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.
Comments
Then we need starter Quests that leads to an Big Mainstory!
This man gets it.
Very well said, I would add that I don't particularly care for the current setting upon entering the game. The encampment in the ruins just feels unattractive and empty. Give me a beautiful city or a warzone, something to grab my attention.
I think options there about which tutorials to do and when would be the best bet. Explain to the new player that Verra is a new, wondrous, and dangerous place, and ask them directly how much information they want before starting the journey. You can even talk about the differences between survival games and RPGs in explaining how to make their decision.
I'm really not sure how to tie in a sense of the world or the lore. Perhaps having the starting area be before you go through the portal, so that once you are on the other side the beginning tutorials are over. You can opt to just hop through or learn some things first.
I am not as excited as some for the just go and learn on your own, especially if there are important choices you are making before you know the consequences of those decisions. Primary archetype and race are such decisions, but I don't think there are many others that happen right at the start. Deciding which parts of the crafting economy to engage in can be done when you choose to start engaging, node selection and interaction can be done when you get close to a node, pvp info can come before you step away from the portal area, and guild or other community can be introduced when you get close to a node as well.
Overall you want to give a new player as much information as they can use right away and are interested in having. Giving meaningful options and explaining why one might choose those options allows a variety of players to get in and get excited!
This is really the core of an mmorpg how i see it and is why i love this genre so much.
I actually quite like the tooltips idea, since it can easily be turned on/off based on the player's preferences, and may be cooler/more game-experience-friendly than a "catalog" of advanced features or any kind of tutorial "forcing" the player to do all the basic moves before being able to move on (for example).
You want to bring in a large variety of players in; ones who’ve played mmos for decades, ones who’ve only play a few years, players who’ve never played mmos before, people who have only played table top. You have said this game may not be for everyone and that’s fine, but I’m sure you want everyone to give it a try.
To do that you can give people flavorful ways to learn your systems. Obviously you can bake in the typical learn your movements and how to use your abilities tutorials at the beginning. Introduce things early on even if the character won’t get to do them yet like your professions.
Have an escort quest where you need to help a gatherer since you *seem strong*, where it explains the options to gather and how to notice them. Things are a bit different in Verra so he thinks you should know. You’re learning about this system and fighting so it’s not a total dialogue slog while you learn. After that you take the gatherables to a processor where he tells you about all the things you could process in this strange world and how to go about it. Once he’s done he tells you that X crafter came through the portal but he ventured off to X village or higher area and he’d pay you if you guard his caravan on its way. Have some Npcs attack the caravan on route to let people understand there’s a risk to guarding/using a caravan. You get to the village+ and give the crafter the processed materials where they explain how they turn these process mats in weapons or potions. You’ve now explained four of your systems in a natural way. To get to the point there’s a village would be a “few days”, so while this wouldn’t be something hand holding people through the first few days it is live, it would be in place going forward.
Warframe is a perfect example of an amazing game, that turns off a ton of players(at least the decently large group I got to try it out), due to how much information is not given to people in game. As soon as they hear they have to basically keep up a webpage in the background to figure out half the crap they lose interest. Having to leave the game to find out basic information ruins the immersion.
I could go on about other ways to do this for other systems but I feel like the basic idea is made. Introduce people to systems early, teach people about those systems in a natural way, limit the amount of information you have to leave the game to find, and put systems in place IN GAME to learn about it. There’s a fine line in hand holding, and you need to find that balance between teaching people how to play the game, and playing it for them.
Too much hand holding and people will get bored and leave, too little and people who may have liked your game won’t play it because they have no idea what’s going on.
Optional organic tutorial nodes sparsely spread around the map. These tutorial nodes do not fully impact the main nodes in the game and only serves as a supplemental guide to the game's systems.
Spawning at one of these nodes could be predetermined by a mix of class choice, race choice, preference in weather, job preference etc. The game would then tell you your character is spawning at this tutorial node and you have a choice to either spawn at said location, or the player can freely choose any of the types of nodes available on the map. Node spawns may also have text briefly describing the history and landscape of the area when hovered over. This way players that enjoy immersion can be satisfied, and players that have friends to play with can also be satisfied.
