Glorious Alpha Two Testers!
Alpha Two Realms are now unlocked for Phase II testing!
For our initial launch, testing will begin on Friday, December 20, 2024, at 10 AM Pacific and continue uninterrupted until Monday, January 6, 2025, at 10 AM Pacific. After January 6th, we’ll transition to a schedule of five-day-per-week access for the remainder of Phase II.
You can download the game launcher here and we encourage you to join us on our for the most up to date testing news.
Alpha Two Realms are now unlocked for Phase II testing!
For our initial launch, testing will begin on Friday, December 20, 2024, at 10 AM Pacific and continue uninterrupted until Monday, January 6, 2025, at 10 AM Pacific. After January 6th, we’ll transition to a schedule of five-day-per-week access for the remainder of Phase II.
You can download the game launcher here and we encourage you to join us on our for the most up to date testing news.
Learn from WOW beginner "tutorial"
Marzzo
Member, Leader of Men, Kickstarter, Alpha One, Alpha Two, Early Alpha Two
In the latest World of Warcraft patch, Blizzard reworked the new player experience. And in my opinion, there is a lot to learn from how they do it.
All the menues, systems, abilities and mechanics are gradally, and cleary thaught to you. At the start, you simply don't see everything. But, as you progress, more and more systems etc are presented to you.
In my opinion this is very good to make the game more beginner friendly. They also did it in a fun way.
For example, I played WoW all my life, and this was a fun experience for me.
All the menues, systems, abilities and mechanics are gradally, and cleary thaught to you. At the start, you simply don't see everything. But, as you progress, more and more systems etc are presented to you.
In my opinion this is very good to make the game more beginner friendly. They also did it in a fun way.
For example, I played WoW all my life, and this was a fun experience for me.
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Comments
but can I add to this?
I think the best way to "unveil" new UI is by showing that they are locked and specific quests unlock them.
This is better than a tutorial that holds your hand and regurgitates a user manual - because as a player unlocking new features, I am invested in finding out what each feature that I earned lets me do.
I personally couldn't even force myself to finish the starting area. Bread crumbs everywhere hand holding trash. The whole experience was not good at all. If I was a new player to any game and had to go through that I would uninstall faster then when I uninstalled GW2(I at least gave this dumpster fire a week). Makes me glad I didn't pre-order the expansion.
Personally the starting area in the latest expansion is everything that has gone wrong with the genre rolled into one giant bugger being flicked at the players. This is an opportunity to learn what not to do.
I agree with the slow reveal of functions. It should go without saying for any game that plans to delay players from reaching lv cap (was said around 6 months with steady gameplay).
L2 ( as you know by now, my go to comparisson for the AoC vision) being a slow game revealed stages of combat, crafting and other farming methods at a very good pace.
Let me be a newbie for a bit, kill some wolves, explore the first area, die 5 times and one by one show me the means to progress.
What I don't understand is that in 2020, so many games still insist on having a tutorial that is exactly the same for everyone, rather than tailoring it to the individual user. As a simple example, I, an mmorpg veteran, don't need to be told that W,A,S and D control my character. Give me the option the tell the game that I've played an mmorpg before and save me the hassle of going through basic controls.
They have a decent quest chain that leads you around the island and teaches you how to fight npcs, loot, turn in quests, sell your items/purchase items, and then ultimately leads to a 2 boss dungeon that runs with 3 dps a healer and an npc tank. There are other npcs that heal and deal damage as well.
They don't just hold your hand on this island they cut it off and drag it around just to make sure you can make it to the end.
So if we want to take ideas from them, my suggestion would be to do almost all of what they did, but make the mobs actually threaten the life of the player as well as allowing them to fail. Failure is histories greatest teacher. Maybe if it had that, I would have enjoyed that tutorial island.
This.
Asking for mandatory handholding chores is the opposite of the sandbox mentality.
If you can't figure out a system, ask someone!
Personally, I like the idea of an instanced area that's just for new players to learn the ropes and have their hand held, but once complete players are able to skip it just like you can w/ the new Exile's Reach in WoW.
We've already seen plenty of post on this forum and on the subreddit where AoC caught the eye of people who've never played an MMO (or any PC game) before and there's nothing wrong w/ easing them into it and letting the difficulty get cranked up after they leave the safe area.
the gradual exposure to new game systems /accessibility was one of the primary reasons why games like WoW, HS and LoL became as popular in the first place.
Implementing a good onboarding experience doesn't take away from anybody but helps the game grow.
I can't take anybody that's against it seriously.
No hand holding with all mobs being yellow fodder as they did later on.
Defias thieves stealing berries, spiders attacking anything that enters their cave, demonic minions sheeming in their hideout etc. That was the sh*t in my opinion. It gave you some kind of responsibility, it taught you to step lightly and not to pull too many mobs. The whole experience showed you how to survive in the regular zones.
That game explains nothing.
No "Basic Controls"/"How to open chests"/"How to trade with an NPC"
No crafting guide, no quest pointers .
The game literally goes: if you don't do stuff right now, it will be night time and you will die.
And they loved it.
However, AoC is considerably more complex than Minecraft - and I think there's an element of fear in entering an established community on an MMO that you don't get from singleplayer games. So something that provides a bit of assurance would be helpful imo.
Plus - surely you guys remember the first characters you created in an MMO? I thought it would be cool to have some Strength on my mage. LMAO. It's probably healthy to let people make mistakes early on.
Thats a good point. I was originally going to be one of the people that said that I can't stand the UI hand holding process but it really does have it's place. GW2 had a good system where you can simply just opt out of it from the very beginning. Imagine it like skyrim where you could just check "skip" and not wake up in a wagon but instead in the dungeons about to fight a troll.
