I agree that there is a lot that needs an overhaul, but as stated, the idea is that we start with this, then build on it. You said ‘I don’t think having a better mentor system will fix the current… system’, and then say ‘If I didn’t have someone to thoroughly explain to me what to do when I started…I would’ve quit’. So you praise a mentor system, but don’t think improving it would solve any issues? Could you elaborate on that, because for me that seems contradictory, and I’d like to understand your view
I mainly think that there is currently too much information when you log in for the first time for a community-driven mentor system to be feasible.
I was asking my friend something every 10 seconds despite having prior MMO-Experience.
While WoW is a relatively simple game to play and perform well in there is SO much information that just jumps out at you and its very overwhelming, especially now with chromie time etc. once you boost a character.
Like tells you to go to the new zone but it also tells you to go to 10 different locations and once you hit max level you’re kind of just lost?
There’s a lot of fat to be cut to make the game much less confusing to play when you start out.
Ah, I see! Thank you for elaborating, and being willing to discuss your viewpoint.
Do you think there should be better pop-ups/windows for tutorials rather than a mentor system then? Or do you think an in-game wiki-type thing would be more beneficial?
I’m not too sure if changing the game in-line with what I’ve suggested would simplify it (that player has a marker so would be open to questions), or complicate it further (here’s another thing for you to notice/have explained).
Thank you again for being open to discussion and elaboration, I’ve found it helpful and thought provoking.
I think they could expand on the guide system, but there should never be rewards. I also believe this should be a Blizzard run system and not endorse guilds in the ways suggested.
There are, of course, some great communities out there that also help people without being rewarded.
Blizzard did experiment with a discord for new players. That was scrapped after a trial period.
The mentor system has been abused in ffxiv to the core and no it will not solve anything in wow either .the only thing people can do is look at their own behaviour and be better people .
I used to be tryhard in the past and would fume on every other mistake people did . Since last year i have started to stop worrying about it and as a healer i even stop if the tank is looking at map in dungeons .like it is not on timer .spending two minutes more will not be end of the world for me .
Boosts were always considered not new player friendly, because you skip the process of learning to play level by level, talent point by talent point. Hero classes that started at level 50+ required you to have a certain level on another character and part of it was so that you don’t get overwhelmed by getting a full kit right from the get go.
I see what you’re saying, but you both seem to be missing the whole ‘it’s new players that give the points’ aspect of this. There’s nothing for players to enroll in. The only enrollment is for guilds that meet the x, y, z, of whatever criteria Blizzard set and even then, it’s only to identify to new players that there’s a group of people that are willing to help them (which would then still be subject to the new players giving them their points). We could even remove the reward aspect of it and keep everything else the same (new players giving points to helpful people, guild master signing up to say their guild is willing to help etc.). But again, there is no player enrollment.
I am not saying there aren’t people out there willing to help, but rather pose the idea of ‘could we provide a marker and incentive to encourage the player base to be helpful?’. Some people will do it for nothing, absolutely (I’ve always helped people for nothing), but if we can find a way to reward people, why wouldn’t we? The idea that it’s because it’d attract the ‘wrong’ type of people is a bit of a fallicy, because the types of ‘wrong’ people it would attract, are typically not the kind of people that would go out their way to get an extra 100 trader’s tender (for example).
Have you got any ideas to expand/fix/support the guide system that we could look at instead of this one?
Thank you for your input!
I pose these questions to you in response; How has the mentor system in FF14 been abused? How do we know we can’t create something that won’t result in abuse of the system? How do we encourage people to look at their own behaviour?
Would a system like this where it’s based around how new players experience the world not make it abuse free, since veteran players have no direct control over it (save their behaviour?)?
You seem to misunderstand that this will attract the wrong type of people who will just do this to earn points to win prizes then go again. It’s not people that care about the community or helping others. It’s purely another grind for rewards. That isn’t good for the community or the playerbase as a whole.
No rating or score system should be attached to anything that involves helping others. The incentive should be to help. Not to reap rewards. A couple of us have tried to explain this so at this point we simply don’t agree and that’s fine. Everyone has their own ideas.
