[Poruku]

I've started working on a new player guide to post to the forum. If someone wants to contribute/give feedback, let me know.

I do think there's a ton of Goodwill in the community, and people have good ideas. Dev could definitely delegate, ask for help, give people the ability to bring their changes to the game.

I will mention that one of the most important things for me is that the Video Game contain all the crucial information. For instance, the Korvara race lore should be part of the race lore in the tutorial room. The lore of each nation should be present in each nation, as text that is readable inside the game (not a link to a google doc). Information on how things go, such as the use of discord pings and the existance of events, should be part of the tutorial, etc.

There should also be an effort to remove and revise the Tips and Lore that are constantly posted to everyone in the game, many of which are either purely G6 (which is not useful), or are giving straight up false information. How can you expect a new player to know that tips can't be trusted? In-game information should have the highest level of scrutiny, because that's the thing everyone is interacting with at a base level. If the game itself cannot be trusted to know the game, then what can? I feel like this is both easy to fix and important.

[zericosmic]

[*]learn countless mechanical systems in the game, stats, builds, equips, and how to play their classes

The learning curve for this game is actually insane, it's so large that often times even players who stick around for years, often do not know how to stat optimally, and there's almost no resources to actually assist in this endeavour, this particularly leads to people being hesitant to really engage in stuff like PvP (which can sometimes further translate to shying away from conflict), because the difference between an optimal build and one that is not is colossal. I actually feel like this game could desperately use some resources and help when it comes teaching people, because generally unless you're lucky enough to run in to someone who's both good at it (something I don't even consider myself), and willing to help, you might be shit out of luck.

We made Korvara way too big. Make people all people within the same nation at least. That'd be a start to fixing Korvara's issues. Make finding players easier without hoping they put up an LFG to maybe be able to find them in this giant world. Either address the issue of conflict or have it be entirely barred outside explicit consent with both parties, indecision only hurts everyone.

I've seen a couple of new players leave after attempting to find roleplay in other parts of the world and simply not getting or finding much, if any at all in some cases.

IMO Part of the issue of new player accessibility is the fact that in this giant world, unless you have friends to call on you to RP at so and so place, you have to divine where the roleplay is, unless you go around chasing pings which most people hardly ever make. In fact I've often recently heard the sentiment that "Yokoshura is just as inactive right now as Korvara", which might feel true sometimes, but as I've spent much time checking with my mighty powers, is not.. Yokoshura is simply large and a lot of the RP does not happen around its square but can often happen in other parts of it, but going around snooping at every corner of the world just ain't an exciting experience, it makes it akin to that one gif of the guy looking in to the fridge only to be disappointed.

I believe this is something that an addon in WoW actually helps a lot with, the addon "Total Roleplay 3" has a feature called "Scan for Roleplay" which will basically tell you where the RP homies are at, and you can turn off your scan location by changing your RP status, this would be a somewhat awkward feature given SL2 has no map, but I believe something akin to it would help.

But breaking into many of these RP spheres has only gotten more difficult over time. Nations, at some point, became rooted around cliques more and more, and interacted with people outside them less and less; something that presents problems for established players, let alone new ones.

I also believe this connects in to the other issue. The world is huge enough that if you have the slightest bit of a negative experience with someone, you could just pick a corner of the world and never give that person another chance to roleplay with you, I've also heard of many situations where new players were quickly jumped with "Don't RP in X Nation, because Y RPs in that nation." or newbie's who've had most of their RP occur in certain locations be avoided for it when they tried branching out. I believe the community is far too fragmented in terms of physical location, that the distance can sometimes feel like the distance between Korvara and G6, and I do not think that is healthy for a community.

[TorientalVortX]

Don't have too much time to fully post atm from my Phone here but something I do want to agree on especially is this point.

"Learn countless mechanical systems in the game, stats, builds, equips, and how to play their classes."

It certainly is just alot of information to go through truthfully, especially eith how much creative freedom there is in some stuff. This was something I got to learn first hand even when working on the web calculator and more.

