Hi everyone,
Long time EQ, Just jumped in and hope this comes out to spend my next 15 years of gaming.
I want to talk TL;DR concepts that I think are really important from past games that made a large difference in experience and setting the stage for a healthy game. The first one that comes to mind is the Newbie Area.
I have found, that games with a healthy Newbie Area where you can do a small island/tutorial and get a solid understanding of what the game experience is going to be for the rest of the game is incredibly beneficial. Some of the games I have seen this Succeed is Vanguard and EQ2.
Vanguard specifically with the island where a player could spend 1-10 or opt out was great. The Story was fleshed out, there was a healthy amount of things to do and it was fun. I did a cycle of every class in Vanguard and every time I came back to the game, I always did the newbie area. I think it would be nice to even expand on this. I think a person should be allowed to get a group experience in the newbie area and (crafting system depending), should be able to stay and perhaps even make a reputation for themselves in just the Newbie Area.
This allows for players to become guides in a sense by crafting things for players to make their beginning easier, explaining concepts and allowing people to learn what a social, group centric MMO is going to be like and what that player may have to do to succeed when in a group. You can also, always save a "learning" character in these areas and never leave.
I am not particularly impressed with EQ1's version of the newbie area (the cave) or Lord of The Rings, I also really like The Elder Scrolls, but think its lacks crafting and group content in their island. I also realize that just about every game I mentioned has either began with a newbie island or implemented it later. And I also think it should be important to note that you don't always have to start at a hometown at the very beginning of the game anyway for those that think everyone should start at their specific hometown. We aren't born a young adult at lvl 1, we've had some experiences beforehand, so I don't think it threatens any lore issues if a person wants to do so. I also like the way that EQ2 has low level dungeons in just about every starting area and it's great fun. I would also do all of those experiences in every starting area and purposely stay low level and just milk Alternate Advancement while stopping my level experience completely. By the time I was ready to move up to the larger areas, I was well-geared, had extra AA, and a good foundation of my character that set me up for the rest of the game.
I imagine for Pantheon a unique experience, where an adventurer is taking on a first large quest, plans go wrong, and they end up somerwhere that everyone else does, attempting to either escape or finish their quest. It explains concepts, gives you all the spells and skills you will use save the absolutely most technical ones, and opens you up to a culminating large group dungeon with multiple bosses and a powerful end boss that is optional for completionists. You should be able to craft and collect multiple sets of gear, interact with friendly and unfriendly factions, and experience quite a few environments that you need to accilmate to get through. By the end, a player should without a doubt, know how the character is going to play and be as prepared or unprepeared for the rest of they game as they choose.
Thoughts? I personally think a robust Newbie Area with roughly 15-20 hours of complete game time, if you did everything is very attractive and fun. I also think an opt-out early on is important, too for people who have different ideas for their character or experience. This is never wasted Development resources as it is something that everyone sees. I always play the Newbie Areas many many times.
Thanks for reading!
I liked how Dragon age origins did it,depending on background there would be a different newbie area.Rolled a mage;magetower
Elf;forest Dwarf: Deeproad expedition.
These starting area quests should be more group oriented.Some kind of large scale home faction quest?
Maybe the first step to betray your faction could be taken in the tutorial group event,depending on the choice you make.
I think that is a great idea. I also like the idea of allowing all these races and factions to come together in an area where you could get a feel for how say a Dwarf would fare in a lake vs. a Myr. I think that is important because then you reduce a bit of buyer's remorse because you experience something right away that may be very distasteful and potentially character ending for you later in the game. It's all already there and you get to make a very informed decision.
Pantheon is going to have unique starting cities/areas for players based on your race. Unless there are some serious population issues I doubt they will dump everyone into a single island. I believe I have heard/read Brad say the tutorial will be while you play.
However, I do think it would be a good idea to have a tutorial while you play. Of course, you should be able to disable it so when you make new characters you're not bombarded by popup windows again.
I really don't like the idea of tutorial areas, low level starting zones sure, but not tutorials. I don't like having to go though all the movement keys, attack keys, setting up this or that ect… before I can proceed. I prefer to just play the game, and if I don't know something, I’ll figure it out on my own or I don't deserve to know it. I don't want someone force feeding information to me, I would prefer to skip any tutorials and learn to play the right way.
I don't much like full tutorial areas, either. a Tutorial you can reference in a codex is always nice when you just cant figure something out, but the basic concepts are usually mastered by now for most if not all. So yes, no to a full tutorial. But a feel out area is what I'm going for.
