How to teach people the basics of the game better

BohnT2 · March 2020

With all the talk about "Low and high APM" players and how the gap between them has to be closed it has become clear that there is a huge amount of players who don't fail because they're bad to begin with but rather that they have no idea about the game at all.

The amount of knowledge you can get fast and easy on the internet compared to what the game teaches you by playing it and telling you the importance and effects of certain amplifiers, consumables and actions is probably much bigger than the skill gap in the playerbase.

When you meet people with 600 CP who ask "what is buff food and why should i even use it?"

"I don't use glyphs they don't help anyway"

"What do you mean using potions helps sustain?"

"Why would i want more magicka/stamina it doesn't help with damage right?"

"I can't tank it when the enemy has those red lines flying towards him, is my build bad?"

Those things have to be taught and people have to understand from playing that buff food is exceptionally important, that potions are a huge benefit and that interrupt/dodging heavy attacks/avoiding AoEs is absolutely needed.

Those things have to be advertised aggressively over and over again without being obnoxious till people just do it without thinking about it.

For buff food this could be done with a message that shows up when you log in or your food/drink runs out along the lines of: "your character is hungry/thirsty and it's holding his power back"
This can also help console players by tracking their food buff without an Addon.

For the combat related things like dodging, blocking, interrupting, weaving. Those can best be taught via learning by doing, make those mechanics a lot more needed in OW and quests and also show people that they'll die if they don't use them.
A tutorial that gets harder and harder which starts with an easy task like "block now", "dodge now" but increases in difficulty and weaves in more and more mechanics and shows how an NPC is doing them and then asks the player to repeat them.
After finishing the whole tutorial which should be aimed to be around 20-30 minutes there should be a reward that encourages people to do it and also give 2 more rewards for doing it again twice.

This would help the playerbase a lot more than changing things to increase the damage of worse players because they still have to be taught all the other stuff to be able to compete in PvE and PvP later on

Nerouyn · March 2020

ROFL

This sad old idea.

No. People don't just need to be "taught".

A lot of ESO's mechanics - eg. "weaving" - are stupid as balls and just plain not fun.

I'd rather chew off my own face than do that *** and so would most other players.

Agenericname · March 2020

Nerouyn wrote: »

ROFL

This sad old idea.

No. People don't just need to be "taught".

A lot of ESO's mechanics - eg. "weaving" - are stupid as balls and just plain not fun.

I'd rather chew off my own face than do that *** and so would most other players.

A lot of ESO's mechanics, eg. all but the one you mentioned, are fun.

Judging by the feedback from the changes proposed on the latest PTS I'd have to ask for a source for "most other players", but one of several and hardly constitutes most.

zergbase_ESO · March 2020

Nerouyn wrote: »

ROFL

This sad old idea.

No. People don't just need to be "taught".

A lot of ESO's mechanics - eg. "weaving" - are stupid as balls and just plain not fun.

I'd rather chew off my own face than do that *** and so would most other players.

Can we get agent orange to yell wrong at this person.

Also to the OP. I think they should. Like have a part game where you go thru fight health pinata boss that does mechanics so the player learns. Then move them into trying lock picking and other parts of the game as they go thru then bam into the game. I can agree that base game setup is lacking. I have been playing for a long minute and that new player thing needs a massive overhaul.

oxygen_thief · March 2020

you can't teach one who don't want to be taught

mairwen85 · March 2020

Clearly ZOS want it to be: "if in doubt lob heavies."

Iskiab · March 2020

There’s three parts to the issue:
1. Easy overland mobs and CP power. I can solo public dungeons, some vets (if I wanted to), and all world bosses. That’s from knowing mechanics, there’s no need to getting better if you don’t want to push things
2. Basics aren’t explained. A mini tutorial couldn’t hurt
3. Poor game design. It will never be intuitive to animation cancel to stop animations because they interfere with the next skill. They shouldn’t have been made so long to begin with.

Juhasow · March 2020

Nerouyn wrote: »

ROFL

This sad old idea.

No. People don't just need to be "taught".

A lot of ESO's mechanics - eg. "weaving" - are stupid as balls and just plain not fun.

I'd rather chew off my own face than do that *** and so would most other players.

Thing is You can still get decent enough DPS to complete all veteran content without perfect light attack weaving or without meta setups. But You need to know how. And to know how You need to learn how. So yes people need to be "taught" at the end. Taught that there are other ways then just brainlesly following meta and complaining when it didn't worked or just complaining , when doing nothing to improve , beliving that meta or weaving is the only way and main reason they've failed.

Everest_Lionheart · March 2020

Well it certainly needs more than what is there now.

Step 1: this is how to block
Step 2: this is how to light attack
Step 3: this is how to roll dodge
Step 4: this is how to interrupt.

