Young player going through NUE in R41

My son decided he wanted to play with me now, since he's watched me play for a while. Hes only 10, and has a bit of social anxiety, but I thought this would be a good opportunity for us to submit feedback on the new user experience. He agreed to be recorded during his first session.

Unfortunately, even though I checked the microphone before we started, Xsplit didn't actually record any of our discussion while he played. Still, I think his habit of using the mouse to point out what he is doing should be useful. I'll go through this with him and submit a more formal feedback, since this is a pretty long video.

In the mean time, here is a 3-hour new player video!

 

Reserved for feedback.

 

Still need to have him sit down and go through the video to add his comments, but this weekend I joined him in Solace Bridge Outskirts so we could play together and I could check out the new quests as he did them.

The quests themselves were fairly decent. Just a few things that took us a bit to work through:

• The fishing quest sends you to learn the Fishing skill, which is great. However, it didn't do two important things: explain how to go unlock the Utility toolbar, or how to assign fishing to the toolbar once you unlocked it. So I had to go walk him through that, since he couldn't drag the skill to his combat bar. (Suggestion: Show the disabled utility toolbar when dragging icons, and put text saying this needs to be unlocked at a Adventurer Trainer over it.)
• The alpha wolf quest was bugged; we got the message to go tell the farmer the wolf was dead, but he responded as though we'd never spoken before. We logged out and then back in, and that resolved the issue, but then we had the kill the alpha wolf quest again. It advanced once we killed the wolf again, but we can't complete the quest again, nor could we find a way to abandon the uncompletable quest.
• The quest to recover the painting was fun, but it seems odd that the painting didnt vanish when one of us took it. We were prepared to go get it for one of us, go back and turn it in, then do it again. Instead, the painting was still "there", so we just kept clicking on it until we both got it. (I'd rather have it work like other deco items we can take, and drag it and have it disappear then respawn, rather than double click on a fake item.)
  
• Several people in the forum mentioned that the next quest was to go talk to to the other guard about recovering heirlooms, however the captain didn't ever send us there. Instead, she sends us straight to the alchemist. We went and talked to the guard and did the heirloom one anyway, just noted that it didn't seem like it was in sequence.
• After talking to the alchemist and recovering the zombie bit, he says he doesnt need anything else. However, the guard captain still tries to send us to see him rather than recognizing this as complete. I don't know if this is the end of the quest chain or not, but we couldn't go further than this.

We did explore the big ruined town past the graveyard, and found some of the ebon cultists there. If there are no other quests in the outskirts yet, I'd highly recommend adding one to go into that area and fight the cultists. Perhaps retrieve something that you otherwise wouldn't during the rest of the game, like a bit of tattooed flesh (showing one of the cultist's symbols) or something. This would both introduce the cultists to new players, be a chance to explain the sieges they will invariably walk into soon, and provide context for the prophecies that you read on the Isle of Storms. There is a pristine home beyond that area with absolutely nothing in it, that seems like a great place for a cultist necromancer to set up shop.

Finally, the farmer does mention his assistant, often. However, there is no resolution to this; he just seems to be gone, and you can't really discover where he went and his fate. It would be nice to tie this up, and maybe "reward" the player by having the farmer telling them they are free to harvest the cotton nearby. My kid thought it would be stealing if we did it, since the farmer was right there.

There are a nice number of crafting stations in the scene, and a craft merchant, however there are no recipes available. Consider adding recipe drops to some of the humanoid enemies in the scene, and maybe as a quest reward. I taught him the recipes I knew, but it seems odd to rely on Hospitalers to fulfill this in the game (and will feel especially missing offline).
EDIT: Forgot to mention, the Carpentry station seems to be a +5 one, but the others are all standard stations. Don't know if thats intentional, but seems odd.

 

Would have been so much better if that questline started with chopping wood instead.

He can be found upstairs in his bed, although he has lost a bit of weight lately...

 

Once I showed him how to gather, I think he went a little overboard. On the plus side, I have about a hundred maple wood more than I did Saturday.

I assumed that was him, but there was no way to be sure and the conversation options with the farmer don't change after you find him. I'd think some wannabe hero would let the ranting farmer know his traps backfired and killed his friend if thats what actually happened.

Also, how can I start shooting explosive bolts from my crossbows? Thats some good traps!

 

Yes, would have been much better if there was some key word one could discover on the remains that one then could use with the farmer to update him on the possibility that the fields will not be harvested by his helper.

Then it would make sense if the farmer asks the avatar if he could pick X cotton and deliver to him, and in return it is OK for the avatar to harvest any reminder crops in the fields after that.