Also, I think it is great to have starting cities and areas. What I'm discussing is a good centralized area that can be before or after you create you character and experience your hometown. Something that can be skipped if a player does not like it or just wants to make a mule. Something that you can get a snap shot of the whole experience in a short while and feel out characters and concepts before you double down and take your character to greatness.
Nope, give me a wide open sandbox area and let me go at it with a bunch of other clueless newbies... Some of the best memories can be established here and certainly friendships can be created early on... It really establishes its worth as a legit zone when it is a part of the game and Not instanced or masked by a tutorial.
We can all agree that by the tie you hit level 5, you will have a fairly good grasp of the basics.
I like the idea of having an enjoyable and expansive newbie area, but I don't like it being a separate area that once you leave you can't return to. My reasoning for this is it becomes useless rather quickly as people have created all of their alts and the new incoming players has slowed down. Plus it separates the new characters from the older characters and doesn't allow that interaction that will hopefully make the game great.
I agree with Pyye, just turn us loose, well figure it out. I want the game, not a hand holding tutorial showing us all things many of us already know anyway.
Helpful Tips on the "loading please wait" splash screens is all we need.
Starting Cities with naught more than a guild note and a torch.
I don't want my handheld as I am corralled around some pointless newb area and doing quests to git free stuff. I want to plunge straight into a world of unknown danger, to adventure.
To find new things... and to kill them. And hopefully die afew times myself in the process, lose my corpse and have to make a humiliating run back to get it.
But that's just my dated opinion on what made MMOS (and Pen and paper for thay matter) so great.
I don't mean to sound like a grizzled old timer, but get off my lawn with your tutorial talk.
I agree newbie areas are important, but I like the figure it out as you go approach.
Starting in "your" city, knowing the monsters nearby are roughly within your range and ...dying as you learn is important. a memory I hve that drives this home was an assumption I made about a skunk scent gland and skeletons. Skeletons were too hard and i always died. Befiore I got enough bags and I was looting things I could defeat- like skunks, I has the skunk scent gland in an open slot. I noticed skeletons did not seem to bother me when i got within what i learned was an aggro range. Also I noticed for some reason the merchants in my own home town, that I had good faction with, suddenly saw me as apprehensive or dubious, some guards were threateningly and I did not klnow why. I found some bags and put the gland in the bag and the merchans suddenly became amiable, and skellies would seem to chase me down. So I experimented, having the skunk scent gland "out" I saw- over time- reduced my cha!- that is why the guards hated me! and oddly- perhjaps why the skeletons were not so quick to get me because I stank!. Or so I thought.
But I did learn that once things started to get easy in the city limits, one would have to eventually head past to the other zone. And word was people were heading to blackburrow, rthatw as the place to be. lots of people, groups available, and fangs where you could run back to the city after some adventuring, turn in fangs and then chat with other people just hanging out or making plans.
An optional tutorial for those new players that want it wouldn't hurt anyone that didn't want it. As in LOTRO where you had a choice of either running a rather basic tutorial to learn the interface and then being placed in your starter area or skipping the tutorial and being placed in your starter area.
An advantage is that players can learn the *really* basic things like how to move and set up their keybinds without being distracted by other players. And without having to ignore other players' attempts to be social because they *cannot* reply since they have no idea yet what the chat commands are, how to configure the chat boxes, and how to make the fonts larger so that they can *read* chat in the first place. Some games start us off with chat so small some of us need a magnifying glass to read it - for those with imperfect vision increasing the fonts HAS to come first. And often this is character by character not in a global options setting.
Not just chat the best systems allow all fonts to be increased e.g. incuding the various interface boxes.
This won't be my first MMO. Or my 10th. Or my 20th. I can figure things out as well as most without needing help. But I still prefer being able to set things up for a new character in relative peace.
Interesting perspectives up above.
So I just want to stress that something like this would not replace starting cities. Also, for those just wanting the torch and note piece; is it that you want your experience and everyone else's to only be a torch and note thing, or could they have a beginning area and opt out if they choose? I'm also not saying tutorial, I know WASD, I get it, I agree.
Take ...Felwithe for example back in EQ1. The first couple of years before Velious expansion, you would find people there, they would start, explore out and get into the newbie areas. They would return, use it as a hub, slowly crawl out and explore further and further. It was an amazing experience. After those first couple expansions, crickets were the only thing that occupied all of the starting areas.
So, I love the hometown, but it is rare to find a game where there is a reason to ever return once you read that note, toss it in a fire and take off. An idea I'm trying to really hammer down is an area where you can land and no matter what expansion, what time of day, what stage the game is in, you (or other people, in all their different stages of gaming) can begin and have the option to take on a mini experience representative of the whole game with other people because it is one of the few times where population is concentrated (So those potential lifers can have a good first taste).
