Topic
Lack of direction for noobs
Mentioned this in another thread right now, but thought I'd reiterate here.
Today, more than any other previous test, I came across players who were just asking "what do I do?". There were people knocking on my door randomly because they just didn't know where to go or what to do. I tried to help them where I could, but it's hard to stand in their shoes (I had to explain to one player what the pet rock was).
I realise there wasn't a tutorial or anything this time around, or an introduction of any sort — which may have had some impact. But it seemed more than that: there was an aimlessness. Indeed, I even found myself using the help and local chat much more than before just to try and get a handle on a few things.
I don't want Glitch to hold a player's hand for too long, and encouraging social interaction is good... but I suspect if new players were left confused and bored, then there needed to be more help than we got this time around.
Replies
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I started playing Glitch in yesterday's testing and as much as I loved playing the game, I felt like I was left to my own devices when it came to navigation - should I have gone left? Or right? Did I miss something? Why am I here? What's there to do here that there isn't on any other street? (That one especially). All the streets sort of molded into one and I got lost very quickly!
But I guess exploring unknown worlds is what glitch is about? - I can see why there's no introduction. They could put one up now and redo it with every step of the build or they can wait til it's done and just do it once. We've already seen 2 or 3 intros come and go which must have taken a lot of work.
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A simple way of addressing this would be a few more quests early on, which as part of the quest explain in a little more detail, what there is to do.
Some more description on the skill page (especially for the first skills) would also help give players who are beginning to find their way an extra bit of help.
Being my first day testing I went through the stage of confusion, without my prior experience with similar game styles I would have been completely lost. Just a few more paragraphs explaining some game direction would aid this immensely.
Other than that though, great work, loving the potential for this to expand. -
I'll chime in and agree that a few extra quests or a few more pointers on the map may help. I got lost on the Ilmenski caverns and faffed for a while before a staff member who was luckily around pointed me in the right direction. A few users I IM'ed were confused in the same way.
I personally wouldn't mind the pet rock talking a bit more often at the beginning - as long as it doesn't turn into Clippy. -
"I personally wouldn't mind the pet rock talking a bit more often at the beginning - as long as it doesn't turn into Clippy."
oh, the irony...in the most recent version of the intro, which was apparently not up and running yesterday, PR explains it all for you...ALOT. In fact there was some discussion about whether or not he was helping or hurting the cause. -
I just thought I'd bring it up since I think it shows that
1) an intro of some sort is valuable (despite protestations in the past)
2) early quests to give the player some grounding or direction are useful
3) NPCs can be important for more than just a way to obtaining or sell objects
Yesterday's conversations made me think that those of us who have moved through the early levels several times have maybe lost sight of what it's like for new players with no context.
I do think the rock could be a bit more instructional and fun to have around. It feels like it lacks a certain something right now. - I found the tutorial in the beginning to be all I needed when playing the game. Exploring came naturally. I think all that needs to be added is an explanation of the UI, maybe forcing new players to interact with each and every piece of the UI, explaining what it does, how to use it, and what it is used for.
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I am very confused about whether most new players saw the tutorial or not (there definitely still is one, and all new players should see it, but perhaps some of the people with older-but-as-yet-unactivated accounts were flagged improperly and missed it).
Sounds like Hybrid saw it, but Hburger didn't? - Of course, don't hesitate to use the help channel! Lots of us who would love to take you for a tour if the rock is busy. ; )
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the help channel is collapsed by default and the forums are probably one of the last things a new player will check out, so the game has to be intuitive and self-explanatory.
but i think it already is, because before this last test i hadn't noticed so many confused players even in the announced tests. i think the initial tutorial does a good job, tho it seems this time around a bunch of new people might've missed it. - true true.
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people are often hesitant to click "help" because it generally takes you to a page where you have to read a lot of language to find what you are looking for. I would consider calling help something else, such as "control" or "panel" - b/c in this case it is actually the explanation of movements and controlling the game.
it also sounds like it might be helpful to have a modal come up or a sidebar window when someone is not in movement for a period of time, so that they can be reminded what the controls are. - I felt like a lof things, this round, had less wording than they previously did. Am I wrong about that? Like, in a given quest, previously it might have told you where to go to get the things that you needed, and now you had to sort of.... figure it out for yourself. I felt like that was tripping people up - they didn't know where to go to get things - where to buy beer, or lips, or a spice mill - and that wasn't displayed by the rock, so there were a lot of questions being asked. I didn't have the tutorial this time (but I didn't expect to; I was already on level four) but I did feel like some of the quests were not as detailed as they could have been - and perhaps had been in the past?
- The quests have not changed at all (though many of 'em are due for an overhaul and that'll come). On the other hand, the tutorial was recently changed to be about 2/3rds shorter (but only people who hadn't previously gone through it would have seen that).
