Tandor wrote: »

MidniteOwl1913 wrote: »

Tandor wrote: »

mandricus wrote: »

The game does not tells you that the tooltip of the skills change based on your resources (I've discovered it only after months that I was playing, and just because a guild mate told me).
The game does not tells you that you have to weave light attacks between your skills
The game does not tells you what a rotation is.
The game does not tells you that your resistances affect how much damage you take.
The game does not tells you how damage is calculated and how mitigation and penetration affects the calculations.
The game does not tells you that there is a golden vendor every weekend in Cyrodiil.
The game does not tells you that you have to train your mount (I've discovered it after months).
The game does not tells you the difference between a regular vendor and a trading guild vendor.
The game does not tells you that you can check your DPS on a dummy.

I could go on for hours.
The game was designed for MMORPG players, which already knows most of this stuff, because it's typical of these kind of games, forgetting that a very large chunk of the player base come to this game from Skyrim, and most of them knows absolutely nothing about this stuff. They have to learn it the hard way...

None of which is remotely relevant to the New Player Experience.

I'm more interested in getting the start of the game right for those totally new to the type of game and taking their time in familiarising themselves with it, rather than those who complain that they don't know how to progress in competitive play after hitting 500 champion points a week into the game.

The horse thing is totally relevant. New players have almost no wayshrines. They have to slow travel everywhere. It takes forever. Some of the regions don't have a starter wayshrine so you have find a boat or a gate to pass thru to ever get there to begin with. And to top it off the maps are horrible. You can pay to upgrade your mount of course, but it's not cheap.

Where are they going?

If they take their time to explore, do a bit of harvesting, and generally get their bearings then they don't need to go anywhere fast, let alone use a mount to get there. Does it really take months to spot a stablemaster and click on him/her? Or a wayshrine?

Cyrodiil in under 50 campaign is where a new player or alt really feels the lack of speed.
The scouting and city quests require a lot of travel and of course there are no wayshrines.
One of the things I loved about Elden Ring was my mount was viable out of the box.
Not against some mount leveling but a level 10 horse is pathetic it is not even the speed, it is the change to stamina they made.
Makes your ride stop and go totally spoiling the immersion of the ride.

It's amazing how weak-willed the generation of players is now. I've never played multiplayer games. This is my first experience. The series of games started for me with Morrowind. No one took you by the hand there, don't put a pot under your ass and didn't feed you with a spoon. You get lost in the freedom of choice, explore and find. I had no problems with TESO. I did what I wanted and the understanding came by itself

Tandor wrote: »

mandricus wrote: »

The game does not tells you that the tooltip of the skills change based on your resources (I've discovered it only after months that I was playing, and just because a guild mate told me).
The game does not tells you that you have to weave light attacks between your skills
The game does not tells you what a rotation is.
The game does not tells you that your resistances affect how much damage you take.
The game does not tells you how damage is calculated and how mitigation and penetration affects the calculations.
The game does not tells you that there is a golden vendor every weekend in Cyrodiil.
The game does not tells you that you have to train your mount (I've discovered it after months).
The game does not tells you the difference between a regular vendor and a trading guild vendor.
The game does not tells you that you can check your DPS on a dummy.

I could go on for hours.
The game was designed for MMORPG players, which already knows most of this stuff, because it's typical of these kind of games, forgetting that a very large chunk of the player base come to this game from Skyrim, and most of them knows absolutely nothing about this stuff. They have to learn it the hard way...

None of which is remotely relevant to the New Player Experience.

I'm more interested in getting the start of the game right for those totally new to the type of game and taking their time in familiarising themselves with it, rather than those who complain that they don't know how to progress in competitive play after hitting 500 champion points a week into the game.

You know what *is* relevant to the new player experience? Knowing what a buff is.. because you are choosing skills the entire time with no idea what they do. Knowing what a 5 piece bonus is. Like the gear with a training trait you got from a quest? Should probably explain what that does. Or I don't know, that you can upgrade your mount speed at the stable, I mean thats so basic and so important for gameplay quality but had to stumble on it after like 2 weeks. I came from Skyrim and I found it overwhelming. What's a taunt? They tell you nothing about what a tank is. Literally all this requires in a readable tab under the options/help menu. There are dozens of things that I was so frustrated about because there was nothing to even hint that it was important. I love exploration open world games but you gotta let players have access to something beyond "this is a light attack, this is a heavy attack, this is a block".

I rely heavily on my compass, map and add-ons to figure out where to go for quests. Even then, it can be confusing at times. My method for questing is to hit all the points on the map for a zone (M for map, map completion, left side of the screen)

You can have max (stable) mount speed in about 60 days. Even more speed with Champion Points + some skill points in Alliance War > Assault > Continuous Attack (Major Gallop at all times).

opalcity wrote: »

It's great that people are offering advice and helpful tips, but a new player should be able to learn things from the game, not have to rely on outside sources.


On the other side of it, new players shouldn't expect to be able to speedrun their way up to endgame content without doing the grind and putting in the time and effort.

The question becomes "How much time and effort (beyond leveling) are reasonable to ask of a new player before they can realistically participate in endgame content?"

