Sparks everywhere ,
well ppl say that all the time , I got a** kicked in VR/PR and so forth. First of all
this is a PVP game, WAR game if you wish. If you want to farm , put something in the ground and harvest it , there are plenty of options out there.

The whole point of this game is to kill or get killed.

Did I liked it when I got killed 100+ times in VR? No ! . Do the ppl I kill now in PR
like it ? No ! But that's the game we all choose to play . So the fact that you are killed in
pvp maps is not something we need to discuss here.
If you want to make a stand , just do it, don't call the other players names, no need to get angry. Just play or quit. And please don't tell others what kind of game this is. We know.
That's why we are here.
The fact that someone is trying to lvl fast in VR doesn't automatically make him/her bad player. Everyone is free to try .
Your argument here is that he/she will get killed fast just because he/she is a "low" level. Well I can kill you just as easily even if you are 70. And even if I can't , someone else will . So lvl doesn't matter.
Ppl are pushed to VR/PR at early levels simply because it's hard to find pt these days and EXP in Pando and etc. is way too low.
And also many new players have no idea about White Tiger , Large EXP and etc.
Besides no one is forcing you to take him/her in your party. Again no need to blame him/her
for joining or not being able to do anything in a 60+ map.
Grinding in VR/PR without gear is a major pain , even if your lvl is appropriate.
Once again in-game economy should be a priority.

In light of the rolling back of servers.

Maybe utilizing the time during maintenance to bug-check wouldn't go amiss.

In my opinion, to retaining or keeping new players stuck in shaiya, we need to let them have a good 1- 30 gaming experience. By experience, I am not saying about levelling exp.

When I started playing shaiya [ep3] It was 1-15 and 20-30 pvp that keep me going on, It was the thought of me getting / buying a heroic 20-30 pvp gears that help me forget the pain of grinding and farming. I never bought ap but It was very fun. Items were expensive but affordable and We can compete against others. Ofcourse there were ubers then, but we can still kill them if it's 4 vs 1. Now, ubers are a 1 man army. meh!

My point is, If new players could have a great in-game experience in 1-15 and 20-30 pvp, I am sure they will love shaiya for a long time.

So i suggest we bring back the fun of pvping at lower levels, not only for new players, for old ones , and for shaiya to be the best again.
Yea.. maybe im a bit selfish and you may think i dn't care about ap-spenders. But what the heck, I love shaiya.

If you want new players to come and actually like the game enough to stay something needs to be done about the power leveling. At this point in time you can form a CR party all you want, but finding a room in CR to grind in is a no-win. Same thing with most places on map 1 and 2.. I know people leaving the game at higher levels cause they can't get a party in CL or VR due to constant power leveling 500/hr parties taking over areas. It has gotten to crazy.

There needs to be a Skill were u can Eat a Mob and gain Hp/Sp back Kinda like the Priest Skill UR, be a fun Skill !

Economy is the best way to retain new players. If a new player is able to support his/her in-game
needs then he/she will stay and enjoy the game. Gold drops are a form of credit system implemented already in the game (no development effort needed) all it needs is to scale up. It's simple and effective and gives access to AH board market. Many ppl are suggesting to simply increase drops or put more valuable items in the drop tables, that sounds nice, but at the end
it will not solve the fact that there are not many able to pay customers.
What's the point of having a better drops in areas where only a few can farm?
Also 1-15 grinding path , should give more, alot more. Why? Simply because that's the first impression the game makes on a new player. All I see now are NM/HM toons comming to 1-15 pvp zone only to stat pad the "elite" there. But I am against putting kill limit on those zones as was previously suggested. It will be a devastating move.
Better in-game help system is also needed.
Noticeable gold drop increase is the easiest way to fix majority of the in-game economy issues.

frenchfrey17 wrote:

There needs to be a Skill were u can Eat a Mob and gain Hp/Sp back Kinda like the Priest Skill UR, be a fun Skill !

not for greenpeace

make the quests run till a player can level meaning sometimes u run out of quests and then have to find party to get the rest of the level or 2 for another quest to show up some players prefer to solo and achieve at least the first 20-30 levels ^^

Everything that has been mentioned
>Easier to get gear
>better XP n reward (preferably usable gear) off quests
or
>open up the quest gear NPC's
(non oj noble gear vendors & dread gear vendors n ect.)

a new one
>make lvl 3 lapis virtually free *edit
Make a merchant like GWH so they can be mass linked without farming.
why not, no one uses them.

