The Tutorial Is A Flop. They Even Acknowledged The Problem, Then Pretended It Wasn't A Problem...

Tyrobag

https://elderscrollsonline.com/en-us/news/post/60151

Note that once you’ve entered a portal, your character can never return to Balfiera. Of course, at that point you can still travel to any of the other starting locations previously available in the portal room—you just have to do it by boat, by cart, or on foot! Finally, because this new addition replaces all previous tutorials, your characters, new or old, can no longer access these quests and areas. Don’t worry, though! [No, I am Most definitely worried!] The original base-game tutorial is now part of the main questline, and you always learn a zone’s critical story information in that zone’s first main quest (don’t forget to use the helpful Zone Guide, too)—you won’t miss out on anything important! [Ok, that one is just an outright lie.]

So they even acknowledged that they are removing story content, leaving the game with a clunky start. Why do they want all of the old content to go to waste?
More so, why did they admit they did something that is inherently bad, not present a good reason (or any reason at all, really), then end the article as if they had somehow justified it???

Now this is likely not the writer's fault, they didn't make this decision, and were probably told to put a positive spin on it. Unfortunately that's like putting a positive spin on an amputation. "You'll get this really cool prosthetic though!" I'd rather have my arm...

This has been said may times, but I'll say it again: This change is the EXACT opposite of what players were asking for. We wanted to be able to choose and play any of the previous tutorials, thus giving our characters a coherent start in the location of our choosing. What you have done is guaranteed that nobody will have a coherent start ever again. This is no better than forcing us into the latest chapter start, then making us wayshrine to the place we actually wanted to start at.

Please fix this. I'm not saying it has to be this patch, but please acknowledge the mistake and work on opening up access to the other game starts, which are part of content that we paid for.

opaj

Frankly? I don't think new players can have a coherent start to the story even as it is now. The new tutorial just compounds the issue.

It drives me crazy. The writing in this game is great! But the stories being made here are stories that only really make sense in certain orders, and the game design is at odds with that. Throw on the prologue quest hooks that are bloating up the towns... Fixing this would take a lot of work at this point, and I don't know if the development team even views the state of narrative design in ESO as a concern in the first place.

Elsonso

opaj wrote: »

Frankly? I don't think new players can have a coherent start to the story even as it is now. The new tutorial just compounds the issue.

No matter what Chapter you have, the tutorial should always start from the "your soul has been removed" point. This is just ESO 101 and ZOS should have just stuck with that. They don't have to start with Wailing Prison, but they do need to start with Molag Bal. That sets the stage for everything else. (The game dialog is literally written to assume your soul is gone, which is not the case for many of my characters)

After the tutorial and your soul-ectomy, the player's chapter choice should have dropped them at the beginning of the story for each chapter tutorial, which exits from the story at the same place. No tutorial, just story. They are clever writers, they can easily write the background as to how this came to be from simply stepping into a portal.

What they generated for this update is a very mechanical solution, but it is not very CREATIVE. (Ahem, Creative Director...)

RaddlemanNumber7

The thing I particularly don't like about the new tutorial is the way that it makes explicit an origin story which was only vaguely hinted at before.

In the Wailing Prison it is quite possible to accept the story as given and still believe that your character could be any random person, no one special, who just happened to get kidnapped by Worm cultists. The story is told in such a way that all the special powers possessed by the Vestige could be gained solely as the result of what happens in the Wailing Prison. The character's wider origins are left entirely to the player to invent (or not) as they see fit. That was the old lore Master's style, to give players room to use their own imaginations. There are hints in lore and dialogue about the Vestige's wider origins, but they can easily be ignored if that is what the player wants.

It was the same in the chapter-specific tutorials. You were just a passenger on a ship, or some random person mezzed by a sea sload, or a passenger on a cart or wagon. You could still be an accidental hero if you wanted to be.

This is not so in the new Balfiera tutorial. It is made explicit in both action and dialogue that the Player Character arrives on the scene as some kind of "Chosen One", and already possesses special powers that surprise even a Direnni intelligencer. Given the proximity of the Zero Tower, it is hard to escape the inference that it is the highest power in the Aurbis that has specifically chosen the player character for their mission. It even tells you in high-level terms what problems you need to resolve in your mission.

I don't want my RP characters listening to that stuff. I'm the one who writes their backstories. The "Skip" tutorial option has never looked so attractive.

tomofhyrule

I would love to be able to redo the old quests. I wouldn't even mind having to sit through Naryu teaching me to fight after I already got it in Balfiera, if only just to escape the slavers from a burning ship again.

