TASK: levels 1-5

[dpi209]

Starting out

I started this task with the creation of the French Female Freetrader „Sandrine Moyenne“. The character creation process is good, clearly structured and with descriptive labels for options and buttons. After choosing a suitable outfit for my character out of the wealth of options, I dove into the tutorial.

The Tutorial

The French tutorial puts you into a ballroom where music is playing. In front of me there is a guy with a question mark above his head, a popup-style overlay states that I can move with the WASD keys. It disappears after a while and I notice the mission objective „Talk to Simon Berry“.
Seeing that the guy has a green question mark floating above his head, I guess this is the person I have to talk to. I can imagine that players new to MMOs would appreciate if NPC names were on by default, though. This has the benefit that they learn to associate „talk to“ with the question mark floaty.

In the following dialogue I immediately notice the differently coloured text with the ship symbol next to it. Hovering the mouse over the differently coloured text highlights it, making it clear that it's meant to be clickable. Since players don't ship text but answer it, the only thing I'd change here would be the icon, and maybe introduce a dialogue that has two answers to choose from to state that there can be multiple choices.
Choosing the last answer, the dialogue box disappears and I get new objectives, both in the mission objective list and on screen – but they appear to be bottom-up:

New Objective: Talk to Captain Beauregard
Objective completed: Talk to Simon Berry

While I understand that this is pretty minor, I think it would be better to swap the display of following objectives around – first display the completion, then display the new objective.
Looking around, I notice that the guy I just talked with is marked by a star on the radar, and that there is a second star for a second character not far away – but he's lacking the question mark. Anyway, I hover the mouse over the person that is indicated by the star and find out that it is indeed Basile Beauregard. Talking with him continues the mission. He asks me to talk with Dimitri. Now I'm a bit lost, since there are no further stars on the radar and nobody has a question mark floating above his head. This brings me back to the suggestion of displaying NPC names by default.

Eventually I find out that a guy standing in the middle of the dance floor is the next one I have to talk with. While hovering over the people I notice a Bilge Rat crew member standing calmly at the door. The dialogue option causes the crew member to shoot Dimitri and stand there calmly again, while I am supposed to talk with him. Again, no question mark. I think it'd be better to have the Bilge Rat appear and shoot Dimitri after choosing the answer from the dialogue.

Now comes something that is not very nice. Pressing the answer in the following dialogue with the Bilge Rat dims the screen and presents me with an obscure chart of things I have to read through without guidance. But – didn't I just say „en garde“? So, I'm potentially fighting the guy but get a huge pop up list I have to read through, which isn't the best start into combat, in my opinion. A possible alternative would be that Captain Beauregard comes to my help and kills the attacker and shows me the basic meaning of the skills in a dialogue after the Bilge Rat was defeated, preferrably with an arrow pointing at the appropriate skill in the taskbar or health UI while explaining what it is. Keeping the card is okay as a reference, but the introduction to avatar combat could really use some work.

Okay, after removing the Bilge Rat from the scene I have to talk with Captain Beauregard who sends me out to get to a ship, telling me he has to stay here to protect the civilians. A popup informs me that the minimap is showing the exit. After a brief loading screen I have to fight some more bilge rats to get to the docks. They are a good way to test out whether I understood avatar combat, since they are not very strong. After completing this objective, I am to speak with the pilot, who appears to be an Attacker (generic). Clicking the answer, I get the next objetive, „Bring the longboat to the ship“. It is marked as an exit, so I figure that it will take me somewhere else. Click, Loading Screen, and the next obscure reference card pops up on my screen. Again, an introduction explaining the meaning of the basic skills with the option to pop up the reference card would be better. At least I don't appear to have any hostiles nearby this time. After sailing a bit, two attackers appear and I get the objective to destroy those. Completing this, I get notified that the blinking button is my loot button. Pressing it, I get presented the loot box. I claim my loot and follow the next objective to get back to the ballroom.

Back in the ballroom, I see the captain, whom I have to speak to, wounded on the floor. The dialogue reveals that he was injured and is about to die. He tells me to pick up the map, which I do. Now I get a popup telling me that the blinking button is the exit of this mission; I press it, and after a loading screen I stand in a town with a guy with a question mark above his head in front of me.
He's Jean Brun, and talking to him I figure out ends the tutorial. Having done this I'm already halfways through level 2.

