Haven't noticed any comments on here from the respective of a new player to not just Mortal Online 2 but the hardcore MMO game itself so I figured I would share my early thoughts here from about 10 hours played mostly in Haven before jumping outside of Haven for an hourish last night. Hoping to get some more time in this weekend not in Haven and Ill share those in a later post in the thread.
1. Initial Experience in character creation
My initial experience in character creation was that it was almost impossible to understand what exactly I was looking at with each of the options that I was presented. I ended up having to go to the forums to look through some of the builds that were offered and went with pretty much a carbon copy of a build I found going with a Thursar warrior build. I think it is important to get a bit better of an explanation of what each slider actually means to the playstyle the player is going for.
2. Combat and Crafting Tutorial
The combat tutorial starts off with a solid explanation of the combat system and it gives you enough info to be able to understand what you should practice before going outside of Haven. The only thing I think that could be worth explaining is maybe in the tutorial explaining the different options and having people change those options during the tutorial to see if they like the other styles of combat better. I personally found out about the different options about halfway through just by scrolling through the different settings to play around with it. Also, I think it could be beneficial to at the very end of the combat tutorial have players venture into a bandit camp or the dungeon near the graveyard to get some practice 1 on 1 with some bandits as the difference between learning on the walking dead and the bandits for me was pretty drastic and took some time to get better with. The crafting tutorial was also a good introduction to the system and begins to show the player just how complex the system can be. One thing that could be added is an explanation of all of the available types of material and what each offers in general. For example like what the different types of wood are, what the different types of metal are etc.
3. Thoughts on systems not introduced during the tutorial
I think the biggest things lacking from the tutorial is that the majority of the games systems are not introduced during this time. Magic is not explained and the only way a player can notice the system at all is from happening upon the magic vendors and tutors. This could be added to the combat tutorial and explained with even a brief overview of the magic system. Another aspect that is not talked about is the pet system and associated taming of those pets. I only learned about the pets after showing up outside of Haven and being thoroughly confused by the horses and pet I saw upon seeing another player. Lastly on this topic is an explanation of how skills work in terms of which ones are required to level to learn others and which ones affect others is a major issue. Right now I think the game is reliant on external sources to provide this information to players which will just cause the majority of players to quit.
4. Leaving Haven
When I decided to leave Haven I was not expecting to lose a couple key aspects that to that point I had been using regularly. First of those was the map of Haven it came to a real shock to me that I didn't have even a very basic map of the continent to use after having one the entire tutorial island. Why give players the impression they will have a map if the game will not feature one after the tutorial. The other aspect I think that could have been touched on was that banks do not transfer over from the tutorial island and really weren't talked about in the tutorial. A quick explanation of banks not being connected and anything you put in the bank in Haven not transferring can be added fairly easily and be helpful to new players.
Overall I do want to say though that the game is something I have very much enjoyed and I look forward to learning more about the game overtime. I hope to start getting into some pvp over the next few days and inevitably get destroyed from having no idea what I'm doing the second I enter the game today and find some random person. Anyways hopefully this feedback is somewhat helpful and can provide some insight on some things that can be improved upon to give new players a better idea of what they are walking into to improve retention.
1. Initial Experience in character creation
My initial experience in character creation was that it was almost impossible to understand what exactly I was looking at with each of the options that I was presented. I ended up having to go to the forums to look through some of the builds that were offered and went with pretty much a carbon copy of a build I found going with a Thursar warrior build. I think it is important to get a bit better of an explanation of what each slider actually means to the playstyle the player is going for.
2. Combat and Crafting Tutorial
The combat tutorial starts off with a solid explanation of the combat system and it gives you enough info to be able to understand what you should practice before going outside of Haven. The only thing I think that could be worth explaining is maybe in the tutorial explaining the different options and having people change those options during the tutorial to see if they like the other styles of combat better. I personally found out about the different options about halfway through just by scrolling through the different settings to play around with it. Also, I think it could be beneficial to at the very end of the combat tutorial have players venture into a bandit camp or the dungeon near the graveyard to get some practice 1 on 1 with some bandits as the difference between learning on the walking dead and the bandits for me was pretty drastic and took some time to get better with. The crafting tutorial was also a good introduction to the system and begins to show the player just how complex the system can be. One thing that could be added is an explanation of all of the available types of material and what each offers in general. For example like what the different types of wood are, what the different types of metal are etc.
3. Thoughts on systems not introduced during the tutorial
I think the biggest things lacking from the tutorial is that the majority of the games systems are not introduced during this time. Magic is not explained and the only way a player can notice the system at all is from happening upon the magic vendors and tutors. This could be added to the combat tutorial and explained with even a brief overview of the magic system. Another aspect that is not talked about is the pet system and associated taming of those pets. I only learned about the pets after showing up outside of Haven and being thoroughly confused by the horses and pet I saw upon seeing another player. Lastly on this topic is an explanation of how skills work in terms of which ones are required to level to learn others and which ones affect others is a major issue. Right now I think the game is reliant on external sources to provide this information to players which will just cause the majority of players to quit.
4. Leaving Haven
When I decided to leave Haven I was not expecting to lose a couple key aspects that to that point I had been using regularly. First of those was the map of Haven it came to a real shock to me that I didn't have even a very basic map of the continent to use after having one the entire tutorial island. Why give players the impression they will have a map if the game will not feature one after the tutorial. The other aspect I think that could have been touched on was that banks do not transfer over from the tutorial island and really weren't talked about in the tutorial. A quick explanation of banks not being connected and anything you put in the bank in Haven not transferring can be added fairly easily and be helpful to new players.
Overall I do want to say though that the game is something I have very much enjoyed and I look forward to learning more about the game overtime. I hope to start getting into some pvp over the next few days and inevitably get destroyed from having no idea what I'm doing the second I enter the game today and find some random person. Anyways hopefully this feedback is somewhat helpful and can provide some insight on some things that can be improved upon to give new players a better idea of what they are walking into to improve retention.
