If we don’t do better at KEEPING new members it makes no sense to bother to try recruit. We lose almost 98% of those we recruit.

I suggest we:

1. Make it easy for them to get here.
Get cKGB volunteers to either bind or have access to every Racial Alliance (To make it easier for them to get here – pass runes).

I suggest if possible we get one to bind to marshrall. This why we doing need to ‘rank up’ people who we don’t even know (I think this is insane)

[My crafter I keep bound to a ork City and he can trade with Ismash]

2. Make it easy for them to survive or handle the deaths so they don’t go elsewhere or quit.

3. Help them understand what is expected of them (when to show up and what they should have) like defending the city, seiging, etc.

4. Mentor them, new people go for gold, wear their best shit, and go back to newbie towns when they die.

Anybody else have ideas?

Hey Smash, please help me understand this part of your post. I think you were distracted and butchered it.

"This why we doing need to ‘rank up’ people who we don’t even know (I think this is insane)"

Sorry, perhaps I shouldn't post while I am standing around Marsrall trying to defend.

I am mentioning ranking up peeps to get things out of the KGB bank (runes/portal shards). I have seen brand new people we don't even 'know' who later leave to go to another guild (when all our assets happen to disappear) get ranked up to get something out of KGB clan bank.

This is a issue with game mechanics that I suggest we adapt to, without risking KGB assets. A cKGB in every alliance area can hand a rune or portal shard to people, not only recruits but anybody else.

Having peeps in every racial alliance area will prevent a noob with no skills from having to navigate to whatever location we happen to be hanging at or offer them the guild bank.

This post is in effort to make it easier to get peeps here and make them stay here (and maybe not risks KGB assets in the process)

My 2c.

Considering that KGB doesn't have stable (or safe) home base moving players out of starting locations is not a good idea. It certainly made my life a lot harder when I had to re-learn surroundings multiple times. Plus harder spawns, plus city getting raided.

Ideal assistance should come in following form:

a. Gear. Bag of crafted R40 weapons, bag of bone/banded armor.
b. Showing spawns around _starting_ city
c. Sitting down and answering questions, let go to separate vent channel and I will answer any question you have way...
d. Gold for meditation
e. PvP practice - help understand PvP by dueling and/or showing the ropes.

Was talking to smash the other night and we both seemed to agree that sponsors need to take more of an active roll in guiding new members(in the ways of KGB and the game if newer) That or possible having someone else assigned that task, Any member should have only 1 recruit to guide..... hands on.

Agreed !!

Couple ideas:

1. Sponsored Kraken runs - set times 1 or 2 times a week. Take more than minimal number of player needed to run it (& maybe bigger ship?)

2. Red vs. Blue training matches, controlled baby steps PvP training in group settings.

3. Guild dungeon crawl - go take over not-very-popular dungeon, get some gold, possibly get "good odds" easy PvP.

Couple more things - we need group tactics and someone in charge of giving orders, calling targets, designate roles. SB had strong group play, DF from what I have seen does not. Is it just KGB disorganized or it doesn't exist?

City/Hamlet control. Can we get _something_ that we can control? Squatting dilutes our identity.

Sinij,

I used to strongly agree that new people should train in newbie areas, but experience has taught me most of these people do not return. The last time I gave gear out the new person came from Ork lands to MS to get 10 sets of scale, a bag full of R40 axes, and 2K Helbore (he was working alchemistry). He went back to newbie lands later that night and I never saw him with KGB again, a week or so later he was off the roster.


Most of the new people who stays in newbie lands don’t join KGB except in tag for a short period. What happens is at most we are a party chat club to them, we don’t run to new flayed elf to help them, we don’t develop relationship/trust. Really what good does KGB do for somebody living out of newbie town? They are more likely to develop relationships with guilds that do hang out there, in fact new members may be getting griefed by these guilds and what is KGB doing to protect them? Many of those guilds DO protect newbies by running out when a red is about.

