You guys might remember me, but, if not, I'm an on-and-off long-term player with some game design experience from my RL career. I keep trying to come back to Hyperspace, the only Continuum zone I've loved for all these years, but I can't. Simply put, the newbie experience is horrible. I've grinded through a ton of resets, as we all have, but I swear it's getting worse despite positive changes. I like getting 10 xp for kills early on, and the starter kit is great, and it's not even money that's the problem really, though I suspect it will be eventually... It's the 2000 xp before I can even buy anything as basic as a shredder. I look down the item lists and see xp requirements that are, in polite terms, batshit insane. 2000, 4000, 6000, 8000 xp? Are you kidding me? The only way for a noobship to get a kill is to lame it by lancing in the center and praying, or do the same in the rare once-a-day flag games that only involve a couple people on either freq. I, a veteran of many years who loves the zone, deem this prospect too annoying and hopeless to pursue. You think newbies are going to put up with it? Hell no. I have to cheese 200 kills before I even get to use a shredder? Which is, itself, just a cheese weapon to cheese more xp at asymptotically lower rates as I try to grind up to 8000 in a zone with minimal population before it just resets and erases all my effort? Hell no. This zone has always been about veterans in godships slaughtering masses of newbies flying paper bags full of dog poo. Whether or not that's the design intent, that is what we have. Well, guess what guys? It's 2013. Newbies don't sign on for that kind of thing anymore. They're wise to the way games play out, and they have thousands of options that don't involve grinding for days before they even get to use an interesting gun. Fix it so we can play, please.