Now those are basic mechanics but in the current tutorial, if you can call it that, the guy just stands there and you get to try those things a grand total of once. I can’t recall if heavy attack was also included or not and they certainly don’t have any skills assigned to use either.

Sneaking also is never really covered but you figure that out on your own, but people will never know sometimes it’s faster to sneak around a tough fight than to run in guns blazing. At least not anyone new to the game.

It would be nice to have a more advanced tutorial that shows us how to string a couple things together. Something as basic as attack>skill>dodge or skill>block>attack. Now those are basic mechanics that many people will figure out quickly, but it would be nice to at least introduce the concept.

Also there is nothing about sustain, nothing about food, nothing about how to level skill lines. Some real tips or more in depth tutorial would certainly come in handy.

FakeFox · March 2020

To me the primary issue is that players are not required to learn anything until they get into actually challenging content and hit a wall. Overland content is so easy there is no need to understand anything about stats or even use basic game mechanics. You don't need to block, dodge or interrupt anything because it has no consequences. You don't need to understand skills because you can simply light attack everything to death. We have scaling, level rewards, overland sets and massive power creep, yet overland content has never been adjusted properly.

NeillMcAttack · March 2020

They should include a togglable GCD bar, with a when to LA indication. And just teach people in game. People will pick it up much faster.
Instead they let people trudge through the entire game developing bad habits for months or even years, and then expect they should be able to complete any content with having zero guidance through the whole game.

It’s not rocket science, and people aren’t idiots ZOS. Just show them ffs.

LadySinflower · March 2020

I see the merit of this idea but I don't think people would cooperate or understand. They would rush through a long tutorial not learning anything, just wanting to get out and actually play. I read the loading screen tips now but in the beginning I didn't, and on occasion I read something I didn't know, still. Asking people to read descriptions of what AOEs are, how food and potions benefit you, and mixing gear for maximum set benefit will go right over the head of a brand new player, and that is if you get them to read the info at all. Everyone is going to be unfamiliar with this game's use of the controller/keyboard, so APM will be low for newer players. I really only learned what I know by playing the game for months and talking to other players. It takes time to build skill and some people will never move past mediocre. It's just the way the world is. If ZOS thinks they can wave a wand and tweak the game a little bit, magically bringing everyone's APM closer to the same number, they are wasting their time.

xXMeowMeowXx · March 2020

Moot point because ZOS will just keep changing the game to keep those numbers up and the nerflings happily spending rl money....

They could of done tuts np’

Best we can do and have done is give our feedback to ZOS while testing on the PTS. At least this time the devs sincerely seem to have acknowledge it to think over.

Imo the purposed changes were to well thought out and planned to not go through. Hopefully, they will adjust some of the changes we suggested....

When it goes live, new players will still get nuked and come to the forums for nerfs.

That is the problem at the core. Simply, most people don’t want to learn. Instead they just want endless nerfs to cater to them rather then l2P.

Dusk_Coven · March 2020

BohnT2 wrote: »

When you meet people with 600 CP who ask "what is buff food and why should i even use it?"

Some stuff is not intuitive in ESO. But some stuff is just plain learn-to-read, or maybe learn-to-bother-to-read. Like seriously, you've never seen a tooltip over your Crusty Bread?
And there's a huge learn-to-read problem. You even see it on the forums. Like when the Jubilee details were announced some people were looking for tickets from bosses during Jesters.

StaticWave · March 2020

Nerouyn wrote: »

ROFL

This sad old idea.

No. People don't just need to be "taught".

A lot of ESO's mechanics - eg. "weaving" - are stupid as balls and just plain not fun.

I'd rather chew off my own face than do that *** and so would most other players.

Your ego is why you will never be good at the game

fierackas · March 2020

Can someone teach us how to log in to the game?

Svyndra · March 2020

Maybe some of us don't care.

I'm high CP and I have a poor grasp of the mechanics. I do agree, it was never shown properly. I did look it up but most of the stuff I found was so full of terms I didn't understand I just said "meh" and moved on. I like overland stuff, i fish, quest and farm a lot of mats. I like selling stuff. I rarely do dungeons or trials and when I do , its always with guild members and I'm straight up with them.. we do it for fun and they are ok with that. If someone in a zone needs a hand, I help out and my poor rotation is better than no help.

The only reason I know anything about food buffs and such is because of Alcast. Ya, a lot of people make jokes about us with Alcast builds, but I don't have the time or knowledge to try all this out on my own.

Sarannah · March 2020

Personally I really dislike weaving, light attacking, and bar swapping. And therefor never do those, but the highest I will go is normal dungeons(to not inconvenience others). Dodging, blocking, and interrupting are base game mechanics though, and these are in the tutorial.
I would be fine with it if ZOS would disable weaving and bar swapping entirely, by removing animation canceling and putting a 5 second cooldown on bar swapping in which the fronting bar is disabled for 5 seconds. Allow skills to queue after one another. To close the gap between the highest and lowest player's dps.