What I'm saying is never played WoW but sounds good for new players and maybe for the users that want to forgo it they can add a little checkbox at the character creation that says "skip tutorial" ?
In terms of monster, this might be true. Leashing multiple monsters by accident equalled certain death, which is something I'd support for Ashes as well.
However, at any given time, WoW gave you the next step on your path progression path. It was a very linear experience, which I wouldn't like to see in Ashes, as it simply isn't a game where its appropriate for.
Then there were game systems, which were explained to you step by step for the first couple of levels. Which imo is a necessity to not overwhelm new players. In terms of interface, new players don't need a mount tab, until they receive their first mount as an example. Keep it clean and make people unlock it step by step, that's the easiest way of giving new players an enjoyable first few hours of the game, which might very well dictate how long they play. (Also add a "skip tutorial" button, that instantly activates all the features and deactivates tooltips)
As long as this is optional. I don't want to be forced to endure it with every alt. And If I have experience with the game prior to release through testing (and trust me, I WILL) I don't even want to go through it with my first "real" character either.
Also I have played the current retail WoW tutorial...and let me tell you it's not a good situation. The older way all of it was done was superior, had more meaning and let you ACTUALLY learn about the game and things that were going on. Hell I would argue that Cataclysm had the best of both of those situations.
The majority of us aren't drooling babies that aren't going to look things up or not ask, at least in the actual Ashes community. Asking for help is literally a basis of the feel of a community, and honestly the hand holding you want in this is indicative of a game that has lived past it's lifetime and just tried to purposely over complicate it's systems to the point that it needs it. Ashes thankfully, isn't that game.
Here are a few suggestions I thought would help make the initial experience smooth and/or desirable:
Personally I like to see a more minimal/simple UI that's intuitive to pick up without too much extra explanation; that and definitely having some "options" in place for the amount of introduction you would like to the world.
I understand that most of the players like minimal/simple UI, but please think of the players too, who are the opposite. When i think about the fact that addons wont be a thing in AoC, than i wonder how much tools do i really get to be as effective as i want to be and as i think my character can be. I dont mean things like damage-meter or like a questfinder. I mean something like active usable UI for a healer, who needs far more information about the life, buffs and debuffs in the raid than a dd needs.
A DD has to concentrate on him and the enemy to say it a little bit in a simplified way, but the healer has to see far more to be really effective, and if you are in a 40 people raid, and all you see are 40 healthbars running wild around in the room because of different aoe-attacks, then the healing will be total chaos.
Dont get me wrong, i am not only concentrating on healers. That was just an example.
As a dd my monitor/UI was full with different Addons (in WoW). Why? Because i wanted the information about what was happening with the raid, especially when you are the raid-leader. All the Addons were a nightmare for other guild-members to see, and they wondered how i can play if i apparently dont see anything. The point is that some people (like me) use these Addons (especcially if you can make them partly transparent) as a "head-up-display" on which your eyes only concentrate for a second if you need a quick overview over the raid-party.
All i want to say is that not all people want a simple UI. Some are more happy with much more information on their screen, and they dont care about less sight on the enemy, because they feel that they still see enough. So i really hope that in the final game the ui has not only movable parts, and thats it, but that we get the option in the menues to activate far more information-sources if we want to.
I think as long as this would be a possibilty to activate or deactivate, then everyone would be happy to choose what they want and need.
If you want a tutorial implemented please give us the option to skip it. Many of us don´t need a introduction to MMO´s.
A little idea from me:
For completely new players you can design the tutorial like a dream during or passage from one of the starting portals. There you can "dream" your humble beginnings in the best MMORPG. So you have completely creative freedom because its dream
With that in mind you can make the world we all play in "tutorial free". If something like this is needed.
If you don´t need a tutorial as a player, you can dream "faster" and you jump strait into action
I also considered WoW's tutorial decent, even good. But I found it lacking in the crafting part and even in the explainy-part.
EQ2 had the Starter Zones that were exclusively for new characters and basically had all the characters lined up that beat you down with walls of text explaining the basics. I was not too fond of that to be honest and I am one of the guys who actually reads the books he finds in the world.
Same with crafting...you could easily equip yourself with your own (useless) noob gear in EQ2 to practice crafting. That was decently explained and you could not do much wrong.
GW2 actually nails it quite well when it comes to the "flow" and the feeling that you are at the start of your adventure, only to screw up in the explainy-part..
Maybe a mix of those things would be nice, maybe a walled off gig with different "stations" like in some tactical FPSs (for mortar-training, queue up here). That way, people can decide if they want to learn how to move or just get an update on how to work spells and craft. Of course, managing to pull that off AND keep it immersive in the storyline is a bitch. Then again, this can be instanced like the personal stories in GW2.
From a marketing/support perspective, there are still a lot of people getting inot pc gaming from console for instance, or older gents/ladies getting into gaming who don't have a clue as to controls that are instinctual for us longtime players.
But i agree, i don't feel like "learning" how to walk and jump and crouch unless they've dramatically changed the usual contro layout
edit: Maybe explore the possibility of a stand-alone zone, separate from the main server for the more complex components, like crafting? like a tutorial island or whatever for those who'd like that?
I like this idea of having the tutorial take place in Sanctus before you go through the portal to Verra.
Vets can just run straight into the portal if they don't want to do the tutorial.
There's no magic in Sanctus, and story-wise it makes sense that you'd be taught basic skills before you are sent through the portal.