[Suggestion] My insane idea on how to deal with tutorial quests.

First off, I hate them. I want to step into the world on day one, and run off into the distance to make it on my own.

Some people need a little hand holding. My suggestion is to have the tutorials separate from the game world. Elite Dangerous does this, and it is fantastic. They could have all of the tutorials for all of the systems contained offline in the main menu. This keeps it so that the game does not have to give you some handouts trying to explain the enchanting or crafting systems, but it also would be a place that they could put sample classes with training dummy's so you can see how things work before you invest in them in game.

This idea would make the tutorials become useful reference that can be explored as the played needs, not a barrier to game play that is going to get clicked through as fast as possible.

Another possible benefit is that if they are playable when the servers are down, it would give you something to do while you wait for servers to come online, or just while you wait in the que to get in the server.

Any thoughts on this?

Find more posts tagged with

Comments

CSP

I really like this idea, or perhaps a voluntary starting location such as Runescape's Tutorial Island before jumping through one of the gates to Verra. Any an all things learned there stored in an always accessible Options -> Help -> Tutorial section perhaps. I'm always forgetting things so it would be a nice feature, regardless whether I completed the tutorial or not.

CaptnChuck

Finally, some good ideas.

Xenotor

+1 this isnt really something new but fully in the spirit of AoC. "Take the good systems of other games and combine them into something great"

This would also help a lot at launch day to spread the population faster.
Lets say we have a server population of 10.000 active players.
At launch all 10.000 will try to join at the same time.
That means with 4 starting zones: If everyone is spread equally (We know this wont happen), then we still have 2500 per starting location.
Now Jahlon explained to me that there are 2 camps per location so we got 1250 Players per starter location.
Thats a hell lot of people.

Please note that there will be no sharding.(correct me if im wrong here) So we have around 1000 - 1500 people clustered in 1 area for at least some time.
If the Starter zone has tutorial quests that hand out some good stuff like a low level mount, then everyone will want to complete them first before trying to get away from the chaos.

That in turn means that any quest (there are allways kill quests) will be a nightmare to do.
And lets not forget the massive ammount of leg and server stress this would cause.

So please Devs. Either dont give out any items during the tutorial quest so people can skip them and run straight away or do what Vhaeyne suggested and make the tutorial a seperate singel player zone.

daxiongmao87

Completely agree. The biggest sin is when games integrate it to their starting area, so every alt has to go through the same thing.

Maybe perhaps that's what they're going for with the divine gates. The quests there may be turorial-like and they said they are completely optional. Idk if they've said more on that or not

Dolyem

Honestly I really like this idea, and you could even do this as an early release along with character creation so people can be ready to go straight away at launch.

Vhaeyne

I am happy to see that some many people approve of this idea. I hope the DEVs take it into consideration.

Xenotor

Vhaeyne wrote: »

I am happy to see that some many people approve of this idea. I hope the DEVs take it into consideration.

Well Steven said that the avarge MMO player is like a beaten dog and i as someone who players MMORPGs for 20 years allready, Fully agree.

The last 15 years nearly every MMORPG i tryed made the same launch day mistakes over and over again.
Its like they dont want to learn or like the devs never played MMORPG at launch day.

So until proven right i will think that AoC has not nailed a smoth launch yet.
There are ways to make a launch smoother so keep the ideas comming.

So far we have the ideas of
-The Singel player tutorial to decrease the time spend at the starter zone.
-Dont put good rewards for quests in starter zone.
-Time limited mount to allow us to leave the Starter area Quickly

Something new i just thought of:
-One time teleportation to notes adjustment to the Starter note to further spread the Player masses.

George_Black

I didnt like the tutorials of bdo.
Also I didnt like the tutorials for many systems like crafting and such. I recall ffxiv for one.

I always feel that they delay me, and I just want to see more of the game, or I feel afraid of delaying or being delayed by my friends.

However I think these impressions were caused due to bad design and timing.
It is silly to believe that tutorials are not needed, even for experienced gamers.
I hate finding myself looking at the controls tabs all the time, because I skipped the tutorial due to being overwhelmed.
I got back to bdo and ffxiv at some point and I was like "how the f do I play this game".

I think each new function needs to appear at a slow pace, and explain the feature fast and effective, as to not annoy the player.
The worst thing games do is when you hit lv 5 and all of a sudden you are being intruduced to gear enchanting/repairing, 20 crafting/gathering paths, abilities and class info, new movement combinations and on top of that many tabs and what's in each of them.

The settings/options/interface tavs also need to be very organized.

Cold 0ne FTB

One of the things ESO did poorly is they didn't explain any of the more advance mechanics in the game. Because of this and because content tends to jump from either stupidly easy or fairly challenging the game lacks middle tier PVE content. It also makes really difficult to jump from a beginner to somebody who is more advanced.

I think tutorials need to be in the game but being able to skip them should be possible. It is also vital that they explain all the important mechanics in the game.

novercalis

I dont see anything wrong with a tutorial island and even like the offline concept it.

MrScrewtape

Thinks like a head-start are were actually invented to help spread out the user population a bit over the beginning.

I actually loved the way BDO released its character designer ahead of time. This allowed those that love spending hours getting their cosmetics perfect before release and save it as a template.

I wonder if an 'off-line tutorial room' could be released ahead of the game? Would be cool to try every class in a tutorial room before the game releases. Would be neat to try all the mechanics and see class skills in a whitebox type room ahead of the game. Would be cool to have a chance to try different classes max level builds before I level them up over months in-game to discover I don't like the gameplay.

Combining that with a tutorial would be pretty cool. How to do that without ruining the excitement of "Class discovery" would be tough, but still would help with a lot of buyers remorse.

Jamation

I'm not a fan of mandatory tutorial's, but I like when games give the option to either learn about the basics of your class or the basics of the game. In FFXIV they have this man you can talk to and he'll take you to this instanced zone that you go through some basic stuff for your class like "learn about what AOE's are" or "learn how your class stuns/heals" etc etc. That could easily be enhanced to teach about some basics of the game world as well.

Child Item