One of the things that helped change my mind (besides the disappearing recruits) is watching Prism get GA up to mastery level I believe, wearing shit gear at the salamanders outside ms. I did the same thing with my merchant (to 60) near a ork town (he was red to most of ms) in a short period of time. Most of the new people reach for hard mobs and more gold, so they wear expensive stuff, get rolled, barely are able to hit the mob because they are running off to heal all the time, or comign back to loot thier corpse all pissed off.

Kracken runs are doable if we can get a good crew together. Can’t have too many new peeps at a time in the event somebody tries to jack the boat. Most of the experienced players can earn that much gold without risking a boat, on the mobs around ms.

I do think dungeon runs are a good idea too, but hard to organize. The last organized event Grizo organized I was the only other who showed up and it was to farm good gold making mobs.

As far as giving new peeps gold, I personal don’t have much gold and never spent 1 on meditation points. I actually thinks this hurt new players as again they are out trying to farm mobs higher than their skill to get gold for off line skill gains and need it more than ever because they aren’t gaining skills in game.

When we can field more people than DHOV does than maybe we can keep a hamlet, today it would be a loss. Practice defending MS a lot to get an idea.

Ismash,

I will be blunt. In the current state of affairs, following KGB is even less helpful than leaving someone in newbie lands. MS is a revolving door of apathetic 'alliance' and constant rowing red ganks. I don't even know why we are in this alliance, but that is entirely different topic for a different thread.

Not to disrespect Prism's admirable achievements, but gridning salamanders won't get you meditation gold, reg gold or regs or enough HPs to not die in 1 hit. Even maxed melee mastery won't get you anywhere near combat ready. You need gold to meditate stats and magic skills, or you need gold to buy regs to macro stats and magic skills.

The game is at least a quarter easy than it was a year ago.
An year ago you probably would get interrupt twice more times by a gang of reds interrupting anything whoever you were doing.

The alliance thing you will not get(understand), because we are playing this game for almost 2 years and had partner up with dozens of different guilds and its really a different topic.

If you cannot skill up now, get gold and etc, right now, I do not know what to talk to you, because people were able to do that in the past and it was more painfull that it was now, and was too a reason to people quit.

Darkfall is a painful experience, a challenge beyond any game made before, I can say is not fun for newer players(and people used to the mmo thematic park), the concept of full loot with few resources to skill up, together with FPS skill level and slowly MMO advancement,get the conflict of skill up to a new level.

Maybe is that the objective of the developers of this game, or you get the challenge of skill up slowyly and painfully for more than a year or just give up, on this problematic game.

What you want to do with your limited freetime,
Play a painfull niche game with few people? I do not think so. Only fewer people can do that or want to do that, maybe they are Sadomasochism or whatever, and even when people want take this challenge when they had a good developed toon, they become aware that they still are completely destroyed by other player, or other group of players, and finally quit, because beyond any grind, DF takes more than any other MMO that I played, and like you I played several others MMOs.

Honestly I do not know why I still playing DF, I think is because the challenge, Im intellectually challenged by this game, mabye Ill not stop until I master all human players skills and group coordination skills to be succefull(my brother and my cousin still skilling up). Maybe I quit like the others blaming this or that or giving a lame excuse like others, who knows!

Do not take personally, but I could bet if you or other KGBers were give a fully leveled maxed char in DF, you end quit in 1 month later, blamming another broken aspect of the game.

Ex. Vuldan,Wolfang,Mor lander,Donk,Darka,Represent,Jaguar..the list is huge, they all had more than ready pvp chars(most of they grinded for 2 year, daily), they all left DF blamming one or other broken aspect of the game. In the final, they had no more fun, or got pwned by kids too many times, and decided that was enough, after all grind and time spent.

Can you compete with kids that have 24/7 hours to play in a full loot, high level human skill game,flooded with bugs and bad mechanics?
Vuldan,Wolfgang,Donk,Darka like you they had normal life, jobs, family etcs.. If hypothetically they had all time like the powerhouse members guilds TSL,Sick bastards and the reds that come do harassment on us everyday, the history would end different.


Can we blame you or them, for not have fun in the game?
NO. So time to move on.

Very Well Said Mithus!!

I blame Canada... =)

I am not buying it. People you listed played SB, UO that all had open PvP and often more ruthless than DFO. Maybe "the one or other broken aspect of the game" is really to blame?

