compilation: new players early experience frustrations

Gulith

Active member
Apr 5, 2021
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this is a topic to compile problems & solutions to avoid new player's useless frustrations at release.

Character creation:
1) force dexterity to max, so 99% of people won't start with a slug character. And if they try to lower it, display a huge red text in the middle of the screen that says dexterity rules movement speed, and lowering it too much will result in being sluggish.
2) player should be able to choose starter equipment sets, at the end of character creation : the weapon type chosen is defined as default, so you have the same when you respawn (no more specializing in axes, and resurrecting with swords).
This can be modifying in-game ofc.

Early gameplay:
1) when first time being inventory overweight, don't rely on the chat window, display a big red text in the middle of the screen that explains what happened, with the overweight icon appearing huge in the middle of the screen, and slowly decreasing to it's regular size and translating to its intended place in the icon bar ... so the player also learn about the icon status bar at the same time.
2) same with all other firsts (armor weight, grey bars etc)
3) at the main place where people starts, there should be a small arena displaying 2 IAs fighting each other (standard IA with no flee or bandage, just 2 IAs turning around each other), dealing zero damage so it never stops. With maybe a NPC in front of it, who explains parry & feint ... or even organize IAs fights with bets, to set the tone of the game.

Early out of haven:
1) you should push a few magic schools that help pve for release. ofc schools with only a few specific spells, like spiritism has been in mortal 1.
because yes, a lot of new players will want to be mages, and they will be disgusted by it, when they won't even be able to solo a bandit ... and when their wolf will die in 2 hits ... and be forced to go melee ... you can't pass this, not with a one-character-slot model.
2) way way way way way more early pve spots (not animals), around all cities.
3) way more random loots, because always looting nothing sets the tone too.
 

Jatix

Well-known member
Sep 30, 2020
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Good stuff. They also need to make less reliance on books to learn a skill. Doing anything low skill is bad. People are goign to want to read lore books to get it up and not waste material. But theres no reason to HAVE to open a book to get a materials and learn skills.

Examples, most magic stuff. You learn mental offence from action. but you cant learn vitalism or mental focus. So a new player will be trying to level their magic and just wont get the other skills they need. This is bad design. Books should be to gain skills passively for casuals who dont want to grind as hard. Not a requirement to get something. Minus obvious things that the book is an unlock, like ogh lore and armor books for recipes.

You dont need to open a book on ironbone to cut into a razorback and see ironbone and decide to keep it.

Theres just so many random little things like this that make the new player experience worse that would be such an easy fix.
 
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pooternackle

Active member
Mar 21, 2021
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They need to just remove Haven and replace it with a short, on rails tutorial where certain stats are temporarily maxed and later limited to show players the potential / limitations of the game’s combat/movement systems.
 

Aynthe

New member
Mar 22, 2021
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They need to just remove Haven and replace it with a short, on rails tutorial where certain stats are temporarily maxed and later limited to show players the potential / limitations of the game’s combat/movement systems.

Big nope to that.
 
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pooternackle

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Mar 21, 2021
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Big nope to that.

People will just mass quit and likely refund the game then. I don’t really care if they quit (if they can’t figure out why they move slow, this game isn’t for them and they’ll probably quit anyways), but refunding 20 minutes in because their character moves too slow and Haven is boring is bad for development.

Combat in this game is genuinely fun when you know how attributes work. It’s horrible when you don’t, which is why the tutorial needs to show new players the actual type of content they’ll be able to enjoy if they put in the effort/time.
 

Tzone

Well-known member
May 16, 2021
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If you quit for your movement being at bit slow, you wouldnt probably stay around for in mo2 for long anyway.
not a real argument when the reason they are slow is because they have 25 dex and dont know how dex works yet. Pretty much everyone whose been playing this game has started out with terrible builds and not know how to make a decent one. Most players have rerolled serval times just because they mad these bad builds like having 25 dex.

A bit thing you see is new players not using any points at start because they have no idea to of what to expect. The norm is to have a decent base speed and then attributes that increase speed really only improve upon a decent base speed.
 

Raknor

Well-known member
Sep 14, 2021
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Hyllspeia
I think the biggest mistake you can make in Mortal is create a bad character and there is no fix for this except a reroll which will be obnoxious once the 100x skill increase goes away at release, to add insult to injury one must be conscious that players may only become aware of their mistake long after the character has been created and, even when they do discover that, they can try to keep pushing a bad build to try and salvage it in weird ways to avoid the painful reroll. This will by and large will only result in the reroll being even more painful.

