New Player Experience

Day 1

Opened Controls for a way to switch between interaction mode and action mode. Spent some more time to bind a key for dodge, since there's an option to enable/disable double-tapping dodge. Didn't seem like a rebinding option exists, however. Moved on.

Answered Oracle's questions, got mage as I wanted. After arriving the battlefield smashed all boxes and barrels since Oracle promised some weapons, found fish instead. Good guy approached and requested my company, was worried that he'd say something about me looting elven corpses but glad he didn't. Probably because I had magic.

Met the bard, bard wanted me to get a sword near the barn. Said bye but he repeated himself, strange bard. Talked to the bard again after taking everything I could, including but not limited to the gold on the elven kid's dead parents and a mysterious dagger. Bard still insisted I should get a sword, though I had one equipped. Oh wait. I destroyed the sword I found near the barn because it was lousier than another one I had. Well...how awkward. Took me some time to figure out relogging would force the sword to respawn. Finally left town.

Fought a bunch of elven equivalent of tavern rats, sunbeamed all the way. Tried dodge but it sort of worked and then stopped working even as I triple-tapped movement keys.

The moment we reached the other end of the bridge the good guy stopped fighting and watched me duel the enemy leader. It was a long duel due to long sunbeam CD and me dealing practically no damage with the lousy barn sword. Finally enemy was gone and I got his stuff. Good guy said goodbye, wasn't too thrilled about what he did earlier.

Was supposed to get to a big city but got to the outskirts with some elves needing my help. Thought I was lost, tried going back, tried swimming across the river but still couldn't find my way. Finally realized it was probably intended.

Accepted the elves' quests, found a trainer, finally realized I had more spells than the two on my bar. I had fire magic? And I was waiting for sunbeam to cool down all the time? Went to fight some bad guys with my newly discovered godhood and almost got myself killed. Bought a bow and some arrows out of desperation, and then it was about bedtime.

To sum up,

• Bug: bard repeating the "get a sword" dialogue regardless of your reply; this happens in some other NPCs' cases too.
• Flaw: bard only recognizes the sword near the barn; ideally all swords should be acceptable, or that the barn sword can't be destroyed during the tutorial.
• Flaw: reaching the end of the bridge makes the NPC follower leave, even as you are fighting an enemy.
• In addition, I believe it would better to either place all available starting spells on the quickbar, or give a hint that there's more. It's possible to assume that what's on the bar is all the character knows.
• City or Outskirts as the next destination? This might be confusing to some players.
• Is it possible to bind combat rolling to a key?

 

Great that you are writing it down.

Keep it up.

 

Day 2

Wild vigilantes spawned left and right, caught me off-guard a few times but I managed to not die. My newly-joined friend however died to a mushroom. It was...humiliating.

(She also didn't understand what a glowing ankh is, so tried to speak to every ball of light around her. No wonder a mushroom could end her life.)

We did part of the quests that require lots of legwork, still couldn't remember where the elven camp and the vigilante camp are, precisely. Spent over an hour trying to find the spider cave but it's probably because I'm bad at finding things.

Most of my time in the elven camp was dedicated to casting Tap Soul - Healing Ray - Healing Touch repeatedly so I could get Corpse Explosion, too bad the visual effect isn't what I expected. The corpse doesn't explode at all! I demand explosion of corpses!

...and iron ores. Do they exist? I've found some coppers but not a single iron ore. This has delayed my time of getting a 2H sword, but I may not need one any more. Cheating using sotawiki has given me plenty of focus potions so I can sort of only cast spells for now.

My spells sometimes do a lot of damage, but most times don't. Pretty big damage range making survival a gamble.

Found a cave of mushrooms on my travel. Immediately backed off. I like that you can get yourself killed easily during exploration.

Additional thoughts:

• Exploration would be more rewarding if there were slightly more resources spawn in the wild; ESO so far has given me and my friend the most satisfaction from resource gathering, but also seems too easy. Somewhere in-between would be nice.
• Vigilantes are annoying, especially the rogues/hidden ones - the way they suddenly appear doesn't feel natural and often interrupts something I am doing, or the mood of exploration.
• The distribution of enemies and resources are strange. I don't expect them to spawn evenly, but currently you can go a long way without anything interesting happening - no resource nodes/enemies.
• The fact that you can unlock recipes through experimentation may need to be addressed more, just in case.

 

In your bullet points you left out that they told you you are going to a city cut instead go to outskirts. I say this because the Devs will probably go back to those but not reread the (great, funny) commentary.

Also, @Lum the Mad

 

Awesome feedback! Thank you

 

Thank you! I forgot to include that one.

 

Yes, though not in every scene, some scenes only have copper (not sure about Blood River Outskirts specifically). Iron Ore is very dark and therefore the hardest one to spot, this is what one looks like:

I did report that a few weeks ago, probably some other people have too.

 

Thank you @Wintermute of CoF! It might be easier for me to find iron now that I know what they look like.

And since I didn't have much time to play today, I'll just add some simple observations:

• Bug: Discovered locations disappear from compass periodically, usually after changing scenes. This nearly caused my friend to quit as we spent half an hour trying to locate Gus (again).
• Related to point one, please allow easier access to maps. Maybe we can draw our own maps, or maybe maps are rare consumables that will unlock the map functionality for corresponding regions. The current interface/design will easily destroy a new player's faith in the game, even if said player is indeed the target audience (so, has lots of patience.)
• Consider putting a cooking vendor in the elven camp. The cooking station is quite useless otherwise for new players that they have no access to empty jars.