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"The quests have not changed at all"
There weren't any quests where one vendor sent you to meet another one. I missed at least one playtest (so perhaps they got removed a while back) but that's the kind of thing I felt actually gave players a better sense of what to do. I'd quite like to see the tutorial again when I start from square one (as I did this time). - Unless that part (with the "go see vendor X" quests) *was* the tutorial. But that seems unlikely to me.
- That would be a deletion instead of a changed quest. I remember them being immediately after the tutorial.
- Yeah, that was a deletion (from a few months ago). Tthose particular vendors won't be around forever and it was a hard one for many people.
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About the tutorial, I saw one right at the start where I was guided through 'When you see this, press Enter', 'Press the left arrow key to go left' and that if I click on a sign post, it'll take me to a new area, yes. It also showed me the map a bit I think.
However, Groddle seemed like the only map because I wasn't told there were other maps (Apart from Ix later on, which made me even more confused! How was I to get to Ix?! Was that even a place or a person?!).
Also, with the quests, I felt I could've received a lot more help... I had no idea that shops even existed?! Also, how do you kiss someone with garlic?! Confused! And the help menu didn't help me much in that sense either because it only tells you the functions of different keyboard keys! - Yeah, I do think the pet rock could give a bit of a hint on the kissing thing -- it's a bit counter-intuitive, especially now that one of the mouth choices for your avatar features big pouty lips :)
- (So yeah, how do I kiss on the game, I never found out?)
- Well obviously, you have to purchase a pair of lips from a vendor, of course! ;)
- Oh really? See I never knew that & it never gave me any hint :( I just bought garlic and went off. I was so confused :S
- Everyone seems to have problems with the garlic breath quest. Red flag goes up for needing an additional pointer in the quest description! ;)
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I played for the first time out yesterday... the walk-thru & tutorial from the rock was pretty helpful, as far as I can tell, it's taught me everything I know about how to play the game...
...'cept of course the kissing bit. Yep, had no idea that you would need specific 'lips' to do the job. And wasn't well versed enough in gameplay to immediately think 'if I can't do something, I probably need to go and see a vendor'. - I liked the kissing quest - not being spoon fed all the way - I asked another glitchzen for help and if I hadn't, I never would've interacted with anyone the whole test.
- You're absolutely right, buying lips in order to kiss is a little on the unusual side. Rest assured, it's not going to be that way forever.
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I would really like to see some more fleshing out of the descriptions of the different gameplay elements. Not the text descriptions, but the introduction into a skill or field of gameplay.
Before I go into my example, I wanted to add the disclaimer that I do know that you're still in Alpha, and still adding/removing different mechanics, and entire parts of the world - and I know that this kind of thing is already in the works, and will be better as time goes on and the world solidifies.
When I gain one of the base skills (such as mining), it would be great for the rock to tell me what this will eventually be good for. Right now, it seems to be a bit piecemeal in the cohesion element. I mean, examining the skill table allows you to see what skill leads to whichever other skill comes along down the tree. But it doesn't flesh out my ability to make use of a particular skill, or know how to better my use of that skill in gameplay.
It's like - Oh! I have elements! Ok, so I know I can make compounds. There's a skill that lets me use those compounds for something else, but I don't really know what. And I don't know what that's good for. Oh! Now I learned
I don't really remember the rock being like "Down the road, you can turn these compounds into cool powders that let you do X! And you can get more elements by mining stuff and refining it into these useful elements." As far as I remember, I have to get the mining and element handling skills, and then refinement, before learning what it's useful for.
Maybe I'm just a lazy gamer, but I feel really overwhelmed or lost sometimes. I really like that there's the aspect of exploration of game depth, and I really don't want to sacrifice that. I dunno...maybe I'm just silly and just not reading the skill chart enough. There's just so many skills that I read and I'm like - what is that good for? I want to learn it, but I don't know how it translates into the game. - I agree with Bingobar about needing more information from the game about how some of the early skills will lead to other things in the future. There doesn't seem to be much point in bubble tuning and gassmorgification unless you know that you'll need them later to make gasses and bubbles of different types if you want to season eggs to make baby animals or to season beans to make trees.
- One of the most confusing things is that you can use tools before obtaining the skill associated with them, right from the very beginning of the game. A suggestion for new players to experiment with different tools would be helpful.
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I've been testing for a while now, and as far as the skills learning goes, I learned every first level skill (because I didn't know what was what), then I studied the chart to see what looked interesting and what made sense to me to learn. In my case, the mining/element handling path sounded cool and the meditative arts seemed to provide good benefits. That's what you do in a role-playing game: make a decision - informed or not - and live with the consequences. ^_^
As testing progressed yesterday, I met and friended another Glitch player who had the more advanced animal husbandry skills and we traded (a baby chick and caterpillar for some mined elements and a few random items I had picked up on my travels). There's your social interaction: become an expert at something and find people who need your skills (and vice versa). There was a local chat and a game-wide chat and I found this friend when they asked "anyone want a baby chick?" I'm sure as the game development progresses, more subtle social elements will be introduced. Remember: this is still in beta. I'm sure Flickr's beta wasn't as robust either.
