Let me preface this post to say: I have been playing this game for more than a year now, enjoy it a lot, and have 2 high rank cities and am Archmage of my own FS in the usual game worlds. So I am a very experienced player.
I came to beta this week, for the first time (finally), to take a gander at the summer event, and to inform my FS what was taking place and what they could expect when it comes to the other worlds. I would like to let you know how the game will strike a new player in the first chapter, which I know isn't a huge percentage, but if you don't take care to satisfy and retain new players, it's lost business. And I know it's a big and almost impossible balancing act to satisfy both new and long-term players.
It's not too challenging to start a city under usual conditions, but when you add the event to the mix of quests, it will feel daunting and overwhelming to a new player. Let me explain.
It was hard enough to get the relics and complete encounters as a new player, without the added expectation of the event. But I hit a wall, being in chapter 1, when it asks for 2 scrolls of provision. I don't even have the ability to build the Magic Academy yet.
One quest asks me to complete Squad size upgrade 2, but to build the academy requires a different route - City expansion 2, which will eventually take me to the Magic Academy, which also requires Advanced Residences. Combined total to get to Magic Academy for those 3 techs alone is 71 KP. Once the academy is built, it takes an additional 24 hours for 2 provision scrolls, IF I even have the relics to make them. So just to get those 2 scrolls is a heavy time investment. I realize there is 4 weeks to complete the quest. But this is the overwhelm and, is it worth it? that a new player might experience.
Now, it's possible that if I did neighbor visits, I could get some provision spells in chests doing visits. However, I'm on the edge of the world and don't have full neighbors. The neighbors I do have are very few in number and all 3 chests have not appeared when doing my neighbor rounds. Because my score is only 700, Fellowships are not likely to include me as a member to do full rounds. The large trades I see are from long-time high ranked members that ignore my little trades for 25 or 50 goods. I cannot fight provinces anymore because I'm too weak. I cannot negotiate provinces because I don't have enough goods (see the goods quests dilemma in the next paragraph). So I can't earn KP nor enough chests to randomly obtain a provision spell.
Some of the quests require 50 goods of my own boosted factory to accomplish. When I barely produce that much in 3 hours, then have to trade to get the other 2 non-boosted goods to complete the 2 succeeding quests, it's very discouraging because I'm left with no goods whatsoever to build my city. If I post 4:1 trades, everyone completely ignores them. As a high ranked player in other worlds, I always help players I know are brand new if they request those kind of trades. To me, they're a drop in the bucket. But for some reason, players in beta don't seem too accommodating.
So you see the challenges a new player faces. It's in the new stage that I'd imagine you'd want to build your player base. If they are all abandoning their cities due to this kind of frustration, then those of us who are experienced players are not happy being surrounded by abandoned cities with perma-building Main Halls.