10 hours, 100 hours, 1000 hours?

I don't have the answer but I imagine the games with the best retention rates don't require weeks on-end of 24 / 7 grinding, but also don't provide an instant 'click here to be ready' button.

naissur wrote: »

3 of them quitted straight away.

Since they quit right away they did not give themselves a chance to figure out the game.

Simply asking in a guild or on the forums would have gone a long way to clear up the quest direction issue. Sure, Zenimax could add a toggle new players could select to guide them to the first main quest in each zone which is not a bad idea. They sold out on a great story.

They did add to the zones a guide for what has been completed and what has not. Beyond that, TES is heavily about exploring to find what is there. That is a core in TES game design and carries over to ESO. So beyond the main storyline for the base game and the main storyline for each zone, players do need to understand the core game design that has worked for one of the largest game IPs for a great many players.

Maybe your friends will give it another chance and you can guide them through the game and begin to understand TES. That sounds like a great plan. Good luck.

Thecompton73 wrote: »

Drammanoth wrote: »

Thecompton73 wrote: »

Four_Fingers wrote: »

Yeah and abysmal beginning mount speed and armor decay every few levels make for a horrible leveling experience.

The mount speed issue is terrible. You can literally run faster on foot than on a horse until you get the training past level 10 and it still feels incredibly slow until you get it up to 25-30 and have the PvP passive for rapids unlocked. A new player coming in without help would have no idea about the rapids passive to make things even worse. More than a month just to get to a halfway decent mount speed is way way too long for new players or people making alts.

You can always purchase Crown Crates, convert them into Gems and boost your speed, eh? ...

Another thing that would need PROPER cleaning is the Clown Store.

A new player either wouldn't know that or would likely see having to spend a fairly large amount of real cash on a micro transaction that early in the game as a huge red flag and they'd just quit.

Many players started this game when there was no means to upgrade a house outside of daily feeding and somehow managed that, all without a cash shop. Each mount had to be trained separately instead of all mounts for one character having all the same trading.

SeaGtGruff wrote: »

Oddly enough, my experience as a new gamer in ESO was magical and exciting.

Did I know what I was doing? Heck, no.

Did I care? Heck, no.

Was I having fun? Heck, yeah.

Was just thinking this as I was reading thru the thread.

I'd rather explore and make my own way instead of feeling like I'm playing a guided tour on rails game.

I'm the type of gamer that HATES being spoon fed. Go here, go there, do this, then do that, just NO.
I even get annoyed when quest markers pop up on basic stuff like fetch quests or where you have to "search around" for something.
"Ok, time to look for clues and see if - "
<GIANT GLOWING WAYPOINT>
"oh."

When I began my first character 2+ years ago I had zero fore-knowledge of the game other than:
1. It's an Elder Scrolls title
2. It's way more peopley than Skyrim.

First major zone I ended up in was Vvardenfell and I picked a direction and just walked and explored.
Years later I'm still learning, but I LOVE that.

Now, all that said, it would be good if ZoS would expand more on some of the beginner tutorials, like the combat one for example. Maybe touch on basic weaving and some of the other things like status effects, etc. Would help dispel confusion early on I feel.

The whole mount thing has to be impacting mount sales. Why would I buy a $40 mount when I can walk faster?

ZOS has definitely not learned from their mistakes when it comes to new player experiences but I feel like this is something that has stretched back all the way to the beta. Back in the beta a lot of players got tired of having to run through the original starting zones (Bleakrock Isle, Khenarthis Roost, Stros M'Kai) every time they reset the servers and they began demanding that ZOS start the player characters in the first large city so they could "skip" the unnecessary starter zone quests and get to the larger zones faster. An issue with this quickly arose as players that had not been able to take part in earlier versions of the beta started to pour into the early access and the day 1 launch. They were immediately dropped in the starter cities with not so much as a inkling as to what they were supposed to do and where to go. Completely missing the initial starter zone quests that would direct the player along a path that would eventually lead off the island. Most players eventually figured it out simply by being curious enough to take all of the quests they could come by. They would eventually encounter the NPC that would direct them to the boats that would take you to the starter zones. And by the time they had left the starter zones they had some semblance of how the basics worked so they could actually move through the game world.

Ultimately it seems that ZOS never revisited this and has since approached development of new tutorials and starting points from the same mindset that "players want to get into the action sooner rather than later" and never really seemed to have understood that the original complaint was coming from players who were simply frustrated with the need to do the same set of quests over and over again just to be able to gain access to the rest of the game where the larger issues (bugs) were more frequently encountered. Being that they were QAing the game for free here the complaint was reasonable. Unfortunately ZOS seems to have taken that complaint to heart.

I would hope that if they ever decide to revisit the older zones to update things they take the time to seriously reevaluate the way new players experience this game early on. Because even as a veteran that is slowly leveling 18 characters its painfully obvious how much of a mess the early games progression is.

jaws343 wrote: »

Thecompton73 wrote: »

Four_Fingers wrote: »

Yeah and abysmal beginning mount speed and armor decay every few levels make for a horrible leveling experience.

