ESO explains its core gameplay quite poorly

DMuehlhausen

How about stop making even overland faceroll easy.

This is what WoW did at launch. While it wasn't difficult you couldn't just spam one skill and take on more than 2 enemies at a time. You had to learn you skills and understand what you were doing. Then that transistioned into the start of doing 5 man dungeons and having to CC stuff.

The way it's all setup now all people have to worry about is going to the right marked area and spam a button till everything is dead.

Pr0Skygon

Guys just a quick reminder:

1. This thread is about teaching new players the "a bit more advance" mechanics in the game, we're not talking about BiS or "how to beat vet trials". Those are stuffs we players should figure it out ourselves.

2. We're not talking about the game's difficulty curve, that's for another time (It's also a big damn issue though for newbies).

3. I'm talking about explaining things, not hand holding players to archive anything (ehem, quest marker).

4. This is the job of ZOS, not us. Do not the generous with games company's laziness. Take Destiny for example, they don't have any kind of matchmaking, but the community just say "well it's ok, we got your back". And now Destiny 2 is coming out, without any sign of matchmaking. While Warframe (a free to play game) has matchmaking for every content.

5. Is it really that hard to explain your own game? The community didn't creat ESO, but they sure know the game to its root. Don't tell me the creators have no idea how their invention works

Everstorm

New guy in the guild was completely bafled by the concept of a stamsorc. Sorceror to him was a magic user per definition.
Other guy was disappointed he got a monster mask with a magicka enchant cause he wanted one with a stamina enchant...

idk

Pr0Skygon wrote: »

Guys just a quick reminder:

1. This thread is about teaching new players the "a bit more advance" mechanics in the game, we're not talking about BiS or "how to beat vet trials". Those are stuffs we players should figure it out ourselves.

2. We're not talking about the game's difficulty curve, that's for another time (It's also a big damn issue though for newbies).

3. I'm talking about explaining things, not hand holding players to archive anything (ehem, quest marker).

4. This is the job of ZOS, not us. Do not the generous with games company's laziness. Take Destiny for example, they don't have any kind of matchmaking, but the community just say "well it's ok, we got your back". And now Destiny 2 is coming out, without any sign of matchmaking. While Warframe (a free to play game) has matchmaking for every content.

5. Is it really that hard to explain your own game? The community didn't creat ESO, but they sure know the game to its root. Don't tell me the creators have no idea how their invention works

I understand, but Zos is not the ideal source for learning the "advance" mechanics you speak of. It is not their forte as they do not play the game to the degree many of us do and tend to learn these the advance mechanics and what builds work best from players, which is common in any MMO.

It is not the job of Zos to do this. Zos' job is to maintain the game and provide new content while providing some basic information on playing the game, which they do provide that basic information.

Just before ESO launched an player provided information on how a basic mechanic in the game actually worked, which Zos was not aware of before. He provided information and evidence that cost reduction stacked beyond what was considered a maximum, which that lack of cap still exists today. Zos learned from this. If Zos does not know simple things like that, which affect gearing, how can the provide accurate advanced information? They cannot is the answer.

Plain and simple.

Pr0Skygon

@Giles.floydub17_ESO I understand your concern. But here's thing, we're living in 2017, where players expect everything to be thrown at them by the game itself, heck, even Dark Souls does a great job of explaining itself.

I'm not talking about ZOS making advance guides (we all know how that will turn out), I'm talking about introducing players to those advance concept. For example: have a Undaunted guild NPC explain to players about the roles of DPS, tank and healer, what do they do, that's it, just tell what players need to do, not how players should do it.

Or even better, have quests for each individual class, tell what that "hey, there's a thing called animation canceling, google that *** or you'll get rekt in PvP". Or having crafting quests telling you that "hey item sets exist in this game, and you can craft them", or even "hey you can actually change your item's enchantment anytime". Or even better, have someone to tell newbies "hey, if you're not CP160, don't even mind about Vet Dungeons, they don't worth it".

Again, just want ZOS to introducing players to those "advance concept", not teaching them. Let them learn the game on their own, that's what makes Elder Scrolls a fun game.

Pr0Skygon

@Everstorm This is why I made this thread

rotaugen454

We can post fantastic guides here, have wonderful Youtube videos, and the vast majority of the playerbase will never see it. There really should be something in-game explaining at least the basics of roles, crafting, food, etc.

Royaji

I'm actually going to ask a pretty interesting question. Has anyone who complains about "not enough explanation" ever bothered to hover their mouse over numbers in character window to see the tooltips? All of them have pretty detailed explanations about what respective number does. Including the infamous "max magicka increases your magicka skills damage/healing".

