I understand what you say but its MMORPG (massively multiplayer online...), don't you think they need to have some help to do those quests ? i cannot believe that one sentinel or sw can go right to suberranean factory at level 31 and complete all the quests there. There should be something that keep current players go back to their low lvl alts and help the newbies (its not that they don't usually want to, they no loger see the point of using their viledon alts if they don't get anything significant in return). Why not make ignis vortex and the 2 nemessis dungeons drop something we (as high lvl players) need ? We go farm and we encounter new players that want to do quests, after we finish the dungeon with them we show them the map bosses and eventually take them down with their help. This ain't a single player game, you can't grind alone forever; think abut entering a new online game and your screen gets spammed with messages (x got sp earrings, y got wizard trinq, z got tears of the spider queen), you realize you are the only one in the map and the fun is somewhere else, noone helps you unless you are lucky to find some bored dude in enocia that can help you wit their alts. I repeat myself a lot i know, but all i want to suggest is:
Replace that useless uniques in starter packs with improved gears, noone tells newbies those are trash, i find so many 25-39 players in janus and turnpike with +8 nt uniques, noone tells them even normal tradable rares are better,
Give them a daily or 3 day cd quest that gives them at least 1 nt unique laser scanner, what point in getting uniques from dungeons if you can't use them ? We got tons of those in the last event but low level player could not, they will not stay forever 120G in ah, and even if its lower, they will have to pay up to 500 G for scanners or even more until they get the good stats, what is left for the enhancing ?
Every time you introduce a new patch, with new costumes, new dungeons, fixes for the skills, you avoid solving the the small problems that don't seem important to you (but they are in the long run). @Bash i beg you, enhance the viledon base guards's damage. I just can't get over the fact that newbies get raided hard if somoene notices there are more than 2 players in the base. There are imbalances in the lower caps too you know ? Aren't the low level battlegrounds and map bosses the progression you talk about ? Progression doesn't allways mean leveling, you can return to 39 or 49 to farm something and have some fun. Where is the fun if you are unfortunate enought to be a newbie with a bad timezone, noone to help you get the unique shoes from cairn or asmodeus, but there is 1 fully geared enemy.
I once asked someone to come viledon for 1v1, he came but someone saw us go to ns and it became 1v2, thats ok, the third one comes in their team, thats ok i can take one down at least, one more player comes to help me finally, but the enemy team now has 5 players (and they are not there for fun just for that instant gratification they get when they kill you in spawn point and don't even let you heal up, and they also put wanted on you so everyone see how awesome they are <<< its not for kill achievement i am sure they got it a long time ago), i regged for janus next and gues what they did not, because that would bring them and us in equal numbers. Do you want to let new players experience that ? It is like this since i returned to lvl 39 with a new class i try to learn.
Do what you think its right, its your game, but if you don't want to implement any of the above, at least include a gameplay manual button in the launcher that opens up a pdf with instructions. Don't let them waste resources on base gear, or spend too much for items they might get later in the game, put your gm's or gs explain the class combos to them, you chose them to help layers afterall - they can't allways be online to answer questions and most non- english players won't even bother if they don't understand the question, not everyone is returning player to know all, and let them know the server is actually populated, not all come to forums and make account to see the online players or chat for help. Don't let half of the game dead please. How are they suposed to have fun when they start against +12 gear players ? if they wanted to fell like working on a character they could go play fallout or skyrim or any other rpg, but they chose mmorpg because they want some human interaction as well. You don't have to give them instant gratification allways , but something to keep them in the game long enought for a guild to notice them and take them in.