[dpi209]

The first few levels

Jean Brun offers me a few missions that guide me through the port, introducing me to the important NPCs and lead me to a boarding tutorial. The missions are marked with an exclamation mark, and not taking the „Repeat the Tutorial“ mission I notice that Jean Brun has one floating above his head now. This is good, since it links „there be missions“ to the exclamation mark.
The misson line that takes me through the port is good and helpful, though maybe a bit too much zig-zaggy. The sequence Trainer – Shop – Harbormaster – Barkeeper – Magistrate is alot of running back- and forwards. Changing it to Barkeeper – Trainer – Magistrate – Shop – Harbormaster would streamline that a bit. During my way to the town I picked up a few missions that will keep me busy for a while, I guess – good!

The Boarding Tutorials

The Boarding Tutorials are one of the highlights so far – it tells you what you need to know in small, easily absorbable messages while pointing out what it's talking about. It's actually what I'd expect from a tutorial.

The first few levels continued

After that, I decided to do my missions I picked up: Le Chantier Naval and The Plague of Piracy. Noticing that something counted towards another mission (gauging from the „Bloody Arms 1/8“ that popped up in the middle of my screen) I killed all ships in Le Chantier Naval, the Plague of Piracy gave me another three Bloody Arms kills – and doing those two missions brought me to level 5. They were okay, not overly exciting and only mildly challenging; especially Le Chantier Naval is easy when following the objectives instead of trying to kill everything. Nevertheless, I'd rate both missions a three. Le Chantier Naval has a glitch in it, too; the objective reads „Meet with Apolline Flamme“ whereas the ship is called „Shipwright“.
Before sailing out to take the economy tutorial I completed the „Claim Prize“ Tutorial and decided to pick up another Bloody Arms ship to complete „Clearing the Shipping Lanes“. Not turning any of those in yet, I was a few XP short of level 6.

And, finally, the Economy Tutorial

The Economy Tutorial starts out pretty good, leading to a small talk about warehouses. I chose the Assistant of Grenville to continue, since I'm lazy and wated to stay in the same port.
The economy tutorial is a LOT of zoning. Due to some reason you keep alternating between the shop and the back office – probably to keep your lessons uninterrupted by other players and give it a feeling of „private lessons“. It is also a huge amount of text presented in the dialogue, which players are tempted to skip once they notice that clicking through is sufficient to pass the mission and that additional requirements are pointed out by an arrow. Mostly.
Simply put: The amount of text you get presented at once is too much. But while I think the content itself is good and gives you sufficient information to start building a structure and warehouse, it's actually not enough information, especially in regards of what one should build and how structures fit together. It does mention to look for the recipe information of a product on the auction house, but I think it should give an example.
A possible improvement to the economy tutorial would be if it would give you building materials and a tutorial deed for a structure that is the same than a regular structure (for example, Logging Camp (Oak) (Tutorial) that creates an Oak Logging Camp in 10 seconds) which can later be used to produce goods that can be sold on the market, tailored to the port that the tutorial is in, instead of just having eight clones in different locations.
Regarding the presentation, I'd suggest to split the text into one- or two-page chapters that can be selected during the mission, similar to the information on some NPC. That gives players the option to „read back“ on information of a previous chapter. And when a player finished reading all chapters, it opens an option to finish the mission.

Skilling

I guess especially the Swashbuckling skills wouldn't be something a new player would skill to begin with, so take my choices with a grain of salt.
As a Freetrader, my default school is Florentine, and so I took Warning Shot and Recovery to begin with. The first captain skills I chose were Before the Wind 1, Optimized Rigging and Travel – the first two to make it easier for me to escape combat, the third because I already know it's very useful to reduce travel times.

The End

I finished this task at level 7, three quarters to 8, with a good 5000 dubloons.

[Ged Bligh]

Originally Posted by Xaphod

Tutorial
-- Avatar combat is introduced using the reference card. This is about as bad as it could be. Have the player walk to the first enemy and then tell them outright what to click, what it does and why while they're doing it: "walk up to this first bad guy.. okay, now you're in combat. start by clicking this yellow skill; that's a prep attack used to weaken enemies before you can hit them.. see how their balance bar has gone down? that means you've reduced his balance and he's easier to hit. now his balance is low, click the orange attack skill and you'll damage his health!" then on the NEXT bad enemy introduce special and finishing moves ("taunt this guy to get him to come over! green skills like taunt are special moves.. reduce his balance.. good, notice youv'e built up initiative.. now click this red finishing move skill to use up some initiative and deal massive damage"), then defensive moves on the next.. ("build up some more initiative by using your prep attack on this guy, now click active block and your character will use up that initiative and block his attacks")
..

In addition please consider duelling in enemy ports except newbie areas.