As for the guide system. I would like to see them allow players to stay longer so that they can continue to ask questions as they reach end game. But giving them the option to leave the chat as they have met the criteria. The guild finder also needs improving and needs to embrace that it no longer requires realms.
There are enough communities/subreddits/discords for new players to be directed to. A huge amount of information about the game is available online and we frequently direct players to those resources.
I feel that we put different import on the ‘why’ people are helping people, and that’s ok, because its allowed us to have a discussion and share ideas! Let’s face it, if everyone always agreed with each other, nothing would get done, and life would be bland. Thank you for sharing your view respectfully, and I hope you feel I’ve done the same.
I hadn’t even considered about them being prompted/forced out of the new channel, so that is a good shout! The guild finder does absolutely also need work, I can’t remember the last time someone told me they’d used it haha.
I am against rewarding things like this with something like tender.
People should help, because they want to help. What you’re suggesting is basically going to make it into a ‘grind’.
Rewarding some title would be fine.
But not tender.
And this is exact point where it turns from a possibly good idea into just anotehr exploitable system that will cause yet more whining about how X can´t get Y, but now on a guild-scale not on a player scale.
If you have to actively reward people for behaving like well adjusted adults, you should be banning them, instead, because they still won´t be well adjusted adults, and will absolutely turn around and bite your hand off the second there’s no more reward.
A system like this would prompt veterans to “farm” new players for their upvotes or whatever you use to measure the amount of currency they get.
I’ve seen this happen in other MMOs, and it never got even close to achieving the intended goal of the devs.
Communities, guilds and external websites provide everything new players need to integrate into WoW.
And btw, you should rename your thread to “my opinion about the new player experience”. It’s funny that feedback such as this never actually comes from new players, but rather veterans claiming to speak for them.
Have you got a suggestion to improve it/change it to go along with the critique? How to make it so it isn’t ‘exploitable’ for example?
P.S. I see that you edited what you said (three times I noticed haha!), and get your point, but this post has had a lot of ‘it won’t work cos X’ or ‘it’s a problem because Y’, and not a lot of ‘if we changed X it would get a better result’
I’ve never said I’m speaking for new players? Just my own observations and what I think could fix issues I perceive based on feedback I’ve gotten and people I’ve spoken to. My opinion on the new player experience is one sentence in paragraphs of writing, which makes up the bulk of the post. But thank you for your thoughts.
Not sure what new players you’ve talked to (if any) but in my experience the worst thing for a new player is for someone to hold their hand and pull them through the content by “teaching” them.
A help channel where new players can ask questions is one thing, but anything beyond that has to happen at the pace and inclination of the player, or their experience will be trash.
Social/casual guilds already provide the mentorship you’re describing, and their reward is the friends they make along the way, is it not?
No, because I don´t beleive a system like this to be either necessary or even for that matter beneficial, because it can and will not work without the very incentives that make it a problem. As Anna already hinted at, numerous games have already made this mistake, much to thge chagrin of their respective playerbases
Wheras the People that actually want to help new players already do so by becoming mentors
So then, in your opinion, how would you make the new player experience ‘better’? That sounds combatative, and I don’t mean it to, I’m genuinely asking.
Is it fine as it is? Does our current mentor system work? Does it fill the need it’s designed to fill? How do we make it so it does? Does it just need talking about so more people are aware of it? A pop-up window for veteran players to remind them it exists (so those that want to help can more easily access it?)?
Would love to hear your thoughts
So your suggestion (if I’m understanding you correctly) is to have an in-game repository of knowledge, that new players can go to at their own pace and ask questions/get information? So by marking guilds as designated ‘Guardian’/‘Trainer’/‘Instructional’ guilds, that would achieve this, would it not?
Social and casual guilds can be great places to learn things in/experience content. So what’s the negative from that extra identification of ‘this is a place you can feel safe to learn and ask questions’? Also, I would contest that you’re dealing in an absolute ‘social/casual guilds already provide the mentorship you’re describing’, when that just isn’t true across the board. I’ve been in social/casual guilds that didn’t really answer questions or provide mentorship, and I’ve been in some that do, this is about finding the ones that do, not assuming that they all are.