Well Said Mithus.

MS is easy mode compared to Andruk. In andruk they used to come and stay ... ruining your game play, here they come and leave. Hell I remember standing inside KGB GH on pac surrounded by orange, and going for long periods without seeing any green. Bad guys are nothing new and ms isn't that bad nowadays.

"apathetic 'alliance'"? You joined as the old one fell apart... remember when we were in the same faction as OPP on UO... again, nothing new here. Who are you talking about the ones who left or we didn't want in? If it is apathetic it is because of us all, not df. You think otg & dhov is apathetic.. to what? KGB?

No grinding skills doesn't give gold to get off line skill gain, but it gives you the skills... that is the point. Again the focus should not be meditation points, if it is that is the problem.

I played UO a year before I got my first combat GM, before UO was easy mode and you could GM Resist in a week or two with friends, before Razor, never macro'ed (At that time). Is DF alot harder than GMing taming in UO? I think not, never macroed that once and it took over a year. Standing out side deceit dungeon following creatures "Will you be my friend" isn't as safe as it sounds. In DF today you can skill up faster than I could when I started UO. 60 in a couple of weeks... lol. In UO I had over 5 characters with GM resist... want to talk about grinding?

There were other people there too who seem to do well here, Houdini, supercow... enemies for sure, but somehow they do it. Our enemies seem to succeed. Off line?

I am not being a smart ass but think the whole meditation thing is crap and undermining what they are trying to do. People think it is broken if they don't have enough gold to buy the skills they want. Back in my day we had afk swimming. Oh they still do just why bother if you can meditate? I have actually seen one wicked guy afk swimming at geodins more than I have seen kgb in the past few months

P.S. I mean no disrespect to anybody. There are many reasons for not liking a game or not playing, but it isn't broke or a problem with the game if gold isn't as easy to make gold(so you don't have to play the game to skill up), or if this or that isn't the way you personally would prefer.

Hey I have an idea, why don’t they create a mirror image of the land mass, where you can’t harm anybody and people can gains skills and farm freely, we can call this land Brammel… they can put all the uber shit there so somebody that has been playing for a month can go toe to toe with with a buff character playing for years. They can even limit who can go to the promised land… oh wait, that has been tried and didn’t work to well.

But this is all getting off topic or maybe that is the topic... if new people are thinking they should be able to come and earn enough gold to get developed off line, than that is the problem, that is what is broke, not the game.

For me ... it is not about the game or pixels so much as the people I spend time with ... KGB is a great group of people ... tons of opinions on the various games we venture into.

With a finite amount of gaming time ... I am honored to be playing with all you ... whatever title it is.

We'll all play what we have fun playing, while waiting for the next game ... then the one after that one.

Rock on!!!

My opinion, is a combination of bad systems that take place on DF, plus people can deny but I do think is true, both MMOs have the combat tab, df do not have that, to old people is harder to master it, how many kgbers dueled my cousin mumm and lost to him, he´s young and seems master the combat with more easily.
So.. to me 3 aspects

- People have less time to play, and the big enemies have all time to play.
- Several bad systems in darkfall(siege system,bunny jump etcs,cities to not protect you, actually cities drop people morale by the griefing caused by hostiles)
- Combat is harder to master and be good at it against young people.

Sum all together and you will have an harder time trying to skill up against people that can grief you all day long, with few resources and mobs to get gold.


I played UO, I can say it for 100%, pvp in UO was a lot easier, specially using UOAssist, other Macro tools, that you combine with combat TAB target system and TADA!, you do not have to aim, so is just a matter of the right macros and the right timing(that df still need too). In DF we have to aim one arrow, spells, and melee weapons against people that have 30 ping, at a moving target is all different. :P
- comparing df combat to UO,SB you must be kidding. We have examples, that people that were good at UO,SB combat system but are trash in DF.

Overall, other main factor is people in KGB do not have the same time that they have to play before, and if you cannot get a consistent group of players to play together at same time with same objectives we will have a harder time.

