Problems Newbies Run Into

I love watching new players start the game on Twitch. But there's a few obstacles that every single one of them I see always runs into:

(1) They never know how to find Soltown. Going from Solace Bridge to Solace Bridge Outskirts without crossing the overworld map, they're always confused the first time they end up on the overworld and they always take a while to realize that Solace Bridge and Solace Bridge Outskirts are two different scenes in two different places.

(2) They usually get lost at least once after leaving Soltown. Even I find it easy to get disoriented there, and I know the area thoroughly. I think it's something about the direction your avatar is facing and the way the map is oriented when you exit Soltown onto the overworld, it's not the way we instinctively expect and we end up heading north when we're trying to go south or vice versa.

(3) They always find Ardoris besieged, and they always enter the siege and get trounced.

(4) Now that the Isle of Storms is gone and the Ardoris confirmatory is their first meeting with the Oracle, they're always freaked out by her and predisposed to consider her a villain immediately. This isn't necessarily a bad thing, but from a story perspective, it's important to be aware of the ways you're shifting people's feelings about and expectations of the Oracle, by changing the way she's introduced.

(5) They always end up at the Tower of the Shuttered Eye before they're ready for it, and if they don't stop playing sooner, they end up at the Necropolis before they're ready for it. And they NEVER do the other outskirts first.

Why should they? Most of the time they don't know the other outskirts exist -- Arabella is just one more NPC, no more important than the Soltown beggar as far as they know, so most don't talk to her. If they do talk to her, they still don't know where the other outskirts are or how to get there. And they have no reason at all to think that going to the other outskirts should take priority over finishing activities on the Perennial Coast. Sure, they might have a "Go to Blood River" quest from Arabella -- but they've also got several more tasks on the Path of Love too, and it's just logical and intuitive to do what's close by rather than ignoring the nearby tasks to go do something else in some far away place that you don't know how to get to anyway. Even when other players are telling them they should really go do the other outskirts first, OF COURSE people would rather clear up the multiple Path of Love items cluttering their task list first. That's just natural.

(6) They always end up running into some more veteran player who gives them a ton of free emotes, intending to be nice, and I respect the intention. But inevitably, this means those new players have just had a ton of side quests and NPC interactions invalidated, because the only reward for those quests or interactions was an emote that they just got for free. Emotes that you're supposed to get from NPCs like that should really not be teachable, it just wastes all the work the devs put into creating the quest or conversation in the first place. And it sets the new players up for disappointment when they do that quest or conversation later only to get nothing out of it.

(7) They always like the sheer number and variety of the skill system, but they're also always confused about how skilling relates to experience and how the experience pool works. The game does not explain that to them; it's up to other players. Which means those playing alone and without viewers are going to be at a disadvantage. Most people don't read instructions as religiously as I do, and the SotA instructions are too long even for me.

(8) They always have problems with at least one NPC conversation (keywords not working or not dimming when they should or not mentioning a hidden keyword they need) and at least one compass marker not working. These are game basics that new players expect to just WORK.

 

Good feedback for @Chris

 

Having started playing this great game just two weeks ago, and being one of the newbies, I agree with every point. Except for 6). There seems to be so few other players around, at least when playing at East European evening prime time. Only in the Solace Bridge Outskirts and Soltown and even Ardoris I frequently pump into other people. So I've enjoyed those scripted quests fully and got emotes that way.

 

1) Immersion

2) You're probably right.

3) Immersion that the devs tried to fix. New players are supposed to quite clearly know that they can and should skip it, I guess the fix isn't working.

4) Interesting!

5) Immersion

6) I try to just give them non-quest emotes, like stuff we got in rewards.

7) Immersion

8) Immersion*

Maybe we can get over the immersion soon. Yes, even the immersion of not knowing about combat.

It's a good list, I've noted the same things many times. Good job.

For those new to the game, "immersion" has been a bane of the project, as it actually just meant "confusion and frustration" in most (not all) of the immersive ideas. Immersion isn't a bad thing if done correctly, but the game, so far, doesn't hold up its end of the bargain. That would be subtle guidance and intuitive systems.

"Heavy learning curve" is another way to put it. "I had no idea there are two other beginner areas I should have played and now I'm level 90" is another way to put it. "Google of the Avatar" is another way. There are many ways to put it.

Fortunately it has gotten better slowly. You used to immersively die falling 10 feet in the old days. Now you just break an ankle.

* Super long story.

 

A very good summary of the situation which unfortunately never seems to get any proper attention from the Devs.

 

For the sieges, the problem is that the dialogue box isn't clear that it's talking about Entering or Bypassing the siege, not the city. They know they need to enter the city, not bypass it. And there's no obvious indication to let them know that the sieges are intended for higher-level players.

