Having played for a couple hours, I feel qualified to offer my thoughts about the new (never even heard of Fractured until today) player experience.

The tutorial could use a bit more of a callout. If it weren't for more experienced players mocking other new players for not having followed it, who knows how long it would have taken me to find it.

As a "you can click these buttons to do these things" tutorial, it was decent. Some of the concepts, like memorizing spells, could do with a more detailed explanation. Guess and test did work eventually though.

As a "this is how you progress in Fractured" tutorial, it was quite poor. I wondered off into the wilderness only to flee for my life from encounter to encounter learning just how powerless a whelp I truly am. The problem is, I have absolutely no idea how to become more powerful.

There is a lot of harvestable junk lying around. Like, a lot. I filled my inventory and had no idea what was useful so I just started chucking things alphabetically.

Talents felt like a major letdown. I was very excited when I bought my first talent as I assumed it would be a character defining moment. Instead, it was a 2.5% cooldown reduction. Literally shaved my latency off the cooldown. That was quite the downer. Big enough that I wondered out of town for a bit and just logged off

I appreciate the insight, Prometheus (and all). As a non-backer ignorant random internet gamer, obviously take my feedback with as much salt as needed. As a developer (non-gaming) myself I know that customer feedback can make or break things so I always try to share.

I hope I didn't give the impression that I hated the experience, that was not my intent. It simply did not line up with my blind expectations. Obviously this is an alpha build and there are tons of things left to do but one thing I would strongly recommend is more direct messaging about progression, especially when doing these open to all events. I did hear some of the phrasing around progression but made the assumption "horizontal" meant "not an eternally growing treadmill" rather than the more accurate "not vertical".

If very shallow vertical progression is the goal, I would strongly recommend an equivalently shallow ramp of NPC difficulty around the starting areas. I believe that horizontal progression requires experimentation and exploration to feel right. My radius of relatively safe exploration was quite small, strongly implying that there should be equally steep paths to vertical power gain.

I heard similar "there isn't supposed to be a tutorial" or "there's no spoon feeding here" comments from experienced players when they were responding to other new player's questions. I would strongly recommend changing that thought process and language.

There must be a tutorial. The tutorial is a game's hook as well as a how to guide for playing. When I first step into a game, I am not at all invested in the world. I literally do not care about the game yet, I'm simply interested in seeing if I might be. That interest needs to be nurtured until it is strong enough to support "spend some time playing around with things, there's a lot to learn."

The first thing new players see should never be "get gud" or phrases like "no spoon feeding" which trigger similar negative emotional reactions. Well, at least not if the goal is to broaden the community. Again I, or anyone else seeing Fractured for the first time, have no skin in the game. If the community is off-putting right out of the gate? That's just encouraging me to walk away.

Ignorance is not the new player's fault, it is the necessary beginning of their journey. Rather than "there's no spoon feeding" or the like, I strongly recommend a concerted effort by the community to speak to this ignorance as a positive. "I remember when I first started, having to learn all of the systems about how things worked - I miss the rush of figuring everything out for the first time. I'm happy to help with some of the basics but I don't want to rob you of that feeling. It's a big part of the Fractured experience."

I'm glad to hear that last sentence is the intended message. It hasn't been the received one. Text is a funny thing. It doesn't convey emotion very well. Most of the time people bring whatever good or bad baggage they have with them when reading. Because of that, I'm hoping, Munch your message was very off-putting for me. It's actually a good example of the kind of messaging I believe will really harm the growth of Fractured's community.

I'm going to unpack that a little to help illustrate why in hopes that you might alter your messaging a bit. You are obviously passionate about this game; I doubt you are actively intending to sabotage it.

You have indicated that using google/wiki's to solve quests is only something that people who do not think for themselves do and that it is a bad way to enjoy video games. You've implied that I might be that type of gamer and asked me to declare one way or the other based on whether I think a tutorial should play the game for me or not. And in so doing you have invited me to exit the community if I disagree.

That messaging isn't going to build a large, or healthy, community.

When responding to people, especially new members of the community, look for ways to make them feel good about their decision to be a part of the community. Focus on the things you liked, ask them what they enjoyed, maybe sound out some specifics of what they didn't like. Imagine ways that things might have been better for them, ask them what they think of those ideas. If you are discussing a specific feature, explain what you like and what you don't like about how things currently are. No feature will ever be perfect. Acknowledging that by example will make healthy discussions about it much easier and far more valuable to the devs working to improve things in the background.

The current titles give a hand picked "these are the community moderators" feel. I discovered that isn't the case only because I had a hard time believing someone had been hand picked for the job and went looking.

