Improvements to the tutorial
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We all know that currently the tutorial doesn't do a particularly good job in introducing a player to the game.
This doesn't come as a surprise, since that tutorial is very old and the game changed a lot around it.
I think that the game is reaching a point where it could update the tutorial, since a few very basic elements of the game, that absolutely need to be introduced, are unlikely to change any more.
So, I think that the following topics really need to be added to the tutorial: (Note: These points were collected by following the questions asked in general chat during these 3 days).- Purple health: What it is and how to get rid of it
- Hunger and Rest: The tutorial shows you how to make food and yet doesn't tell about the hunger. Also, as a consequence of not telling them about rest, an enormous amount of players have no idea what the tooltip in second wind means, and are surprised that they have to go back to the campfire every 2 mins.
- Fractured is a game where you have to adapt and find a way to fight the challenges. So, why there is no introduction to the resistances? I saw 3 players fruitlessly ganking on a warg by spamming magic arrows, unknowing that those things have a very high resistance to that type of damage, and many didn't even know that magic was a type of damage.
- Since a few tests, houses are a huge part of the gameplay. No one knows how to claim a plot or how the tech system worked.
- Similarly for the imbuing system. 90% of the drops in the game serve the imbuing system, and yet it isn't introduced.
- How to catch an horse.
Now, fitting this stuff in the tutorial isn't easy. Especially plots and horses. What could probably be done though, is add a section to the knowledge book, with "common knowledge" articles. The tutorial just tells you that if you are unsure on how to do something, you should consult your knowledge book. In there you find pages on how to catch horses, how the tech system works and stuff like that.
Would make the game a lot more approachable.Last note: Please in the archer tutorial, after he makes a bow, make him also craft some arrows
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Agreed.
A large part of engagement is setting the right expectations. Players are coming in lost and confused as to what they're supposed to do because they're coming in blind and it doesn't play how they expect. They game doesn't need to change how it plays to suit these players, it needs to better explain how the game works so that players can have more exploratory expectations.
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agreed. In addition:
Better explanation of the Presets section. There wasn't really much info at all presented beyond "memorize X abilities" Nowhere did it mention going to the abilities tab. Maybe that seems obvious, but it certainly wasn't to me.
I don't know if we'll have a typical quest system or if it will just be the tutorial and then off we go on our own. I would like to see most of this as a quest chain beyond the tutorial. I think for the most part the tutorial gives us the basics to get started, but not much beyond that.
For the Housing, it could be a chain that starts with "accumulate X gold", then points us to a plot, or region of plots. Although, come to think of it, that could put us somewhere we don't want to be in relation to guild and whatnot.
Horses though would be easy. Starts with "craft 5 ropes" then "craft Animal nets" and finally give us the little green marker of the general vicinity of where horses might be.
There's lots more of course, from building the home, to building the craft stations, to decorations etc.
Overall, I was impressed enough that i purchased first the champion pack, and then this morning the Eternal pack. Eagerly awaiting next test. Hopefully Beta 1?
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They do not intend c to make this a quest-driven game. Aside from the tutorial they don't really plan more quests at all.
As for horses, I don't see them placing a horses found here marker as they want horses to be a self limiting resource since they don't die.
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That's probably fine as we'll have guilds to fall back on for help/info. A smidge disappointing that there won't be much structure per se as its somewhat limiting. But not a deal breaker.
I saw a lot of the same questions being asked repeatedly. I saw the same people answering the same questions repeatedly. I saw the same people bemoan the fact that they WERE answering the same questions repeatedly.
An expanded tutorial, or even a set of tutorials would help alleviate that. Granted, so would an actually help wiki or FAQs. But really, whose gonna take time to read those when they can be playing instead?
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This is one case where I think that an instanced starting area separate from the rest of the game world would, and only accessible from char creation, be useful.
There the devs could give you access to wheat, cotton, crafting stations, imbuing, allow players to claim a house plot for 30min and build a basic crafting station, tame a horse, build a campfire, experience being knocked down, and death (with traps). You could have mob spawn areas with signs that show different elements or weapon types to cue the fact that you need to switch it up to fight this mob. Have those beginning mobs rank up really fast so that a player can see what a filled bestiary page looks like.
Then when they are done they click on the harbor and choose the connecting harbor they want to arrive at on the continent of their choice which would make it much easier for new players to join their friends and at the same time disperse the population to reduce initial competition. If needed you could even have the characters die, loose all their loot, and wake up naked on the beach after a 'ship wreck' which would then give them the thrill of working up from scratch with no gifted stuff from the tutorial.
This would mean that the cotton and wheat you find in the world would no longer have to be permanently blocked and players could go out and harvest it if they really wanted to.
You could still have the player friendly 'starter towns' for basic crafting, banking, and market.. but after the first few weeks of game play they are mostly ignored in favor of player towns, so why really?. I would be in favor of having no 'starter towns' at all, requiring everything to be player built outside of the instanced 'beginning island'. But I know I am in the minority there.
