New Player Guide Area

[Joseph]

Just a thought on new players and their lack of knowledge...

It seems that the majority (at least the vocal majority) of new players entering Korthos have no idea what they should be doing, or why they should be doing it. Additionally, the number and type of items that can be purchased at intro are not exactly representative of what is available, and should be increased in variety to allow new players a better selection (or at least allow them to select a wider array of weaponst from Jeets at the beginning).

With that in mind, I was rememebering the old, original tutorial quests on the starter island - before Korthos.

Is it possible that the devs have geared Korthos towards the more experienced player (as our playerbase was before FTP), and unintentionally steered away from those who have no knowledge, experience, or mentors to the game? I think so.

I believe that putting those original quests back, simply by re-introducing them - with some very minor adjustments, would go a long way towards 'fixing' the problems that currently exist. It would be a simple thing to add one or two areas that gave divine capable builds (for example) a task to pick up a CLW wand that had maybe 5 or 10 charges and use it on an NPC, or requiring melee capable builds to use skills like trip or sunder on a mob before attacking it.

To those who think this is a bad idea - how many of you have actually read the tool tips or pop ups when you run a new character? Some of them are well written and quite good - but in a random survey of new players (about 100), most just click past the tool tips. If the players are not using the tool tips, then a more graphical method of instruction (which was already built previously anyway), would be very helpful.

The old Euphonia's challenge, IMHO, was far better than the new island starter with Celimas. New players learn far less with Celimas then they would have running Euphonia's challenge. The two could be combined, or new players could run through Euphonia's challenge simply as when entering the cave to speak to Celimas, the player makes his or her way to the first shrine, Jeets disables the traps, and then they are either forciby separated, or they intentionally separate (perhaps with Jeets tagging along chatting about his prowess and ability to go all night).

Another possible suggestion - since forum accounts are tied to player accouts - perhaps set it so that new payers receive a bonus of something like 50TP for creating a forum account (not for posting, as that would simply fill the forums with trash posts.

Then there is the possiblity of new player mentors (volunteer players) who guide new players. Obviously guilds would farm this - but it is a minor issue under the current system - and in the long run would help to build a stronger player base.

Anyway - some thoughts - the main one being the reintroduciton of Euphonia's challenges and the old starter island quests - they actually taught inexperienced players much more than the current starter sets do (and, for example) the swim was much easier - swimming down and back up is more difficult than swimming under.

Thoughts?

[DoctorWhofan]

...or you could just clone me a couple of dozen times...

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hmmmm...maybe a bad idea.

I DOES get tiring hearing the same questions over and over again, often within minutes of each other. One does have to take a deep breath and remember we all were stupid once. I don't think it would fix the problem. The stuff that IS in print in thegame, people ask about anyways. ALot.

Face it, thegame is a high learning curve. Maybe DDO needs to hire a couple of offical mentors for each server. Might catch alot of the questions befiore the harbor and I might get another character to 20...maybe...

[Joseph]

Oops, did I say clown - I meant clone, hehe :)

Yes - even giving us vets some sort of forum bump / title if signing up for mentor would be good :)

[Narmolanya]

Agreed with the return of the old starter island as it was far superior in explaing how to use your skills.

Also the in game advice channel needs to be fixed so that only people who know what they are talking about can give advice. Perhaps tie it in to how long you have had you account or how many characters you have capped or something. As it is now the advice channel is just another chat channel fill with mindless clutter.

When FTP first hit I saw a lot of people helping out and attempting to redirect general chat away from the advice channel. Now it seem most vets just have it turned off and new players are getting advice from other players whom have no idea what they are talking about. Oh and don't forget all the "your mama" responses players asking questions get as well.

Realy, realy need to fix it somehow.

[Anderei]

Sometimes starting to get a little bored by the game itself, I felt like creating a lvl 1 cleric to never leave Korthos being there only to help newbies. However all my slots are full, and I don't feel like giving money to turbine, to actually help them with their game, to do something for fun they could actually pay somebody to do.

