follow-up:
    The video tells you how to start the tutorial mission, which is important in the sense that unless you knew to wave your hand you would have no idea how to hail the NPCs (would PROBABLY figure it out, but still), getting an overview of “what to do” is great but there’s still a lot of missing information. For instance the video shows very briefly the mission NPCs and tells you what kind of missions they offer but not where to find them. Only about half of the mission NPCs have markers over their heads, and what those mean is also not explained. So, for me personally as an example I had no idea where to find the scavenging NPC until I randomly stumbled upon him, same for fishing. This is a big deal because these are all ways you gain XP and not having access to them makes the leveling process that much more of a grind.

My recommended fix: Make locating and accepting your first mission from each NPC part of the tutorial. This will eliminate a lot of confusion and lead to a happier playerbase who know all of their options for getting xp (not everyone wants to grind out mobs 100% of the time).

  • Early Quest items need a spawn boost:
    Now that this trial exists, there needs to be a big decrease on spawn timers for the areas just outside of highsteppe. Nobody wants to stand around waiting for the thing they need to spawn so that they can progress. This can be slightly remedied with the first suggestion, as if you know about and have one of each mission type in your log then you can complete other objectives while you are waiting for this to occur.

  • Mob cons are basically worthless because of the random nature of gear:
    I had several level 5-6 missions while level 6 but could not defeat the enemies required, despite several attempts. Even on enemies that I am able to beat, it’s usually only by a small margin of my health that I survive the encounter. This I believe is because there is an assumption being made about what stats a player should have at a certain level which includes gear. When there is no vendor to buy gear from though, the assumed power level should be substantially lower in order to account for the random nature of gear drops. When you get a PvE mission of the same level as your character you should not be faced with a mob that you cannot kill.

I think that’s all I can think of at the moment. I’ll edit/add more if I think of anything else. Overall I think you have a very solid foundation for a game here, but I think if you really want to take advantage of this new approach to pulling players in you have to make sure that the trial players are not lacking in information or frustrated with the game during that period. MMO players are particularly fickle with all of the options available, even considering the VR hook here, and most won’t return to a game they did not enjoy the first time around.

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Just a feedback on your feedback:

Mobs drop gear based on the mob’s level. So if you’re lv 6 fighting a lv 6 mob, the mob will drop lv 6 gear, while lv 1 mobs will not drop lv 1 gear despite you being lv 6 etc. (From what I understand)

Different classes also handle mob farming a lot differently. Some classes handle soloing mobs very very easily, while others don’t or is hard to handle solo/skill required.

Paladin for example is the easiest to handle mobs solo imo.

Regardless I believe ALL classes can handle Red star level enemies solo with enough practice.

I guess I could be wrong but it’s hard to believe that it’s an L2P issue, since I’m using all the mechanics at my disposal (fire arrow, poison arrow, crit spots, charge shots) and the enemy just rushes you once they’ve been hit. It’s not like I can dodge them or something. Once they’re in your face there’s not much you can do. Your movement speed is slowed, so any time spent moving away from a melee auto-attack is better spent getting another attack off. If these enemies were using some channeled skill for big damage or something I could understand that but these are auto-attacks that are for all intents and purposes undodgeable. Additionally the enemies have a tendency to teleport around which can make it a pain in the ass to fight them and while they are teleporting around they are still hitting you with auto-attacks.

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You shoot from afar, and you place down a trap, and you spend more time teleporting than regular moving, and you only teleport when you need to (Mage/casters shooting orbs at you or melees about to do a slam).

The trap is the thing on your right shoulder.

Also you have applied talents right?

Edit: You can run backwards as well

The trap doesn’t even work on most of the mobs I’ve encountered in terms of holding them. Not talking about mages. No slams, these are auto-attacks that are killing me. And yes I’ve applied talents.

If you have the current level gear, and you’re not going against anything higher than red star difficulty you should be having no issue.

Also you want to be basically maximum distance when first engaging so you have amplitude time to get those shots in even before they reach you

Therein lies the problem, gear is given via random drops. If you are having problems killing mobs of the same level, you cannot then get the level-appropriate gear. The system itself just doesn’t make any sense logically, like you need to kill the mob to get the gear that will allow you to kill the mob…?

