Nah, if it existed there would need to be an in-game time limit.
Why we don´t need Haven
- Thread starter Eldrath
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eh i kinda thought i explained fair reasoning in a non-antsy-vet kinda way but oh well
sure, fine tune the idea, give an hours real time notice, I don't get how there's any antsy-ness when you're learning the basics to align with the true game experience of a first person only hardcore full loot mmo, i mean why prolong the inevitable ? staying on Haven is just loitering in a mini-game longer than necessary.
or don't have it.
this might not be the best parallel, but it's like keeping a kid back in kindergarten/preschool a few extra years because you're worried about their learning experience with the big kids
sure, fine tune the idea, give an hours real time notice, I don't get how there's any antsy-ness when you're learning the basics to align with the true game experience of a first person only hardcore full loot mmo, i mean why prolong the inevitable ? staying on Haven is just loitering in a mini-game longer than necessary.
or don't have it.
this might not be the best parallel, but it's like keeping a kid back in kindergarten/preschool a few extra years because you're worried about their learning experience with the big kids
Haven in MO1 was a greifer's paradise SV failed terribly to protect or educate new players there. Killing people with pets set on aggressive kiting boss mobs to the graveyard grey blocking and the never ending shit talk in help chat. They better step it up for MO2.
i dont have any issue with people staying on haven indefinitely. what is the benefit of forcing people to go to myrland if they dont want to? if the content is sufficiently limited in haven i think that will provide more than enough push to go to the mainland.
haven itself could use to be more streamlined. too much area, too many biomes, too many materials, etc. it should take a slow player maybe a couple days at most to get thru haven's short storyline, and the lack of any additional content should be the strong push to go to the mainland.
time limits also dont prevent 'griefing', vets will get new toons up to speed in no time vs genuine new players and be back at it every time their limit is reached. unless SV specifies otherwise, there is no such thing as griefing, only creative use of game mechanics, which if SV later determines to be undesired, they can change the code to prevent it (and in the time lag between when SV declares it undesired and when they put a fix in, you can consider it griefing).
using aggressive pets to attack yellow players is one such case, and doing so gets you booted from the haven (once a GM sees it i guess). lets hope SV can fix their rules for mo2
-barcode
haven itself could use to be more streamlined. too much area, too many biomes, too many materials, etc. it should take a slow player maybe a couple days at most to get thru haven's short storyline, and the lack of any additional content should be the strong push to go to the mainland.
time limits also dont prevent 'griefing', vets will get new toons up to speed in no time vs genuine new players and be back at it every time their limit is reached. unless SV specifies otherwise, there is no such thing as griefing, only creative use of game mechanics, which if SV later determines to be undesired, they can change the code to prevent it (and in the time lag between when SV declares it undesired and when they put a fix in, you can consider it griefing).
using aggressive pets to attack yellow players is one such case, and doing so gets you booted from the haven (once a GM sees it i guess). lets hope SV can fix their rules for mo2
-barcode
i thought there were some good reasons which answered that question of why force a time limit, what is the actual benefit of leaving any population endlessly on a tutorial island that doesn't really represent the true game vision though ?
genuinely curious, as i was originally in favour but hadn't thought it through objectively ( yes i know that's near impossible )
genuinely curious, as i was originally in favour but hadn't thought it through objectively ( yes i know that's near impossible )
It will exist in game. SV is going to ignore this like they did the request for no guards for nearly the same reasons. And I'm really guessing there won't be a time limit if SV cares about new player experience at all.
I kind of skimmed your post given it's length but the main takeaway I had was that you felt haven was bad and video guides were more useful. The answer is make a good tutorial instead of a bunch of questy text vomit. I described how to do so in an earlier post but the TL : DR is that good tutorials should model themselves after the hero's guild in Fable 1.
some players might want to spend time helping new players out or directing them to the guilds they want to support. maybe they prefer the limited materials so they can always be geared out in the absolute best of what is possible. its a sandbox after all, play it the way you like
-barcode
yea it was a tad wordy
my main point was that new and old player contact within the context of the true learning environment is king. that's about it.
if they can somehow come up with an amazingly beneficial tutorial system then that will likely require a further crapload of time and development, which actually gets back to some of the very first points made against Haven in MO2.
i honestly wont be upset if it happens, i'll rejoice if it works and sigh if it's another same old' and this may have all made some difference.
yep i agree, and this is exactly how i finally *actually* learned things after the Tindrem Gardens fail I went through in 2011/12 or whenever.
a couple of really helpful vets ( yes there were some ) were hanging around Tindrem and only then did things really make sense.
yea it was a tad wordy
my main point was that new and old player contact within the context of the true learning environment is king. that's about it.
if they can somehow come up with an amazingly beneficial tutorial system then that will likely require a further crapload of time and development, which actually gets back to some of the very first points made against Haven in MO2.
i honestly wont be upset if it happens, i'll rejoice if it works and sigh if it's another same old' and this may have all made some difference.