Just as there's no indication, from either Arabella or anyone in Blood River, that they should go to Blood River Outskirts before continuing on the Path of Truth. Like the Path of Love, they're specifically directed to go on to Aerie and Vertas. The game flat out tells them to do the opposite of the Outskirts.

For the rest, I'm starting to get really really annoyed with the way devs and players both in this community talk about immersion. It's like everything wrong with the game gets blamed on an attempt to be immersive and used as an excuse for more blatant immersion-breaking, when in fact the problem has nothing to do with immersion. It's not remotely immersive to have all the major political players in Ardoris wanting to meet and give tasks to low-level newcomers/strangers to the city. It's not immersive to have people railroaded out of a scene onto a boat that takes them somewhere they've no idea where when they haven't had a chance to get their geographical bearings. It's DEFINITELY not immersive to have compass markers that don't work (some of which are inherently immersion-breaking) or NPC conversions that don't operate consistently.

On the good side: The new players I've watched also like the housing (although it's not a priority to all of them, though it is to some) and are impressed by the size of the world. And while some of the vet players complain about the combat system, the new players always like it. (As I do myself.)

 

Me too.

But someones idea of immersion was what caused most of these problems. And yeah, they found out that much of it is not immersive.

But it's where it came from. I'm glad you're here to keep shouting about it, as I've gone hoarse.

 

If there's one thing my real life advocacy work has taught me, it's the importance of sharing the work, knowing when to step back for your own sanity, and when to give it everything you can so that someone else can step back. Otherwise you all burn out before the work gets finished. *wry smile* Heck, half the reason I've spent so much time in-game this summer is because I'm burnt out in real life.

 

@Bedawyn @Vladamir Begemot
Does anything introduce players to the Map feature? One thing I liked about early Ultimas was the cloth map which you could use to actually figure out where you were going. My first thought on bumping into the Solace Bridge Outskirts northeast exit was "What's a Novia, and why would I want to go there?". My second thought was "Is the Novia hostile? Will it easily fry my beginning character?" After using a few moongates and getting lost several times over the next few weeks, I found out that I could run across the continent in several minutes instead of moongating. One other thing is that moongate zones that do not have a map will tend to confuse players as to how to get back to the moongate.
I don't know how many players will try to play thru Love before any of the other virtues. I tended to look into the logbook to see whether a quest was recommended for me now or not. I was, however, very disappointed that the Tower of the Shuttered Eye was a tier 2 dungeon marked as tier 5 and inside a tier 4 approach area. Similarly, the difficulty in the Truth quest does not really go up except for the external zones, which is a real letdown when I see the dungeon with no monsters in it is allegedly tier 5. I doubt anyone would try finishing Courage before either of those two but you never know.
The "Quests active / available" display on towns should be modified by whether you have quests active or whether you have quests available (that is, not done). If a town keeps saying "quests available" when you have done all the quests, then that's not helpful. Speaking of which, I don't even know where to find suitable quests for my level.
I would like a better description of "tier". Right now my character is an AL 60 archer/mage/"thief" (stealth/backstab). I can handle tier 3 easily and tier 4 except when I get mobbed. I find I cannot handle tier 5. Yet the difficulty of monsters varies a LOT even at the same alleged tier. For example, a tier 4 siege has what look like tier 2 Obsidians (100-200hp), tier 4 Obsidians (200-400hp), and tier (5? 6?) siege engineers and champions (1000hp+).
Which reminds me, I particularly do not like it when I clean out about 4 or 5 enemies just to have all of them respawn next to me after 3 minutes or so. There should be a "no respawn" zone around the Avatar.
The is one other thing which I really don't like: some % modifiers are % of something else, not raw %, so for example wielding 2 -10% reagent wands will not reduce a 20% reagent use spell to 0% reagent use. When I look at things, I usually think that they're base % but that's not necessarily right. Even weirder are things that specify a non-unit, like fire resistance +10. Is that -10hp fire damage, +10% FR, +10% of some particular other resist value, or +10 affinity which is +5% base FR? If hp then how does it work with % resistance? While it's not necessary for players to know every little detail, the thing is that players need some indication as to whether X is worth it or not, or how X compares to or stacks with Y (e.g. Douse and Ice Shield).

 

That "some % modifiers are % of something else, not raw %" is common among many games. I still can not figure out the math used in Diablo 3 or 2 or, most likely 1 ...

 

It's quite simple really.
If you have 100 damage and you get 30% damage boost, you now have 130 damage.
If you get 10% more damage now, it can be either:
143 ( 130 + 10% ) ( this is multiplicative, it multiplies the actual value )
140 ( 100 + (30% + 10%) ( this is additive, it adds multipliers together first )

Multiplicative is better, giving bigger boosts. These numbers get more significant, if you have more boosting stats.

base damage: 100
current boost: 1000% more damage ( ie. 10 times more )
calculated damage: 1000 damage

You find an item that gives you 100% more damage. Sounds awesome right? Double damage, atleast, thats what it sounds like.
However, it all depends on what kind of 100% it is.