Honestly was getting burnt out writing some things only to find out moments later usually "oh theres this hidden thing too...shoot"

Even when trying to bring some friends in, there certainly are some things just hard for one to try to learn without outside help

[Miller]

I figured I'd chime in on the conversation but:
To put it bluntly, SL2 has quite literally some of the worst onboarding processes I've seen in a game; I don't mean any insult when I say this, but the majority of the tutorial hasn't changed in twelve years and a lot of the onboarding that was present on G6/Sigrogana is not relevant content anymore.

So I apologize for not addressing more of the overarching topics at hand, but I'll be fixtated on 'The NPE'.

The New Player Experience

The average new player is gonna spawn into professor pink's office and be absolutely bewildered before engaging with the rest of the game. The tutorial experience roughly goes like this:

1. Speak to Professor Pink.
   
2. Pick a race.
   
3. Pick classes.
   
4. Invest SP.
   
5. Buy an item and equip it.
   
6. Choose your name / do your appearance.
   
7. Pick a nation.
   
8. Leave.
   
   

That's it. That's basically all the guidance you get before you're thrown into the world; if there's one part of this process I want to point out and heavily critique, choosing a nation is one of the biggest traps a new player can fall into. Korvara is clearly the focus, but encouraging picking G6 for new players to learn systems often leads them into a desolate wasteland where they gradually teeter off or get told in OOC to remake on Korvara. A lot of mechanics in this tutorial are not communicated in the slightest to the character and forces them to learn by trial and error.

Including but not limited to: (correct me if I'm wrong)

1. Main class only abilities. (I've seen countless players be confused by this while coming into the game)
   
2. Scaled Weapon Attack.
   
3. Spells requiring tomes to use their full SWA. (The 'About Tomes' section in the description for any tome is the only way it's communicated and also outdated)
   
4. Food
   
5. Soft/Hard Caps and Scaled vs Unscaled.
   

This leads them to asking in Korvara's discord or on OOC and receiving a variety of responses that range from barely helpful or too much information being unloaded at once.

There's barely any direction.

No seriously, after you pick one of the nations; you're given very VERY little direction on where to go. It requires players to fill in the gaps or someone inquisitive enough to ask the NPCs for any hints on the matter.

For example, the lv1-20 dungeons:
Telegrad's starting dungeon is a ways off from what you would expect and your only real hint on the matter is the inn... in the backend of the city.
Meiaquar is a lot better off, most players could easily end up stumbling into it.
Duyuei is somewhat in the same boat as Meiaquar, but there's a far more likely chance a player will wander off and not find the dungeon within the city.
Geladyne's not too amazing, the dungeon is in the far southwest and a bit out of the ways.

Now after that? You have to fumble around an island that takes a huge chunk of time to travel until you stumble onto the next area that you can level at.

There's barely any direction (Solutions).

I think it'd be cool if there was in game maps or better communication to the player as to where these dungeons are. If you want some of my honest suggestions that wouldn't take a big rework? Shards should be set up to lead you to dungeons and important locations, not be haphazardly placed everywhere like they feel right now. Nemalyth could also tell you outright that there's a zone for leveling in every map.

But If I'm being honest, I think a starting zone on Korvara catered for people learning the game would help the most. Why? While G6 wasn't the greatest example, there was at least quests that generally guided you in the right direction for leveling and I think that would personally be a good way to encourage newer players to learn the game and it's easier than trying to homogenize the experience across all five nations. But what I also implore is that if this approach is taken, it must be shown and told at the same time; too much text is an easy way to get someone to clock out of a game on their first go. (Which while ironic for an RP game, it does happen.)

In short, give us tutorial island from Runescape as a 'Nation' to start in. Give people a little zone that is more 'quest' driven and allow people to fumble around + get a better understanding of mechanics and have a means of traveling on a boat to one of the five nations after it's done. (Though it'd be cool to have an option to return for anyone willing to help people out)

This would allow players to level to 5 or 10 before engaging with the rest of the game while also adding in an avenue for players both new and veteran to hang out and help each other out

There's little clarity.

