The new player onboarding experience needs to be a top deliverable for Alpha 2 Phase 2

KingRajesh

Throwing players in a nondescript town with minimal quests and handholding, forcing people to grind a small group of mobs for XP, is worse than 2004-era MMO game design. I've played MUDs from back in the day that had a better starting tutorial.

The new player experience needs a ton of work and that work needs to be done ASAP. Even Albion Online had a better new player experience in Alpha than this.

Bkx

Agreed. There are a number of things missing here, such as an introduction to the interface, skills panels etc. that you need to know about to begin building your character.

It's also difficult to figure out what's going on with the quest tracker, and quest steps are frequently not properly explained.
For example, The Warhelm Curse has the step with a number of sub-tasks: "Ask the Lionhold villagers about the curse."
These sub-tasks under this include things like: "What has been going on here?"
This doesn't provide any hint as to how you might find this information. I'm not asking for a lazy arrow pointing out every single NPC; a bit of thinking is good, but at least give me something to work with.

The combat quests have some problems as well, with credit for kills and quest item drops apparently only being awarded to one player. This does not make gameplay better; it just results in camping monster spawns and it's something I definitely don't miss from early MMOs.

Last major pain point I have with these quests is interacting with NPCs (and other objects) seems to have a short range and is picky about which side of the object you're standing on. It would be nice if the interact command was easier to use without shuffling around things trying to make it register.

KingRajesh

Bkx wrote: »

It's also difficult to figure out what's going on with the quest tracker, and quest steps are frequently not properly explained.
. . . I'm not asking for a lazy arrow pointing out every single NPC; a bit of thinking is good, but at least give me something to work with.

I agree with this. I think the starter quests SHOULD be more "hand hold-y" in nature. Sure, quests at level 30-35 can be vague, but you don't want new players getting frustrated and lost.

Noaani

KingRajesh wrote: »

Throwing players in a nondescript town with minimal quests and handholding, forcing people to grind a small group of mobs for XP, is worse than 2004-era MMO game design. I've played MUDs from back in the day that had a better starting tutorial.

The new player experience needs a ton of work and that work needs to be done ASAP. Even Albion Online had a better new player experience in Alpha than this.

They aren't throwing players in to a nondescript town with minimal quests and handholding.

They are throwing testers in to a nondescript town with minimal quests and handholding.

KingRajesh

Noaani wrote: »

They are throwing testers in to a nondescript town with minimal quests and handholding.

Semantics. Testers are still players, even in Alpha 2.

Regardless, this is the new player experience they chose to show off to the public in their first non-NDA content release. It needs significant work to explain the game's core systems. This wouldn't be acceptable in 2014, let alone 2024, let alone 2028-2030 when this game is likely to release.

I've played a lot of Alphas and Betas for MMOs over the years. I can't remember a worse starting zone than what Ashes has implemented at the moment.

Noaani

KingRajesh wrote: »

This wouldn't be acceptable in 2014, let alone 2024, let alone 2028-2030 when this game is likely to release.

I agree.

And since the launch is set to be in "2028-2030", they should probably work on that new game experience in 2027-2029. No point working on it now, as that new game experience is going to change before launch.

This is all a part of being a tester rather than a player.

Depraved

KingRajesh wrote: »

Throwing players in a nondescript town with minimal quests and handholding, forcing people to grind a small group of mobs for XP, is worse than 2004-era MMO game design. I've played MUDs from back in the day that had a better starting tutorial.

The new player experience needs a ton of work and that work needs to be done ASAP. Even Albion Online had a better new player experience in Alpha than this.

I encourage you to read the description of each alpha phase. phase 1 Is to test stability, not progression.

there are already bunch o f quests you can do early on anyways...or you could just go out and from mobs. not saying things cant be improved, but Its not so bad right now...too much handholding is bad

CROW3

I agree it’s rough - really rough, as described by Intrepid well before A2 kicked off. The state of the game reminds me of EQ2 at launch (2004). But it’s also an alpha build, I mean BETA T&L was a totally different game. So gold Ashes will also be something that will feel much better.

That said, keep the no handholding. I’ll take an intuitive UI over a tutorial into every time.

nsys

Can't agree more. And even once you have gotten around learning the basics of the game, it takes dozens of hours to get into a state where you can interact with the world and the systems WE ARE SUPPOSED TO TEST!
it's mindboggling, that I have to grind mobs for days to finally be able to set out into the world (with lvl 15-20 monsters).
It's insane that to test the crafting system, I have to spend days mining non-existent copper/zinc. This is not just a bad new-player experience, but also the worst tester experience.