If you can provide a video I am sure we can give you feedback… Or if you are doing everything fine then that video could be great user research for the dev team to rethink how hard overworld enemies are.

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red star difficulty is about 2-3 levels above your current level. At lv 6 you should be able to take on 1 lv 8 mob just fine etc,
and yes a video or if we can meet up in game and see how you are doing we could see whats going

Randel, the tutorial NPC, should have a text appear in front of him that tells you to hail him by waving.

All of the mission NPCs should have their icons above their head, unless you have new leveling missions from them, in which case you should see the dark grey diamond. If you’re not seeing either of those, please snap a photo and put it on the forum as I’m fairly certain that would be a bug.

The way experience works in this, you only really need about 3-4 of the vendors to get to level 30 at a good pace.

I’m not certain that they will all have a quest for you during the tutorial. I think one of them starts off at level 4? Could be wrong on that, but I agree that could be a useful addition to the tutorial.

The issue with raising a spawner is that new players might be swarmed by enemy respawns if they are in a shard with fewer players or if there is a lull in new player entry to the game.

You should almost never have gear any lower than 1 level beneath your active unless you did so on purpose (like to hold onto an xp boost gear). Every public event gives you gear, every mission turn-in gives you gear, and every level gives you gear. Were you opening the boxes you got?

For the most part, you are correct. That said, there are a few quests that are meant for a small group to kill, like the V. Stafrages on the plateau. Or Sorceress, Colossus, etc. The rest of the quests it’s just a matter of skill. Don’t pull more than one melee mob at a time. Dodge ranged attacks.

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Thanks for the feedback all. I don’t have any video capture software nor do I have any experience with it. I’ll have to just take your collective word for it.

The salvage missions npc does not have an icon for me and I had to lead a couple of new players to it yesterday

If you are using fire arrow, that might be your problem. Every arrow other than poison and piecing is worthless. You should make sure that you hit a target with every charged piercing arrow you shoot.

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charged piercing, poison, hit arrows in correct timing as bar reaches top and jump backwards should do the job.

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Huh, ok I’ll swap to piercing arrow, thanks for the tip!

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I think i’m going to just try another class. Either I’m just no good at it or Ranger is gimp, either way it’s worth a shot swapping to see how something else compares. I’ve watched Scoundrels of the same level or lower absolutely blow through mobs that I barely finish off.

Interesting, perhaps that impression is why there’s so many around. Sadly they are the worst in dungeons, tho. Several new scoundrels I played with are below the tank or even healer in dmg. The main skill to achieve is curve your shots to high ranks, which is normally a thing to be practiced for 100s hours. New rangers I played with are double as high in dmg normally, not great, but decent. Apparently noone can suck at them so badly, they also just recently got a dmg boost.
Shamans got pretty decent dmg tho, more than both of them currently, and there’s literally no skills whatsoever which require practice on dummies or such. I play with lots by now who got shaman as their alt-spec for trash because it’s a no-brainer, drop your totems, stick out your palm release balls and done… great for trash and apparently also on bosses which do not require to move that much. Some skilled mages can hardly keep up with that and the shaman takes only a fraction of time to ‘learn’. Might be nerfed though once people notice and whine again about stuff being all too easy.

Both a problem and a chance is that you can actually level entirely without killing mobs, and then come back to your kill quests later. Do other things first, especially events which give you a hell lot of xp and armor. Mobs are levelscaled but it’s still way easier if you are higher, got more class skills etc.

I’d not recommend fighting red or yellow mobs if you can fight green, the xp isn’t worth the time it takes to bring them down, best do something else and come back or team up with someone to be faster with the mobs required for quests. Also there are low-level quests which actually already require a group, for example for the Volur Stafrage and others Atropos already mentioned above.

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Are there DPS meters in instanced content? Just curious to know how you figure this out.

Rangers get gimped big time in the overworld due to mobs moving faster than you and you needing range to do your damage, you have to pull from a big distance to do it most efficiently, playing in a group is a lot better as a ranger.

I’d love some changes to be made to the globe system or for rangers to quickly get away from mobs/players while in combat so we can keep our range cause right now it’s bad

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the game client (for PC) logs a combat log, and people use third party parsers to calculate their dps after the fact, although you can definitely do an in-game overlay as well using something like ovrdrop.