Think about changing the titles to something obviously unrelated to community outreach/moderation? Progressively more awesome animals, maybe? Progressively more specific colors, perhaps? "Redshirt" to "Pale Blue of Dawn's First Light". Just a thought.

I'm glad to hear that last sentence is the intended message. It hasn't been the received one. Text is a funny thing. It doesn't convey emotion very well. Most of the time people bring whatever good or bad baggage they have with them when reading. Because of that, I'm hoping, Munch your message was very off-putting for me. It's actually a good example of the kind of messaging I believe will really harm the growth of Fractured's community.

I'm going to unpack that a little to help illustrate why in hopes that you might alter your messaging a bit. You are obviously passionate about this game; I doubt you are actively intending to sabotage it.

You have indicated that using google/wiki's to solve quests is only something that people who do not think for themselves do and that it is a bad way to enjoy video games. You've implied that I might be that type of gamer and asked me to declare one way or the other based on whether I think a tutorial should play the game for me or not. And in so doing you have invited me to exit the community if I disagree.

That messaging isn't going to build a large, or healthy, community.

When responding to people, especially new members of the community, look for ways to make them feel good about their decision to be a part of the community. Focus on the things you liked, ask them what they enjoyed, maybe sound out some specifics of what they didn't like. Imagine ways that things might have been better for them, ask them what they think of those ideas. If you are discussing a specific feature, explain what you like and what you don't like about how things currently are. No feature will ever be perfect. Acknowledging that by example will make healthy discussions about it much easier and far more valuable to the devs working to improve things in the background.

I appreciate the insight, Prometheus (and all). As a non-backer ignorant random internet gamer, obviously take my feedback with as much salt as needed. As a developer (non-gaming) myself I know that customer feedback can make or break things so I always try to share.

I hope I didn't give the impression that I hated the experience, that was not my intent. It simply did not line up with my blind expectations. Obviously this is an alpha build and there are tons of things left to do but one thing I would strongly recommend is more direct messaging about progression, especially when doing these open to all events. I did hear some of the phrasing around progression but made the assumption "horizontal" meant "not an eternally growing treadmill" rather than the more accurate "not vertical".

If very shallow vertical progression is the goal, I would strongly recommend an equivalently shallow ramp of NPC difficulty around the starting areas. I believe that horizontal progression requires experimentation and exploration to feel right. My radius of relatively safe exploration was quite small, strongly implying that there should be equally steep paths to vertical power gain.

I heard similar "there isn't supposed to be a tutorial" or "there's no spoon feeding here" comments from experienced players when they were responding to other new player's questions. I would strongly recommend changing that thought process and language.

There must be a tutorial. The tutorial is a game's hook as well as a how to guide for playing. When I first step into a game, I am not at all invested in the world. I literally do not care about the game yet, I'm simply interested in seeing if I might be. That interest needs to be nurtured until it is strong enough to support "spend some time playing around with things, there's a lot to learn."

The first thing new players see should never be "get gud" or phrases like "no spoon feeding" which trigger similar negative emotional reactions. Well, at least not if the goal is to broaden the community. Again I, or anyone else seeing Fractured for the first time, have no skin in the game. If the community is off-putting right out of the gate? That's just encouraging me to walk away.

Ignorance is not the new player's fault, it is the necessary beginning of their journey. Rather than "there's no spoon feeding" or the like, I strongly recommend a concerted effort by the community to speak to this ignorance as a positive. "I remember when I first started, having to learn all of the systems about how things worked - I miss the rush of figuring everything out for the first time. I'm happy to help with some of the basics but I don't want to rob you of that feeling. It's a big part of the Fractured experience."

Having played for a couple hours, I feel qualified to offer my thoughts about the new (never even heard of Fractured until today) player experience.

The tutorial could use a bit more of a callout. If it weren't for more experienced players mocking other new players for not having followed it, who knows how long it would have taken me to find it.

As a "you can click these buttons to do these things" tutorial, it was decent. Some of the concepts, like memorizing spells, could do with a more detailed explanation. Guess and test did work eventually though.

As a "this is how you progress in Fractured" tutorial, it was quite poor. I wondered off into the wilderness only to flee for my life from encounter to encounter learning just how powerless a whelp I truly am. The problem is, I have absolutely no idea how to become more powerful.

There is a lot of harvestable junk lying around. Like, a lot. I filled my inventory and had no idea what was useful so I just started chucking things alphabetically.

Talents felt like a major letdown. I was very excited when I bought my first talent as I assumed it would be a character defining moment. Instead, it was a 2.5% cooldown reduction. Literally shaved my latency off the cooldown. That was quite the downer. Big enough that I wondered out of town for a bit and just logged off

Also, hello. Sounds like Fractured might be exactly what I've been looking for in an MMO - here's to a weekend of dead pixels!