Tutorial nodes could have NPCs that have no name or indication of who they are besides a gently glowing F key above them when close by. The player presses the F key on the NPC with a backpack and a small chest nearby their feet. The player is greeted with something like "Hello traveler, my name is Bob. I've been collecting things around Vera and was wondering if you had this Blue Flower? I could give you a Red Flower in return."
In the speech box, the player has the option to either click Continue, the gently glowing T key underneath it, or the key on the player's hot bar. Choosing either options will open up the trading window and a Continue in the speech box, but the glowing T key will still be indicated in the speech box and on the player's hot bar only if they previously chose to click Continue.
Player chooses either options, trading window is closed, and Bob says something like "That's okay. Rumor says you can find Blue Flowers near a peach tree with moss covered boulders surrounding it. If you so happen to be there, pick some for me." The glowing T keys are gone and the player can click End in the speech box.
The glowing F key is gone and now replaced with Lvl 5 Bob and a backpack icon above the NPC whenever the player is nearby. Completing his quest now shows a Lvl 100 Bob in a suit and tie, backpack icon, and the small chest is now a golden bank vault, cuz that's how Mafia works...
The player now knows how to interact with NPCs, interaction reveals more information about surroundings and tasks, hints during interactions are optional and not invasive to future gameplay, and completing quests requires players to actively use the information given instead of following a traditional quest marker stamped on the map. Players also know quests can also have tangible consequences to the game world, which can help with immersion and keeps quests refreshing, not a chore.
And how much “hand-holding” do you generally like to see in a game?
At the start of playing in the game world, players should have a Hints and Tutorials Manual that is fully available. This manual has a search function that brings up related topics based on keywords and phrases. This manual could also look like a spell book or a diary the character keeps on them.
In the manual, hints and tutorials will be highlighted and ordered by when the player first encounters them, with the most recent ones starting at the top. Those not yet encountered will be dimmed and at the bottom. Players who decide to check the manual will now see a green check mark appear next to topics that they have read, regardless if they have been encountered.
This I feel allows the player to double check their progress on the fly without spoiling too much of how the game works.
Please no "gather the chicken" quests
I don't think there need to be hint buttons popping up all over screen. Most games have key mapping from which you can figure out a lot of how the UI works.
It appears to me people range from wanting everything marked to race through leveling to wanting as little given to them as possible so they can explore and discover on their own. Perhaps the main quest line could be highlighted to help some and non mainline quest could be left unmarked so people can explore and get those "Ah hah" moments. This could give players a varied experience from all going from A to B to C on the same quest and offer for them to get out and wander more at least at the start.
Zero hand holding in game.
I made a thread in the past about how it would be great if all tutorials were offline single player experiences.
This would allow people something to do when servers are too congested, and it would keep tutorials from ruining the game world. People seemed to like this idea. Elite dangerous does this and it works very well.
My main reason for not wanting to put tutorials in the game world is that tutorials end up leading to NPCs giving the players hand outs, and it takes away from some of the sandbox potential of the game.
In game tutorials are also repetitive when making alts.
I also just hate when games act like I can't figure them out. An in game or out of game reference manual is preferable to NPCs telling me what to do as a part of some lame plot.
This is my personal feedback, shared to help the game thrive in its niche.
All to the cries of....'infinitus mortem!', screeched with chilling laughter
Perhaps it is better to ask, what new players should not experience, the moment they enter the game ?
rofl.
Don't try to integrate learning into quests it usually just ruins immersion.
For mmorpg I think separate zones for each race are an exelent way to introduce new players into world.
Show them through starting quests what it means to be orc/elf/dwarf/human in this world. What your enemies are, what struggles you'll have to overcome. Build up a bit of tribalistic mindset.
Then after put in some class quests to set up class fantasy better.
