Thread: RpXp?
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Old 10-09-2002, 07:23 PM   #15
Loremaster
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Join Date: Sep 2002
Posts: 35
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In the interest of truth in advertising, I would like to comment.

- Non-auto attack.
Not positive what you mean, but there are plenty of 'aggresive' mobs, and dangerous places.

- Lots of quests.
 Yes. there are quite a number of them.  Sadly, the implementation is severely lacking in my opinion.  Most of the quests involve bringing something to an NPC who grants a certain amount of coin and/or decreasing amount of XP based on your level.  I spent the first two weeks in constant frustration because players nearing the end of their stay in 'newbie' areas would kill the quest NPC.  It does not change.  with 200-300 players online, a LARGE percentage of them are 'questing', which means that by the time you are finally  able to do anything more than bashing rats, the quest items are not available. All of the quests I came across allowed players to do them multiple times.  This means that even after performing one, they go right back and do it all over again.  Multiply that by a hundred or so players, with another large number of players who just like to go kill the quest NPC's and you see why quests are a sad joke.  

Quests depend on pure luck of being at a quest item spawn and being able to get it to the NPC before someone else kills it.  Players who have spent a lot of CASH in purchasing certain skills that allow them to teleport have the advantage here.  These skills are at the top of the skill sets all the players I met who got them through hundreds of hours of play were at a level that the XP and coin for those quests were basically meaningless.  

-Heaps of skills that you have to train up, not just practice.
The variety of skill offerings at achaea truly are nice. Being able to fashion a voodoo doll that can kill another player anywhere in the lands is just cool.  Tattos are fun too. However,  most of the imprortant skills are only available to certain guilds.  Wanna be a Serpent Lord that uses a mixture of Venoms with weapons and armor only available to Knights? Nope.  Guild dictates your primary skills, and to a large extent, style of play.  I dont understand the bit about  'train up, not just practice.'  A new player can come into the game knowing nothing. Never killing so much as a baby rat, and if they spend some $$ on purchasing credits they can convert to lessons, they can have the same top-level skills that others have spent months of time in game to be able to achieve.

- RP-enforced by the players in the game, not the imm's.
This is true from my experience.  The best way to deal with the newbie killers (which seem to abound) is to talk to the head of their guild.

-Extensive and involving class and character selection.
Didn't seem that extensive or involving to me.  With the choice of guild dictating your skills, its more a matter of choosing a race that isnt too hampered by your guild choice.  I did not stick around long enough to try all the race guild combinations and cannot definitively say that choosing a race low in the Intelligence stat would not do well with the Occultists or Mages.

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On a separate note:  I found Achaea to be very much a non-newbie friendly game.  I tried four different guilds after being completely ignored by the leaders of the first guild I tried... it was not much better in the others.  You would think that members in the same guild would at least show SOME interest in recruiting and training up new members.  None of the guild leaders I met displayed any of the traits normally associated with leadership; they were leaders only in name and title.

When getting any kind of assistance from veteran guildmembers is like pulling eye-teeth, there is something wrong.

I do not consider achaea to be solely responsible for this other than the way I feel they have designed the game to attract and reward players who only care about themselves.

I actually *did* meet three players who were there not only to have a good time but actively took part in making it fun for others as well.  None of them were guild mates.

"If it was really as bad as you make it sound, why did you stay?" you may ask.
One reason is because I kept hoping that things would improve as I gained skills.  Another reason is because I wanted to find another place to play before quitting.

Achaea has some interesting features and it obviously appeals to the 200-300 players I see during prime playing times.   My biggest disappointment is that the crafting/merchant features I originally joined for did not seem to be a realistic path.
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