The new HQ's look great but they lack purpose.
Perhaps make it so you are flagged PVP for avcom when entering enemy ports unless you have the correct faction requirements for peaceful trading.

A tutorial for faction would also be a good idea.

[LoJo028]

New Character: Lojo más DeNueveMill

Freetrader- Spain level 1.

Very first mission you talk to Gaspar de Silva and the ship gets attacked. Then he tells you to speak to Captain Dragon. A small window pops up saying "The mini-map shows the way to Captain Dragon." However, it doesnt really. If you are standing next to Gaspar de Silva Dragon is about 1-2 yrds off the map(default is 25 urd radius map). If you spin around you can see him a ways away with the "?" over his head...but he isnt on the mini-map as the text says until you move closer to him.

1st mission. NPC(Rosalnda Diaz)- Boarding Tutorial:To Arms! - not much to it, very clear.
2nd mission. NPC(Harbor Master)- Boarding Tutorial:To Boarder's Bay! - liked it, very easy. Good demonstration of boarding and damaging masts.
3rd mission. NPC(Rosalnda Diaz)- Meet the Freetrader Skill Trainer - Simple mission, just talking and such. Unless I missed it I never noticed anything on how to use the local map, the NPCs genereally just say something like "I'll add the location to your map", thats it. Might be a good idea since when you are looking for the Freetrader Trainer you really arent sure where to go.

I would like to kill the buzzing flies, headphones make them even more realisitic.

4th mission. NPC(Freetrader Trainer)- Visit the Shop

Small comment - "A collection Of Stone" the junk merchant's mission. I've always hated these things, ever since I started the game. You go in thinking it will be like all the other missions you have done, only to find out you have to go find a bunch of random loot drops. It kinda of misleads a new player to abandon other quests to go finish this one. Except the drops are completely random so rather then learning the game through the missions he is galavanting around trying to figure out what the heck a Stone Mask is and why he can't seem to find it, wich usually ends up in floating around the OS for awhile and getting jumped by NPCs that are much to powerful or he ends up in some new port taking missions and completely by-passing the story line he should probubly be doing back at his starter town. SO yeah, just my opinion but I think they detract from the newbie learning process.

At this point I decided to find the Freetrader Trainer and learn my first skills! Decided on "Hold Together" and "Before the Wind 1". I decided staying alive and running the hell away were important right now.

Next I visited the Florentine Skill Trainer. Learned "Screened Kick". Getting another damage skill seemed cooler than another prep attack.

5th & 6th Missions NPC(Auctioneer)- The economy:Starting Out - Waited to do until after Meet Harbor Master, Meet Bartender, Meet the Magistrate.
PC(Civilian Ship Deed Trader) - Meet the Harbor Master - Simple go meet him and read text mission.

7th mission. NPC(Harbor Master) - Meet the Bartender - Read text and locate mission. Simple, effective.
8th mission NPC(Bartender) - Meet the Magistrate - Simple text and locate mission. Simple, effective. He has 3 new missions but I decided to go finish the economy mission first, so I didn't take any of them. An actually new player would probubly take them and do them first.

I noticed when leaving to go to Campeche that there wasnt much on how to use the "world map", so players are left to kinda figure that one out. However, the fact that it is the "m" key, wich is standard for nearly every MMO and most other games, players are pretty quick to figure that out. However it still might be a small weakness and confuse a new player when he is trying to blindly find Campeche.

Economy Missions, seem pretty straight forward. I think the bidding system is still a little confusing for people coming from other games that work like EQ or WoW Auction houses. Other than that the missions are well done and get players going down the right path to figureing out what they can do. I might point out that during these economy missions they finally point out how to use the world map and use more of the big glowing red arrows. Would be nice if that were before you had to sail and find Campeche.

One last thing. It might be slightly confusing to some new players the way the leveling/skill points system works. I recall when I started I would ding a level and then run back to town only to find out I didnt get any more points in my sailing skills. Later I realized that you get a skill there every other level, wich seems obvious now but at the time had me a little confused.

That's all I have for now.

[taronstar]

I had a friend (Rob) start this weekend, and he has never played an MMO before. Based on his first two hours experience in Pirates, these are some things I noticed. I'll see if I can convince him to post his opinions.

1. Chat Focus - was only an issue once, and we were grouped pretty much the entire time once he was done with the tutorials. The one time it was a problem Rob actually got stuck on the chat window.

2. There should be an in-game explanation of what happens when you sink. Because, yes, Rob sank. He decided to go attack a Drakesman Pirate group with 3 Bermuda sloops as a level 2 FT in his fallback ship. Until I explained Durability Points and Fallback ships to him, after he sank he was a bit discouraged about how he would get a new ship. (Hey, I don't want to hear anything from the audience, I can only do so much in a gunboat.)

