I think they should be able to pick or at least have a guide to take them starter zone

I have noticed that fighting dragons in Southern Elsweyr is much less frustrating than Northern Elsweyr for the same reason, likewise for The Reach harrowstorms versus Western Skyrim.

New players do not have the skills to fight these battles. They are also afraid to get hit and die and just stand back and just spam light and heavy attacks.

When it comes to harrowstorms, they are more likely to farm the lost souls or go after the bosses rather than attack the witches pikes. This is bad because the pikes stay up and more bosses keep getting generated.

I can't imagine how confusing the game is for new players I agree that they need to have choice of tutorials/stories from the character creation screen - with Harborage main story being recommended for the first playthrough on their very first character.

I was very lucky to start before One Tamriel, so my journey properly began in the best tutorial. Doing main story together with my alliance story, ending up in Coldharbour, doing Silver and Gold stories after... It all made sence. Then I played all DLCs in the logical order (sadly, I messed up with Clockwork City and Vvardenfell ). New players have no idea in what order they need to play stories to get all the pieces together. They would need to search the internet for all this information before they even start the game

It would have been so easy to provide a choice for new characters: "Where do you wish to start your adventure?" Do you wish to start in the most recently released chapter zone, which is rather difficult for an inexperienced player, some of the earlier chapter zones, some of which are reasonably easy, or the original starter zone for one of the three factions, which is quite easy and was designed for beginners? One screen with multiple choices, one extra click after you create your character.

With the current forced start in the most recent chapter zone you can access, new players often don't even know that there are plenty of other places to quest with your first character while you level it up. They don't know, because there is nothing in the game that actually tells them. This very weird design choice has had me completely baffled since the very first chapter expansion in ESO.

Olauron wrote: »

Raideen wrote: »

I agree. I can not fathom the reason the devs would want new players to start in a DLC zone.

If a player is a new player, then this player has bought the last chapter after skipping the base game and all other chapters. The most likely reason to skip all previous chapters (and base game) is not being interested in them. That means that new player is buying new chapter specifically to get the new chapter content. It would be quite unpleasant to buy something specifically and be put into other content and not into the content you bought. I can already imagine all the support nightmare with the "I have bought Greymoor and can't find it" messages. So putting new players into the content they bought is reasonable.

There should be a way to choose the starting place, if one wish to do so.

I disagree. The majority of people I know who started an MMO after one or more expansions were released did it simply because that's when they wanted or could afford a new MMO, not because they wanted to play that one specific expansion to a game they previously had no interest in.

I know Skyrim was very popular, but even then a huge chunk of players who discovered TES with Skyrim and wanted more of it bought ESO at launch or shortly after, I can't imagine many of them waited until now because they specifically wanted to visit Solitude and wouldn't buy the game until that one area of Skyrim was included. My experience in-game and on the forum matches that too, the new players I've met just want to play ESO and expect to be starting at the beginning of the story, not the latest release.

Some of them don't care about the story at all and are fine starting out whenever, but more often that not when I've encountered a new player asking why an NPC they've just met acts like they're old friends, whether past events referenced in quests are actually in the game and if so where and highlighting all the other inconsistences their reaction as soon as they're told it's because Greymoor is actually the latest release and not a starter zone is to immediately drop what they're doing and head to where they should have started to play it in order.

I agree they should be offered a choice, but ideally that should make it clear that the base game is the start of the story and not mislead them into thinking it's an appropriate starter zone. If for some reason a player only wants to play the one expansion because they're not interested in the rest of the game they could do that, but it shouldn't be the default forced on everyone.

Can see both sides of this. A new player who bought Greymoor likely wants to see Western Skyrim, not base game zones with textures which haven't aged well since 2014 and zero mention of the cool vampire stuff from the promo materials which prompted them to buy the game.

On the other hand how much fun is repeatedly getting your newbie behind handed to you at Harrowstorms?

Of course what would really help is a graphical refresh of the base game content, but there's no money in that.