Multiplicative: 1000 + 100% = 2000 damage // This gives the real double damage.
Additive: 100 + 1000% + 100% = 100 + 1100% = 1100 damage. // actually gives only 10% in this situation. Can be less or more, depending amount of multipliers you already have.


PS: Sorry to sidetrack.

 

@Bedawyn not really. All good suggestions.

 

Yes, I know how how multiplicative and additive works. I'm a programmer by profession and hobby. But quite often the actual numbers that end up being used just don't.... "add up". SO, there's probably some logic going on that breaks what should be a purely polynomial equation.

But, as you said, getting a bit sidetracked.

 

This is mostly because when players complained about how bad some of these things are, the dev response was always, "it's for immersion." Which became code for, "we don't have the time or manpower to change/fix it, and are unwilling to take the blame for the current state." Usually, when players blame something on "immersion" they're saying it unseriously.

 

There IS one in game activity that encourages players to explore and learn the Overland Map, Regional Mail Deliveries (I detail that in this guide). I always thought that was actually well done as a new player activity. You get some gold AND you get to run around the Overland and learn the layout of the land by visiting most all of the larger cities in the game.

 

Another way is the Grand Tour. That Automaton is is Soltown. That in itself will get them out on the oveland and pull up the map. But i agree there is nothing that tells them to look at the Compass for the sparklies if they have quests. I wish they would bring back the Isle of Storms tutorial. I for one think it was a better combat tutorial for new players. And talking to the Oracle there. It gave them some sort of idea what is expected of them being thrust into this world .

 

When players started on the Isle of Storms, at least you could talk to Arabella first and get some information about the "Novia" and "New Britannia" keywords before you came down to the planet. Even after they removed it, you originally had a chance to talk to Edvard at the bridge and he could give you some basic geographic information. When they moved him to the boat, they also took away the possibility of asking him questions before leaving. :-(

They really really need a Quickstart document, including information about the Map feature. And they need to stop the vendors from selling obsolete maps and rename them as "Antique" in the loot drops, so people can still use them as deco without new players expecting them to be useful.

EXACTLY!

I'd think for a world as large as this one -- which is not supposed to be undiscovered country but one full of civilizations -- a basic cloth map of Novia should be at least as important as starting gear as the crafting tools, if not more so. Especially since the Oracle and/or Arabella are supposed to be providing the starting gear, even if the new player no longer knows that. I mean, if you were Arabella, giving this newly arrived avatar all the armor and weapons and tools and apparently wanting them to succeed, wouldn't you hand them a map too?

The "conventional wisdom" among the player community is to tell people to do Truth first, then Courage, then Love. The game itself tells people to do Love first. Yeah, my inclination was to bail on Love when I saw it was leading me into a Tier 5 area while I was still getting whomped in Tier 2s, but I'm the comprehensive sort who reads every journal entry. I think you and I are in the minority when it comes to new players paying attention to the journal beforehand instead of only after running into trouble (if at all). It also doesn't help that not all the tasks in the journal have difficulty levels.

I haven't lost hope that they will eventually return player choice to the starting areas, which would once more allow people to start on the Courage line (as my first characters did). At least the courage questline has an early natural stopping point where the next task is "travel across country to do something non-urgent for an unsympathetic character", so it's easy for a low-level player to think, "yeah, right, whatever, I'll go do this other low-level stuff first, maybe even switch Paths." The Love and Truth paths don't have the same narrative stopping points, at least early on, so it's harder for an immersive player to step off those paths and go do something more appropriate for their current level.

The inconsistency and unpredictability of the Tier levels, and the fact that they are not a good estimate of the difficulty of a scene, is one of my pet peeves. Looking at the Outskirts as an example, having Solace Bridge Outskirts and the other two considered the same level is simply ridiculous. All three may have very weak monsters, but the ones in Solace Bridge Outskirts are also incredibly slow and stupid -- you can pick off their friends from a distance and even hit them and it still takes them several seconds to decide to fight you. They almost never initiate a fight. And they're limited in number and limited geographically -- they stay in very specific places where you can avoid them until you choose to. The mobs in the other two areas may not be harder, but you can't move 10 feet in any direction without having them ambush you. Their strength may be the same, but their numbers and behavior is very different.

I would love a reference list somewhere of quests that could be sorted by how much combat/how strong you have to be to complete them. (Even if a quest itself isn't dangerous, if you can't complete it without passing through a dangerous area....)

Yep yep yep.

The comments and complaints about SotA math throughout the community make me very very glad that I'm not a play-by-stats type. I suspect I'd be pulling my hair out if I were.

