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New Players and why they won't stay.

Discussion in 'Release 73 Feedback' started by shadtek, Dec 19, 2019.

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  1. shadtek

    shadtek Avatar

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    I recently bought another Character slot and I noticed something that the developers might not have considered.
    Now, as you can only start on the path of love, some considerations were not made that will stop a new character from progress, discourage them, and they will quit.
    I made a new character and I was determined to keep the horrible quest journal straight, I did every task by the book. So by the time they ask me to go to the shuttered eye, I am about level 20. Because of experience, I could get there, but I am telling you, a New Player will give up.
    So now, at around level 30, I am supposed to explore Midras Ruins (tomb of the avatar). Every creature is at least dark orange, and most of them are red to me. There is NO WAY a level 30 can do this by themselves.
    So character quest progress completely stops. And once that happens it's only a short time before the player abandons the game in favor of a game that works right and where new players have half a chance to progress...
    I made several new characters and several different runs at it to be sure that I was right.
    Somebody should look into this because this game needs new players more than anything, and you will not be keeping them if they cannot play the questline you provided to them.

    What will happen is they will either quit or be forced to abandon the questline until they are stronger.
    What happens then is they wind up picking up more quests, and by the time they are powerful enough to go back to Ardoris, their Quest Journal will be hopelessly confusing and frustrating.

    I am telling you, I love this game but I almost quit in the beginning over the quest journal alone.
    And now that the new player quests are altered and have to start with Solace bridge, You have NO CHANCE of completing those quests in order. and that quest journal will be the nail in the coffin. They will quit, I guarantee it.
     
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  2. Anpu

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    Create new character. Finish Battle of Solace Bridge. Arrive at Solace Bridge Outskirts. Run to the exit. Run to the other 2 areas of your choice. You are never forced at all to finish the Solace Bridge Outskirts.
     
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  3. shadtek

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    Yes Anpu, as a veteran player I know to do this.
    A new player will not know this and even if you tell them what to do, then they will end up with a jacked up quest log.
    That's 2 strikes against the game right out of the gate.
     
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  4. Gussak

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    I just ignore the quest journal, I hide most stuff there,
    I like to wander around and anything with that blue head marker I go towards (I think it may be lack of patience or time),
    I never read the texts from quests :(, (not just here, in any game), I just fast click on all words on the leftmost side as til now, if it is a question, the leftmost is accept/yes/SomeGoodOption,
    There are some interesting stuff worth of reading but they are rare, so I end up ignoring everything, I think all these quests text should have some kind of voting, to hint other ppl they will have a fun time reading it, so ppl like me would know it is worth spend time reading it.
    :)
     
  5. Drilikath

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    It is impossible to get people to understand this stuff.
     
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  6. Drilikath

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    Sure if that was what they where TOLD TO DO . But it is not. They are told to go to a hard area next in the chain that they do... People don't know this game coming into it.
     
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  7. liz_the_wiz

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    At the same time, Ive done a video in the past showing you how to complete the shroud in 1 day, starting from creation to walking out.. solo.
     
  8. Rat2

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    Nice job, but any game has to have an easy and inviting entrance. Deep games like SotA need a way to start and grow. If there are blockers to normal people, without the benefit of youtube, then shadtek is completely correct. I've run into a few new players lately and tried to help or direct them to help, but the newbies that haven't hooked up with a guild are going to have a difficult time.
     
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  9. Numa

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    This is what worries me. There should be a lot more newbie activity in the designated forums on the SOTA boards. It's possible these new players aren't making it here for some reason.
     
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  10. liz_the_wiz

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    If they download the game from Steam, is there even a link to the forum here?

    We were all new once. Only guild I joined had one active played and I then made my own guild of just me because the other guy stopped playing.. but, if people want to play they will, problem these days is that it does seem like lots of people either want the game handed on a plate (like new WOW were you dont even have to pay for the new skills or travel to train them) or if it doesnt click with them in a short time they give up. Many of the ones Ive seen give up, have gone to UT at really low levels, like almost day 1, and played like 12-15 hours a day hit high levels real quick and found, solo is hard because of all the humanoids and.. well, its almost like theres nothing to do now, cos they are so used to UT if they cant get that xp elsewhere, and basically all they know is grinding in the one zone.. they are bored now and move on
     
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  11. Gussak

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    VIRTUES (where are you!? why r u hiding u pretty virtueses?)
    Why I love this game: virtues.
    But I've played "a lot" (of time at least in few days), and I couldnt feel the virtues, they did not show up clearly "like they used to in the long past" :>
    They should be more exposed, I should feel virtuous all the time, I should see glorious virtues like a beacon...
    but I just feel like playing another MMO.

    COMBAT VARIETY (currently is player guided, but could be a builtin feature with teleporters between these areas below with in-game hints based on the party average potential/power of the top 3 players on it)
    It is fun to level up skills, but not that much, repetition is boring.
    UT is cool, but not that much.
    Once I went with a party that fought a dragon and after that went to a cool maze (pvp area depite none had pvp enabled), and that variety was nice, also because I discovered new areas to teleport to. But after that I only found UT parties :(.

    The first/initial area is 75% fun, it is big, has many things but feels empty of players at combat areas, least cemetery as I found some players there. We didnt interfere with each other tho. Once I saved a fleeing player from a strong mob, I didnt want the loot but I had to kill it and she couldnt check the corpse as we were not in a party... but was fun, and happened only once... The "roll dice loot mode" should be default in such areas for ppl not in parties, the more you damaged the mob the more chances you have to loot each item, may be that way ppl would interact more?

