1.2.0 Improvements to New User Experience

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And missing a lot. Get rid of hit mechanics.

That is just wrong. Did you ever take a look at your char screen? You have to level a lot before Accuracy starts being important.

Some ideas i have since i'm playing PoE for new players

Tutorial

- Optional Area tutorial with text boxes could be enough if it's nicely managed, also an opportunity to act like a showroom ( what we do in PoE is there, here are some mechanics, different monsters, different way to act when you facing them, introduction to reflect, box, gears etc ... Can be a quite long tutorial, the game is full of easy and hard mechanics, it has to be understand asap by new players.
Also if a new player decide to jump in without tutorial this is his choice.

- More updates on the gamepedia, i know this is an hard job to manage a large informations base like that but it has to be done, one non-updated part = 10k false informations relayed ingame, like it's already the case about RnG. In my opinion, gamepedia is the completion of an ingame tutorial, this is here you go if you need spare informations for advanced things.

- Assuming this is considered like the harder part in PoE, and game progression is mostly based on it if you want profit of his potential, the trading question have to be in the tutorial, this is really important to make new players jump in faster than actually.
Again this is an opinion based on my game experience, i'm maybe wrong and we should keep going with players who don't know how to use this trading system at level 80.

The respec question

My first time in PoE: Around 50hours work per week when i started PoE, leveled around 62 level a ranger without following a build, finaly failed hard, saw i didn't have the choice and had to reroll, left the game and back only for release. Have to admit i have been a bit extreme to leave the game like that, specialy since now i have spare time to start a new 80+ char all weeks :D

Well, i'm talking too much, what i really suggest is it's necessary to think new players can be discouraged with the first char, i know this is a blahblahblah hardcore game and we are all agree on that, we want it to follow this line butttttt there are some options you could think about if you have spare time sunday after a good beer :D

Option number one: Give a full respec point for the first char of an account reaching 66 levels. OF COURSE it's a respec for 66 levels if he use it at level 90 it will still for 66 levels. Why ? Instead of make players leave the game, or just spend less time on it and aside that miss the potential of this skill tree system never made in any game, you give him the chance to discover it and learn his errors. This is an hardcore game, by this complexity and the number of differents mechanics, hard to keep them in mind when you start. I call that a win / win. And no, the game won't be casual if you do that, the hardcore have to be in challenges, ask new players to get all informations the first week is just tell them " there is a selection for this game, if you can't do it you are not welcome ". ( note: there is no offence in what i'm saying, sorry if you take it like that this is not volontary ).

Option number two: Keep going with regret, i'm using around 20 to 30 per char after level 80 cause i want to do some tests, as i said in a second forum thread there are a lot of theorycrafting tools thats true, but if you played your own game you know the only way to test something is to play it in endgame, the " questing part " is all about run, farm some popular and designed area for xp and thats all.

Option number three: Think a lot of people will just take a shotgun for this one but i'm trying at least ... random quest appearing in areas like the boxes actually do, with a little challenge giving 2 or 3 respec points, this is more fun than previous options after all and this is an other way than farming / trading ( specialy if you are not friendly with trade ) all days and you keep going while playing, i call that an alternative to regret adding more content to the game. Cause i'm lazie i didn't worked the idea more than that, and after all it's not my job ;)

Option number four: Let things like they are actually, it's not a problem for me and a lot of players we can deal with that, we already deal with that all days :)

Thanks for reading,

H.

yes to tutorials.

i'd suggest a quick in-game portal/map area that players can use or ignore, and a separate written guide with more in-depth topics/mechanics indexed.

the in-game tut: +1 to removing gems, perhaps support gems if you want to drop one in that area and give a linked gear. show them their stats pages and tell them changing gear will change these numbers. this makes us learn about resists and accuracy/attack speed without spelling it out. show how to access the options panel. show setting your skills on the mouse and key pad, and most importantly: show how to access the written guide-poe-opedia. state that here they can find lists outlining of all the in-game hot-keys, /chat commands, and vender recipes. do tell us we have these and where to find them.

the written guide should most def be official ggg/poe, and yes, it needs to happen. it will help.

re: the skill tree learning curve:

the "build of the week" /month idea is a great way to provide information on builds, game mechanics, and the skill tree. and catalog this as part of the player guide. would really help!

as to the frustration of failed builds so players leave, my experience is the frustration sets in act3cruel. thats when my fabulous noob builds start to fail anyway, so then to learn why, and how to fix it:

the gear rewards in-game should help, but they dont. i've gotten some nice rings, but gear wise the reward has given me worse items than what im wearing, regardless of character class, every single time. do fix this. give us a sliver of damned hope!! :P

someone above mentioned a full skill point refund option. +1 twice! perhaps a new currency that is a reward only, you earn maybe 3 for the entire life of an account. it would ease the pain of the learning curve for those of us who suck at this game but play anyway cuz its fun. this currency might be given when a second or third character reaches level 30 or 40, then and again after reaching lioneye's watch in your fifth & twelfth characters only, idc the specifics, but it would be nice to know that persistence will pay off and that i'll be rewarded for playing even if i still suck. being able to revamp a leveled character once one has wrested the learning curve in this game--with out having to start all over--may help take mid-game softer-core people deeper into the later content. it rewards persistence. and its ok to suck and be having fun at the same time. im sure there are a 1000 reasons not to do this, i only know my perspective given my play style. :)

re: the attack speed question:
i agree with the folks saying it's accuracy, not speed that is the issue. if i am a templar with a giant staff, i do not believe that i am missing this dumb arse monster 20% of the time! 80% accuracy isn't believable, and its frustrating. i might be slow, but i should be able to hit him! dang!

taking the movement penalties off low level gear seems like a good idea, it would help address the clunky feel, especially for evasion based characters.

anyway,
thanks for the manifesto. its exciting.
and thanks for the inspiration to make a first post in the forums.

well done so far, GGG!!
I do dig this game.
Cheers!