Now... what is the less documented in-game feature that just throws a bunch of numbers at your face without explaining anything about what they do? Indeed, character creation.

The second worst problem is letting people roll mages without telling them mages are nothing like any other game they played (i.e. a soloable glass cannon type of class). People will quit over these two things, they cannot be expected to spend hours on youtube just to learn how to create a character before actually playing the game.

Make reroll easier at release or explain these things much better / give proper warnings at character creation inside the game.
 

Jackdstripper

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Jan 8, 2021
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Jesus, kids these days dont just want hand holding, they want double hand nut cupping with warm hands and special lotion..,.

seriously dude. There is plenty of help these days for new players. Lets focus on fixing the real issues in this game.
 

Gulith

Active member
Apr 5, 2021
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seriously dude. There is plenty of help these days for new players. Lets focus on fixing the real issues in this game.
which is new player retention.
do i have to explain to you how important it is in a player driven economy sandbox game?
I'm too for fixing parry & ballerinas, and having a real economy & co ... but do you realize most players leave before realizing these problems?
don't you want SV to hire more devs to fix everything faster & beyond? yes, so let them keep a lot more players, even if they are not full pvpers drama queens, but just casuals.
 
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Zbuciorn

Active member
Jun 3, 2020
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Make reroll easier at release or explain these things much better / give proper warnings at character creation inside the game.
One or two reroll tokens for everyone would solve a lot of problems like that.
 
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ArcaneConsular

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Oct 27, 2021
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Jesus, kids these days dont just want hand holding, they want double hand nut cupping with warm hands and special lotion..,.

seriously dude. There is plenty of help these days for new players. Lets focus on fixing the real issues in this game.

Lol you think Mortal Online is hardcore no hand holding mate. You wouldn't last a day in Crowfall punk. That's what real hardcore gamers are playing. /s. But Jesus Christ how pathetic is someone that thinks helping new players learn how to play is bad just because they already know how to play the game and want to kill new players who don't know better. Smh. People like you are the reason why pvp MMOs never last more than a year
 
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Jackdstripper

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Jan 8, 2021
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Lol you think Mortal Online is hardcore no hand holding mate. You wouldn't last a day in Crowfall punk. That's what real hardcore gamers are playing. /s. But Jesus Christ how pathetic is someone that thinks helping new players learn how to play is bad just because they already know how to play the game and want to kill new players who don't know better. Smh. People like you are the reason why pvp MMOs never last more than a year

Lmao …wtf is Crowfall? Oh i know, its that one shit game that has even less people than Mortal 😮. You are totally free to go right back to it if its so damn deliciously hard core.its aaaalll yours….quite literally.

mortal used to be hard core. Now its got plenty of hand holding. I just dont think it needs any more than this.
 

Tzone

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May 16, 2021
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Lmao …wtf is Crowfall? Oh i know, its that one shit game that has even less people than Mortal 😮. You are totally free to go right back to it if its so damn deliciously hard core.its aaaalll yours….quite literally.

mortal used to be hard core. Now its got plenty of hand holding. I just dont think it needs any more than this.
He had /s in that part about crowfall.

I just think its not the new players fault when they dont know how to make a character when they never played MO before and there are not many resources for it besides annoying people in chats. When I first started I rerolled 5 times my first week. You pretty much have to find a guild to teach you but the issue is that its also a bad idea to join a guild right off the back because you dont know the politics of the game.
 

Gravballe

New member
May 28, 2020
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char creation should have a few pree defiend builds in stats.. like
- fastfighter
- slow fighter
-mage
and so on

that people can select, and then modify a little..

Also explain that Dex = movement.. I always add as much dex as i can on a build. becaus moving around slow, is painfull to play
 

mortalsn

New member
May 10, 2021
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I am a new player myself but I see the whole Haven tutorial as wasted development time. I think they could prepare a nice pdf user manual explaining the basic concepts, giving essential starter information (e.g. which choices during character creation are binding and which are not), and answering FAQ. Then they could make that user manual very visible and accessible at game login page. I think it could be more helpful than Haven tutorial.
 
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