Devs, Tutorial please?

[kyleann]

I ran with a level 13 Wizard last night who stuck around after the raid while me and a guildie chatted with a new friend of ours. Well, the wiz asked about what sort of equipment would be good for his level. I began explaining what's good and what you need: like Heavy Fort, the highest +CON and False Life items for your level, etc...

After explaining a lot of this stuff, we discovered the wiz was wearing multiple +INT items not realizing they don't stack. This is understandable...I did the same thing myself the first character I rolled. We don't all stare at our character sheets all day. Well, an hour later we had him kitted out like a champ and I think he now has a new understanding of DDO and will be able to enjoy the game a lot more with his new found strength.

My questions to the Devs is: Where is our decent tutorial? Its nice that anyone can get to level 20 without great equipment, but in the end this is only going to lead to /ragequitting when the level 20s start ripping into people for not having necessities like Fortification or CON items on.

The current exclamation point system could be used to introduce these ideas. For example, when you have a +Stat/skill item on and you equip a second one, Pop, an exclamation point shows up telling you "Hey, those don't stack, only the highest bonus applies". Or when you loot your first Fort item you get a Pop "Fortification guards against critical hits, and is considered an extremely important item to have for any character." Something like this would go a long way towards helping you keep a strong player base that understands your game.

Simply put, this game is difficult to learn and has a much steeper learning curve than games like WoW. This is especially so if you've never touched PnP. I'm not advocating making this game accessible to 5 year olds, but just to add tutorials explaining the extremely important things that are expected at the higher levels to avoid frustration down the line.

After all: Knowing is half the battle! Knowledge is Power!

[berlinetta84]

Most of these kinds of things I learned from the loading screens. Like the bonus stacking from Tip #179

http://ddowiki.com/page/Loading_screen_tips

[kyleann]

Yeah, that definitely doesn't cut it. I'm only on a loading screen a few seconds, and I have lower than a 1 in 179 chance of seeing that particular tip? Plus, when they have events or promos going on they put those up at a higher ratio than the tips, at least from what I've seen.

I'm talking about an in-game, non-korthos tutorial that points out the usefulness of certain item properties that people should be paying attention to. For example, Paralyzers or Vorpals. Or how about breaking DR? Where is that explained other than wiki and forums? How about that enhancements on weapons isn't necessarily better than the other properties? i.e. a +5 Greataxe generally isn't better than a +1 Icy Burst Greataxe of Pure Good. With things like the Base Damage Rating you wouldn't know that, because the game would tell you that the +5 axe has a higher damage rating, when in reality the +1 axe is likely to hit more mobs harder (assuming you have a class with a decent BAB of course).

There are many parts of this game that simply are not taught that should be. How many times have you run the vampire quest in House P and found out you were the only one with a Silver weapon? It happens because there is no information given up from from DDO, instead you learn from experiencing a fail in the quest or having a leader actually explain something before questing.

I realize the info is out there, and I personally use and share all the info I have with anyone who needs it, but if it would help turn noobs into newbs and maybe create a stronger, longer-lasting player base then DDO should look into it. There just needs to be a more intuitive way to present information to the player base.

How about a quest that involves fighting enemies with DR that you need to break to kill. In the beginning of the quest you read the journal of a slain adventurer who found out how to kill said creature and there happens to be a Silver Pure Good weapon next to his body. It's a quest item so you lose it on leaving, but you get the idea. How about a paralyze, banish, or vorpal weapon the same way, to show how those weapons work?