The new tutorial is interesting, but still ultimately makes no sense for a new character.

TaSheen

Northwold wrote: »

ADarklore wrote: »

However, if new players actually CARED, they would just look online and learn about the game and the proper chronological order for the stories. "Shouldn't have to" is no longer an excuse in a world where you can quickly and easily look up the information you want to know, most people have smartphones so they have this information at their fingertips. This game is almost ten years old now, therefore it should be expected to have TONS of content, which equates to people should expect to do a bit of research to know what's going on.

I take your first para which I've only snipped for space, but just on this one, I have to say, this sounds like an established player attitude. To a new player, a game that has to be looked up on Google to be playable is simply a bad game that they should just dump and play something better. .

I ALWAYS look up games I want to play online. I looked up WoW and RIFT, and several others that I ultimately chose not to play - and I looked up this one. My sister, nephew and his friends from college, daughter and granddaughters do the same, as do numerous friends I've played games with over many years now.

Personally, I do want to do research. But even with that said, I STILL preferred meandering around in this game for a long time to being railroaded into quests and zones.

Games are meant to be fun, not railroaded questlines on steroids. If the only way to have played this game was to have started with the Prophet MQ, I would never have bought it, and I certainly wouldn't be here nearly 7 years on. I didn't even play Skyrim's MQ right off the bat - I wandered around all of it before I ever really did any questing at all. Yes, I did eventually do the MQ once from each side (both of which left a very bad taste in my mouth - I REALLY hate "war" as a deus ex machina), so now I never touch it at all. And yes, I am still playing Skyrim....

Deserrick

1. Have the game start the way it used to, with Soul Shriven in Coldharbour / The Wailing Prison, followed by winding up on a ship in the first zone of your chosen alliance. (The game already starts with a tutorial, so this initially forced but later skippable start is no net loss of freedom).

2. Have the map locations list categorized by chapter/alliance, and in chronological order (the order you can see on Urich's Skill Point Finder). So the map location list would be:

• Aldmeri Dominion
  1. Khenarthi's Roost
  2. Auridon
  3. Grahtwood
  4. Greenshade
  5. Malabal Tor
  6. Reaper's March
• Daggerfall Covenant
  1. Stros M'Kai
  2. Betnikh
  3. Glenumbra
  4. Stormhaven
  5. Rivenspire
  6. Alik'r Desert
  7. Bangkorai
• Ebonhart Pact
  1. Bleakrock Isle
  2. Bal Foyen
  3. Stonefalls
  4. Deshaan
  5. Shadowfen
  6. Eastmarch
  7. The Rift

followed by the other locations in release order, with similarly connected locations grouped to make it easier to tell how they are connected, like

• Summerset
  1. Summerset
  2. Artaeum

3. Instead of, or in addition to, the "Start Zone Story" button, have a "Start chapter/alliance story" button that directs the player to the first uncompleted zone story in the areas connected to the player's current zone (for example, "Start chapter/alliance story" from Stormhaven would direct a player to where currently choosing "Start Zone Story" in Stros M'Kai directs them). If the ability to do zone stories out of order is kept, provide a warning similar to Genshin Impact's quick start feature ("You should complete [earlier zone stories] first to get the best experience from this story. You can still play this zone's story and experience all the relevant story and gameplay without completing said stories, but your experience will be affected, as you might encounter unknown characters and relationships.")

4. Allow the other tutorials (Broken Bonds; The Mind Trap; Bright Moons, Warm Sands; Bound in Blood; The Gates of Adamant) to be accessed upon completion of the related prologue quests.

amapola76

I hate that the old tutorials are no longer available. All that money spent on artwork and writing and VA, and now it's just... gone. Locked from use forever. Such an absolute shame and a waste.

Granted, the tutorials were not all created equal, but I quite enjoyed the ones for Morrowind and Elsweyr, for example, and I would love to visit them again on a new character, sometime. But oh well.

This is a classic "we are listening to you but lol, not really" example of a situation where we asked them for the ability to start with any tutorial of our choice, and instead they gave us a completely bland, nondescript one-size-fits-all tutorial that pops us into any zone of our choice. Not at all the same thing.

OtarTheMad

I like the new tutorial, I also like that even though it takes place at Direnni Tower it’s hinted that the place is huge so we can still go back there for a trial or dungeon.

Also FYI, some of the old tutorials technically still exist just in form of a quest. Morrowind, Summerset and the original Coldharbour one can were turned into a quest so you can still visit a part of them. So the tutorial aspect is gone but you can still see the area.