But this does still break the story in a way. Consider a new player who makes a DC character: They know they want to do the story in order, so they leave Balfiera through the portal to Stros m'Kai, where they gather Kaleen's crew and sail for Betnikh... where they're promptly told that they're the only one who can do Carzog's Demise since they have no soul. What? When did that happen?

It's only after that that they finally make it to Daggerfall and meet the Hooded Figure, and then they can get to Coldharbour.

So why does Balfiera send you to the starter islands instead of giving you the starter city and the main quest? Instead, you still need to use an external source to figure out the right order to do things...

Pity. Evan as someone who's played for a while, I'd love to be able to run through Deepwood with Fenn or escape Firemoth with Naryu again. It's sad that that content is now deprecated. Hopefully they'll hear us and allow us the option of activating it instead of just throwing away the time/money spent on VAs/worldbuilding/etc in those areas.
(And really, how hard is it to have Balfiera warp us to the old tutorial in the first place? When I did it on PTS, it even gave me the original Morrowind cinematic when I warped over, which zoomed into the window of the ship...and then spat me out in Seyda Neen...)

axan22

This sucks big time BRING BACK THE OLD VERSIONS.

ESO_Nightingale

They didn't even make the tutorial better either. They haven't changed the fundamental issues with the tutorial. I bought my friend the game and he said he wanted the game to teach him instead of me explaining it. He said he wasn't even taught how to use abilities and it wasn't made clear enough to him.

redlink1979

Elsonso wrote: »

No matter what Chapter you have, the tutorial should always start from the "your soul has been removed" point (...)

^ Totally agree.
I'm glad I started before One Tamriel, it all made sense back then.

GreenHere

Tyrobag wrote: »

Unfortunately that's like putting a positive spin on an amputation. "You'll get this really cool prosthetic though!" I'd rather have my arm...

Pfft, no way man! You seen what can be done with modern prosthetics?

Eyy, fugeddaboutet!

Plus, it'd be kinda weird if you had this stuff with both real arms... but think how much fun joke fashion you'd be able to enjoy guilt-free!

And before anyone gets all up in arms (heh) about being offended over this sort of thing, let me tell you what a one-armed coworker of mine used to tell me: (read all this with a comically Southern US accent, if possible) "When life gives you a bad hand, you gotta play with what you got." and "Now that I lost my bird flipping hand, I mostly just flip people off with my facial expressions -- it works purty well!" and (when questioned about his always-upbeat attitude) "Nah man, I lost an arm not my sense of humor. Gotta have a good attitude about things, ya know what I mean?"

Guy was like 50 years old, and worked right alongside us youngbloods in a physically demanding warehouse job. He did have a normal arm prothesis, but usually you'd see him wielding his crazy hook-arm-scimitar thing he used for pulling crates. Dude was an absolute unit, and a great person. I learned a lot about not taking things -- especially hardships... and also myself -- too seriously from him.

Wherever he's at, I hope he's still living a great life. But whatever's up for him, I'd bet he's still making like 15 jokes a day minimum.



But yeah, I agree that the new tutorial is just kind of a janky band-aid solution to distract from the clunky mess that is being a newcomer to ESO. I'm sure a fair amount of work went into it and all, but they really missed the mark. It's like they just don't get it -- and not just for this issue. Feelsbadman.

Reverb

This change displeases me. We want the ability to choose from any of the starter tutorials (even better if there was a randomize option too), not to have them removed!

lillybit

It's not a good change imo. For a completely new player, it gives no context at all to what to expect. The same very basic combat practice that doesn't in any way prepare you for the actual game, then a room of generic portals that tell you nothing of what to expect. It's not so bad at Chapter release, new players are probably joining to play that so have some idea of where to go. The rest of the year tho, it's pretty much pot luck where they'll end up.

Introducing a new tutorial for every chapter is obviously a decision they regret as they're abandoning it for another one size fits all version. I think they would have been much better just reinstating the old one tho and adding the portal room to the end. At least it's actual story that sets up something, rather than just a series of bland go there/do that instructions.

SeaGtGruff

Regarding the "removal" of the old chapter tutorials, that has always been the case when you buy a new chapter:

- Once you bought Morrowind, the original tutorial was gone, except for the part that was incorporated into the Main Quest.
- Once you bought Summerset, the previous tutorial was gone.
- Once you bought Elsweyr, the previous tutorial was gone.
- Once you bought Greymoor, the previous tutorial was gone.
- Once Update 30 is released, the previous tutorial will be gone.

Note that "previous tutorial" refers to either the original tutorial or the tutorial for whichever newest chapter you owned prior to purchasing the new chapter.

