Welcome to New User Experience Testing/Feedback!

Discussion in 'New Player Experience Feedback' started by Attenwood, Jun 17, 2016.

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  1. Attenwood

    Attenwood Portalarian Emeritus Dev Emeritus

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    Hello Everyone!

    As we ramp up development toward Final Wipe, we are refocusing our development lens toward what we consider the “First Time User Experience”. We have an incredible opportunity to revisit scenes that impact the earliest experiences of players approaching our game for the first time.

    While we Devs are actively testing these scenes internally, we also want to open the process up to the public to get as unfettered and untainted opinions as possible. Needless to say, working on and building these scenes may have made us numb to the challenges and concerns of the average player navigating through them! :)

    This section of our forums will be our chance to accumulate feedback for earliest gameplay experiences. No-holds-barred. We want to know what you think! We hope to hear about:
    • Bugs
    • Improvement Suggestions
    • Difficulties/Challenges
    • Things you liked
    We want to try and focus on areas of the first 4 hour experience, so we hope to see input on areas relating to:
    • Character Creation
    • Isle of Storms
    • Tutorial Scenes
      • Battle of Solace Bridge (Love/Archer)
      • Battle of Highvale (Courage/Fighter)
      • Blood River Massace (Truth/Mage)
    • Soltown
    • Subsequent Quests/Adventure Scenes/Crafting
    • General
      • UI
      • Controls
      • Visuals
      • Audio
      • Etc.
    Details are welcome, and feedback from as close to a First-Time User’s perspective is appreciated. (Clearing registry files for the game to start with a blank slate helps!)

    Thank you to everyone who takes up the mantle to work alongside us in improving the early experience! J
     
    Last edited: Jun 17, 2016
  2. Golem Dragon

    Golem Dragon Avatar

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    Sounds like time to do a youtube video then for full, unedited, feedback on stuff... ;) Will wait till new release at the end of the month because of big fixes like a few Unity ones, the Solace Bridge update, etc.
     
    Last edited: Jun 17, 2016
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  3. Alley Oop

    Alley Oop Bug Hunter Bug Moderator

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    You have /bug and /devbug. You wanna make a /newbiebug?
     
  4. Drake Aedus

    Drake Aedus Avatar

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    Nothing like stream-of-thought feedback to really drive a Dev to drink.
     
  5. Cinder Sear

    Cinder Sear Avatar

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    Is this a literal operation, like, if we do a 'clean install' of the game somehow, less bugs may occur? How shall we clear the registry, and can we have instructions for each operating system? Or is this some sort of metaphor? :)
     
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  6. Golem Dragon

    Golem Dragon Avatar

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    oh they already drink, no problem there...
     
  7. Raven Swiftbow

    Raven Swiftbow Bug Hunter

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    For "first time" users, they also need to go through the "Player Instructions" with a fine toothed comb. I read through the R30 Published Player Instructions yesterday and forced myself to read all of it - not just the stuff which was highlighted green. I found a few glitches and also some misspellings. I would suggest taking the document and dumping it into Word and spellchecking it. I think it was the word "recipe" which was misspelled, but alas, I did not keep a list. It was not a lot, but I know Port wants to get it all spiffed before July 28th.
     
  8. Browncoat Jayson

    Browncoat Jayson Legend of the Hearth

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    I'll be having a (potential) new player over this evening, so I'll get their thoughts on these things! I have my own as well. Maybe a video, or linked document...
     
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  9. Attenwood

    Attenwood Portalarian Emeritus Dev Emeritus

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    I'm excited to see so many already jumping at the chance to participate in this! I look forward to every video! We will be documenting each report and comment vigorously. Although I would recommend creating new threads for organization. :D

    Thank you all!
     
  10. enderandrew

    enderandrew Legend of the Hearth

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    My wife has an account but has barely played. I'm going to encourage her to play and report her experiences as someone who is really new to the game.
     
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  11. Golem Dragon

    Golem Dragon Avatar

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    oh mine will just go up on Ultima Codex like I always do... easy for everyone to find my stuff then...
     
  12. Sophi

    Sophi Avatar

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    uhm how about letting us access the multiple character option on our accounts???
    then we could make a new char or two without having to erase what we've got so far if we don't want to...
     
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  13. Womby

    Womby Avatar

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    What's Ultima Codex?
     
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  14. Doctor

    Doctor Avatar

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    What's Codexitorious Ultimaaaatahaha? Sorry... i seriously don't know what that is.