Build of the Week is important for two reasons:
1. Some people just aren't good at making builds. They need to copy off of someone. Build of the Week allows some degree of GGG control over that process, which otherwise would fall almost squarely on streamers. This isn't necessarily good for the metagame, as certain items become over-desired and thus over-priced.
2. Assuming a frequent update schedule can be maintained — in other words, Build of the Week, not Build of the Month — it will open players' eyes to how many builds are actually viable in the game. Currently there is a bit of a myopic view that there isn't a lot of build diversity in the game. This is false, but demonstrations help to prove one's point. :)

In terms of full respecs, I'm strongly against it. However, I do believe the amount of respec points offered by quest rewards should be generously increased, especially for the Act 2 quest (which is rather long), and less so for the Act 3 quest (which everyone does anyway). Let's say, just for the sake of argument, that the Act 1 quest was increased to 3 points, and the Act 2 quest to 4 points. That would be an extra 9 respec points total per character, allowing new players greater flexibility to correct mistakes without a Regret tax.

I'm still strongly against invasive tutorials... which comes really close to meaning tutorials in general. I feel those supporting them here don't really understand what the effects would be on players. What tutorial elements do exist need to be very carefully crafted to be as non-invasive as possible.

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ScrotieMcB wrote:

I'm still strongly against invasive tutorials... which comes really close to meaning tutorials in general. I feel those supporting them here don't really understand what the effects would be on players. What tutorial elements do exist need to be very carefully crafted to be as non-invasive as possible.

elaborate then

because tutorial opponents up till now used only 'my ego shall hurt when others get good at this game too' arguments. poe has bad interface, so most knowledge has to be guessed. poe wiki is an obscure way of outsourcing knowledge management and few parts of knowledge are available ONLY to people that read forums and a special parts of it (like complete data on minion stats available only in skill feedback secion.. who would have guessed). couple that with high cost of mistakes and you have game outright HOSTILE to new players. there is difference between being difficult and obscure.

what doesnt help is that in normal you can do pretty much ANYTHING (including not spending a single passive) and think you are doing 'more or less ok' and then you meet cruel forest monkeys and you are absolutely dead. that was a story of my first character, fortunately i watched kripp tutorials and managed to get going

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Startkabels wrote:

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FillInTheBlank wrote:

Quest rewards need to be improved in some way. Giving an unid rare as a reward is a nice gesture but the chance of it being useful make it almost less useful than the support gem I might have needed.

I don't really know what a solution would be, I just know that right now item quest rewards are not in a great spot.

I also guess gem rewards might need a look over, sometimes a class doesn't get a gem you expect it would.

What I would find rewarding is to have a vendor add a mod to an item, with 3 options: strength mod, intelligence mod or dexterity mod.

Tutorials should be handled like in Spiral Knights, where it is all handled in a special area independent of the main game. (I'm not talking about the introduction level)

I really liked the idea to consolidate all the ideas into a new feature called for example the Tome of knowledge

This would be a very user friendly and straight forward feature. Could include for example:

Catalogs/wikis
-Currency including detailed descriptions and values per orb
-Vendor recipes
-Mechanics
-Gems
-Uniques
-Lore and story

Guides
-Community builds and builds of the week
-Character class
-Crafting
-Passive tree
-Character progression
-Farming
-Trading

And a list of all the loading screen tips.

Maybe people will agree with me, maybe not, but the main problem I see for new players at mid to late game is the fact that they can't ever drop legacy items.

This makes so that older players will always have better items or more money than new players, unless the new player manages to become crazy rich and start buying legacy items.

I'm in favor of either returning all changed items to their best and strongest form as to keep it fair among players, or to re roll all legacy, to also keep it fair.

I know that this won't ever be supported by players that got a lot of legacy items, they would lose a lot with it, but from a new player perspective, they got an unfair advantage.

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MRLoki2 wrote:

Maybe people will agree with me, maybe not, but the main problem I see for new players at mid to late game is the fact that they can't ever drop legacy items.

This makes so that older players will always have better items or more money than new players, unless the new player manages to become crazy rich and start buying legacy items.

I'm in favor of either returning all changed items to their best and strongest form as to keep it fair among players, or to re roll all legacy, to also keep it fair.

I know that this won't ever be supported by players that got a lot of legacy items, they would lose a lot with it, but from a new player perspective, they got an unfair advantage.

It's not like one must have legacy items to beat everything in this game. They are considered unbalanced so I don't see a reason for this.