New Player Experience - A couple of suggestions

I really like this game, and I've been playing it on and off since beta, but recently I have really dug my teeth into it. There is a lot to love about this game, and GGG have been kicking some serious ass, steadily improving the game, and fostering a really great community.

And it's paid off, the game is doing better then it ever has and it continues to grow in popularity.


However, one thing that it does rather poorly, and continues to do so, is the New Player Experience. (NPE)
I know Chris Wilson sees this as a problem, and that one day maybe they might be able to go back and fix it up a little, much like how they recently revamped the Brutus and Merveil boss fights. Which btw is quite excellent now, thanks.

So I felt that now that the game is doing well for itself, it might be an idea to go back and make the game a little more approachable for new players and give a couple of suggestion based on my experience.

Be warned, I tend to waffle on a bit, I'm not a great writer. These suggestions are likely not new either.


Tutorial Area
Let's face it, the tutorial area sucks ass. It's slow, bland, and very grey?
You effectively show the game at it's absolute worse with no idea what's going on or context given to the player. And unfortunately the first couple of hours spent playing doesn't improve gameplay much, and it takes a good long while before the game started to becomes rewarding and shows it's hand.

But even then, unless you go out of you way to research how to make a build, it's going to take you multiple attempts to make a build that actually feels good to play.

Quite frankly this is a horrible way to start your game, and if anything is going to put people off, it's this.


So if you ever decide to completely revamp the tutorial section I have a suggestion.
We know we got to the land of Wraeclast via ship, and that it was a ship wreak that washed us up onto the shore where we find ourselves right?

Well, why don't you show us on the ship just prior to the ship wreak as a skippable tutorial area which shows the game off at it's very best?


This is the way I'd think it could work. You start off in a cell, or something like it. Given some basic context as to who you are and where your going. (as a continuation of the dialog your characters says at the character creator)
Upon breaking out you get introduced to the basic mechanics of the game, movement, attacking, skill usage.

Then the game should quickly ramp up. You find your gear, and it gives you a temporary build at level 60-70. A community build, one that not only works but feels fun or otherwise distinct to play. And give the player a couple of build options per class, say three builds, one in each of the chests in a cargo room or something.

So instantly your made to feel like a badass. With a good build and equipment, but having had some abet small part to play in picking it. You then slaughter your way through the crew of the ship, maybe one of the other escaped exiles as a mini boss, until you fight off against the captain themself. It should be a relatively small, easy to navigate ship area with several sub levels as you make your way from bottom to top.

After killing the boss, maybe your treated to a short cut scene showing the boat capsizing and your character being swallowed by the waves, land in the distance, with debris and people sinking as it fades to black.


You then wake up on the shore, like you already do, at level 1 without anything from the tutorial section.

This does a couple of really important things. One, it's starts off big and instantly makes you sit up and pay attention, giving context to what you are doing, teaches you mechanics in a carefully constructed area with the promise of violence, but no actual danger. And it shows off the game at it's very best rather then it's worse. It's shows you what you can become, not through something abstract or unattainable for a new player like a build of the week video, but hands on experience.

You could even take this a step further and have an option to highlight the passive skill tree with the build they chose at the beginning. As a guide if they wish to use it. And little bit of hand holding can go a long way, so long as it's purely optional and non intrusive.


This alone I think would greatly increase retention of new players. Like the adage goes, the first 15 minutes of your game are the most important.


Iteration
As anybody who has played Path of Exile knows, the first build you make, most likely the first dozen builds you make, are all very likely to fail and fall apart later in the game as difficulty increases.
At which point you basically have to start over.

This is a good thing. It forces you to learn the mechanics and get better at the game.
However the long iteration time between one build and another does hurt the NPE somewhat, but good equipment does help reduce this time since you can carry it over from one play through to another.
But ideally you want to reduce iteration time as much as reasonably possible.


Now naturally you can't do much about this, it's largely just part of the game. However, there is one area the game where it needlessly adds iteration time in addition to frustration. Skill Gem levels.
Unlike equipment that can easily be transferred from one build to another, skill gems once leveled up become dead weight on subsequent play troughs. There is no easy way to reset their level to 1 again. Both options you have require you to have already succeeded with a build to begin with.


It is simply not an option a new player has, if they even know about it. And so any and all skill gems they used on failed builds are now useless.
For most general skill gems this isn't usually an issue. But for key build defining skill gems that you only get late in the game, like Multistike or Spell Echo, losing a skill gem like this is very painful.
So even if you wanted to try that build again, just modified to fix whatever mistake you made. Nope, shit out of luck, you don't have the skill gems you once had.

Coming from experience, it's not fun. And I honestly don't see any good reason why their can't be an easy way to reset skill gems. Economy maybe? Idk.
But if their were an option, and the game made this clear to you, then I think it would make subsequent play troughs for new players a great deal less frustrating.


I could probably rave on, but I think that covers the lot of it.
Revamp the tutorial area so that it doesn't totally suck, and reduced iteration time between builds.

Otherwise, keep up the good work GGG.