I don't mind special noob areas that are only for noobs. It should be separated by race and in some cases class (everquest 1 erudite necros started in a dif area than other erudites) though for the sake of lore and character identity.
That said, having high levels drop by and buff/help you is nice so I would also opt for the noob area to be in the way of higher levels, like maybe in front of the starting city for the race.
It's been discussed a lot already, and I think the general consensus was that race specific starter areas are better at giving your character an identity. There you are not just some "newb" (as you would be on a starting island shared by all players), instead you really are a young ogre (for example), and the starter area can give you a good idea of what your races' people think, who they consider friends or foes, what dangers or opportunities you can find in the vicinity of your starting city, and so on.
I think shared starter areas were never done because devs thought they were a great idea, but because of a) lower development costs, and b) sometime down the road when there were fewer new people coming in, and the devs thought it would make things easier/more pleasant if the new players didn't have to start in empty ghost towns.
That said, I think that while Pantheon is going to have separate starter areas, these will only be in use for very few levels, and then you already move on towards the "flow zones" as Brad called them: Shared areas where players of different races will come together for the first time, like Avendyrs Pass.
hihi. i just remembered how i got lost in the erudite starting city. and dmg, it was so dark at night! :). there was no map or anything, so i choose to attack a guard (instant death) so i could spawn outside the city! :D
i agree with Nimryl and Pyye. Still it should be polished well (no broken quest lines, no falling through the ground, not getting stuck all the time between objects). otherwise it would cause a lot of bad feedback if there are 1000 bugs.
there is no second chance to make a first impression!
Solveris said:Take ...Felwithe for example back in EQ1. The first couple of years before Velious expansion, you would find people there, they would start, explore out and get into the newbie areas. They would return, use it as a hub, slowly crawl out and explore further and further. It was an amazing experience. After those first couple expansions, crickets were the only thing that occupied all of the starting areas.
So, I love the hometown, but it is rare to find a game where there is a reason to ever return once you read that note, toss it in a fire and take off. An idea I'm trying to really hammer down is an area where you can land and no matter what expansion, what time of day, what stage the game is in, you
So, I cut out everything cept the tidbit I wanted to reply to.
What you saw there (I'm not sure how much of EQ1's growth you were there for) was Paludal Caverns (I think I spelled that right) and the introduction of ACTUAL quests, and a failure on the part of the dev team to give a rats skinned backside about anything but the new hotness.
So you had your original starting cities. And much like you describe Felwithe they were all pretty well populated in the beginning (Feerot and Oggok being minor exceptions, most trolls and ogres I knew, even at low levels, would do their best to find their way to Neriak, as Nektulous had much better hunting at low levels). When Luclin came out all that changed. Armor and weapon quests were introduced.... but only in the expansion zones. New low level armor and weapon drops were implemented.... but only in the expansion zones. This new low level gear was far and away superior to anything you'd find in equvalent old world zones.
The trick here, in my opinion, is to make sure that if you offer something of value in new newbie zones, you have to offer something of equal value in older newbie zones. You want to release an expansion that adds a new playable race, with a new player starting area? Awesome, do so. You want give the new starting area quests that will reward players with experience and gear? Awesome, do so. Just make sure you add in quests and rewards of equal value to the older starting areas as well. That, in my opinion, is how you keep your newbie areas happy and healthy. I don't feel that's even just true of newbie areas either. If the loot/xp of some new expansion area is better than the loot/xp of the older era zones, people will gravitate to where the loot and xp are best.
Nandor said:Still it should be polished well (no broken quest lines, no falling through the ground, not getting stuck all the time between objects). otherwise it would cause a lot of bad feedback if there are 1000 bugs.there is no second chance to make a first impression!
Nimryl said:Pyye said:
Nope, give me a wide open sandbox area and let me go at it with a bunch of other clueless newbies... Some of the best memories can be established here and certainly friendships can be created early on... It really establishes its worth as a legit zone when it is a part of the game and Not instanced or masked by a tutorial.We can all agree that by the tie you hit level 5, you will have a fairly good grasp of the basics.
^ 100% this. I feel a mmorpg shouldn't handhold too much. Most of the game should be fairly common sense anyway. Specifically designed tutorial areas and enviroments break my immersion of the game as I will be able to tell it's "designed" (most gamers can tell these things nowadays) and if its designed it's fake.. which brings me back to reality with a bump. For me the whole point of playing a RPG is to live in a fantasy world and enact our your role upon it.. the mmo part is about "connecting computers; aka people" aka a mainly group/social content focused RPG; (else what's the point in making it a mmo?).
The best memories can take us back.. for example.. if you're a eq player; how many of you will trigger a memory when you see one if not more of these words below?
