99% of PVP/permadeath woes are an onboarding issue

[linkfanpc]

I only ever see vaguepost venting about client and botting shit, it's never pointing me to a specific busted advantage and I feel like 80% of the time (generous) it's hermits or groups of 2-5 complaining about either giant groups that have huge number advantages on them no matter what, or a smaller group of people that are just nolifing the game bigger fish style.

Please feel free to show me what I'm missing here

nothing

[IsThisRad]

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/fuck_you,_I_got_mine

Also kind of true because I'm not going to get anything out of more direction at the start, but I'm showing like 4 people how to play and if I didn't have the initial 3 quests to have them do I would kill myself. There's already so many asterisks to cover. Why the hell is stacking toggled off be default? Why so evil?

[linkfanpc]

Why the hell is stacking toggled off be default? Why so evil?

great example of something that isn't "vague and left for you to discover" but just implemented poorly. inheritance, claims, and the necessity of a palisade are similar problems.



i do think though there is a strong argument to be made that obviously muh joy of discovery IS a really important part of the charm and pull of the game, but some parts of the game lend themselves to that SOOO incorrectly in the context of a PvP MMO.

i do think that having some quest that tells you that a palisade is REQUIRED to play the game because you NEED to protect yourself from other players is a good idea, but at the same time thats such a weird and obtuse goal to give to a newcomer that it would have kind of pulled me out. like, what? build a wall? isn't that something that can wait? look at AAAALLLLLL these things to look at first!

it's also kind of one of those pitfalls where you really need to do it ASAP and veterans do it by day 2.5, but it honestly takes a while (like at least a week) for a brand new player to discover ropemaking, glue boiiling and leather tanning.

and the problem is that the natural way the game shows you those things feels FANTASTIC. you will naturally buy those cheaper skills, you're gonna hunt animals, you're gonna explore your build menu for new workbenches, it feels great to DISCOVER all these interesting cornerstone crafting materials. having a quest that says "collect 10 leather and 5 rope and 2 bone glue" on day two or three when you really NEED to have them in the current context would feel not just handholdy but kind of linear to a new player where the rest of the game is so open for you to explore. the difference in how a player would naturally discover the existence of the palisade, and how we would theoretically immediately command them to build one, is the same difference in why games like zelda and metroid are so much more fun and memorable than others. it feels soo good to feel like YOU did all the work in learning the rules of the game and exploiting them for your benefit, even if you're actually secretly being shepherded along by good game design. in a vacuum this game really feels like ocarina of time on omega steroids sometimes and i adore it for that.

not to mention the potential overwhelmingness of the build a palisade quest. "how do i make any of that? none of that's in my craft menu!" do you add quests for every single scenario that leads to being able to make them? that's so many demands.

and the biggest BIGGEST problem to me is there's no easy way to solve it. i feel like either way you give up a really important part of the game; either the new player feels oddly forced to perform an obscure set of objectives that are so incredibly meta and don't feel satisfying or even really all that relevant at their current gamestage, or the player is left to gleefully discover it for themselves and have a good chance of getting decimated by someone else in the meantime.

(i mean...maybe the real solution is private servers...where a budding hearthling happily learns the game over some dozens of hours alone or with friends...feels so accomplished and proud as they build their first homestead over a couple weeks...and then eventually, weeks months or even a year later when they feel confident, joins the single public regularly-wiping PvPvE world right at its beginning and gets to test their skills and knowledge against others...but what do i know...)

[vatas]

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/fuck_you,_I_got_mine

Also kind of true because I'm not going to get anything out of more direction at the start, but I'm showing like 4 people how to play and if I didn't have the initial 3 quests to have them do I would kill myself. There's already so many asterisks to cover. Why the hell is stacking toggled off be default? Why so evil?

I'm assuming you're referring to the tutorial quests 'Ways in the Wild' , 'Shifting Gear' and 'Something to Eat & Drink'

Rather than bombarding the player with dozen different steps on what exactly to do (the dreaded "hold-your-hand-tutorial"), those quests function as an "on-ramp" to figuring out the very basic interactions. If something similar could be added for PvP, that would be more productive than almost any suggestion on how to change PvP. Currently the best idea on how to exactly implement this would be to have NPCs in Valhalla that you can ask to chase and try to kill you. Obviously there are limits to how accurate you could make those NPCs, but currently the game has no "practice mode" outside of getting someone to mentor you.

[IsThisRad]

... having a quest that says "collect 10 leather and 5 rope and 2 bone glue" on day two or three when you really NEED to have them in the current context would feel not just handholdy but kind of linear to a new player where the rest of the game is so open for you to explore...
... not to mention the potential overwhelmingness of the build a palisade quest. "how do i make any of that? none of that's in my craft menu!" do you add quests for every single scenario that leads to being able to make them? that's so many demands...

I definitely agree with you at large on discovery being very important and satisfying, a questline for this would not be ideal at all. I think what can easily be done for the palisade is mentioning it in the Yeomanry flavor text alongside the claim pole, making it populate in the build menu for the player when Yeomanry is unlocked regardless of if they have discovered all materials yet (if it already works this way then oops), and in particular adding flavor text/light instruction to the palisade build entry, which is very precedented.

Honestly shocked it doesn't have anything at all. The totemic gate is in the same tab and even it has some, lol

... Rather than bombarding the player with dozen different steps on what exactly to do (the dreaded "hold-your-hand-tutorial"), those quests function as an "on-ramp" to figuring out the very basic interactions. If something similar could be added for PvP, that would be more productive than almost any suggestion on how to change PvP. Currently the best idea on how to exactly implement this would be to have NPCs in Valhalla that you can ask to chase and try to kill you...

I agree with opposition of excessive bombardment of handholdy tutorials, especially in Haven, and yeah there being no combat practice entities in Valhalla is very weird to me. It would be very helpful. I feel like Valhalla should be accessible through hearthfire as well for convenience