3. Related to item #2, I think a new character gets 3 Hull Patches and 3 Mast Braces when they are created. I really think those should be added to the "Ship Combat" toolbar by default. Part of the reason Rob sank is because I was trying to explain to him, via chat, how to use a consumable item while he was being shot at by two Bermuda sloops.

4. Although it is probably far too late to change this, he wants to know why the people who have missions have exclamation points above their heads and the people you turn missions into have question marks. He thought it would make more sense for the people you need to speak with to get missions to have the question marks. (Strangely, I have never thought of this before, but it does make sense.)

5. In the tutorial when you target the enemy ship and it pops the targeting explanation, a short sentence explaining what class/level your target is would be nice.

6. If you have to go inside a structure (i.e. the magistrates office, shop, etc.) to complete a mission it would be nice if a question mark appeared over the door in the GUI so that you would know to go in there without having to refer to the mini-map or the local map.

[Valeroth]

I created a new Bucaneer on testbed today...and I kept notes the way through so I thought I'd post them up here.

Okay, today’s testbed activities:
Created new character, Bucanner. Captain Long Fall. Yarr! These are his very disjointed notes.

- Cool you start in the ship's hold. This is new for me…Very cool. The sound and art in this new below decks room is cool. I hadn't seen it before.

- Billy didn't have a ? above his head the second time I was supposed to talk to him, but I figured it out anyway.

- While I’m rearranging my skill bar, and a bilge rat walks in... awful calm like. Hmm Buncaeers use fencing, okay.
- Okay so Billy runs the bilge rat though and I head for the deck.
- I kill the 6 bilge rats, talk to Solomon Pratt, Billy, get the map, now I'm taking command. The story setup for the Pirate tutorial is cool. I like it.
- I kill the two bilge rates ships easy enough... However there is no guidance other than the quick reference guide. I really think there should be some explanation here of how to fire your guns and maneuver your ship... as well as an explanation of how to use skills (like the crew focus skills). Most people are going to close that ship combat quick reference guide right away because they want to see what is going on. And it is really a reference for later. You need to teach people what to do, not make them read it. This used to be something that was in the tutorial.

- Okay so then I’m in Marsh Harbor. Marsh Harbor is... by the way one of the better towns, in terms of atmosphere and art, and in terms of layout.

- I get there and talk to Ebenezer. I think he should pop right up into the mission dialog without have to hit discuss on the Tutorial mission.

- So I grab the “Boarding Tutorial” and “Question the Buccaneer” trainer from him.

- Next I did the Boarding Tutorial.
I find that with the flashing arrow over your batteries (when it’s telling how to load them with different shot) can make it a bit hard to click on the left battery. This is about the 5th or 6th time I've done the Boarding tutorial, so it was no real challenge but I took it a bit slower just to read through things. For the most part the Boarding tutorial is pretty straight forward and well done. The one thing I think I would add is teaching players how to drag ammo to their toolbar to load all batteries at once.

- The first guy I run into in Marsh Harbor (on my way to find the Buccaneer trainer) is the Clerk who can give me 3 Bounty PvP missions. I don't think it's obvious though that these are PvP missions. In fact I know it's not obvious because I've had plenty of new players ask me about them over the last few months. Also I don't think you should be giving new players PvP Bounties right out of the gate. This is true of all the starting towns. I would move the Clerks to the towns that have the first regional auction houses for the Nationals, and to some place like Cat Island, or Whitby for the Pirates. You don't want them to be the first thing a player runs accross.

- Kudos to the sound department for the sound by the still outside the tavern!

- Okay so I finish all the "Meet and Greet" missions. I get my first real mission. Treasure Hunt. One thing to note is that the Missions UI points me to the Coxswain on the far side of town. The town has two coxswains, which is nice, however, I think the Mission UI should point me to the closest coxswain. And if I get halfway through town should then it should switch.

- Okay Treasure hunt takes me right into a cave. I fight my way past the goons, and get the treasure, the click out. Not to much trouble. (Of course I'm at the far coxswain so I have a ways to walk back).

- Next I get Mysterious Visitor, I'm tasked with tearing up a Navy group that's following one of our beloved pirates into town. Again the mission box wants to point me to the opposite end of town, but I'm since I've already checked that out this time and head for the closer coxswain. Okay it's a rescue the ally type mission. Normally I'd go right for the guy I have to protect. However this time I figure I'll play like a newbie and just kill the nearest target. It goes okay... Not to difficult as I kill the 6 NPCs with a little help from my allies.