The mount speed issue is terrible. You can literally run faster on foot than on a horse until you get the training past level 10 and it still feels incredibly slow until you get it up to 25-30 and have the PvP passive for rapids unlocked. A new player coming in without help would have no idea about the rapids passive to make things even worse. More than a month just to get to a halfway decent mount speed is way way too long for new players or people making alts.

I feel like the mount speed stuff is really an established player problem.

New players who are doing quests for the first time in overland have nowhere they need to be that requires mount training to get there. The main story quests are directly outside one of the first main cities, and the zone quests slowly radiate you throughout the zone incrementally, allowing you to unlock wayshrines as you move along. The Mount Speed complaint is really an end game complaint from players rushing zone dolmens and sky shards to level their 15th character, disguised as a "help the new players" problem.

Well..... there are really two kinds if new players. Brand new players, and people new to ESO who may be experienced gamers elsewhere, wanting to level up so they can PvP or do group PvE content with their friends ASAP. The latter will get frustrated with horse speed very quickly. Also, I do remember being so upset about my horse speed in Cyrodiil that my first PvP experience was brutally unfun.... spent the entire time trying to get to battles before they were over and swearing at my ridiculously slow horse. It almost permanently turned me off of PvP for good. In PvE I don't remember being as impacted by it, but that was back when horses had specializations and you trained each horse and it just very obviously was going to be a long slog. Back then 40,000 gold (or whatever it was) seemed like an unreachable sum of money for one of the "better" horses.

I will say, I have played a TON of MMO's and when I started, I often commented on how it felt that ESO relied on external content more than most games I had played, and in some cases the information was basically NOWHERE at all. Compared to those days, it's a cakewalk now. Tons of new player guides, almost every single quest can be found on YouTube if you get stuck, plus a ton of in-game "new player" tips and leveling rewards that didn't exist at launch.

This is not at all to belittle any of the feedback in here, but just to point out that this has never really been ESO's strength, and most of us here today had to really WANT to learn the game and figure it out. Maybe the OP's problem partially is that if you have to work that hard to convince your friends to play a game... maybe that game shouldn't be ESO, because we know the early game experience is a bit of a mess.

I would like to see ZOS continue to work on improving this, especially the issue they've created with making each new area be possible as a starter zone, which was a problem that didn't really exist at launch and just keeps getting worse and more confusing with each new release.

Many people here moaning about mount speed and that is another thing that is badly explained and only an experienced player might be able to help......

The first passive in the Assault skill line which is easily unlocked by just doing the Cyrodiil intro quest...... no PVP needed but gives you an immediate extra 30% mount speed.

How many new players are going to find that?? Many new players actively avoid PVP content because it scares them or they feel they need more experience before jumping in!!

Whereas infact in less than 10 mins they can get a massive mount speed boost!

All those stories about new players quitting ESO and the reasons why they quite are actually just examples for a common no-brainer: different people have different tastes. Some of the offered reasons are just ridiculous. "Just wanted to PvP and were annoyed that they had to farm gear and run dungeons first"?! Srsly? I mean...come on! Wrong genre! Instant action is what Fortnite is for.
ESO (and MMO games in general) is just not for everyone and I think we should stop trying to MAKE it for everyone. It requires some patience and the will to dive into the complexity and find out how everything works. I'm not saying ESO could not do a better job at guiding new players, but in the end, you just can not fully explain all aspects of such a game. And strangely enoug, for some reason, quite many people made it through the initial overwhelming experience despite the lack of a dedicated tutorial.

I started the game on gamepass, so only base game content was available.

Made a character and started in coldharbour prison, got washed ashore on the starter island of my alliance and naturally progressed through it.

When I got to the mainland, it got a little bit foggy but I quickly got to the point where following the zone story, mixed with the guild stories made a lot of sense.

Since the zone story takes you pretty much everywhere around the zone I ran across a lot of POI and completed the side quests.

It felt like a ES game right away, loved the progression, the stories, the exploration, it just clicked.

The new tutorial breaks this immersion, and the introduction video makes no sense, you see Molag Bal and the prophet gives you some info on what's going on but you don't even know him yet. You have no bigger purpose the first few hours, it's only when you start one of the bigger stories, it starts to become interesting.

Also the DLC content is more tailored to the idea of play how you want, it's the main story (which has a ton of lore in general) and alliance zones that are hard to follow.

There's some great content in this game but I agree it isn't the best experience for someone starting from scratch, they should really rethink that.

SizanLopkniht wrote: »

Way back in the beginning it was still confusing, but it made a lot more sense in terms of progressing and learning how to play.

You had to start in your factions starter zones and if you wandered out of that zone too early you couldn't compete, so you were more or less forced to do the quests "in order", even though there wasn't a specific order to do quests, there certainly was an order you had to do the zones in.

Over time we got "one tamriel" and account wide achievements, which, in hindsight, maybe/probably wasn't the best way to change the game even though they both sound like good ideas on paper. In practice the updates just, as the OP posted, makes the game messy and confusing.

I honestly believe that if we could get ESO v1.6 back most people would be happier.

No thanks. I don't want to be limited in those ways. I would certainly not be happier with the "1.6 version". In fact, I'd just cancel 3 yearly subs and go back to Skyrim.