Tutorial Re-work

Suggestions
#1

Im going to be re-working the tutorial almost completely in the coming weeks. Just wanted some quick feedback from some of the most recent players joining the game (welcome by the way) on some things that were lacking in the first go around.

One thing that we are changing is that we are getting the players out of the tutorial sooner rather then later with the current approach we took. Another item that was lacking from the original tutorial was also explaining all the different settings/options that you have in regards to the locomotion/audio/ and graphical settings. So we will be doing a better job of explaining this (actually one of the first things we explain when you join the game now). The purpose of the tutorial re-work is to get new players out into the community faster so that they can start the “fun” part of the game and also to remove some of the text heavy parts of the tutorial and replace them with shorter more direct instructions to accomplish the same tasks.

The runemage class will still remain locked behind the current quest, just in case anyone was wondering.

So the things Im looking for in feedback is some of the following:

  1. Do you feel that the current tutorial served you well in explaining all of the different class mechanics or could you learn the same from a in depth journal page explaining each class mechanics.

  2. After completing the tutorial (Only applies to players that completed the entire tutorial), was it obvious where the main story quest resumed (with Chef Lethrow) or did you feel lost on where to progress next.

  3. Is there anything glaringly obvious that was left out of the tutorial that you felt like stopped/hindered your progression in game until you had that “ah ha” moment that made the game more enjoyable. And what was that “ah ha” moment.

  4. Was there anything in the current tutorial that we explained that could use a deeper explanation?

  5. Was there anything in the current tutorial that we explained that you felt like was a waste of time (something that was so obvious it didn’t need explained)

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#2

Hooboy. I’m a UX designer so I’ve thought a LOT about this. I’m glad you’re working on it.

  1. Currently, the tutorial forces you to give each class a shot and experiment some with their different mechanics. Keep doing this. The game already leans a lot on asking players to memorize journal text in the current system and I would urge against doing more. Mechanics like shaking the musketeer turret to activate healing would actually benefit from being added to the interactive tutorial. Just about anything that you want new players knowing without asking for help would benefit from being shown rather than told. This would prolong the tutorial, so maybe a skip option could be good too.

  2. I’m a bit fuzzy on this one since it was a while ago and a nice player guided me there. There are a couple of periods in the main quest early on that felt confusing and this is probably one of them. I think it would be worth marking out all the main quests in the journal and doing a pass to make sure each journal entry gives all the relevant information for what you’re currently doing.

  3. RUNEMAGE. This will get it’s own section at the end. I understand that runemage requires practice and benefits a lot from asking players for help, but the runemage new player experience goes too far. There is no satisfying “ah ha” moment - it’s just frustrating. More on that later.

My second thought here is that it I feel the player should be explicitly told at some point that they should ask for help if they’re stuck. That it’s not only encouraged but literally a part of the game. Orbus is really cool when you get stuck and ask an actual person for help but it’s really uncool when you get stuck and don’t know that you should ask for help. My big “ah ha” moment was that I realized I could go to the fishing spot outside of highsteppe, cast out a line, chat people up, and ask for help on my current quest while fishing. Having a sort of reliable strategy on how to ask for help in the game made getting stuck a cool experience rather than a frustrating one.

  1. Nothing’s jumping to mind. I actually really like how teleportation and resurrection are just mentioned offhand so that newbies know that they exist, but can’t do them until they ask for help somehow. This is really cool to me. As far as the intro tutorial, I think all the information’s there, but would again benefit from having more being shown interactively rather than being in the book.

  2. No.

Runemage bonus round:

OK I really want to stress that I understand that runemage is meant to be hard and require assistance from veteran players, the issue is that new players aren’t told this at all. Imagine this.

You’re a new player, you finish the runemage quest, and you’re given your first runes. You get them in your journal and go outside the cave. You start casting and find that you can rarely, if ever get the runes to work. You try for a while, and pull up your journal in front of you trying to figure out why it won’t work. You might even try directly tracing the runes in the journal. This still does not work, and you may even experience the game misinterpreting your spell for something else despite rarely recognizing what you’re casting to begin with.

I’m an 18 runemage, but I cannot begin to describe how frustrating it was when all of it happened to me. Runes not working on a direct trace from the journal especially was maddening and really needs to be addressed in my opinion.