I know you are panning to allow all races start in one zone in AoC but I think it just doesn't feel so good. Friends can group up after their starting zones are done. It's not a big deal.
As to ''hand-holding'' I really hate when game thinks you are a stupid person and can't do quests without huge arrow in front of your eyes and pulsing marks on your map. Questing is something you can become good at in mmorpg. Just like gold farming or pve. Plan ahead, figure out what quests are worth doing and what quests are not good for exp/time, what different quests you can do in one area if you pick them up in advance. Learning how to do quests in more sand-boxy mmorpgs is very satisfying.
If you want a designated tutorial, don't put the player on tracks. Make it feel open ended with mini quests ("you can't move on until you make a sword") and allow all types of player interaction. Please don't cut off somebody from their friends in their first minutes of an MMO. Show them the very base gameplay functions like moving, interacting with objects, interacting with inventory, and fighting enemies, then set them free.
If you want to avoid a designated tutorial, set the player free from the start, and show them the way with little popups. Show them how to move, get their first quest, and how to fight. The goal is to get them fighting stuff as fast as possible. Once you do this, that's 90% of your tutorial done. A brand new player DOESN'T CARE about the node system and CAN'T AFFECT IT, so DON'T TELL THEM ABOUT IT. Only tell them about things once it's applicable to them!
This applies to people before they get into the game, too! From the moment they start downloading the game, beeline their thought process to just getting in and playing. Complex information about the classes or the nodes isn't useful to somebody who hasn't played the game yet, so don't give it to them.
To answer the question directly: Show the player how to move, talk, interact, and kill. After that, be as hands off as possible, only giving information on systems as they progress to them. Don't hold a player's hands. Allow them to hold your hand until they feel comfortable enough to ask others for help.
There is something else i think is terrible to introduce a game and is to put a cutscene with lot of metaphors and not understandable dialogues trying to sound "epic" or something, i just tried Bless Unleashed and omg it was terrible. An introduction is pointless if you don't understand it or it doesn't gives you any information about the world. Now... Ideally the cinematic has to be short, if it's a 5 minutes cinematic i lose interest and i just want to skip and play.
About the actual game, i hate when they make you walk like 40 minutes of endlesss dialogues you don't care as a tutorial. Just show me how to move my character and maybe how the UI works, but i will discover the world by myself.
What are some of the key elements you think should be introduced to a new player, and how much “hand-holding” do you generally like to see in a game?
Firstly, this is an expedition to a world the adventurers haven’t seen for a long time so everyone is going into this with very little knowledge of what’s on the other side. The portal should be in the middle of what appears to be an ancient ruin or crumbling city that is different and yet a little familiar. It should be a crude base camp and should probably stay as just a base camp that will walk the players through their menus, basic controls, how to access the stationary work benches needed to complete their crafting, how to harvest materials and after getting some wildlife kills, that also introduces how corruption has changed the scenery, sends forth the adventurer to the next base camp. That’s when the fun begins.
(After this step has been completed once allow the player the option to skip for future characters giving them some basic materials and set amount of experience)
At the next town it will walk players through the basics of the node system, how they can contribute to the progression of the node, how guilds will come into play and how to engage in PvP. This gives purpose to the player. Your class trainers will give brief overviews of the class, how to train your skills and to tell the player, once they’ve reached the level that they can pick their subclass, to return where another brief overview of how subclasses can change your abilities and also how to change to a different subclass or respec your current abilities. I’m assuming the main story quest will pick up in this town and will walk you through more content in the game such as mounts, dungeons, bosses, area events, and so forth.
A good solution would be to also keep the AoC wiki or database that is deemed accurate for players to access for further information that is confirmed by the dev team. This website doesn’t have to be a complete manual to everything but should be able to answer mechanical questions without spoiling any surprises or ruining the players experience to discovery. This website could also have dev created content where they show brief but educational videos about the more intricacies of certain content such as sieges, running for mayor and trade caravans.