So then I decide I’ll take a bit of a break. My Bucaneer is now level 4. Some further comments:

- I noticed earlier today that in Jenny Bay there is a Town Crier… I clicked on him and he will answer all sorts of important questions. I didn’t notice of Marsh Harbor had one. I think you should really point new people to the Town Crier. He has all sorts of useful info for new people.

- No where in these tutorials do we really teach people how to use their skill bar well… or how to move new skills down on to it.

- Part way through I noticed that my toon was marked as a Trial Account. That seemed weird.

[TomSavage]

Along with the guy above (although not at the same time) I created a buccaneer just today on the testbed, just get the in's and outs of it.

The First Tutorial:

I have to say, the new start for the class if definately a great idea and this is something that would really need to be developed more for the other classes in the game too I think.

I did also pick up on what must be some sort of continuity bug when trying to talk to Billy Jones. This happens before the Bilge Rat npc comes down who Billy kills. You really don't pick up on it unless you're keeping track of the tutorial through the objectives pointers, as you don't get any question mark over his head plus it does stop at an odd time, so I wondered what on earth I was meant to be doing next with this for a short while there.

I do like how you get to grab the map off the dead hands of someone else trying to steal it from that ships captain. I do still think that the map needs to be more identifiable in some way, as in the tutorial there it's off to the side and you end up looking all over the floor for it if (like what happened to me) your back is facing it after the combat with the Bilge Rat so you can't see it due to the camera angle.

Once you've got your ship sailing, I really do think that the 2 Bilge Rat ships spawn way too far away. In these basic ships it felt like a really odd pause in the overall pace of the tutorial, as I felt like I was just sitting there sailing towards them. Although perhaps that's just me, as I can set my ship up very quickly now having played for so long.

In terms of other points, I am a bit sick of the current big pop-ups explaining how you do AvCom and sailing. They just feel... I dunno really, just seems rather unneccessary. Well perhaps the wrong choice of words, more bad placement than anything else. I've always thought that it might be better having videos that explained this for new players, something that experienced players could skip. To do that though, you'd need to change the order around a bit:

1.Character Creation
2. Introduction Videos explaining sailing and AvCom
3. Main tutorial

With that, you wouldn't have to change the style of the tutorial, just not have the bit where you would get the details popping up. I just feel it's a lot of information for a new player to take in and it's all over the screen. A video would look a lot more nicer and it would get a lot more information across in a much easier way too.


That's pretty much it from me on that. I'm still to run the economy tutorial as I do feel that I could probably write a fair bit on that all by itself. The other missions still seem to run well, although I will agree with some that more active note needs to be made in-game some way about using various existing elements of the UI to find out about the mission difficulty.

[Pchan]

If I would improve anything about the tutorial it would be a lot more interaction than videos and infosheets.
The approach of trial and error seems like an effective way of learning new stuff.

Such as traveling towards the wind could be tutored as first pointing you directly against the wind. After a few seconds the system acknowledge that this does not work and suggests instead tacking close-haul. It is common knowledge for those of us who have been around for some time, but I notice new players usually goes directly against the wind and gets frustrated when it takes so long to get to their target.
I also suggest equipping them with 90 point ships from the start, since they are easier to sail with.

Avatar combat could be approached the same way. First you are told to use a basic attack and when that does not work, you are told to use preparatory attacks and monitor the enemy balance. When it goes down to certain level the system tells you to use basic attacks. After about three enemies down you are told to use a finisher to see how that works.
This tells a basic tactic in avatar combat without dumping it all at once.

[Paul Gascoigne]

I think it should be mandatory before people get to go out on the open sea a brief guide on PVP is shown to the player.

E.g as they go to un-dock a window pops up saying "Hi Sailor, this is your first time on the open sea... etc etc, avoid red circles as nasty X lurks there etc etc etc".

Also explain to people about the pvp support cut off time etc.
Also flares dont work in pvp etc.
How to use surrender and things like that.
So much of the pvp needs to be explained.

Lets avoid the rage quitting of the newbies.

On Invincible we have a lot of mature players who are not usually mmo players who generally dont read about a game during its development and are completely unaware of what the red circle means.

[Swiss Mercenary]

Ah found a tiny-weeny bug with the French NO claim ship mission hand in Pointe-à-Pitre.

It gives 4 Commendations of Diligence! On top of that the Tutorial:Commendations mission needs 5 Commendations of Diligence so it is impossible to hand in.