I hate that we lost the Western Skyrim tutorial area, that was such a big place (Deepwood Redoubt). If any place deserves to be transformed/repurposed as a quest now that the tutorial for it is gone, its that one.

Dahveed

I guess I just don't like the fact that the option was taken away from us... I really wanted to start a cat player in the cat zone doing cat stuff.

Instead they just gave me the generic one (which is well done, I'm not saying it isn't) and gives you a generic "you are soooooo special" that every generic fantasy game has.

And then "poof" I just teleport to Elsweyr with no direction (at all), not even a hint.

I enjoy the open-endedness in general, but you should at least have *some* hint of what you're doing, where you're going, and what's going on around you. And then have the option to completely ignore all that and go your own way, should you so choose.

FayJolyn

It's a shame they took away the old tutorials. they made narrative sense and it would have left Balfiera open for other purposes instead of what it is now. I started playing during Blackwood and I was pretty confused as a new player as you just get dropped into a zone that feels it needed a better introduction. I don't see why you don't just get asked a question right after character creation which storyline you want to start in and then put you through the old tutorials. the current version is awkward and clunky.

evan302

I agree the new tutorial is confusing and makes no narrative sense.
What we have is great for returning players and for alts, but when I was making my first character earlier this year, the choice felt overwhelming.
I wanted to experience the story and, like the OP, I found myself doing things out of sequence, even though I had found the 'ESO in Order' post on this forum and was attempting to follow it.
I know that most MMOs will be confusing at the start (this is my 4th) because inevitably a lot of information gets dumped on new players in their first couple of hours. However, ESO really doesn't try to make the main story easy to find and follow.

For the story to make sense, new players would need to start at the Coldharbour questline. I'd suggest a different introduction so the basics of combat can be taught, then run through the story with Lyris and finally get teleported to Balfiera where we can get to the portals and chose where to go. That would be Balfiera minus the combat tutorials ofc.
Returning players and those making alts would have the option of skipping straight to Balfiera and the portal room.
I also think it would be nice if we could get to the portal room at any time after playing through the introduction, but that would just be icing on the cake.

I notice they reported record numbers of players after the promotion that gave the base game away for free; I do wonder how many of those players the actually retained, though. I'd put money on it being a minority of those trying the game for the first time.

AvalonRanger

Maybe, people totally forget about "Deadric invasion" now a days.
What is the main theme of 2nd era of Tamriel?

[Molag Bal]: "Hey" players. I'm lonely. Don't forget about me!!" (/._.\)

...

RaddlemanNumber7

I like that the new tutorial puts new characters in the landscape with no specified direction to go - no instructions, no corridor to follow, no quest giver in their face. This gives players the opportunity to explore the landscape, and the rest of the game, based solely on their character's experience of it, if that's what they want to do. Exploration is an important part of TES games.

Players wanting something else can ask in chat, join a guild, read a wiki, etc, etc.

The choice is ours to make, by design it seems.

evan302

[quote="RaddlemanNumber7;c-8011406"
Players wanting something else can ask in chat, join a guild, read a wiki, etc, etc.

The choice is ours to make, by design it seems.[/quote]

A choice that is completely uninformed isn't really a choice at all. Players who are just starting out, who know nothing about ESO, just take a stab in the dark and pick an area at random.

As I said above, what we have is great for returning players and people making an alt. It also suits people who don't care about the story for whatever reason. For those of us that want a coherent narrative, it's sorely lacking.

I did my research but I still managed to go wrong a few times by getting lost (the map and navigation take a bit of getting used to) and picking up quests that were at the end of the zone story before I'd done some of the earlier quests. I didn't expect those quests to be visible before the earlier quests were done, so seeing a main story quest marker I just picked them up. I muddled through and eventually got the story straight and learned how things worked, but I would have to say the starting experience in ESO is not new player friendly.

I appreciate the devs have made changes to the Prologue quests recently, so the quest givers no longer chase you around, but I think there is still room for improvement.

RaddlemanNumber7

evan302 wrote: »

[quote="RaddlemanNumber7;c-8011406"
Players wanting something else can ask in chat, join a guild, read a wiki, etc, etc.

The choice is ours to make, by design it seems.

A choice that is completely uninformed isn't really a choice at all. Players who are just starting out, who know nothing about ESO, just take a stab in the dark and pick an area at random.