I don't want to harp on this too much, but there's so much text that hasn't been updated in a decade. Tips and Hints are especially relevant for the new player experience; but there's even examples that veteran players can't tell the difference between, such as: 'Weapon Power, Power, Total Power and Power.'. While I don't have a plethora of examples on hand, power is one of the most notable ones, there's no communication to the player if they affect Scaled Weapon Attack (like in Pure Power's case) or if they're flat damage bonuses (like Claret Call).

There's a lot of old text that could use a once over.

That's my soapbox for today. There's a lot more I could go on about but I'm tired.

[Rendar]

I think it should probably be said as well. As someone that's been doing Kira's hardcore challenge...

Level 1 thru 10 suck. 1 thru 5 the most. You go from fighting 1 jammer at tutorial (pretty reasonable) to fighting 2 to 3 enemies. No exceptions. If you underestimate how much damage they can output from double tapping you? You die. This only gets compounded further with not all dungeons being equal. Telegrad dungeon has water scaling, AND ranged attacks from the clams that get spell scaling. So they have MASSIVE health pools. It's reasonable, if you have a party, or know what you're doing.

But the new players that are testing the waters? Not part of the community yet? They stumble into this cave supposedly their level.. and immediately die. Jammers are bad whenever the mages get spells (they love getting air pressure)... duyuei can be kind of a pain with the spirits having ranged attacks and phys dr. Meiaquar is bad when delvers get spells.

So you think. Ok. I'm out of the red now than I'm level 25. You move on to the next dungeon for your tier. You want to know what the only safe 20 to 40 dungeon is? Lake Hallard. Because abandoned mine have respawning enemies that blind, evade ignore, and have excessive dr. If you didn't build a lot of skill, lost beach is going to be hit hell (melee builds get double hell here vs soldier krabs and electrojams). Goblin cave? The mages slam spells like a 9 to 5 worker slams back energy drinks as their lunch.

The solo experience in sl2 SCREAMS to party up, but once people get to 60? They rarely go dungeoning with lower level folks. The exp is not worthwhile for them, and it's not a learning experience for the lower level character because the level 60 presses exactly one button and kills everything.

I don't have any solid solutions, but doing a run thru on mob stats and damage would be ideal, methinks, because the average person is dying in 2 to 3 hits. Maybe a bit more. Because mobs stat scaling is horrendously outpacing player stats. If a player focuses on health, they lose damage. Which means fights take longer. And mobs are getting damage. Ranged attacks. Unique skills. Health, and hit.

No seriously. The sheer amount of people in HC that have died sub level 10 is stark. The sheer amount that have died solo grinding goblin cave? EVEN MORE STARK. I've literally been telling people to just skip to 10 thru quests (that people forgot existed and gave exp. So how do new players even stand a chance there?) because it sucks!

Edit: tl;dr

Incentives for level 60s to want to help low levels at a baseline. Taking from City of Heroes, the Mentor system allows a level 50 to 'scale down' to their protege's level +2, iirc, and they gain EXP proportional to what they would get from killing mobs their level. In this instance? Lowering yourself power wise down to level 3 to help out a level 1, if you fought a level 10? That'd be like fighting a level 60~70 enemy. It doesn't help with the loot situation (which is why most people are grinding mobs anyways), but it'd at least give some degree of an incentive to do that.

Secondly, just. Mob amount scaling? 1 player in the 1-20 dungeons shouldn't be fighting 3 mobs... maybe 1-2. In 20-40 dungeons, maybe ALSO 1-2.. and then at 40-60, it can scale back up to 2-3 for a solo player. (or have it be some kind of option).

Thirdly, Oh my God Why Do The mobs HIT SO HARD. I was level 21, getting dinged through 30 def/res by mobs using spells and spamming them and hitting me for friggin 60+ damage each. Spell scaling with mob weapons is jank as hell, and HURTS. Basic attack mobs WISH they could ding someone from 8 tiles away in an aoe for that much damage.

Edit 2: I forgot about Yokoshura's starting dungeon.

Yokoshura's starting dungeon is actual torture. If you go in there level 1, you will die. Over and over and over again. The armadillos are unreasonably tanky, hit like a truck with their sand spell (it will likely blind you if it doesnt outright kill you). And the shades have shadow boxing. So. It's just kind of a very unforgiving starter dungeon as well that DEMANDS a party.