As for hand holding, I would recommend an extended (5 levels or so) intermittent tutorial, that follows along the natural flow of the gameplay. For instance, explaining things when you've encountered them for the first time. This prevents players from feeling like the tutorial is something separate from the gameplay and allows the players to act out the tutorials instructions in real time. (It also allows you to disable tutorials from the menu, preventing frustration from veteran players rolling a new character).
Hand holding is important to learn, if it's someones first mmo they need their hand held, if it's not then they don't, in this way the new player experiance/ tutorial shouldn't be forced, ie you can choose to ignore it and explore or follow along to learn the basics.
It should cover the building blocks of the game without overloading the player with details. Walls of text are ignored or forgotten quickly and so practical use of information quickly is essential, as well as reintroducing it before its forgotten so it keeps in the players working memory for longer.
Seperation of combat and skilling is also important, some players don't want to do combat and simply want to skill and vice versa. This again comes under player choice in the tutorial so having a set structure could be detrimental.
I'm not a fan personally of the traditional arrows pointing at what you need to do or where to go because it shows a fundamental failure of the level and ui design and is fixed with a bandaid fix with the arrow. The initial progression should be obvious through a tutorial but not visably forced.
Personally I feel like combat should be taught but classes should be learned, so you have to figure out the class yourself but the combat is taught to you in the beginning is a good system. It provides the necessary information to start and succeed but if you want to really get good you need to read into your class and make decisions by yourself.
I feel like the new player experiance across the MMO genre is incredibley weak so taking inspiration from other genres could be an option. Regardless of how its handled I'm excited to see what is made
Much love ❤️❤️❤️
by Asraiel
For me the first 2 hours of a game are the most important hours of the entire game because that's the time a game has to draw me in. The better that experience is, the more dedicated and hyped I get to discover the rest of the game. but those 2 hours aint only important to me, many players, especially casuals will need a very good time within these first 2 hours of gameplay in order to stay.
Now the game will be subscription based but that is a draw away from the game. I didn't play many games that had that system cause i dont wanna pay a full month if the game doesn't deliver the fun I may expect from playing it and so often choose not to try it in the first place. a system like the first 5-10 or the first 7 days are free2play (maybe with some restrictions to player vs player trades or participating in elections for mayor. so a player can enjoy the first steps freely, maybe with an increased progress at the very start which becomes a lot harder later in the game to keep the player busy.
well at first i thought after character making having a entrance cinematic where the player depending on race is in the mayor town of its race and getting sended to verra over the portal (a town full of life and player being treated like a heroic adventurer) and once stept in the portal the player can choose the server he wants to join as well the portal (this is important for later in the post). and so starts its journey in verra at the portal.
Now why is the selection of the server after the cinematic and not before character selection? simple so within the first 5-10 levels the player has to choose to cost free transfer to a different server, maybe due to misclicking or other stuff. For higher levels after that a server trans of the character is also possible by paying either a ingame fee or an item of the shop. but every transfer is without gear, backpack and money so only the char and its skills may be transferred to the other server.
As for me, I don't know any game that has servertransfere implemented to be freely used. with some restrictions but these are necessary to prevent bad behavior of players like transing goods to other servers and so. (in case of a server merge this would also give a better opportunity to the developer to keep it simple.
What do I expect to see and experience within those first 2 hours? many of the systems like augmentation, housing, crafting and other stuff will be more in the later game, so the focus is quests and pve maybe a bit of grind as well and especially that the entrance portal is full of life may mostly be npc, so that it give a nice filled feeling. I would even go so far as the portals themselves are metropoles themselves but not nodes so they don't give the tools that normal nodes give. ruled by npc’s supporting some merchants, some small crafting, basic mounts like horse sellers and so on and each portal is of one of the races.
but as mentioned these portal metropolises don't interact with the node system and also don't have the features that node metropolises support. may also only be a village. maybe each race 1 portal and if there are more portals those are ruined ones like we saw in alpha one.
so the player enters a living environment and almost gets overwhelmed by it. and then starting his journey to explore and conquer the realm of verra. maybe supporting a map poster in the portal city but the player map needs to first get explored to unlock the different parts on the player map but each village or higher displays the map of verra.