"Kurn's tower", "West ramp", "The newbie log", "Kithicor forest", "Blackburrow", "Spires", "Chessboard", "Lift", etc etc
Now how many OTHER mmorpgs can you remember these key newbie area/words? Exactly. These are the memories we remember well.. but in other mmos we can't.. why is that?
It's because the game didn't handhold.. and was "raw" in it's level design and was group/social focused; meaning it didn't specifically design places.. WE designed the places via community/social engagement and personally I think it should be like this again. :) <3
I agree with this. I really liked that the newbie areas were close to towns. You would be among other new players. Higher level players would come through on their way to the bank in the city or the like, it made the area feel alive, that you were in the middle of the game from the first moment.
Also only seeing your own hometown made it fun to go explore what the other races hometowns looked like, or have that as a surprise when you made a char of that race.
-sorte.
Sorte said:Nimryl said:Pyye said:
Nope, give me a wide open sandbox area and let me go at it with a bunch of other clueless newbies... Some of the best memories can be established here and certainly friendships can be created early on... It really establishes its worth as a legit zone when it is a part of the game and Not instanced or masked by a tutorial.We can all agree that by the tie you hit level 5, you will have a fairly good grasp of the basics.
^ 100% this. I feel a mmorpg shouldn't handhold too much. Most of the game should be fairly common sense anyway. Specifically designed tutorial areas and enviroments break my immersion of the game as I will be able to tell it's "designed" (most gamers can tell these things nowadays) and if its designed it's fake.. which brings me back to reality with a bump. For me the whole point of playing a RPG is to live in a fantasy world and enact our your role upon it.. the mmo part is about "connecting computers; aka people" aka a mainly group/social content focused RPG; (else what's the point in making it a mmo?).
The best memories can take us back.. for example.. if you're a eq player; how many of you will trigger a memory when you see one if not more of these words below?
"Kurn's tower", "West ramp", "The newbie log", "Kithicor forest", "Blackburrow", "Spires", "Chessboard", "Lift", etc etc
Now how many OTHER mmorpgs can you remember these key newbie area/words? Exactly. These are the memories we remember well.. but in other mmos we can't.. why is that?
It's because the game didn't handhold.. and was "raw" in it's level design and was group/social focused; meaning it didn't specifically design places.. WE designed the places via community/social engagement and personally I think it should be like this again. :) <3
I agree with this. I really liked that the newbie areas were close to towns. You would be among other new players. Higher level players would come through on their way to the bank in the city or the like, it made the area feel alive, that you were in the middle of the game from the first moment.
Also only seeing your own hometown made it fun to go explore what the other races hometowns looked like, or have that as a surprise when you made a char of that race.
-sorte.
You know, there's this whole discussion on guildhalls and what perks/functionality they should provide (things like harvesting nodes, crafting nodes, bankers, brokers) and another discussion on whether or not auction houses are a good thing or bad thing. One of the points people keep going back and forth on is, "Why does it matter if people are in the cities or not?" and this right here, particularly the bolded part, that's something I wish everyone from those discussions would read.
I stand firmly on the side of not wanting a tutorial style beginning experience that gives you an artificial experience compare to what’s in the main content. I hate the Eq1 tutorial in the cave. It literally creates a situation that avoids some of the locations that I enjoyed the most, and because it has better item rewards then the starting cities even if I wanted to avoid the cave I really could not pass over the rewards.
Now I am also very much for having access to information in game about what things mean. I hate in Dark Souls and Binding of Isaac (both games I love) that I would constantly need to look things up out of game. They should have a robust help file in game that allows people to look up definitions and what not in game. So if they don’t know what DoT means they can just open the help file and look at the definition page.
Don’t make my first experience in game nothing but a tutorial quest hub.
Xonth said:I hate the Eq1 tutorial in the cave. It literally creates a situation that avoids some of the locations that I enjoyed the most, and because it has better item rewards then the starting cities even if I wanted to avoid the cave I really could not pass over the rewards.
Don’t make my first experience in game nothing but a tutorial quest hub.
I cut out everything I didn't care about.
Ye gods and little fishes I hate that cave!!!!!
Sorry, I just had to agree there. I hated it, I hated everything about it, I hated the loot that came from it because the loot was better loot than normal starting area loot, and I hated that I wanted the loot from there, and I hated myself for going there. Really, I was so filled with hate over that place. And yes! What the actual frick! I hate the idea of, "Here's your starting area, everyone here is a quest, you're gonna walk in a circle while we teach you how to tie your shoes!" Frickin frackin retcha fretcha..... just... frick. No! Just NO!
