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

[SavageFox]

honestly right now the current beginner Quest system is pretty shit it's actually overwhelming is they added a whole bunch of new stuff every time you learn a new skill now you get task related to that skill so it's very easy for your quest to get flooded I think there needs to be a specific beginner Quest tab and all new quests not related to beginner stuff moved over to a separate tab note all those skill quests I don't consider beginner quests I just considered them clutter
this is the way I think the beginner Quest should be first Quest explain the basic controls in menus next Quest how to survive teaching them the basics on how to make a container for drinking water then a quest explaining how the food system works and how to gain stats and give them a vague idea of food items for each attribute they can get early game to me the most important basic attributes players need to focus on as a new player it's Constitution intelligence and perception then after that quest explaining the skills they need to build their first home then after that Quest explaining how to protect their home then optional Advanced tutorials guiding them to like hunting their first small difficult animal other words a fox these quests need to lead them in a direction where they can get the answers they need it doesn't necessarily have to give them to them

[vatas]

honestly right now the current beginner Quest system is pretty shit it's actually overwhelming is they added a whole bunch of new stuff every time you learn a new skill now you get task related to that skill so it's very easy for your quest to get flooded I think there needs to be a specific beginner Quest tab and all new quests not related to beginner stuff moved over to a separate tab note all those skill quests I don't consider beginner quests I just considered them clutter
this is the way I think the beginner Quest should be first Quest explain the basic controls in menus next Quest how to survive teaching them the basics on how to make a container for drinking water then a quest explaining how the food system works and how to gain stats and give them a vague idea of food items for each attribute they can get early game to me the most important basic attributes players need to focus on as a new player it's Constitution intelligence and perception then after that quest explaining the skills they need to build their first home then after that Quest explaining how to protect their home then optional Advanced tutorials guiding them to like hunting their first small difficult animal other words a fox these quests need to lead them in a direction where they can get the answers they need it doesn't necessarily have to give them to them

You used to get the three quests I mentioned in sequence. This had the problem that people could be gated from advancing to the next set of task, and later would be directed to do things they had already figured out.

Improvements to quest log is a big +1 from me, I personally think that the Credo quest in particular should be segregated into a new tab that holds all the Credo-related stuff (that is currently split between a submenu in the Skills tab and cluttered into the Quests tab.)

[vatas]

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

Crafting menu used to not have any tooltip support (aside from telling what object you're hovering over) and Jorb rarely goes over old content just to polish it, sometimes stuff gets refurbished when it's part of an update that Jorb cooked up (or at least is related to the patch.)

[MightySheep]

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

Idk wat ur point if I could wipe memory to do fresh start I would

[IsThisRad]

... I personally think that the Credo quest in particular should be segregated into a new tab that holds all the Credo-related stuff (that is currently split between a submenu in the Skills tab and cluttered into the Quests tab.)

Hard agree

Idk wat ur point if I could wipe memory to do fresh start I would

This seems workable. They should consider solutions after OCO is implemented

... Jorb rarely goes over old content just to polish it, sometimes stuff gets refurbished when it's part of an update that Jorb cooked up (or at least is related to the patch.)

I feel like if there was more intentional evaluation of parts of the game comprehensively, probably informed by more playtesting with people unfamiliar with the game, things like this wouldn't be as overlooked. There are many little easy tweaks that could be done to alleviate without being controversial. Maybe the true evil hurting this game is the lack of an active project manager :'^)