The situation is not going to be any different than it has been, except for the following two details:

(1) Everyone will get the new tutorial with Update 30, whether or not they've purchased Blackwood or any previous chapters.
(2) Upon completing the new tutorial, you can choose which zone you want your character to be transported to.

Danikat

For me the new tutorial is still an improvement over the previous system because it leaves how you got to the island entirely ambiguous, all you're told is you came through a portal. That gives me far more flexibility to write my own backstory than having to explain why this character is on a boat to Vvardenfell, or a cart to Skyrim or whatever, especially when I know the first thing they're going to do is leave and go back to their homeland. Likewise where you go next and the reasons you choose it are left up to you, the elf woman will tell you a bit about the main story of the area you pick but at no point do you have to say that's why you're going there. Maybe you're going back where you were, maybe you're going as far from where you were as possible, maybe you're continuing your journey, it's all left up to you.

Having said that it's not as good as it could be and one of the biggest problems is that you can't do any of the other tutorials so the portal > video intro > being dumped in your chosen map process makes no sense. The base game maps have the additional problem that you're dropped at the point you're supposed to exit Coldharbour, but without going there so not only does a lot of the narrative make no sense but you're highly likely to get caught in a loop. You do the new tutorial, then the starter island/s, then you get to the main city and pick up the main quest and when you get out of Coldharbour you're back in the same place being told to find the same NPCs to do the same quests you've already done (which are not repeatable). At that point new players are left with no direction whatsoever. If they're lucky they'll go back to the city where they picked up the main quest, if they're unlucky...who knows.

The new tutorial is a step in the right direction and they're technically right that it won't prevent the player from learning all the information necessary to understand the main themes of each zone, but they seem to have totally missed the point that what's still lacking is a coherent narrative to make this seem like an actual story and not just a jumble of unrelated activities. If this was a platformer with a hub world to dress up the level select process this would be acceptable but for an Elder Scrolls game it's pretty poor.

RaddlemanNumber7 wrote: »

This is not so in the new Balfiera tutorial. It is made explicit in both action and dialogue that the Player Character arrives on the scene as some kind of "Chosen One", and already possesses special powers that surprise even a Direnni intelligencer. Given the proximity of the Zero Tower, it is hard to escape the inference that it is the highest power in the Aurbis that has specifically chosen the player character for their mission. It even tells you in high-level terms what problems you need to resolve in your mission.

I think it's important that you're only told that by Norianwe who seems pretty naive and inexperienced. Even then it's only her speculation on why you might have ended up there. She doesn't know where you came from or how you came to travel through the portal or what's happening to the Zero Tower (she's planning to start researching that after you leave) so it's just speculation and could easily be wrong. How many times in ESO have we seen scholars who formed a hypothesis about something in the moment, when they were excited by an unexpected discovery, and get it totally and completely wrong?

Or her second guess could be right and you were chosen only to stop the daedra Shyazzel from attacking the tower, in which case you would have been chosen purely for your combat abilities and your "destiny" began when the portal activated to bring you there and ended when you killed the daedra. Even if the highest power in the Aurbis made that decision it seems likely the major factor was being near a portal (or where a portal could be created) and as competent in battle as any random member of the Fighter's Guild, so it doesn't have to mean you are some sort of supreme champion destined to change the fate of Tamriel.

(Alternatively you could skip the options questions about why the Keywrights Gallery came to life and why she thinks you're there and then it never comes up at all.)

Kiriiko

SeaGtGruff wrote: »

Regarding the "removal" of the old chapter tutorials, that has always been the case when you buy a new chapter:

- Once you bought Morrowind, the original tutorial was gone, except for the part that was incorporated into the Main Quest.
- Once you bought Summerset, the previous tutorial was gone.
- Once you bought Elsweyr, the previous tutorial was gone.
- Once you bought Greymoor, the previous tutorial was gone.
- Once Update 30 is released, the previous tutorial will be gone.

Note that "previous tutorial" refers to either the original tutorial or the tutorial for whichever newest chapter you owned prior to purchasing the new chapter.

The situation is not going to be any different than it has been, except for the following two details:

(1) Everyone will get the new tutorial with Update 30, whether or not they've purchased Blackwood or any previous chapters.
(2) Upon completing the new tutorial, you can choose which zone you want your character to be transported to.

Yeah, we know, and we've been complaining about that! We want to be able to CHOOSE our TUTORIAL, cause some of them are definitely more alternate starts if you, say, DIDN"T DO THE PREQUEL DUNGEON FOR THE CHAPTER.

tsaescishoeshiner

I liked the new tutorial and found it interesting. It sets you up with this mystery about how you got there, and why a daedra (seemingly from Coldharbour) was following you. On its own, it made it feel very Elder Scrolls-y to me.