Yep, it's all there but noone actually bothers to read it so why do you think people will pay attention to any other way to educate them? Those who want to become better at the game will go to google and youtube and get all the information they need from Alcast or Gilliam. Those who don't will just ignore any attempt to educate them anyway. ESO caters heavily to the very casual player. You can't make a casual player good because he doesn't want it. Unless we are going to do forced tutorials (and tell me how well this went last time WoW tried that...)

Bouldercleave

Royaji wrote: »

I'm actually going to ask a pretty interesting question. Has anyone who complains about "not enough explanation" ever bothered to hover their mouse over numbers in character window to see the tooltips? All of them have pretty detailed explanations about what respective number does. Including the infamous "max magicka increases your magicka skills damage/healing".

Yep, it's all there but noone actually bothers to read it so why do you think people will pay attention to any other way to educate them? Those who want to become better at the game will go to google and youtube and get all the information they need from Alcast or Gilliam. Those who don't will just ignore any attempt to educate them anyway. ESO caters heavily to the very casual player. You can't make a casual player good because he doesn't want it. Unless we are going to do forced tutorials (and tell me how well this went last time WoW tried that...)

People don't need an EXPLANATION - what we need is progressively harder content to hone the skills and find out what works in different levels of challenge. 1T KILLED progression as such. I remember pre-1T going into higher level zones to find the "sweet spot" for my skill level.

You can no longer do that. You are all but invincible from level 1-50 especially if you have some CP and are playing an alt and are doing quests, grinding, and general overland stuff. Then you queue up for real content and have NO idea what the hell you are doing.

The only time I die in solo play is if I go AFK in a bad spot and come back to a corpse, or if I'm not paying attention and run myself off a cliff...

OmniDo

World of Warcraft attempted this with their introduction of "Proving Grounds".
A player was taught the general basics of what they needed to do to complete a dungeon using NPC voice and text cues, etc..
What was later discovered was that a large majority of players could not achieve the "Silver Rating"; there were three "Scores" that you could achieve, Bronze, Silver, Gold, and "Endless", and as a result, only a small fraction of players ever achieved "Gold" and "Endless" status.

To add to this, Blizzard made achieving the "Silver" rating in whatever role you wanted to be; Tank, Healer, or DPS, a requirement for group participation, thinking that this would deter casual players from wasting their time in dungeons for which they clearly did not display the required competence, thus hindering more "hardcore" players.
The other side of the coin was the intention of motivating less skilled players to improve, as a sort of "Carrot-on-a-stick" approach.

While a few enjoyed the challenge of achieving their Gold and Endless titles (I know I did), the disparity between players willing to reach for said achievements and those who "simply didnt care" was large, thus Blizzard removed the requirement in subsequent expansions.

Teaching players how to play is something they have to want. It cannot be forced.
There will always be segregation for varying levels of performance, as well as the stigma associated to them, whether people accept it or not.
We are NOT all equal, and likely never will be.
Some are better than others, and those are just the facts.

Pr0Skygon

@Royaji I do know about that. But still, for such an important aspect, ZOS sure made it hard for players to discover it by burying under the menu, instead of having a text on loading screen saying "Your max stats does effect your dps".

Also, as I said, there're many sources on google and youtube with guides that are horribly written, misleading or outdated. Isn't it more simple to make a guide right in the game? Sure there're people who wants to improve their skills, but there're also tons of people who just want to play the game for the sake of playing games, and "hiding" features from those players is just irresponsible. Not everyone wants to play games just to google that same game every 5 minutes.

Pr0Skygon

@Bouldercleave again my friend, the difficulty is a topic for another day (and trust me, it's *** busted for new players)

Pr0Skygon

@OmniDo You're missing my point here buddy, I'm not talking about teaching, no no no, we all know how well ZOS can "teach" us anything in ESO. What I want from ZOS however is what I've written on the thread's name, "explain". Many many new players I've met (I have a newbies guild) struggle with many concept they don't understand. And here's the problem: They can ask me and guildmate about stuffs they know exist, but if they don't even know that the concept exist in the first place, they won't even ask and so, they're totally blind in that perspective (such as animation canceling, how each zone and dungeons has its own loot table, ect).

Again, what I want from ZOS is not "teaching" anything to new players, but to introduce and have a grief explanation to them about the concept. If new players know about the concept, they'll then google, youtube or ask their guildmates about it.