I also would love to hand newbies 1000g packages or potion packages, but then you have this sunny/snowy mechanic that hinders me to bring stuff over to snowy, well I don't know why exactly they made that, but whatever.

[Iambeastx]

Now it seem most vets just have it turned off and new players are getting advice from other players whom have no idea what they are talking about

I ain't a 'Vet' but i'll admit to having advice turned off far more often than not.

[Nott]

Also the in game advice channel needs to be fixed so that only people who know what they are talking about can give advice. Perhaps tie it in to how long you have had you account or how many characters you have capped or something.How would that work exactly? Would they need to disallow posting to the channel unless you meet some criteria (and those that do meet the criteria could spew random advice in response to their imagination of what those who cannot post questions might be pondering)? Or would they need to add some UI to detect a question from an answer and only allow things that look like answers from people who have met their criteria (this from a company whose monster AI has far more A than I)?

[katana_one]

It's not the quests, it's the players.

I never experienced the pre-Korthos starter area, but I have to say that I found the Korthos quests pretty helpful in learning the basics of the game. But then again, I actually read the on-screen hints for my first 2 characters. Heck, I still read the loading screen tips. There were a couple of things I still had to ask about in-game, but they were rare (targeting allies with spells was one of them).

While there might be ways to make the starter quests more instructive, you're still going to have players that stubbornly ignore the hints, and refuse to read the loading screen tips, and refuse to read the mouse-over descriptions on gear and spells.

[Narmolanya]

How would that work exactly? Would they need to disallow posting to the channel unless you meet some criteria (and those that do meet the criteria could spew random advice in response to their imagination of what those who cannot post questions might be pondering)? Or would they need to add some UI to detect a question from an answer and only allow things that look like answers from people who have met their criteria (this from a company whose monster AI has far more A than I)?

My though on how it could work is players apply to be mentors and would have to demonstrate a certain level of knowledge about the game. When a question is asked via the advice channel only those who are montors could see it. They could then respond through an "advice tell" this would simply be a tell that the queston asker could give negitive or positive feedback on depending on how helpfull the answer was. There would be a certian threshold of positive feedback mentors would need to maintain in order to remain mentors. This would weed out mentors that constantly give bad advice or grief newbies.

Of course with other issues in game that have yet to be fixed I don't think this should be high on Turbines development agenda. I just feel sorry for the new players starting to play now as it is a complicated game with lots of ways to make a very gimped character and so much bad advice flowing around from players that have no clue themselves.

[Joseph]

I agree that the development issues to create new areas would be a pain and detract from new quests. I'm not advocating that.

It just seems that there were several good starter quests back in the old days that were much more helpful (having shown numerous people DDO back then and now, I can say firsthand that the people who went through the old stuff had a much better grasp of how to play than those in the new Korthos areas).

It would be relatively easy for the Devs just to plug that old content back in. It is all created. In fact, the intro area you now start in could simply be the old intro area, and from there you could pass the tests / challenges, and then run the Celimas quest to 'meet' them before joining up with them again later to battle the dragon.

It would only enhance the starter experience, and not detract from it in any way. Plus it would re-use existing content that is shelved somewhere. Some of those intro areas were pretty cool / interesting and have a different flavor than the newer Korthos items.

Reintroducing those areas would not require any of the back end code that some of the mentor suggestions require - but it would clear up many questions new players have that are not answered graphically.

It would be nice to hear a Dev's opinion on this :p

[Nott]

My though on how it could work is players apply to be mentors and would have to demonstrate a certain level of knowledge about the game. When a question is asked via the advice channel only those who are montors could see it. They could then respond through an "advice tell" this would simply be a tell that the queston asker could give negitive or positive feedback on depending on how helpfull the answer was. There would be a certian threshold of positive feedback mentors would need to maintain in order to remain mentors. This would weed out mentors that constantly give bad advice or grief newbies.

Of course with other issues in game that have yet to be fixed I don't think this should be high on Turbines development agenda. I just feel sorry for the new players starting to play now as it is a complicated game with lots of ways to make a very gimped character and so much bad advice flowing around from players that have no clue themselves.I see. Cool idea, +1.

[Ashurr]

Love it, +1