But he follow-up isn't very good. It would make more sense if it tied into the main quest intro, or whatever happens to you next.

I thought in some stream they mentioned that you can't redo the old intro quests "yet"? Maybe I'm misremembering that.

code65536

I just played through the tutorial on the PTS (yea, yea, a bit late to the game).

I feel like it was a great idea that missed the mark.

My biggest problem is how the new tutorial interacts with the start of the Main Quest--the Wailing Prison.

So here's what the player's experience will be with the new U30 tutorial, if they want to play the content "in order":

1. New tutorial.
2. Take portal to alliance starter island (e.g., Stros)
3. Do quest sequence that takes you to alliance zone 1 (e.g., Glenumbra)
4. Encounter main quest
5. Do the Wailing Prison, which is basically still a tutorial with awkwardly repeated tutorial-like elements
6. At the conclusion of Wailing Prison, fall out of the sky and land in the alliance starter island (e.g., Stros)

So the new tutorial drops you off in Stros (if you choose the "canonical" order), which leads you to the old Wailing tutorial, which drops you back in Stros again.

This is so awkward. And a terrible missed opportunity.

@ZOS_GinaBruno @ZOS_RichLambert Why wasn't something like this done instead?

1. Make the Wailing Prison the tutorial again, but change how the tutorial ends.
2. At the end of the tutorial, you are returned to Tamriel, but instead of landing in an alliance starter island, you are instead dropped on Balfiera Island. There, you get the choose which portal to use: Stros, Vvardenfell, etc.

This would've been so much more coherent and sensible than the current mess on the PTS.

GreenHere

code65536 wrote: »

I feel like it was a great idea that missed the mark.

ESO in a nutshell, sadly.


And yeah, your suggestion is what would have been the sensible way to do it. It seems so obvious and simple, right? They don't even really need to redo much work... just put what they got in the "correct" order.

It baffles me that this kind of stuff has to be spelled out for them time and again and again and again. And they don't even bother to acknowledge such critiques most the time anyway. Very frustrating and disappointing!

LightningWitch

What I haven't read in all this "hate the new way" rhetoric is if ZoS still pushes the MQ onto players regardless.

*THIS* is the entire point of the change, and if the MQ isn't shoved/locked into our quest books forever, this opening option is actually the best.

You all keep thinking about "new" players", but is there such a thing? Bah. Even still, let's examine it from their point of view.

They start the game in an area they've never seen (obviously). Then, they're shown to their starter island. This is actually good, because the tutorial islands are pretty nice to get the feel of the game.

Then, they MQ - WHICH IS NOT SUPPOSED TO BE FIXED TO PLAYERS ANYMORE - which takes them to Coldharbour, then back to their starter island.

Awkward? No. I think this is a great decision because it puts new players back to an area they're familiar with. If someone decides to MQ later, then restoring them to the starter island shouldn't take them long to get back to where they were.

As for alts, let's be real here: those who didn't care just ran out and tried to level up and skipped the MQ. I know for a fact I'm not the only one with the "Talk to the hooded figure" completely locked and undeletable in my journal. Maybe you have it to.

If the new patch FINALLY removes this MQ quest from the book, *THIS* is the primary reason for the change, not the tutorial.

When these "new" players make their alts, they'll not care about the start either.

phantasmalD

Literally nothing changed about the MQ. Still forced on you the moment you get near a base game city and can't be removed.

LightningWitch wrote: »

Awkward? No. I think this is a great decision because it puts new players back to an area they're familiar with. If someone decides to MQ later, then restoring them to the starter island shouldn't take them long to get back to where they were.

It's very awkward when you are an EP member. You get sent back to a burning village in the middle of a siege. Your only guidance is the Prophet who says that you were fished out of the sea and that there are people in need of assistance nearby. But if you've already finished every quest on the starter island then that's not the case at all.

Elsonso

phantasmalD wrote: »

Literally nothing changed about the MQ. Still forced on you the moment you get near a base game city and can't be removed.

LightningWitch wrote: »

Awkward? No. I think this is a great decision because it puts new players back to an area they're familiar with. If someone decides to MQ later, then restoring them to the starter island shouldn't take them long to get back to where they were.

It's very awkward when you are an EP member. You get sent back to a burning village in the middle of a siege. Your only guidance is the Prophet who says that you were fished out of the sea and that there are people in need of assistance nearby. But if you've already finished every quest on the starter island then that's not the case at all.

Yeah, they ran out of Scotch tape when they taped all the different stories together. This is why I suggest that ZOS hire someone who is in charge of story continuity across all of the chapters. A Director that sits above the Creative Director and guides the big picture.