Player vote: Lower softcap to 300?

I reckon there are other options to keep newbies hooked up. Once there is a mayor and he gets messages when a new Character is born, it's his duty to contact the young ones and to offer them help. This is within the community then. There might be other ways to make capitals more attractive like markets etc. There might be gamewise methods to keep them playing like a tutorial with overlays in the main page etc. that guide you through the most important steps without reading anything. Also a mail a week after Character creation if they didn't play would be a possible reminder. Since some Players almost hit 300 after one month of playing in which we were several days on a boat, I'd say at the end of the year there will be Players who softcapped every weapon skill. So my vote is: no.

I don't think 300 cap would help with this. No one I know trains secondaries near cap anyway. I think the big issue is not being able to communicate with the new players. We would have to be within a few tiles of them when they are online to communicate with them. Currently cap doesn't offer any reason to visit it other than to accept or turn in quests which is why people don't go there much.

Communication is a big one.  The capitals largely seem deserted of people who'll chat, the markets almost never have much available, groups often have little to nothing in their descriptions to give clue what they're about, guides are scattered and difficult to find, the interface isn't very intuitive to the beginner to find information they need, there are two different forums for when you're logged in or not (which is confusing), even the message board system is wonky as you can't see messages sent, and messages that come in are very often weirdly formatted. 

Some of this could be improved on the back-end I think, but some of it requires more effort from the community too.  For instance, group descriptions or market trading.  Of course, I'm sure there's good reason more experienced players don't come to the capitals often to trade.  And maybe there's something the devs could do to encourage more visits there. 

This is just my opinion as a newbie myself.  I don't mind it being a bit deserted and know there's action elsewhere.  I also managed to find the information I was looking for, for the most part, on my own-- but it took some work and I still find things I missed even after almost 2 weeks.  I can see why some might lose interest after a few days, when they first start and see little going on in the capital or can't seem to find what they need.   It certainly gives a bad first impression that there's not much going on in this game.

I remember when I first started playing TPS, as soon as I was able to I ventured out and about, I had no wish to hang around capitol. I wanted adventure. My friends and I communicated thru mirc, and those chat rooms provided the source of my sense of belonging to and participating in the game as much as what I was actually doing in the game world. It's Discord now, instead of mirc, and the effect still holds true. It's not global communication, however, its communication with my group, my buddies. What we have to do is pull those players into our groups and get them involved.

I tend to agree with Grahf. 300 or 350, there is no reason to sit by cap for most players.

Essentially it's the game community around the game that will keep them interested. Joining discord chats, forums, groups etc.

For a player unfamiliar with this sort of platform though, it's going to be the initial quests that really affect their decision. They have to be corralled into going through quests to learn game system, without being able to stray too far, and without getting bored. There needs to be a solid walkthrough tutorial, with a reward.

The current quests are helpful, but I don't feel it's enough of a true guide for someone who enters with zero knowledge.

Has anyone played the game Pardus? It is a 2d php based game also. By far one of the best newbie walkthroughs I have come across. It might be worth looking at for inspiration. Essentially it gives cadets in a new space world academy a couple of missions and tasks/fights to perform in their own mini newbie world, giving them an introduction to factions, fight system, gear, trade system, etc. Then they graduate with some sort of reward, and choose their path from there. It's a bit long, but perhaps a condensed version of something like that. Kinda like the boat landing, but boat may be a bit too restrictive of an introductory world. Perhaps in combination with.

With gamers nowadays, it's gotta capture their interest in the 1st few moments, or they are on to the next one on the list.

This is not a fast paced game. Lowering the cap may only achieve making it more of a grind for the active player community, which may begin to lose interest. I've already heard players express a similar view unfortunately. I feel there are better remedies to capture the interest and perk up the activity of new players.

I like Tiana's idea (COBD chat essentially).
Also, after the initial rush to gain main skill, people will be all over the place training and gathering materials anyway.

Being brand new to this genre, despite having 10 years of experience with text-based MMOs, the biggest "hurdle" for me when i started, was the lack of guidance.
I know most of the old-school players with tons of experience in here do not want the community to be helped too much in the game, but if you want a new generation of gamers to play a game like this, you got to make it easy to understand and get in to.

Some prefers to play a bit like a loner, especially in the start where they check out the game.
But the very first quests tells them to kill "this" and "that" - But the players have absolutely NO idea of where to look etc.

So if they do not reach out themselves, they can easily get demotivated from the very first minute they arrive in the game, despite having an interest in the game concept and genre.

To me the skill cap makes no difference.

The 2 main things that would help solve this issue, in my opinion, is:

1: Much more guidance and help during the starter quests and the first days after sign-up.

2: Much better communication tools ingame, as some also have mentioned in here.

... If we except, or only value those who are perceptive and skilled enough to get started by themselves, i don't think this issue will ever get fixed.