Q3 Suggestion -- Advanced Combat Tutorial: Weaving, Buffs, Health Bars, and More

Soarora · March 2023

I know the concept of an advanced combat tutorial has been brought up previously, and zos employees responded with "we want to make sure we do it right" but literally anything is better than what we have right now. How things work are buried in the help menu to the point that barely anyone will see it and there are changes that are straight-up not shown anywhere in-game. It's all a mess.
Note: All the following are just my opinion, I have no assisting knowledge (such as game development experience or psychology).

Weaving
I don't see why this can't be easily added to the current combat tutorial as another round on the dummy. Start off the player with 3 skills: the basic one from each class skill line (and give all characters who had previously done the tutorial 3 skill points to make up for this). This would establish what is suggested by players: to spend the first 3 skill points in the basic class skills to level all three lines. What this would also do is give the player a skill to weave with. Just have this round make the player light attack and then cast their skill and maybe the npc can call out that it's not required but highly suggested to continue weaving past the tutorial.

Buffs
Something I didn't know as a new player is that you can't double up on named buffs. Considering there are already pop-ups for combat, I think once someone slots two of the same buff a pop-up should appear to let them know that named buffs don't stack.

Health Bars
There is a combat pop-up to explain what breach looks like on enemies, however there is nothing that explains this:
image.png?width=395&height=63

For the longest time, I thought my health bar was bugged. It is true that it does bug out with not increasing in size when it should, but only recently did I find out on my own that the weirdness going on here is actually buff related. The glowing I believe is empower, and the border might be resolve, but I have no idea. An advanced combat tutorial based around what buffs look like would be great (not only on health bars but also physically and the buff/debuff icon) but at a minimum it'd be nice if there was a pop-up like there is for breach. Additionally, an image explaining what the buff/debuff looks like should be viewable somewhere at minimum, maybe in the help menu.

Updated Build Suggestions
The suggested builds feature is so out of date and confusing that it makes me sad. It feels lost to time but could be a great feature if updated and expanded. To be more specific, here's an example: tank taunts. On my sorc tank the suggested build is to use only inner rage as my taunt. No frost clench, not even pierce armor. Only inner rage. This is really bad advice.

Enchants
This is described in the help menu but I feel like there still is some confusion. Why does using a restro staff skill not proc an enchant while using a destro skill does? People also are still confused when their enchants don't proc their proc, such as encratis. I'm not sure where this information could best fit in the game but it should really be somewhere. If it is in the game already then it's not something people look at.

Detailed Set Information
There are so many sets that have a target limit or a range that is just not present. Please add this to the tooltip for them. Additionally, it would be nice to have a place or a setting to view what common ranges are, I don't know how big a meter is in-game, let alone 26. A toggleable suggestion mode would be great for accessibility as well. What I mean by this is explaining how to use each set and what class and role it's most commonly used it in the tooltip. For example: Roaring Opportunist, healer, best paired with jorvuld's guidance, heavy attack 2x in trials and 1x in dungeons. Powerful Assault, healer/tank, best used with echoing vigor, use 2x in trials and 1x in dungeons. Burning spellweave, dps, dragonknight. Etc, etc.

PrinceShroob · March 2023

With regard to a weaving tutorial, I would probably show a tutorial walking the player through spending a skill point, and force the player to spend their first skill point on their class spammable, as every class has a spammable skill available at rank 1 of a skill line. This will also teach new players that using skills to attack enemies is more efficient than using light or heavy attacks alone.

Alternatively, Norianwe could cast a spell that would give the player a "glimpse of the future"--that is, fill their bar with a preset skill loadout based on the weapon they picked up earlier. Then Norianwe could explain a bit about weaving and performing a rotation with the player being able to use abilities they normally would not have access to until later, similar to the tutorial for Metroid Prime.

You could also combine these approaches, such as with Norianwe intending to power up the player until they defeat Shyazzel, but it wearing off too quickly. Then the player would receive the tutorial forcing them to spend their first skill point on a spammable.

I would also probably disable Restoration staves and sword and shields from the tutorial, and have Norianwe give a thinly-veiled explanation that those weapons are for group play (perhaps with her saying that she's not much of a battlemage, so you'll have to do the killing).

***

I also strongly agree that the current build advisor builds need to be updated. They were passable in 2018 when they were introduced, but they've gotten more and more out of date since then. Some of them are confusing, advising you to purchase abilities late in a skill line without having purchased earlier abilities or advising you to select a morph without choosing the base skill. Additionally, please remove the "Initiate" build--it's just confusing new players. Lock the tank and healer builds until level 10 and either automatically select one based on the weapon the player picked up during the tutorial or have the player select one when they receive their first level up.

UNSeki · March 2023

Soarora wrote: »

Start off the player with 3 skills: the basic one from each class skill line (and give all characters who had previously done the tutorial 3 skill points to make up for this).

I see what you did there.

But seriously, I agree. Even a few small changes would be a great improvement from now. I feel like we're missing a toggeable setting on the menu to add an extra hovering menu together with the normal hovering menu when you're inspecting an item or skill. This 2nd menu/pop-up would appear besides the original and provide extra info such as the exact distance, targeting and conditions for a set, for example.

Soarora · March 2023

UNSeki wrote: »

Soarora wrote: »

Start off the player with 3 skills: the basic one from each class skill line (and give all characters who had previously done the tutorial 3 skill points to make up for this).

I see what you did there.

But seriously, I agree. Even a few small changes would be a great improvement from now. I feel like we're missing a toggeable setting on the menu to add an extra hovering menu together with the normal hovering menu when you're inspecting an item or skill. This 2nd menu/pop-up would appear besides the original and provide extra info such as the exact distance, targeting and conditions for a set, for example.

I don’t know what I did haha. However, if it’s that then everyone gets +3 skill points I think that leads into another suggestion:
Altar Tutorial
Maybe at the end of the tutorial the player can pass through a museum and learn about the altars and the priests. This would include: respec shrines, mara shrine, vampire shrine and locations, werewolf shrine and locations, and the cure priest. Can force the new player to respec here if needed using a modified shrine that will delete the extra 3 points with some lore reason behind it and assurance it won’t happen again. This may decrease crown store sales for related items but it’d be great for PR.

Somewhere it’d also be nice if the game explained that for fighting monsters, all points in one attribute is ideal, I thought the attribute system to be rather stressful as a newbie. Maybe that can be included in a re-enterable role tutorial, which teaches dps to stand between the boss and the healer, healers to buff/debuff, tanks to hit resistance cap, etc.

Way too much information is dependent on looking outside the game, and often looking for suggestions leads to websites with bad build advice. It’s past time that these things are added to the game.

Billium813 · March 2023

Wait, why are we teaching new players the intricacies of weaving? Even as an "advanced tutorial", it seems like something players shouldn't NEED to know, especially outside of Trials and before CP 500 at the soonest. Once you create a tutorial for something, you are essentially telling players "this is important to learn and you need to know this". That seems wrong for weaving. It's one of those things that is so late game that by the time a player gets there, they will already get it. And even if they don't get it by then, it shouldn't be a game system large enough to be required.

I think the most important things for players to see are the invisible damage caps (over penetration, crit cap, resistance cap), how resistance vs penetration works, and what the resistance rating is on different enemies! Some players don't even know these caps exist, how penetration even works, how resistance works, or what kind of resistances different enemies have. I would be very easily told to the character by informing them of things like "Over Penetration"/"Crit Cap" and showing enemies resistances in game.