There should be an option added to the rock where you can say "Help! I'm lost!" and he can give you hints and more information to proceed. That way, the people who want/need extra help can get it and other people can continue to analyze and solve the next piece of the problem themselves without any help. Personally, I figured out that I needed a beaker to make compounds without any help, but it took me a while to figure it out. During that time, I just kept mining and selling what I was finding (diamonds are a wonderful bonus when mining!). But then, I'm use to playing long-winded JRPGs....so the exploring/grinding/figuring things out is something I enjoy.
Can't wait for the next round of testing! I'm already addicted. ^_^ -
I thought that the tutorial these two days were actually pretty informative, letting us know the basics and figure out the rest. There might need to be some wording changes though ("Enter to go forward" I believe was one).
I'm not sure how I discovered that lips help people kiss, but I remember figuring it out somehow without having to ask anyone. I think I might have seen the lips in the store while I was buying garlic and gotten curious about why anyone would sell lips in a store (lipstick, sure, but lips? o.o) so I decided to check on the description. Or something.
Maybe to encourage checking on things' descriptions, pet rock could, in one of his quests, tell you that you need to buy a tool from the tool vendor (or anything from any vendor, really) that does __________. He could remind the player about the descriptions on the buy window, and then just leave saying something like "You're smart, kid. I know you can figure it out."
@blogkitten:
It's actually still alpha, not beta. Alpha comes before beta. ^^
You were the other person who got a chick yesterday, weren't you? Hii! ^^
I agree, a hint button would be very helpful. Maybe if you spent a really long time not doing anything (actually not doing anything, not just not doing the quest) the rock could also pop out a message telling you that he can offer you hints if you click on his hint button. You'd only really see it if you went afk or got really lost, but that way you can at least have some way of knowing that it exists.
What's funny is that I actually made a friend during the kissing quest, I think. But maybe that's because I stopped to explain that I was doing a quest to kiss people with garlic. ^^; -
Whoops...I meant alpha! ^_^
Yeah! Fellow chick people unite! -
Yays!
You should see my house with the cute chickie ^^ -
Glitch is a well built realm, but as a game, i'm not so sure.
this may sound corny,
but you need a goal in the game. Every successful online game has a goal (either explicitly stated, or implicitly derived by the players themselves):
eg:
1. Farmville: Build the most awesome farm
2. City of Eternals: Complete quests and become a bad-ass vampire
3. WoW: Train yourself, complete quests with friends, and be a powerful lvl 50000 mage (whatever)
I don't see that in Glitch (yet). I find myself exploring the worlds, doing cute things without an end goal. As a result, my motivation to play decreases over time.
I do see the houses that others have built, and ask myself how the heck do I get a house as well. This could be a start in developing a concrete goal. E.g: build a house in the Glitch world and make be-billions by selling items.
Another way would be to let the users choose "paths" right at the beginning. Eg: do you want to be a miner, farmer, home builder, etc. And give adequate instructions on how to get there. - @fugufish: I think Glitch's "open-endedness" is one of the very reasons that I play. I like not being bolted down to one particular task, having the freedom to do whatever the heck I want. If I wanted to be forced to be a miner or a farmer, I'd go play Runescape. Granted, Glitch has a lot of things that I'm like "Ok, where do I buy corn." On the other hand, I'm never going to say "Damn, I'm so bored mining this dullite, I wish I could go plant some crops...too bad I didn't sign up for that at the beginning."
- @Soopa-Fresh: point taken. Percentage-wise, I'm not sure how many players like open ended-ness vs goals. It's definitely bad business for Glitch to ignore the players who want a sense of direction.
- Levelling works a little bit in that direction with building max energy/mood.
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leveling doesn't mean much, other than that you can show off how 1337 you are. the increased energy capacity is a little useful, but toward what end?
in WoW, different classes mean significantly different play styles. differences that might only be possible in a 3D realtime multiplayer strategy game.
in glitch, being a miner and being a farmer have so many mechanical similarities. repetitive and grindy.
I think the different "goals" in glitch will be:
1] XP/Levelling pavlovian addiction
2] Decorating
3] Community
4] Commerce/Trade
so far, we've only seen #1 and the slightest hint of #2.
for #3 there is the beginning of a framework but no motivation. if the game was more open ended and the game world reflected the actions of community better this would already be thriving. if the game have superstructured community play, same thing. but right now neither.
for #4 there are auctions but no real reasons to invent anything fun, like marshmallow dagger futures trading markets. - It's not often when you see a summary be twice as long as the original. ;-) My thinking has been that having a strong social playground will forgive a lot of faults. I'd give #3 top priority.