 

While I agree with @Vladamir Begemot that "immersion" is often the reason why certain things are left intentionally vague or why certain mechanics (ie NPC schedules) exist, we've learned over the past few years that these features often do more harm than good. Immersion done correctly should make the player feel like part of a living world, exploring through it and discovering. While having some fourth-wall-breaking help text might affect immersion, nothing breaks immersion more than having to tab out of the game to ask a question, search for information, or even just to wait 10 minutes for an NPC to be where they're supposed to be and willing to talk to you.

One thing that players who are new to Sota, but not necessarily to the MMO genre, do not expect is just how much of the stuff simply does not work, or does not work as expected. In most RPG type games, if you complete a puzzle or a quest or objective or whatever, and the expected result does not happen, you assume that you've missed something, or not done it right. Sota veterans know that its far more likely that the content is not working as intended, there's a bug with the quest flag, there's a bug with the dialogue, or the item you need simply isn't spawning/dropping for unknown reasons, or you can't interact with the thing it seems you should be able to interact with. I cannot count the number of times that we've had to brute force someone through some quest or another because it was unclear what to do, journal didn't update, quest item didn't drop, or something else went wrong with it. No way to abandon quests exacerbates this. Its sad that in a game that is meant to be story-rich, the best advice to give new folks is often "don't bother with the quests except the ones that give unique deco."

I'm not saying anything new here that most of us don't already know. Honestly I think making things glow blue and adding compass markers just made it worse since they aren't always reliable anyway, and it kind of kills the whole 'explore and figure out non linear quest objectives' thing. Either do one or the other - make the quests a subtle backdrop to the game, or hold the player's hand and show them the way through it. Trying to split the difference has just made it frustrating all around, in my opinion. Either way, they need to be rewarding, and/or memorable.

 

@Toular Yeah, not all of it is intuitive.
@Katu Multiplicative isn't always good. Reduction multiplication (e.g. Wands) means 2 10% wands reduce your reagent usage by 19%. Again, this is only valid for things that have a base unit other than percent. If the base unit is percent, you don't know whether the % is base % or % of your %. For example, wands and staves reduce your reagent use by (current use value) * (1-benefit) * (1-benefit) so if reagent use is 20% you will reduce it by less than 4% with 2 wands (to 16.1%). And I'm still wondering what +23 fire resistance for Douse means when fire resistance is usually percent of incoming damage. And is damage reduction by affinity and spells multiplicative or additive?
@Jaesun Regional mail deliveries are nice but it took me a long while to realize that there was an overland map, much less that I could drag the mouse over any town to see its name. I took a mail delivery from Ardoris (or was it Soltown?) which was to Celestis but I didn't know where it was or how to get there.
@Belladonna Rose Actually I completed the Grand Tour and the Shrine Caretaker quests and never figured out that there was an overland map to pull up until later. Also I got lost in Westend (I think) because it didn't have a map so I had to find my way to the tour bot and the town crier and then back without knowing where the moongate was.
@Bedawyn Yes, Truth is the easiest path, especially if you have stealth capability. You essentially need to be able to fight tier 2 monsters and survive the Exceter Mines outskirts. I haven't started on the Necropolis yet nor the Kobold camp.
@kaeshiva Sometimes I find the blue glow helpful, such as when I have no clue as to what or who I should be looking for. What I do not like is that apparently dropping solved-quest items apparently has caused towns to glow blue for me even though they shouldn't, and I don't know whether a town has additional quests that I haven't done rather than just having quests per se. That, and caretakers giving me quests to kill the Obsidian Lords when I'm obviously not ready for it, which clogs up my quest list unnecessarily.
Speaking of quests, anyone know why there are 2 NPCs in Desolis that want the Obsidian Logbooks? I ended up giving 2 of them to one and the other to the other. Neither was described as "virtuous" or "evil" so it's not like the Geisterseelen quest.
Many RPGs have an "intro" where they don't toss you into the game but have a mini-movie showing you something important that happened. Maybe that could be done to introduce new avatars to Novia?
Also, it would be nice if there was some "standard" way of finding out what quests are available in a town (other than quests that are a continuation of a previous quest or quests that are deliberately hidden). "Go everywhere and talk to everyone" is not as reasonable an expectation in this game as it was in Ultima 4-9 as important NPCs are by far a rarity and harder to find.

 

Great thread - really enjoyed to read all comments

So there are still people enjoying to explore, following the story and doing quests!

I won't re-write thoughts I posted recently:
Some thoughts about Shuttered Eye Tower
Some thoughts about first impression and a summery of doing the three paths with two Avatars

I just want to add two thoughts:
1. Story/Quest related maps are really important to be included as soon as possible - alot of them are still missing!
2. Sieges should be skipped automatically until Adv.lvl 40/50 ...