Enhancing= A confusing system for Newbies?

Most of the people I've come by (including me) have gotten confused with the current systems and enhancement types. Most people look over the tut quickly and end up moving on to enjoy the game. I know I did. When I first started I knew nothing about the system, I ended up getting a tank to level 30 with training enhancements but I ended up getting bored because I wasn't able to hit anything, and of course I didn't take stamina. Didn't know you really needed it.

I'm only going by experiences from myself, and fellow friends that I've got into the game. I really think there should be another mission or atleast another tut in gameplay to help people. Even though not many people will take the time to read something.

I actually got to the Point that I made a Gif Animation tutorial on my CoH SG Website to try and explain to people how to use things like SG mode and Enhancements and stuff, cause even after the tutorial I kept getting asked how the stuff worked because the people (mostly kids who are impetiant but a few adults) didn't understand CoH/CoV's tutorial.

Heres my Webpage I did devoted to that stuff http://www.angelfire.com/planet/indyskeep/tut.html

Looks like the Invention Tutorial on Youtube got shut down again, Guess I need to make a new one!

i agree the IO system can be very complicated, but its also unnecessary to play the game with since the game is balanced around SOs

if you know how to use TOs, DOs, and SOs, you will do fine against everything in the game

IOs are something you can do upon reaching lvl 50 so that you can further improve your character but they can be expensive to buy on the market and also complex to learn, but once you learn the basics like the rule of 5 (can only have 5 copies of the same set bonus) then it becomes a little more clear

...I don't think it's really that complicated. You add enhancement slots every other level, it's kind of obvious what the slots are for, isn't it? The only confusing part is knowing where to to get the enhancements, but that's easily solved by just asking people...

When I meet new players, I usually just tell them that the crafted enhancements are good, but aren't vital to play the game with - so it's better to get a feel for what the actual game is like first.
I also give them the address for paragonwiki, the forums, and my global, so they can read up on it themselves, or contact me if they need in-game help.

Yes.


ding ding ding ding
DoooooOOOOOoooooommmmm
ding ding ding
DoOOm

HORK!

• Prototype won't let you continue the storyline until you buy a particular move, like the air dash. Odd.
• Pri/Sec guides:
  • RedTomax's City of Data refactored away a chunk of stuff from a lot of guides: the power stats.
  • Another part is showing which levels to slot things at, which varies from a minor convenience (Scrappers, Blasters) to not having to wait for a freespec (Kheldians, Defenders). The principles are the same across Scrappers, so those could be refactored away.
  • (This leaves the important and interesting part of a powersets guide: how does it play?)
• I thought I knew the standard form for how (when) to slot things; now I'm not so sure. *wince*
  • You can pull the slots off Swift (unless you're Stone Armor).
  • Er...
• The doom part: I've never seen the mission structure change in Open Beta, so, we'd better storyboard our own slotting tutorial.
  
  That is, by the time we see the Praetorian tutorials, it'll be too late to fix them. :S
  
  *crosses fingers for a normal-vendor UI upgrade*
  
  It'll be interesting to see what they do put in the new tutorial. When a Tanker can get to 30 on TOs, a message like It is not recommended to combine enhancements at every level., or even Slot for Accuracy! isn't gamebreaking enough to get posted. That was before the Going Rogue gearup, however.
  
  (The loading tips don't say much about enhancing, come to think of it.)

Having just read part of the Marketing thread, I'll just chime in here to say that I suspect one of our biggest problems in reaching out to non-gamers who might be interested in this game is how complicated some of the systems are, including the enhancement system. I remember when my father set up his account that he found the way these things work to be very unintuitive and hard to remember. And this was back in 2005, long before the age of IO's.

one of the factors to keep in mind about Going Rogue is that the developers are aware that not all of the game functions and rules are explained through the existing tutorial.

I suggest we wait and see exactly what Going Rogue's tutorial does before throwing suggestions against a wall and seeing if any stick.

Hmm...

Quote:

Originally Posted by Shuriken_BladeX Most people look over the tut quickly and end up moving on to enjoy the game.

...

Quote:

I really think there should be another mission or atleast another tut in gameplay to help people.

If people are irresponsible enough to skip one tutorial, how is a second tutorial that they're going to skip just as readily going to help them? Tutorials, guides and explanations are only useful if people actually read them. You can't inject knowledge directly into their brains. So if people refuse to read the game's explanations and tutorials, I'm afraid that's just not the fault of how the game is set up. I'd understand it if this were something very complicated that's never really explained in-game, but you have at least two tutorials on enhancements, so if people don't read any of them, then I don't think even more will solve the problem.

Quote:

And of course I didn't take stamina. Didn't know you really needed it.

You don't need it. You never have, you never will. I would be VIOLENTLY opposed to a tutorial that suggested you needed Stamina, because that's both a crutch and really bad practice, considering how many people complain about having to waste three power picks before level 20. A tutorial that tells you HOW to build is incredibly damaging to the game in general.