Now this whole setup is combined.
starting game
select or create character
starting cinematic of the new heroic adventurer entering the portal
selection of the server and the spawn portal
entering verra portal that is located in a ruin, village, city, town or even a metropole
exploring questing and pveing, grinding small portions of gathering and crafting in a rich environment suited to the race of the portal holders.
After some hours in the game, I started the journey to explore and conquer the world of verra.
so combined said 2 hours that lets the player believe that this ain't a game, that this is something even bigger.
together with some free time at start like f2p up to lvl 5-10 and then the subscription will be needed may also display on several actions like buying an apartment or player v player trade that need a subscription if the non subscriber wants to enter items or money to trade off to another character.
Best regards Asraiel
2. Simple quests to know how things work but no super long tutorial.
3. MUSIC- wow’s music is second to none and music helps set the tone SOOO much.
So many people who don’t play WoW anymore still go on youtube to listen to the tracks. Have tracks that stand out
4. Make us seem like just an average joe. It isn’t immersive when you know every single player who comes through is “destined to be the prophesied hero”. What kind of journey would it make if we’re already a hero. What if we don’t want to be a hero or famous etc?
Also building on an idea from another post, memorable theme music to sing along to rather than just instrumental please
- there's a big shiny pedestal in the middle of the room... why?
- If I press E on it, a demon spawns and starts attacking me - how do I defend myself?
It makes the learning process more fun.And also a little bit of healthy stress:
- You don't really get what you're supposed to do in minecraft until you experience your first night out in the open.
It makes the purpose/reason to play very obvious.Don't explain the details of a mechanic: just why it exists, and then later when I suddenly need it - I'll know what tools I need to explore and it's a process of discovery from there. This sometimes needs a reminder notification/popup if I've forgotten it exists - e.g. if I reach level 10 and still have a level 1 weapon equipped.
This encourages self-motivated learning, rather than trying to force a horse to drink water.
A cluttered screen is always scary when you're a new player - I've found it really helpful when games lock many of their advanced features to higher levels/pre-requisite quests so the amount of learning is paced as you level up.
- more than that: The best tutorials held back from teaching me about a feature until I encountered a piece of it out in the wild. For example, there is no crafting/mining tutorial until I walk past a resource on the floor and try to interact with it - THEN I'm totally open to learning about mining.
This makes it really clear to a player what the context of the mechanic they are learning is. Rather than learning about some system out of the blue just because you reached level 10 with no indication of its importance to the rest of the gameplay.Dropping the player in a blank room with 1 door is enough instruction to say "learn how to move" without needing to use any text.
OR
having a fairy ask you "how do we get over there?" is more interesting than instructions like "press WASD to walk around. Climb the ladder to reach the other side"
Instruction manuals ruin the fun of learning, and are a missed opportunity to create a sense of mystery/excitement/autonomy.
I've seen some games with optional "Class Examinations" with rank-up title rewards (e.g. "novice ranger", "expert ranger", "veteran ranger") and the exams would test players on specific mechanics of their class (e.g. a map of 8 enemies that must all be killed in stealth, a map of 3 enemies that are only weak to poison, a maze that requires clever use of sniping to navigate).
They become stepping stones for more intensive learning, and also serves as an easy place for returning players to get re-accustomed to gameplay.
Something specifically for Ashes:
I think the tutorial really needs to sell to the player the impact of the node system from the get-go because it will be the defining centrepiece of this game. I don't mean teaching new players about Nodes immediately, but presenting them with a choice early on that has real implications for what content they will have access to, and content they WON'T have access to (with a hint that they might be able to change this fate) sets up fertile ground for the game's core loop as they learn about Nodes later on.
This could be done in Sanctus where they have to choose 1 of 4 portals to go through and it's SUPER CLEAR that "there is no returning to Sanctus once you choose a portal" or something more dramatic.
thankyou for coming to my TED talk.