I tried to get my dad to play and he quit for the same reason. It’s too difficult for new players to follow where they should be going and what quests they should be doing. This game needs better quest distinction. All we have is a black/white quest marker and a slightly different white/black quest marker. Adding the option to change main quests to different colors would help with confusion.

Agreed, ZOS should make some sort of a "new player experience" option when starting out. Which has it's own tutorial, and then starts the benefactor quest in the main town. So players can fully start fresh from the beginning. Something I would do every time as well!

And ZOS should give prologue and DLC questlines different color questmarkers, like dailies already have. This way we can differentiate the quest type(s). And make those queststarters stand still somewhere, and not rush into you every time you go to town.

Edit: And there needs to be some kind of skill catch-up mechanic. When new skillines came out, those were tied to DLC skillpoint amounts. We can't seriously expect every player to run through all DLC on every character(and all regular zones). For the record, I'm not saying more skillpoints should be available. But existing skillpoints should be easier to gather from zones we were never in yet. For example: Give excavating a random chance to grant an overland skyshard from any zone accessible to the player, including DLC zones. Or some other way.

I don't understand why, despite constant requests, they refuse to let us pick which tutorial zone we go to. Its such a simple feature that would add so much to the game. As it is all of the older tutorials are just laying around unused.

If I want my character to start on Vvardenfell I shouldn't have to start in Skyrim, skip the tutorial, then wayshrine to Vvardenfell and try to justify why I suddenly appeared there instead of getting a proper start.

I think it's probably too late to do this now but my ideal would be a shared intro for all players which lets you choose where to go next.

After a short tutorial to cover the absolute basics everyone is dropped onto the same island. If you know what you're doing you can use the wayshrine or a boat to leave immediately and go wherever you like, but if you don't know the game that well or you want to play through it you then get quests which act as an extended tutorial and also introduce you to aspects of the game's world.

For example you get the option to fight for any of the Alliances against the other two. If you know who you want to side with you can just do their quests, if not you can try out all 3. Then when you've finished everything and you're ready to leave you choose an Alliance to join permanently (with the option to use an Alliance change later of course) and speak to an NPC to be sent to their starter city. As DLC and chapters are added to the game their quest givers are added to the island so anyone with that content unlocked also gets the option to start on the area of their choice immediately.

(This would also have the advantage that quest givers for DLC could be very obvious, although hopefully not stalking you endlessly, without being annoying to the general population. They could all be standing in the island's town advertising their various quests and zones so they're virtually unmissable but once you've made your choice they're out the way and won't bother you. And if you want to pick up another one you know exactly where to go to find them because they're all in the same place.)

I agree with you OP as it's incredibly confusing for new players, and I personally hate having my new characters dropped into the newest DLC as it ruins the intro to the game. Like how can my character ressurect themselves when they have not even been turned into a soul shriven yet? It's very jarring to disrupt that sequence of events.

I know they've said they wanted to start new players in the latest zones since the tutorials have been getting better, which they have. I know Fenn's combat tutorial is much better than Naryu's from Morrowind.

Having said that, it is disappointing that there's no indication of what to do for the main quest. For story-driven people, you're railroaded into all of the Greymoor storyline unless you know to turn away from Fenn and go to meet the Hooded Figure in a starter city. Not to mention the ever-growing number of prologue quest givers standing around, one of which is even nice enough to break the actual main quest at one point.

I do miss the other tutorials too. Morrowind's came with a unique spin on a Vvardenfell quest that would be nice to be able to do again. And all of them have fully voiced stories that can't be seen again. It's also gonna be tough when we get the next chapter since Greymoor's tutorial also explains Harrowstorms and how to deal with them, which we're not going to see coming up soon.

I think a brand new account should need to play at least once through the newest tutorial, just because it explains more game mechanics. After that, let people choose which tutorial they want, and maybe add a flavor text as you're picking to suggest that Coldharbour is the recommended start (give it an extra skill point so it matches with the rest), but allow us to experience being caught by slavers or witches or grounded by dragons if we want to start a character that way. I have a great idea for a character I'd like to play using Morrowind's tutorial, but... I guess I can't anymore.