The reality with runemage is that the whole time you’re doing that practice outside the cave, you’re wasting your time. All the starter runes either have objectively better versions that are faster and easier to cast, are cheesable by casting different, simpler drawings, or have “tricks” to draw the runes a certain way to get them to register more often.

What players actually need to be doing when they leave the cave is:

  1. Find a high level mage
  2. Ask them to teach you the tricks for each rune
  3. Practice what you learn from the mage

This isn’t a bad thing. I really like that learning Runemage is complicated and benefits from having a teacher, but I’m sure you can see the problem here. The game is telling players to do one thing and expecting another. It’s saying, “Hey, cast spells as you see in the journal”, then punishing players for doing this with failed casts because what people are actually supposed to do is ignore the game, find a skilled player, and find out from them how to actually play the class in a completely different way.

I really want to stress that I think having to practice spells to be able to do them in combat and needing to seek help from skilled players is a cool part of the learning process in this class - The issue is that players don’t know to do that, and are mislead into thinking they need to do something else (practice from the journal).

…Random side note: I think it would be really cool if you had to discover spell locations in order to cast them. It would encourage asking veteran players for help to find out where spells are while still requiring you to adventure yourself in order to unlock them. Could even be incorporated into the talent system later.

3 Likes
#3

I spent a while in the beginning not being able to find quests. I “lost” the main story because I didn’t realize the chef had another quest to give after completing the first one. Not directly part of tutorials, but perhaps something should be thought of on it. As a new player, I just kind of assumed there weren’t many other quests to do yet in that area.

#4

Ive been working on tracking this bug down, but in the meant time I have added an additional “help” sign warning of this problem and explaining to players about the quests from Chef to try and prevent what happened to you from happening again.

#5

  1. The tut drove me crazy, I got stuck on things like putting my journal away (still do), on grabbing arrows and how to shoot them, on really a lot of the actual VR-movement parts. As for abilities I didn’t focus too much on explanations, read most on the Wiki after, and watched videos. I was glad to not be thrown into meeting other players right-away, though, having my private space and set my own pace to learn, that was great, so the tut helped.

  2. After “completing” the tutorial…? HAHA fun fact, perhaps I’m super-dumb, but I totally missed that sign about the King Stag, ran past it, never came back. So I couldn’t finish the tutorial for a long time, grinded instead, did other tasks I found - which weren’t much - and now and then searched these dang stags all around HS. Thought it’s perhaps a rare spawn and lots people farming them :slight_smile: I must’ve been level 5 or even level 7 when I finally searched up on the hill. Don’t remember much but the tut did not clearly say you need to stay, like, in HS I think.
    I had that issue quite often, either not finding any new quests or having no idea where to go. The Chef I found in advance, but only because explored that house, then remembering the sign beneath him when I looked at the quest.

  3. I found out VERY late about the autorun option, only by googling it after my fingers hurt so badly, being way past level 10. Very much wished to have found that out first day, in the tutorial. It’s a lifesaver for those more fragile or playing hours in a row.
    Also I did found out how to slide-move rather late, stuck to teleporting, can’t remember slide movement was explained either.

  4. The Ranger. I thought the bow is broke at first, never was sure if it was me not getting how to shoot (which was the case) or my tracker not seeing things or what. See above.

  5. No.

Runemage: I personally had not much issues learning that one by myself, only that, like always, I only found this quest per accident and pretty late. I did watch couple videos and read up on the wiki after, just as for the other classes, I’m not sure if I would’ve learned them just ingame. Oh and please keep it optional if we add spells to the journal or not, at least until there’s bookmarks or such; it’s a pain browsing back and forth between, for example, the Chudkatet hints and the Chudkatet quest :).

#6

The tutorial made me completely miss the billboards on the left when exiting. Partially due to draw distance and not really being able to read the text while doing combat in the arena. Partially being located far away from the quest giver. Partially because they were off to the side and not infront of the player. And the journal doesn’t always cover what’s on there word for word.

Did it serve me well? I guess, well enough to get started. But most warriors come out of there with no idea what the icons on their shield mean or do, such as sword charge. Most musketeers don’t know about using the turret for at least a few levels.

I think it needs to assume both new player and new VR user. So it needs to even have pictures or video showing the action of grabbing behind your back, grabbing special arrows or orbs from the gun, all these things so no stone is left unturned.