I both write guides and interact with newbs / answer their questions frequently in any game I become experienced in. I know the value of interaction with older players and that value won't go away even with the best tutorial because no tutorial can answer every question a player might have in a game this complex.
But I also know a good tutorial is going to answer a lot of questions that will otherwise get asked about 100 times a day in help. And done right it can actually be a fun experience that draws players into the game while no tutorial or a bad/boring one pushes them away.
A good tutorial will dramatically increase new player retention. It's worth some investment. And like I said in my previous post, while I do consider it being fully voice acted to be essential, I know the community will come up with the audio they need if they ask for submissions.
Honestly if anyone goes to Haven to blueblock and otherwise grief newbs and this becomes known to SV just hand out a permanent account ban. It's deserved at that point. If they're going to keep remaking accounts just to be a twat then a timer wouldn't have done jack to stop them in the first place.
nothing stopping you from asking the new players to come join you in myrland where you can do so.
-barcode
Basically nobody WILL decide that and the vast majority of players will come join us on Myr if haven is optimized around providing the best tutorial possible and nothing else. This whole "trammel" argument seems like a thinly veiled argument put forward by people who just want to kill newbs. Kind of like the "there should be no guards" topic put forward by the exact same OP.
Since you are obviously desperate for a response from me I´ll indulge you.
The only thing that is thinly veiled is your dishonesty and inability to put forth an argument. Which is why you misrepresent both the current arguments and even my other very popular thread about the flagging system. But I guess since you are only skimming everything we can´t expect you to form any kind of understanding.
The things that you actually put forward are laughable.
A fully voiced tutorial from the company that just had to push the release of their game by 2 months?
A fully functioning tutorial island when Myrland is still in pieces, missing assets and does not have the functions it needs?
The community providing the audio to implemented in the game?
So, no, it is not reasonable to expect a good tutorial island. At best it will be passable.
My suggestion on the other hand is feasible for an indie developer, worked for other games that are vastly more popular and was active during MO1s most populated years. Even better players have even more and better tools to create guides and communite them. Like you claim you want to do.
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@barcode
Yes, you could make the island so shit that there is no point in staying there. That is not what Haven currently is and I have not seen SV making any comment on their determination to change that. Why would you assume that this core concept has changed?
Also what exactly would be the difference from the Tindrem gardens after they locked the gates? Just as an overflow protection for launch?
Then you also argue for player to seemingly stay on Haven forever, which is basically calling for a PvE server. That confuses me.
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With the exception of a few known offenders this thread is very enjoyable to read and I appreciate those that actually put thought into their posts. I do find that definitions can be blurry. I advice everyone to make a character in the current Haven to fully realize what we are talking about. It is far from the very basic tutorial area that many here seem to wish for.
Haven offers a PvE experience with optional PvP. Whenever SV introduced this kind of concept a subgroup of players wanted it expanded. When the yellow flag was introduced the duration wasn´t long enough. When walls got introduced the cost of sieging wasn´t high enough. When Haven was introduced the actions against "griefers" weren´t strong enough. The same thing will happen again.
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Lastly I still don´t see a concise argument why MO2 needs a fancy tutorials when dozens of other games that are just as difficult to learn and hardcore don´t. What exactly is the difficulty that cannot be solved by improving the UI and intuitiv gameplay?
Both sides makes good points.
Since we know Henrik is against splitting population in to regional servers, is safely presumable that SV will design new Haven (if there will be Haven) as coherent as possible with this philosophy.
I think Haven experience will be drastically limited, if not by time it could be by features like @Vagabond and some others proposed.
By making new player being bored of it after few hours of intensive playthrough.
Since we know Henrik is against splitting population in to regional servers, is safely presumable that SV will design new Haven (if there will be Haven) as coherent as possible with this philosophy.
I think Haven experience will be drastically limited, if not by time it could be by features like @Vagabond and some others proposed.
