#Playing an alt, think that the new player experience should be addressed.

1 messages · Page 1 of 1 (latest)

coarse egret
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Enough has been said about quick play, but I really want to ensure that new players have in-game learning resources to help them.

I decided to roll an alt because I am kind of over the end-game grind (e35, 12K good enough) and sheesh it feels bad. This has nothing to do with player skill. Incoming players have no opportunity to understand how the game works and are forced to look into third party resources, which can overwhelm/detract from the newbie experience.

The best example I can think of was my sailor's abyss run in adept - the group did not know what a soak was, did not understand they needed what to kick, did not understand the concept of dispelling a debuff, did not understand line of sight on the boss fight, etc. There is a tremendous amount of information (routing, dungeon codex, high level MMO glossary, explanation of basic abilities) that is simply not available or presented in a way that is intuitive. I've played WoW and know where I need to go to find the above information. I am not blaming any of the people I grouped with for not knowing all of this and hope that this game finds a way to be gentler to newer players. I simply cannot foresee that it'll be great for player retention moving forward if newbies don't have easy access to a compendium of in-game learning materials or some kind of a controlled, tutorial dungeon experience.

visual swallow
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Ya 100% additionally the difficulty ramps up rapidly, especially in champion and paragon (before patch adept was crazy too ;D). I also played my alt yesterday (10k main) and logged out after an hour of wiping with random groups.

coarse egret
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Oh my experience felt like all difficulty was concentrated in Adept. There was a downward curve from mid champion to eternal 20, at which point it started ramping up again

visual swallow
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That is also interesting. For me as a healer the game changes completely with full talents and the legendary. For me it felt like after the adept patch it was super smooth sailing until that point. Then there is an insane difficulty spike in champ until mid paragon as players + healer capabilities and gear can't really keep up and then it fell off significantly until e20 as you said.

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My strategy /gameplay loop for my main was: You know what is going to happen in every league. There will be an insane struggle and a large amount of toxic people until you somehow reach the capstone and then you can breathe and grind for a while until you hit rinse and repeat in the next league ^^ I think the capstones are a good indicator for manageable difficulty. They are much easier and people grind them for that reason + gear as they know most players will manage that level of difficulty consistently

blazing cobalt
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Looks like a more you problem then the game. Your expectations are higher than needed for a lower level gameplay.

And you also mention about losing the boss in sailor abyss, that is something that is NOT require to do its just a great way to make the boss easier

I agree on you that the game really need to work how to introduce new players to the game and how the game mechanics works, but i generally feel like players who are expecting these kind of stuff when playing an alt is the big problem. When you queue up in quickplay or adept/champion you expect your teammates to know everything in and out. You have to remember that not everyone is playing their alts. And we know how gatekeeping works in mmo games, its not a fun experience.

One thing i can think off is when you are a new player before entering the quickplay there should be some kind of "tutorial". For healers the game should tell you what a debuff/curse is and how you dispell it. What kind a spell and how it shows on the party frames.

Dps -> rotation helper in tutorial/kicks/avoidable damage

Tanks -> Defensives/threat etc

Also i know this game is in early acces but stuff like these need to be adressed asap or the player base will drop fast, for me great game is something i always will be reminded off and come back and play it anytime. I hope you get my point and developers really reads these feedbacks. I have seen alot of post of great feedback and ideas, and i think most of the community see that this game currently lacks support of new players.

quartz marsh
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Agree on 99%. Definitely need a way to get new players interested, and then most of all retain them. Current system, if I was a new player and stepped into quick play, I'd likely just log out and uninstall. Not that this post is about quick play but yea lol.

A way to learn the basics, as you mentioned would be great. What a "soak" is, what is NOT a "soak", what is a "dispel", what is a kick, focus target, focus target kick, etc. Definitely those types of things.

But something like LoS'ing defeaning screech in sailors and similar things shouldn't fall into that kind of category of being completely spelled out for you, that's something you have to just learn on your own. It's a special thing like, "ok this was fine in quickplay and contender, but now it's chunking me to 80% hp, is there a counterplay? Everyone else is running to the pillar. I should do that too!" Yea it sucks, adept runs are going to run into those issues, champion, and paragon too. But its kind of the fun of learning as well.

The first time you run something new is always going to be your worst performance on it, even if you're an ok/decent player. I mean we all didn't know what to kick either until we did. I still have players in Eternal 20s that don't know things, but its much much rarer. I probably don't know everything either. And somethings you never learn because its not a problem until a later difficulty.

I do hope they figure something out though.

coarse egret
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I have no expectations because I do not want to ruin someone's gameplay experience

quartz marsh
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yea I think its perfectly understandable to get frustrated with other players holding you back when you know you've already advanced to eternal xx. I would feel it too, id think thats pretty normal.

As long as it doesn't turn into berating/toxicity which for a lot of people it does. Lol. Not saying you do, but in general.

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I haven't played a new alt since the adept changes, but prior to those changes on my main play through, I definitely ran into all those issues you mentioned as well.

coarse egret
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the real issue is that we need a billion more tank players

quartz marsh
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word

spark granite