I don't agree with the FPS thing being a problem. In fact it's one of the biggest appeal of the game : player and not toon skill matter due to FPS. It also gives real hiding using the terrain and the friendly fire can be used against a large undisciplined zerg.
That's what we all dreamed about when first following this game while playing SB hardcore.
The first month on EU when all toons were roughly the sames were crazy good with even fights taking place everywhere all day long. I can remember coming back from work then playing 3 to 4 hours non stop fighting back and forth between Khosgar and the little hamlet south west.

Then the realization of how important the grind was and how insane it was hit. And it hit hard.

I'm going to be blunt.
When I want to play some fast action, I can load my BFBC2 and be in a game fighting on even ground in 5mn. For hours.
Or I can log in DFO, get my toon ready with all the gear I need. Either wait for a raid or go raid / try to find ennemies. This can take 30mn to 1h until a non automaticly lost fight is found. Then I can bitch about paperdoll locks. And go back to thinking about leveling some ray spells or get some other spells to surging because it's an edge which is needed when you don't have the ping one.
And well, I don't have time to devote for that. If I was still a student, it would be another totally different story because even with this grind DFO is the best MMO out there.

You are being disrespectful, so I am ending my participation in this conversation.

My apologies to you and anyone else who thinks I am being disrespectful to any people. It wasn’t to attack you or anyone else, nor was it the first time I posted that or said it in vent and I think it was appropriate here.

Well most of us that are still playing have limited time to play right now, me included. I am fighting to keep my job, and am here from sun up to down.
I think if there were more fun people playing, it would be funner. It is the people, not the game. I personally hope to be back soon, after the dust from this reorg settles in the next few weeks.

Good luck with that Jet .. I am going through similar chaos at the State. 4,000 layoffs to be announced ... and they hate seeing us contractors stay while the union employees get the pink slips.

Looks like Tas isn't the only one holding frogs. Sounds like someone is really turning on the charm... when i mean charm I mean cuffing the balls. =P

I am in the same situation. I put insane hours in and work for one of the biggest or the biggest outsourcers in the world, in what they have said is one of their biggest targeted skill sets to outsource. I struggle just to do the basics before I go to bed, like make dinner, and lunch for the next day, dishes, etc. Not to mention health/family/etc issues. I can mine a rock for ore but not hit the daily Iklid spawn for 14K a day.

You struggle for your career and to make as much of it as possible and at some point some bean counter may determine they can show the share holders they will save .10 cents a year by shit canning you (and forget what revenue they lose or if your replacement is even capable of learning your job at all).

Today (literally today) I fixed problems I told them about 2 years ago when they assured me they were professionals and it wasn’t a problem. Whole teams could not even find the problem more less fix it. I just collect a paycheck making 50% of my base pay in ot and let my superiors make excuses and their BMW SUV payments while building their custom homes. My 2005 Kia Rio parked in from of my apartment isn't so bad. Oh wait my Kia is in the shop because I got hit by an uninsured African immigrant turning from the left lane to go down a road on the right.

This was the change Obama was talking about?

Feel for ya Bro.

Check and see who the corporations are funding for President. I think it will all be clear to you then.

Don't hate me because I crush dreams and break spirits for a living.


I can't help that I'm custom made!


Wooooo....Dance all night long!


You must be 18 or older to get on this ride.

Just think, if you worked for GE you wouldn't have to worry about it. Since GE didn't pay ANY taxes for 2010.
You get all the perks when the CEO of GE is one of the President's economic advisors.

I wonder how much shit Bush would have caught, if one of his economic advisors was a CEO of a company that didn't pay any taxes.

How about none. You can always tell when someone answers a question with a question, if you were right or not. :-)

Boy, GM's profits sure looked good this quarter. I bet those 1.2 million people that didnt lose their jobs are happy. Good thing we didnt listen to the right and let the whole US car industry bite the dust.

Too bad the right voted to continue subsidies for the most profitable industry in human history on Wednesday.

Tisk Tisk.

So your saying that if Bush had a CEO of Haliburton as an economic advisor and Haliburton didn't pay any taxes that year, you wouldn't have ANY issue with that?