KochDerDamonen

Nowhere in-game is it mentioned how/why you can cancel animations, on which spells/actions, or that it's a thing you can do in the first place.

This mechanic should be as core as roll/dodge/block/bash if ZOS really designs around it. They don't, of course. They didn't put animation cancelling in on purpose, they didn't adapt the game to keep it, they just leave it in and hope it continues to work.


Every day I would meet players who didn't know how to use these core mechanics, let alone applying CC or self buffs, the concept of applying DoT/HoT effects, coralling enemies together in group AoE, or even how to interact with others in-game or how guilds work. ZOS' tutorialization is one step above abyssmal.

hmsdragonfly

Bouldercleave wrote: »

Royaji wrote: »

I'm actually going to ask a pretty interesting question. Has anyone who complains about "not enough explanation" ever bothered to hover their mouse over numbers in character window to see the tooltips? All of them have pretty detailed explanations about what respective number does. Including the infamous "max magicka increases your magicka skills damage/healing".

Yep, it's all there but noone actually bothers to read it so why do you think people will pay attention to any other way to educate them? Those who want to become better at the game will go to google and youtube and get all the information they need from Alcast or Gilliam. Those who don't will just ignore any attempt to educate them anyway. ESO caters heavily to the very casual player. You can't make a casual player good because he doesn't want it. Unless we are going to do forced tutorials (and tell me how well this went last time WoW tried that...)

People don't need an EXPLANATION - what we need is progressively harder content to hone the skills and find out what works in different levels of challenge. 1T KILLED progression as such. I remember pre-1T going into higher level zones to find the "sweet spot" for my skill level.

You can no longer do that. You are all but invincible from level 1-50 especially if you have some CP and are playing an alt and are doing quests, grinding, and general overland stuff. Then you queue up for real content and have NO idea what the hell you are doing.

The only time I die in solo play is if I go AFK in a bad spot and come back to a corpse, or if I'm not paying attention and run myself off a cliff...

There were as many failed groups before 1T. Your argument is invalid.

Zolron

Crafts_Many_Boxes wrote: »

Ya know, there are literally threads with the exact same content in my previous MMO (Rift) as well, on a regular basis to this day. Is it just me, or are ALL modern western MMOs really bad at explaining and teaching endgame play to their playerbase?

I know a big problem in Rift was that most of the devs barely played their own game, and the ones who did were extremely casual.

That being said, i can't imagine trying to teach animation cancelling to your playerbase. Honestly, animation cancelling almost made me quit this game when I realized it was an integral part of the endgame meta. The positives of everything else just BARELY outweighs animation cancelling for me, and that was only after I got "creative" with my mouse buttons and some menu options.

I tried explaining animation cancelling in a completely unbiased way to a friend of mine who plays other games, and he almost threw up in his mouth at the idea. Even if the vets of ESO have embraced it, it is still a VERY toxic, backwards, bizarre concept to the gaming community as a whole.

Many games enable you to cancel animations with other actions, but they do it in an intelligent way where the cancelled action doesn't have any effect or apply any damage. Because, ya know, it was cancelled. This way, it doesn't become a part of maximizing dps, because that would just be insane. Right? Oh wait.....

What I'm trying to say is, many MMOs are real, real bad at explaining endgame, but it's especially bad for ESO because something like animation cancelling should never be an integral part of dealing damage. It makes it THAT much harder for new players to wrap their heads around endgame, aside from just being a terrible "feature" to begin with.

^^^ Well said and 100% agree
The game used to be even more convoluted...remember the days where some magika skills used weapon crit !!!!

Zbigb4life

They explain everything quite poorly

zaria

Pr0Skygon wrote: »

@OmniDo You're missing my point here buddy, I'm not talking about teaching, no no no, we all know how well ZOS can "teach" us anything in ESO. What I want from ZOS however is what I've written on the thread's name, "explain". Many many new players I've met (I have a newbies guild) struggle with many concept they don't understand. And here's the problem: They can ask me and guildmate about stuffs they know exist, but if they don't even know that the concept exist in the first place, they won't even ask and so, they're totally blind in that perspective (such as animation canceling, how each zone and dungeons has its own loot table, ect).

Again, what I want from ZOS is not "teaching" anything to new players, but to introduce and have a grief explanation to them about the concept. If new players know about the concept, they'll then google, youtube or ask their guildmates about it.

This, its not about teaching an bis rotation or animation canceling,
I played an sorcerer for a long time before I learned about surge. Suddenly I went from being scared for 3 mobs to pulling as many mob in public dungeons I could. I tried it as increased damage, i did not think about the healing who was far more important.