If I have misunderstood what your intent was, I apologise, and would ask for you to elaborate so we can get suggestions/tweaks/fixes to what I’ve proposed.
The only actual new players opinion I can offer is that of my wife, who quit once hitting levelcap after leveling in dungeons as a healer because she refused to be associated with this community (and people call ME the hardaszz one… )
Don´t allow them to queue for instances while leveling.
One would have to ask an actual new player for this all to have much merit as far as whether it´s fine or not, but it definitely was not my wife´s primary issue, that was 100% ellitist tryhard f-wits refusing to allow her any chance to to learn her class and role for the 60 levels after Exile´s Reach and then flaming her for not already being a healing god. However, just as a side note, I do find it quite telling that her reasons for quitting and my reason for categorically refusing to play with randoms for almost 10 years are identical…
I do believe the mentor system itself works as intended, and I can´t say I was trying to find it when it crossed my path (though admittedly I know longer know what those circumstances were as it´s years ago, I may or may not have had to actively pursue it… but if I did that merely underscores my statement about mentors being ther ebecause they actually WANT to help new players and not for any reward…)
As far as making iot more “visible”, that could well be intentional , because the vast majority of players I wouldn´t even want to see in the mentor system, god forbid, the damage their elitist attitudes and tryhard spew could potentially cause there would be immesaurable…
The issue with WoW and new players is, that we already have a massive amount of guides for every aspect made for all types of players.
It’s often forgotten, that those guides and mods are all made by the community to help players. It only requires a minimum of effort to Google it, not much harder than asking and definitely more comfortable having someone explain it in a limited chat window without pictures for the 100th time.
I have experienced players to be helpful when someone asked specific questions, but less motivated to write an essay because someone is too lazy to Google it in 2 seconds.
Same with the mentor channel, most new players don’t even think of asking. Most new players don’t even know what they are supposed to ask.
I especially think that the murloc disappears way too fast. It would help mentors a lot if it stays a bit longer (maybe with opt out) and would be more visible like in LFG or a mentor queue maybe.
Also mentor should be account wide, because my toons can’t be mentors but I’m not in the murlocs natural habitat with my mentor chars… So unless they contact us, which as I said rarely happens, us mentors have barely any contact with them.
Oh and for the rewards: no.
No rewards for mentoring, for once we should take a good look at FF14 and abandon that thought.
Most of the texts in there are “#showtooltip x /cast x” or “come here” or “how do I stop walking” or the funniest one that comes several times a week, a hunter, that spams “F* YOUR M*” three times, in caps. xD.
Personally, I like to help players who ask for help, I like to discuss strategies, rotations, possitions, and interactions overal; what is true tho, is that in those interactions sometimes you can’t really learn something new from the “mentor” perspective; so aside from the selfless satisfaction of helping another, there’s no reward, and if you add the layer that is having to put some efford, explaining something carefuly, analysing, spending some time and “love” to the fact that the other person is asking for it instead of googling by himself, is a bit… hard to take sometimes. So I understand how players aren’t willing to help others when the information is public, and at hand.
While understandable, more experienced Players like ourselves also need to understand that, by industry standard, the mere act of posting on a forum or watching a youtube guide already qualifies you as a “hardcore” player, because the vast majority of players of any game will do neither, ever.
And it is this vast majority that “we” as a community regularly display nothing but disdain and utter disgust for in game by not even allowing them the slightest chance to learn it properly, much less participate in even the most casual of content, and don´t even get me started on all teh BS they have to deal with if they ever want to try actually challenging content… FFS, people get flamed for not having watched guides before queuing for LFR, how much more preposterous and self-aggrandizing can it even get?
If today’s community were around back in TBC when I started, I would have never become an RWF raider or even remotely good at the game, because instead of the healer in my first DM run explaining what Arcane intellect is and why I should always have it up or the tank in my first Gnomeregan run telling me that it makes more sense to use blizzard on large pulls, instead I would have just been ruthlessly flamed and summarily kicked for not buffing / AEing, leaving me as a new player with a punishement, but no idea for what, and therefore no chance to actually improve. And i would have quickly done exactly what my wife did, said “F this ” and moved on to a different game (or in her case back to FF14).
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” and moved on to a different game (or in her case back to FF14).