There are two vendor recipes to lower the level of a gem. One that lowers it by one, and one that resets a level 20 gem to level 1 and grants it 20% quality.

I'd say no to that tutorial you want. It would be a waste of time to make, and it wouldn't even make any sense. Why would you be so powerful and then lose it all when you wake up on the shore? You're supposed to be normal in the beginning and then get powerful while you explore Wraeclast. Also the combat in arpgs isn't hard to learn, you don't need something that in depth to show it off.

As a response to Shagsbeard and Telzen.

First I'm aware of the currency recipes which I referenced in my suggestions. But again, the problem with both of them is that a new player does not have access to them, if they even know about them at all.
Both GMP's and Scouring Orbs are uncommon drops that tend to only drop on higher difficulties. GPM's already require you to have succeeded in a build and have gotten to level 70+, something that isn't going to happen to a new player for quite some time.
Scouring Orbs have a similar problem given the way skill gems level. The first 10 go by a lot quicker then the last 10 levels, because of the exponentiation growth curve.

And so more then likely your going to need a lot of Scouring Orbs to reset a skill gem, which a new player simply won't have. So all that ends up happening is that they end up with skill gems as paper weights on subsequent builds, needlessly increasing iteration time.



As to the tutorial, it is contrived sure, but it does make sense. The idea is to empower the new player and give them a sense of how good the game becomes later, and some idea of how to get there, while teaching them the mechanics of the game, which the game already does well enough as is.
It's not about difficultly, it's about getting people to play though the worse aspects of your game in order to build up and get to the good stuff.

A lot of people simply won't put up with a game that is this painfully boring for the first couple of hours. Videos do not to it justice either. Some people need to experience it first hand, and the game currently isn't built to deliver on an experience like that early. It's a very slow burn.

And to compound this problem the game is free. Meaning that new players have no investment or obligation to spend any amount of time in the game. And as a result many many players would simply leave long before the game starts to get good.
So even if it is contrived and takes development time away from other things, having a tutorial which hooks new players on the experience that they will have later if they stick with it, will end up making the game retain much more new players and continue to grow out the community, which is good for everyone.

I don't think a tutorial is needed.
If someone can put his first gem into weapon, knows how to press right mouse button, can kill hillock without dying and put some white gear on his character, then that player would do just fine. Yes, the basics of the game are really that simple. Your tutorial would be suitable for ppl who play rpg first time in their life..
And why should a new character start in a cell? Lol that cliché.. Don't get me wrong, I love elder scrolls.

Do you really need hand-holding for a game this simple? It's not Dwarf Fortress, if you can't grasp the concept of click to move and click to attack you might be intellectually disabled.

Come on man. "Temporary build to feel like a badass"? Not even Diablo 3 had that and that game's as casual as they get. No wonder the games nowadays are such garbage if every modern player is like this guy. Have you ever considered the fact that perhaps the developers don't intend this game to attract the Call of Duty audience?

Yeah it's pretty unapprachable - first thing I did after looking at the daunting skill tree was come to forums and found a good tanky build to learn game with. Did that for 2 more builds before cutting umbilical cord. I;m still learning but confident enough to try my own routes.

Agree about act1 looks like shit compared to rest of game giving new players a bad impression.

This is just an IMO thing, but I really like the subdued, more grounded feeling of the first act with its scattered cannibals and undead on gloomy beaches and barren cliffsides. It's come the closest of any Diablo clone to giving me the same feeling of the original Diablo and act I of Diablo 2, where you're just one little weakling wandering around a decrepit world that's falling to pieces. If I ever get bored with it, it's purely due to how easy the zombies and other enemies are, rather than because I don't like the theme. And that easiness is mostly resolved with random corrupted areas, strongboxes and master quests to do along the way. It's the very, very start of the game, and mandatory progression content really shouldn't start kicking your ass before you've even managed to start building a character identity.

I think there are some areas where the game could be more newbie-friendly, but not in regards to the general combat mechanics (which are intuitive and fully established by the genre).

Most of the master quests seem hugely overtuned relative to the areas you find them in, and and could use more clearer warnings about their frequently finicky parameters. Someone going into a Haku invincible totem mission for the first time is probably going to get a bad impression, because nothing else in the game prepares you for it in any way whatsoever.

Another place where I think a tutorial or some kind of guidance would really help new players is in the currency system. As it is, you basically have to look at a wiki or faq to figure out the recipes and figure out when to spend and when to hoard your currency, and to tell worth picking up and what's not. The economy for PoE is a lot more complex and multifaceted than that of most Diablo clones, but your in-game guidance for putting that economy to work for you (even as a self-found solo player) is virtually nil. No one's going to just 'guess' vendor recipes by randomly selling junk and hoping to get lucky, there's no mystery aspect, so why not at least put that vital information in the game instead of forcing us to navigate to an external website? Basic, useful to every early game character recipes should ideally be available for in-game viewing as soon as you hit the first town.

The skill tree is kind of insane-looking at first, but you could resolve that intimidation factor pretty easily by just handing out more orbs of regret as quest rewards.