You feel a little bit lost but not really. The biggest issue here is/was (if fixed) the quest bug that made the quest icon above people disappear until you either relogged or waved your hand at anyone to refresh the icons above all NPCs.

Probably covering the tools each class had. Like I said above, maybe walking them through using the turret more or charging/stunning a target, or using charged shot a few times. Basically, hand holding people through basic mechanics so they can better play around with the classes to decide what they want to play.

If there was a better way to show the tutorials via video in game without needing to go cinematic and without the frequent video crashes that occur, there would be quite some potential here. I think things like “wider faster swings do more damage” and “drawing the bow string back until it locks deals max damage” should be things covered from a VR standpoint.

I think VR games are still at a point where you want to cater to both new VR buyers and experienced VR players and new players to the genre (MMO) and experienced players. So what you would want here is some way to “skip” or fast forward through parts of the tutorial you think you don’t need explaining as a player. Then the journal should have all that stuff in there.

The problem with the journal is that its too troublesome to flip through 40 pages these days without bookmarks and tabs. Or these lengthly word tutorials need a help journal that pops out via menu option that is explained and unskippable at the beginning when talking about the menu.

2 Likes
#7

Im not new but i REALLY hope you make grouping and how to group very obvious from the tutorial. It took me longer than it should have to even notice there way a group finder and i only saw it after i was starting the first dungeon and almost made a post asking to add one.

#8

By grouping do you mean the Looking for Group tool or do you mean the way to party up with players close by?

#9

Oh Yes, i saw the Group-searching-system also very late.

And also I have Notice from some other players that they dont Know there is a message System ingame and how it works…

#10

Why are there so many right turns, that are the wrong turn. To kill the stag the stairs down and out, that seem most obvious is the opposite direction. When taking the first right turn in the road away from those stairs it puts you in a level 8 or 10 area.

When people are lost/confused they have a tendency to wander in clockwise/rightwise circles and keep landmarks on their right hand side. It’s like everyone on your level design and QA team is left handed.

Learning how to store that first piece of loot was painful.

It’s really hard to tell what’s sending out into the world, and what wants you to stay in the higher townish area.

Right now I only have a short time in the game. And I’m stuck away from my VR computer on business. Pretty much only got up to the fishing part for the chef. But will be back.

#11

Sorry for the late reply, but honestly both, but i think the group tool more importantly since your not always near people your lvl.

#12

I’ll second the auto run needing a mention.

While I like the idea of getting into the game proper faster, maybe a segment on dodging AE’s? I don’t know if you could have it flash instead of dealing damage, or apply a non-damaging debuff on you to show you didn’t dodge?

I believe I saw it on a billboard when I went back, but the compass interaction as a microphone for group / fellowship chat was not intuitive to me. Like Corgi_C, I didn’t see this the first time.

Runemage quest / tutorial needs to stress the importance of drawing “flat” perpendicular to the ground and in front of you. I would also suggest an option (best if it was a toggle) that lets you see group members line work. Then fellow mages can more accurately demonstrate to people in game. Not that youtube doesn’t do the trick, but I prefer in game solutions. Maybe even have Tinny casting spells slowly showing you her line work as her idle animation of the starter spells? (Now that I say that, I like this best. Illustrative rather than descriptive.)

Writing a message should be accessible through the mail icon. I didn’t find it intuitive that this was for received messages only.

1 Like
#13

There’s an autorun??
srsly, how do I use it?
Just for perspective, 158 hours on record.

EDIT:
Come to think of it, I bet I accidentally set autorun on a few times. I’ve become stuck sliding in a random direction and had to restart the game to make it stop.

#14

You can autorun by squeezing the grip while sliding. At least on the Rift. I think it’s the same on Vive?

1 Like
#15

It’s the same on the vive

#16

Ok after i ran into you on ourlander the other day i gave this a lot of thought. What i think is lacking is the sign design. When you’re first starting the game, oftentimes new players are not going to go through the trouble of reading through paragraph after paragraph even if it’s all information that they need. My recommendation is to simplify at least the top portion of the signs with art that you can get the general concept without reading anything. this is something you see in a lot of video games and by no means is an easy feat to pull off. However I think it’s worth giving a try

2 Likes
#17

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