Oh and... FORD was in the same boat as GM, they decided not to take any tax payer money and they've done fine. Imagine that... the private sector MAKING it without the government, WOW... what a concept!

Just so you know, I think there should be a flat tax for everyone. Oh yeah... that Industry also employs MILLIONS of people. So yeah... let's tax them into Oblivion. I just find it very fucked up they want to tax oil companies an extra tax while GE doesn't pay ANY taxes. Granted I don't like paying $4 a gallon for gas, which is another wall of text. But to put it short, if Obama would yank his head from his ass and start consuming our OWN natural resources, it would put more people to work HERE (In the states) and we wouldn't have to take OPEC rubbing shit in our eye's, in fact we could tell them to get fucked. And yes... we could still work toward finding better and more efficient alternative energies while doing so. You can walk and chew gum at the sametime can't you?

My point is, we need a flat tax for everyone. None of this... "let's tax these guys because they are making to much" bullshit. The Government wouldn't lose ANY money with a falt tax, in fact they would probably gain.

The whole GE thing you have to be careful with, as to what you exactly mean.

Did GE get away without paying any taxes?

Absolutely not.

They paid every single cent of the Federal, State, and local income tax paid on wages. That means all the stuff that really counts like wage, FICA, SS, and workers comp. On top of any actual state that has a income tax as well. In addition GE paid every single cent of Sales tax in every single State it purchased goods, services, and municipal infrastructural.

What GE didn't have to pay anything on was the FEDERAL TAx LIABILITY! Just make sure you get it right. That tax liability is what is paid on revenues made inside the United States. What GE did is put all of its cost centers in the US, and place all of its revenue centers outside of the US. GE basically had a 2B USD revenue in the US last year, and with taking full right offs for all allowable itemization to the full legal amount was able to offset the FEDERAL TAX LIABILITY for that 2B USD.

The whole rub of it is that no revenue made outside of the US can be used inside of the US or it instantly becomes subject to those set of rules and taxes, which are stiff.

So what GE did was work the Corporate Tax System, which is what the CEO said they did right after this story came out. Don't blame them because our tax code is fucking broken. Be mad at the fucking tax code and the bureaucrats who refuse to fix it because they have been bought and paid for a Trillion times over.

Does not compute.
A profitable industry have no need of subsidies.

I understand they paid taxes on goods and services. My point is the tax system, where they were able to write off the federal tax. If they want the big earners to pay more of their share, a flat tax would do that. I'm not sure why people are so surprised, when a company makes a lot of money that produces a product that's in such a high demand, where everyone with a gas engine has got to buy this product to get from point A to point B. When you have hundreds of millions of people buying your product, YOU ARE going to make a lot of money.

If GE made an electric car that was highly efficient and practical, and millions of people bought that vehicle. Then people would be hating on them as well. If YOU made a product where MILLIONS of people would buy it, would you be for the government taxing just YOU more because you make to much money in their eyes? The blame needs to be pointed back to ourselves (government) & OPEC. Speaking of OPEC, as you know they are made up of middle eastern countries. People that may say their our friends, but they really aren't. When we have someone else dictating what we pay for oil, then common sense should tell you that's not a good thing. Common sense would kick in and say "hey" we have a lot of our own oil. We have nearly 2 trillion barrels of SHALE oil alone that's not being tapped, as well as offshore and the oil we haven't tapped in the tundra of Alaska. Why are we setting ourselves up by relying on OPEC to dictate what we all pay, when we have all of these resources. It's just absolutley fucking retarded to keep up the status quo.

In the end neither the tax code or the way we get our oil will change. Unless everyone bands together and makes it change. If Obama wants to see more jobs, I could almost guarentee that if they loosened up and started giving more permits to drill offshore and open up SHALE oil. There would be more jobs, that alone could win him the re-election.

I like a global Tax System. Where when the Federal Government and State Government are giving you massive subsidies to set up your cost centers here in the US, that you ought to pay a damn flat tax rate on all Revenue created outside the US. Even if that flat tax was 5%, the US coffers would get tens of billions a year just by doing that. Consider it a flat penalty for moving manufacturing and work off shore to lower cost centers globally.