    PS.: my potato PC is another problem, but I compensate the huge waiting for an area to load by watching youtube videos xD
     
  12. Lord Tachys al`Fahn

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    This isn't new to many here... we've been arguing this and fighting this particular good fight since before they decided to go live with a half-finished (actually, less than 1/3rd finished, but more on that later) product.

    Unfortunately, their answers are :

    • Buggy quest system: Fixing it... but for episode two. Don't like episode one's quest bugs? Don't play them and wait for episode two!!!
    • Progression: There is no answer. They don't understand the word apparently, or they would have fixed this in the episode 1 quest lines (and other places) long ago.
    Yes, the answer to level progression has always been that you would play one episode through to heading to the Hub town for that line (Ardoris, Resolute, etc) then go to one of the other quest lines. That would get a new player to about adventurer level 50 before trying to go further any one individual quest line, and then about 75 by the time you finish all three and the main quest line.

    No... there is NOTHING that tells you this, because why should you have to be told? We're not going to hold your hand here!(/sarcasm)

    They had the people on hand to fix all this two years ago and more when we were first bringing this issue up, but it fell on deaf ears. Hell, you should have seen the eyes roll (LITERALLY) when I told them face to face that their Isle of Storms area, while conceptually fantastic, still needed more of a personal tutorial touch than it had at the onset, that could provide the option to skip past all of it should the player so choose. Now.. too late, that ship sailed and sunk a long time ago. Instead, we have a game that released with one of three quest lines ready, and over half the scenes in game having neither anything to do with the game in general, nor their own specific identity, instead being clones of other scenes.

    So, in summary, counsel your friends that you can talk into playing the game to play through the outskirts and starter town quests, and THEN start branching out into finishing the deeper quest line stuff. It does get better once you finish the main quest line, but you have to be self-motivated to go out and find the things that are out there to occupy your time.
     
  13. liz_the_wiz

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    arabelle/Annabel whatever her name is does. Problem is. She does it before you even really start down the quest line. Pretty much she’s in the first village you get to on each quest and says hey to do another line.
     
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  14. Anpu

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    I am unaware at this time, of any bug that is preventing you finishing the Chapter 1 quest, with a single player? In fact, Mac has finished the Chapter 1 Main Quest over 16 times, and has not had an issue finishing it. I also have finished the Chapter 1 quest multiple times (on QA) and was able to finish it just fine (using my 1 time quest reset).

    If however you are referring to the "Stuck Blue Markers", that will effect players that have older created characters, that's a (display) issue. It is however not related to a quest being broken in any way. Of note (and this is the case for all of my newly created characters), I have no stuck blue markers on any of my characters.

    The current "quest system" is working just fine (for the Chapter 1 Main quest) as well as all the other side quests in the game. I am not quite sure what you are referring to in your statement above.
     
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  15. Toular

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    I suspect there are some conditions that cause the appearance of a broken quest, such as stumbling into events that are part of a quest before actually getting the quest. Or the occasional NPC conversation where you have to actually type a key word instead of clicking it That's a problem for those that don't read the NPC conversations and just click the left-most word that pops up in the dialog box.
     
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  16. Lord Tachys al`Fahn

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    First of all... no one said anything about there being blockers. I said it was buggy, which it still is, or it wouldn't be on their list of things to revamp to fix/make better for episode 2.
    Second, I could give a [adjective] [expletive] HOW many times Mac has completed the fekkin game. I have made many, MANY run-throughs myself in the interest of helping them fine tune and/or fix various aspects of the quests and storyline, some of which were actually listened to, many of which were ignored. Please refer to the new player section where people STILL post (when there ARE new people posting) about problems with quests.
     
  17. Lord Tachys al`Fahn

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    I did indeed forget about this. However, it is more in more of a "Hey... you might want to look over here" kind of way, rather than being a more purpose-placed NPC that is DIRECTING you to head down another path. Instead of a side-NPC kind of nudging you somewhere, these prompts should be coming from NPC's that are more directly in the path, shunting you off in a round robin kind of way until you are ready to progress. You know... progression.
     
  18. shadtek

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    Well, all I am saying is if you want new players to stick around, something has to be done about the Journal for sure. And if nobody wants to fix the actual quest system to make it solo-able at a realistic level, people will quit.
    This is not about "handing them" something, it is about a useless quest journal, and a lack of foresight or precaution to prevent the player from screwing up the questline, and getting frustrated, and quit.
    How hard is it to index a journal?
    How hard is it to setup a flag system that prevents the questline from happening out of order by stopping certain dialogues until the appropriate prerequisites have happened first?
    What kind of programmer does not do this? It is really a no-brainer... Sorry if that hurts anyone's feelings but this is like some programming you would find in the High school classroom...

    Game needs new players to survive, and I don't think enough attention has been paid to new Players. notice if you will, there are no new players. We are all veteran players here and we only know how to survive the new character process because we know how to play and how the game works. They don't.
     
  19. Gussak

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    mmm... "Veteran Advices" could also be published as those notes and books we can write :)
    I am still waiting for the Adventuring Tour guide, UC is "cool" but too repetitive... I want to be taken to the Maze, to see a dragon and so on, I like the combat, everything else is boredom to me, even reading quests, I just fast click on them...
     
  20. shadtek

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    ok that is a good idea anyway. However, it don't invalidate what I am saying. The games very survival depends on picking up new players.
     
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