This doesn't inpact experienced players n opens up a few more options/ accessability to the newer people in game.

Gold could be increased a little bit to help the baby toons buy npc gear n link the baby lapis.

But this still doesn't do a whole lot tbh. If I had just started at EP5 n had to lvl thro VR, I'd probably give up on it.

Sidenote- put the within 10 lvl kill pvp cap in place.

My main worry remains the sheer AP cost of being able to step even slightly above the PvP Mincemeat level. I did a calculation of the AP cost of a decent 70 PvP set in September last year, Tactics. You'll find it by checking something you got from me while I still was a GS.

In it, I compared the AP cost of making a decent 60 PvP set in Ep4 with the Ep5 cost of a 70 PvP set. The difference was disturbing, mainly due to the fact that Ep5 ensured just about every lapis required an OP hammer and a Lucky Charm to attempt to link. The AP cost for an Ep5 70 PvP set, with what I think was an optimistic estimate where OPs and LCs went, was a SEVEN digit figure (six digits for Ep4). And that was without enchanting and rerolling for OJs taken into account.

1,000,000 AP = $10,000 - that's pretty serious money for a game.

The recent onslaught of tiereds might have halved this cost, but even $5,000 for a 70 PvP set is ludicrous when taking into account what a P2P game costs to play. A F2P game needs paying players to keep it F2P. Thing is that Shaiya in its current state does not allow for casual spending in any meaningful way - unless you shell out significant amounts (talking thousands of dollars here), you will not enjoy the 'Pay to win' aspect of the game. And if you are among the few capable and willing to spend this kind of money on the game, you buy dominance, not an edge over the rest. Which in my view is wrong. Paying for benefits should give you an edge only, or enable you to make up for lack of time to play and farm on par with the hardcore round the clock players.

And now we have Ep6 coming soon. With new armor sets that need linking. The gear conversion tokens will only help slightly on the cost of creating the new gears. You will still need the Helmet lapis, the lvl 7 and 8 lapis, the elemental lapis, the debuff lapis, the OPs, the LCs, the recreation runes, the lapisia, the GM enchants. I fail to see how the cost of this will be significantly lower than it is today, which means I do not see how Ep6 will help retain players in the long term, especially for endgame PvP.

The Shaiya players are looking for fun. Aeria is making sure with their extortionate AP requirements that the fun is minimal and only for a chosen few. The seed of this course were sown already by the start of Ep4, when the shift from temporary gain (nosses, remedies) to permanent gain (enchants, OJs, more gears on the item mall) for AP started. Add that not even obsolete AP items (best/heroic accessories to name some) have been added to the drop tables since then (not to mention the continued refusal to let slotted helmets drop ingame, making it even harder for non-AP spenders to compete), there has been NO compensations for the non-spenders ingame as the content range of the AP Item Mall has expanded.

This has gone on unchecked for almost four years now. And it is not like there's been a lack of warnings from the community nor the GSes. I can only conclude that this has been a willed policy of Aeria's, and that voiced intentions in the past to fix this for the benefit of player retention were at best token handshakes.

The players are surely not to blame for the AP gap. I don't see Ep6 closing this in any significant way, even if the nerfing of enchant benefits depending on level is a nice touch. If Aeria wants players to stay with the game, there has to be a life for the low to mid-range AP spenders, not just the highrollers.