But I am fine with how it is now, I am just not going to push myself further. There are days where the character I play and its abilities feel just right, and my dps skyrockets. Most other days I do not care if it takes a bit longer to kill something, and just relax. Doing bar swapping, weaving, and light attacking makes me feel like a keyboard spamming monkey, instead of a gamer. You can't force players to push themselves, if they do not want to. You would only push those players away from the game.

Glyphs, foods, and potions are a gearing issue. This is easy to learn, and should be in the tutorial. Though I also hardly ever use potions, and foods only if it is really needed. These are things I do aim for, as well as veteran gear through the golden vendor. Have been kicked from a dungeon once for not using food, but when your character has plenty of sustain, there is really no need for it.

For the record, I probably sound like an idiot player... but I can solo all public dungeons, and most world bosses(only those with multiple bosses give me issues).

There is enough content in the overland game and DLC's, for many of my characters to still go through.

PS: I have been a top player, pvper, and raider in other games, now I am just relaxing.

Edit: Did a tutorial today, would love it if they added a restoration staff in it, and somehow make it known if there are still any hidden skilllines. A new player would not know they are missing an armor or weapon skillline still. It should also be more clear where to go after the tutorial. And give the player the quest, and an option to port to it's alliance starting island/zone. Right now it is weird: You start with the latest DLC tutorial, then you have to figure out to go to your alliance main starting city, get someone to give you the benefactor quest(main quest tutorial), and then that guy ports you to your starting island. Weirdest order ever, even I had to google that stuff. *Sorry, just my thoughts on the current tutorial!*

Lixiviant · March 2020

It just depends on the player. Some like to just jump in there and complain because something is too hard, or they expect someone else to revive them when they die. So, you can talk to them all you want and it won't penetrate.

Others actually want to invest a little time in the game, watch some YT, visit a build site and join a Guild that will help you.

I had a hard time pairing up food and potions until I asked some questions and read everything Alcast had put out there.

Xarc · March 2020

BohnT2 wrote: »

When you meet people with 600 CP who ask "what is buff food and why should i even use it?"

"I don't use glyphs they don't help anyway"

"What do you mean using potions helps sustain?"

"Why would i want more magicka/stamina it doesn't help with damage right?"

"I can't tank it when the enemy has those red lines flying towards him, is my build bad?"

Welcome to ESO.
Everything here is done to XP very fast, XP scroll, XP cake, XP event, XP from ESO+, XP XP XP XP XP
Alik'r has non stop zerg for dolmens,
Random dungeon and Random BG gives XP bonus
The first one gives even more XP
AND
you're enlighted everyday to XP more and more.

SOOOOOOOO
we have players with maxCP who are noobs in 2020.

merevie · March 2020

Because of lag, there has never been attack speed problem in PvP. There is a desync problem, but that is lack of design skill issue, not a player skill issue.

In order to do well you need to have played every single other class well yourself, so you know how to deal with your foe.

That's a lot of time and a lot of toons.

The exception is if you join a ball group and press 3 buttons on the one class and let someone else direct your every move. < This is the in point for new players to PvP. Join a guild, get build support, learn the basics. Learn the actual PvP class mechanics in down time.

People have this expectation that if they copy someone's amazing build online then they are all set. Unless someone labelled their build 'beginner' this is going to end very badly.

If Zos wants to level the playing field then they need to write a manual explaining how the combat system works for new players. And perhaps themselves.

What they did to introduce the hammer in PvP was helpful. Do more of this. There is a fighter's guild -maybe it could actually teach fighting skills.

Varana · March 2020

- Many players don't care about tutorials. Tutorials are the new Readme.txt - no one will read it. Ever.
- ESO has a lot of information, and much of it only comes into play hours, days or months later in the game. A level 3 character in Elsweyr has no need to care about glyphs or sets or even traits. Or weaving. When they have reached the necessary stage, the tutorial will be ancient history.
- Case in point: the Volendrung tutorial. Yes, it's great... theoretically. I have done it with three or fours characters, and I can't for the life of me remember which button did what. For a few hours (tops) immediately afterwards, sure, but - surprise! - I didn't get to wield that hammer in the next two hours. It has been months now, and I've never needed that information. And yes, I could do it again (which you can't for the starter tutorial), but I don't go into Cyrodiil thinking "I wanna get me a hammer now!", and do a tutorial first - in the really unlikely event that it drops on me and there's no-one actually competent around.

Yes, tutorials would be good. But they don't solve everything, and make players magically better.