    Me and Womby are not ganging up on you. Promise. I know I've made it look like we are now but I'M honestly telling the truth. I don't even know who this Wannabe Wombat is. Look at that cute adorable grey....face. Such a disgrace!
     
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  15. Link_of_Hyrule

    Link_of_Hyrule Avatar

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    @Attenwood my #1 complaint about the new player experience is the hints they are borderline useless because they stack instead of being in the same window with back and forth arrows. In addition to this, they need to have a hint index that displays their titles with them all listed in the order they received them so they can be referred back to at any time by going to the hint menu! It would be even more helpful if the hints index was divided into categories (controls, crafting, combat, etc) so you can easily find stuff. I understand this is a lot of work but it's definitely something that's needed for new players to understand what's going on and have the resources they need to be successful at playing this game. Please please please make this happen!
     
  16. Ysold

    Ysold Avatar

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    Location:
    Beregost, M'Hul Island, Umbra Regnum
    Here's my first 4 hours experience.

    While the game downloaded, I read newbie tips on this forum and watched some tutorial videos. So I came in a bit prepared and set my game options pretty much as was suggested.
    Character creation: loved it! Plenty of options to really customize a character. Just 2 things I missed: a nice red hair color and options to age a character a bit.
    Upon entering the game, I was very much confused, because all I seemed to be able to do was swing the camera around. Luckily I remembered seeing somewhere that TAB could be used to switch camera settings and after that I was ok. I would have be much better if the game always opens with normal camera setting, though.
    I was warned about the weapons rack and I quickly found arrows, but it took me a long time to find my bow. It was pretty much invisible on the rack and the active area where the cursor turns green is small also.
    Target practice: leveling up bow skill was very very fast. Is this a special testing setting? I am a bit disappointed by the range of the bow and hope this will go up later in the game.
    Reaching the first town was going well. In town, I ran around a lot to explore, talked to a lot of NPCs and found out that one NPC was looking for the loot I sold to a vendor a few mintes before... I tried to find my way back to the bridge area to kill some more skellies, but found out that way was now closed - pity. I also would have liked to find a few harvestable resources in the first town to try out harvesting skills (but then, harvesting is often my favorite activity in games).
    Someone already commented on the stack of hints windows. I agree: it would be much easier if the hints would be shown in one scrolling window!
    World map: It is quite hard to walk around mainly because it often isn't clear where the path is. I like the idea of the world map a lot, though!
    Ardoria: fine city! I explored, talked to NPC's, even found some pumpkins to harvest. However, I didn't manage to find a bank there. If there is one, I would suggest that the boatsmen get an extra option to land you in front of the bank.
    Next I explored 2 nearby wild areas. I love the fact that it is quite easy to run away from enemies that are too strong for you. I suspect that other players, who are more battle-oriented than I usually am, will find it too easy. But it's perfect for me! I killed some critters and did some harvesting. Harvestable wood and herbs were relatively easy to find but ores are a lot harder to spot. I would appreciate a brighter color on ores!
    After that I ran out of arrows and returned to Ardoria to buy some more. I started with about 100 arrows and ran out of them in about an hour, so I decided to buy about 500 .... and was overweight. This is the first thing that really bugged me. Even as a newbie, I think I should be able to carry enough arrows to last me an evening of fighting. Please please reduce the weight on them, or preferably, make them weightless.

    All in all, I had a great time! I decidedly tasted the flavour of good old UO Online and found myself thinking "An Lor" when clicking the light-button:) I also appreciate the new ideas that got into the game to make it different from all the other ones on the market. I'm very much looking forward to hours and hours of fun!

    Ysold.
     
  17. enderandrew

    enderandrew Legend of the Hearth

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    Welcome to the community!

    A lot of the new user experience will be changing in the next build and improving thankfully!

    Ardoris is a big city. There are maps you can buy to help you navigate towns, but you can also use sotamap.com which can be used for overworld map, as well as town maps.

    Also, while in Ardoris, try asking NPCs for directions. Go up to a guard and say "where is the bank" or "where is bank"
     
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  18. Mata

    Mata Avatar

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    Welcome Ysold!
     
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  19. Golem Dragon

    Golem Dragon Avatar

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    UltimaCodex.com
     
  20. Kara Brae

    Kara Brae Avatar

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    Great feedback! I think you had an easier time than most because of the reading you did :)
    You've probably already figured it out, but when you arrive at Ardoris and ask the boatman to take you to Sequanna Square, you arrive at the main square only a couple of steps away from the bank. :)
     
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