As I said above, what we have is great for returning players and people making an alt. It also suits people who don't care about the story for whatever reason. For those of us that want a coherent narrative, it's sorely lacking.

I did my research but I still managed to go wrong a few times by getting lost (the map and navigation take a bit of getting used to) and picking up quests that were at the end of the zone story before I'd done some of the earlier quests. I didn't expect those quests to be visible before the earlier quests were done, so seeing a main story quest marker I just picked them up. I muddled through and eventually got the story straight and learned how things worked, but I would have to say the starting experience in ESO is not new player friendly.

I appreciate the devs have made changes to the Prologue quests recently, so the quest givers no longer chase you around, but I think there is still room for improvement.



[/quote]

The Zone Guide is now available to help players do zone main questlines in the correct order.

JemadarofCaerSalis

ArchMikem wrote: »

In my opinion, not locking Quest content and Zones into a linear, chronological order was a mistake. There's simply too much to do now. Giving the player some choice is a good thing, but giving us EVERY choice is not. People have better narrative experiences when they're on rails, whether they admit it or not.

As someone who started playing in July, I think one of the biggest problems is simply information overload, and not much way to figure it out in game.

I started the tutorial, and did it, and then was given a choice of the portals, but they didn't really tell me which one I should choose, or what that choice *meant*. I mean, I knew it would put me in the main world someplace, but I started with Alderi Dominion, and so wanted to do that first, but (from what I recall) there wasn't anything that said 'this will start the AD main quest'.

It also wasn't made clear that you couldn't get back to the tutorial area once you left it.

Then, once I chose a place to go, I was dropped in this place with all these NPCs shouting at me (thankfully a lot of those have been moved to different places) with little to no idea who they were, why they wanted my attention, or what they really meant. So many different types of quests, again with little to no explanation in game, made it overwhelming and harder to figure out what exactly I am supposed to do, especially without going online and finding a guide that could potentially spoil the story line for me.

When you add in the quoted issue, about the narratives, it can be even more overwhelming, especially if you have ESO+ or you bought all the content, so you have access to all the areas of the game. I wanted to do the stories in more or less chroniclogical order, but I had to use an online guide for that. The zone guide is nice, but again, it goes back to the information overload, and new players just having all this information being pushed at them.

I can understand people liking the freedom to go and start anywhere, that is what I love about Bethesda games, the freedom to ignore the main quest. I also don't like games that 'hold my hand' or lead me about by the nose. However, I also prefer games that give me *some* idea of what I need to do, and in what order. (I can't remember now, but I thought that completing the main quest can change some things in the zone quests? Or is it the other way around? Because the quests were designed to be done basically concurrently, so racing ahead on one can cause certain changes in the other main quests).

Also, reading a bit further along the thread, I dislike the idea that players, new or old, *must* access a player run guide in order to get the most out of the game.

I love player guides, and there are some great guide makers, and great people (in pretty much all game communities) that do wonderful jobs. But, with a game like ESO, which is ever changing/evolving, in game guides are a must, because sometimes people can abandon their guides, they can get outdated information (such as the changes to where the prologue quest givers are. Any guide who had them only in the original locations will be out of date until they are updated), and just confuse players even more.

Not to mention, and this may just be a 'me' problem, until a player has immersed themselves in the game, a lot of the guides will use terminology that might not make sense to them. When I was new to ESO, someone mentioning Khenarthi's Roost and AD meant absolutely nothing to me. Just like the difference between DLCs and Chapters, and whether or not Chapters become DLCs eventually, or will they be included in ESO+ eventually, and so on.

So a new player looking up a guide and seeing all this information would still be potentially at a loss, because again, information overload. (not to mention the issue of potentially spoiling the storyline for people who care about that.)

Monte_Cristo

freespirit wrote: »

Arizona_Steve wrote: »

For me, the biggest issue was all the prologue quests to DLC zones that were out there in Stonefalls once I got my new toon there. I found myself talking to Sai Sahan, even though he was supposed to be imprisoned in Coldharbor. It was really jarring.

I've been playing this game for 10 years now... and I still get confused.

I cannot remember who it was but on one occasion I had three versions of the same NPC in the mages guild in Daggerfall!

I laughed but other people may be soooo confused by this!!

It might have been Vanus. I had 2 of him in my sight at once in Daggerfall.

Ashnarug

Monte_Cristo wrote: »

It might have been Vanus. I had 2 of him in my sight at once in Daggerfall.

I think it was Abnur Tharn.