And, really, how much is there to know about enhancements, or even Inventions enhancements? Yes, creating Inventions and the effects of certain sets are complicated, but the whole Inventions system is optional. Beyond that, you have basic enhancements, and they're about as simple as any system gets. What is there about them that isn't directly obvious from powers' Real Numbers or enhancement percentages? Accuracy makes you hit more often, damage makes you hit harder, recharge makes your powers come back up faster. The powers tell you what you can slot into them and their real numbers (for the most part) tell you what enhancements did. I understand that, say, to-hit mechanics may be more than a little opaque, but you don't need to understand the base system to use the enhancements.

As far as going on Training enhancements and not knowing about the rest, I COULD have gone with that back in the day when stores were "secret," but these days DO and SO stores are on the map. You need enhancements, find the $ sign of your origin, go to it and you'll notice it sells better enhancements. I mean, I found out about these things back in the day when the stores were "hidden" and I just ran across the Mutant store in Steel Canyon, finding out about DOs that way. There's really no reason to NOT find out about them when they're marked on the map. To boot, you get DOs and SOs for doing your own story arcs, so at least you will know they exist.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Arcanaville Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.

Because some people won't listen to something unless they have too. If the mission had a cut scene or something people would pay attention to that but we probably wouldn't have anything like that ingame. When I first red the tut I just red how to enhance and how to put them on. I ended up not knowing what DOs were and what kind you were suppose to put on until I joined an sg. I kept training enhancements on till level 30, doing little damage and not hitting anything.

The hero tut for example. Is a bit dull to actually keep casual gamers (well the ones I know) interested enough in wanting to read. It's just talking to people and you get to do one mission. That you end up not really getting xp in the first place for. Some people like to go into a game and be able to pick it up on their own without going though a tut. A lot of games give you the power to do that but you can't here.

IMHO the funnest part of any game is learning how things work.

Having it all explained up front would really irritate me.

The information is available for those who care to seek it out but doesn't get in the way of people who'd rather learn by doing than reading.

Perhaps a small button leading to the tutorial info that you can click in the enhancement screen would be a good idea, but I don't know that we need much more.

Real numbers was the real thing that was needed to make our choices more clear, actually. They let us know the difference between powers and how they work. Now, we have the tutorial info, right clicking for more info, and real numbers. Being able to access the tutorial info at any time (if people hastily, impatiently, or accidentally skipped through it too fast) is pretty much the only other facet that is really needed.

Otherwise, I was able to figure it out from playing and in-game information: I don't think our game is too complicated. I've played Star Trek Online, and believe me, it can be a LOT more confusing. Much harder to figure out what helps what out over there.

All we'd need next is a tutorial on how to locate and click the tutorial button.

I'll have to admit, I never had a problem in figuring out how the enhancements worked when I was new to the game, but then I have a nasty habit of reading the information provided in game.

I was on a trial account recently and on top of the trouble finding a team I actually found it pretty hard to find help. I could only talk in local and /hc, except it doesn't tell you in can talk in /hc. I assumed that like every other MMO the help channel would be /help or /h, but nope, those bring up some blob of text which didn't answer my question. At that point I forgot about my original question (though it was probably something trolly) and was scouring /help to figure out how to talk on /help. The worst part is that when I had the actual help channel highlighted and would try to chat into it, it would tell me that the command "/help takes 0 arguments"

Ironically the frustration from that set in motion the chain of events that ultimately made me reactivate... so what I see as poor design may actually be brilliant marketing...

Anyway, the first time I got a toon to 20 was on a trial account long ago when you could do that. I was on a stereotypical terrible Inv/SS tanker with six slotted brawl and taunt, and all the passive powers because I had such terrible end problem experience with a Stone tank, that I decided to play a set that go just use passive powers. It was so bad that if I came across a similar build today I wouldn't kick them off my team; I'd instead kick everybody else off my team and begin private instruction. With the advent of real numbers I doubt I'd have botched so hard, but it's still an example of how bad things can get.

As far as template builds go; if you look in any tabletop RPG's main book* you'll notice that they at some point include afew premade builds. It's good for if you just want to jump in without thinking (aka the freedom community), and it's good if you just want to see what a well rounded character looks like. Of any MMO I played, building for COH is the closest to building for a tabletop in terms of options, and therefore should probably look to the table top for inspirations.

*by any, i mean any that don't fail this common trait...

Let's see if I can reach back the four years I've been playing this and recall my time spent as a wee lad...

...Nope, not recalling enhancement being an overly difficult dynamic for me to grasp, but then, It wasn't my first MMO either, so I was pretty proficient with menus. In fact, I recall feeling that I was rather surprised how little interface there was to clunk around the game, and how much I liked the enhancement system compared to say, loot. Mostly I was irritated that they changed the naming schematic for DO's and SO's, so I had to read the description of everything to have any idea what the **** it did. Now I just memorized the colours.

By the time IO's came out I was already a super cool information savvy kind of guy.

Though it is fairly off-topic, the /help channel thing DOES need to be looked at.
I think I only found out about using /hc through one of my other global channels.