By making new player being bored of it after few hours of intensive playthrough.
Fully voicing a tutorial wouldn't even be hard if they just asked the community to submit the audio. It might not be the greatest quality audio ever but given the numerous submissions they're sure to receive it should be decent as they can pick the best submission for each character they need implemented. I'm sure I'm not the only person wanting to play this game who has access to a sound studio and even just a decent mic like most twitch streamers have is better than nothing.
New player experience is worth investing in. This game is in all likelihood going to get review bombed upon release like any other indie MMO but a really good tutorial is the most likely way to actually see that not happen. Actually getting mostly positive reviews could be HUGE for this game. Even a fairly buggy release might be forgiven by a lot more players if this game really sells some of it's unique points in an excellent tutorial.
There are way too many players that aren't going to go look up the guides, way to many bad guides to sift through, and the major limitation that guides can't teach as well as an interactive experience. You don't want to rely on out of game guides to teach the basics. I had the benefit of someone drilling me on the basic for hours when I first joined. When hundreds or thousands of new players are pouring in we won't be able to do that for each and every one of them.
New player experience is worth investing in. This game is in all likelihood going to get review bombed upon release like any other indie MMO but a really good tutorial is the most likely way to actually see that not happen. Actually getting mostly positive reviews could be HUGE for this game. Even a fairly buggy release might be forgiven by a lot more players if this game really sells some of it's unique points in an excellent tutorial.
There are way too many players that aren't going to go look up the guides, way to many bad guides to sift through, and the major limitation that guides can't teach as well as an interactive experience. You don't want to rely on out of game guides to teach the basics. I had the benefit of someone drilling me on the basic for hours when I first joined. When hundreds or thousands of new players are pouring in we won't be able to do that for each and every one of them.
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Henrik has talked about the statistics on player retention and how an overwhelming majority of people quit after only a very short time in game.
I'm willing to give SV the benefit of the doubt that the data/feedback they have on why people quit so abruptly means a tutorial Island will improve that retention rate.
The difficulty is the depth of what players can do, and the limited feedback they get while doing so. There aren't a ton of tool tips or straightforward ways to explain every system in MO, a lot of it has to be figured out by the player.
If they decided to explain systems like taming, do we want tooltips that say "in order to tame you need taming skill and lores. You need to cook carcass to raise your lores or read a book, and not everything can be tamed"
Thats the kind of hand holding i expect to see in other games that doesn't let players figure things out on their own, which is part of what makes MO special.
And I think thats what SV is looking at, players who would otherwise enjoy MO and figuring out the different systems, but get frustrated upon being murdered before they get a basic understanding of the game, they just give up on it.
I dont know how a UI design can compensate for that without sacrificing a large part of what makes MO special.
Here's a short list of reasons why people might quit MO almost immediately.
Bugs, horrible clunky AI, ugly dated graphics, getting stuck constantly, interacting with water at all, lack of information on tooltips, lack of information about weight movement and inventory, a huge green arrow at the top of their screen incase they are below 70 IQ, counter-intuitive system design, bland and ugly game world, static and boring mobs, complicated (not complex) crafting, bad animations, a much slower movement speed than other games, an inability to participate in PVE with magic. I could go on. and on, we all know this.
Here's why people do not leave an appropriately advertised Full loot PVP sandbox game immediately after installing...because it's a full loot pvp sandbox game.
There is no reason to pretend that it's because of some massive PvP slaughter-fest. It's beyond fantasy at this point. Fix the game, polish the game, don't erase the entire point of having this niche project in the first place.
its true, theres a lot of caveats in what i've suggested, including some radical changes to the existing haven. the fact remains that there will (hopefully) be a large influx of players on launch and they need to go *somewhere*. you could put them in a queue and have them wait to play the game they paid for, or you can spin up multiple instances of haven and have them make the choice to get a chance to experience the game a bit before being thrown to the wolves or just jumping directly into the gaping maw.
if people decide to stay on haven, clearly they're not the target audience for the game. just the same, why would you prevent them from staying if they so choose? i expect the number of people doing so will be vanishingly small, if there are any at all. they would simply stop playing rather than exist in haven for unknown reasons
shoehorning the tutorial into the game world was a bad choice, yellow flags in myrland was a bad choice, at least with haven the players should have the ability to pick their starting city in myrland, spreading out the new player population rather than concentrating them in two areas.
-barcode
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