Suggestion: update and make mandatory Hall of novice tutorial

[RVallant]

The road to 70 buff is so strong it allows one to skip a lot of extra mob fighting early on and class quests which teach how to play the class.

Road to 70 is pretty bad, it trivialises content IMO, and one of the best ways for people to learn is to struggle in overworld content. Stand in AoE's in the overworld and die? You'll stop doing it (in theory), whereas if you're twenty levels over thanks to doing one side quest, you'll probs eat the AoE/Special attack and think nothing of it.

I thought MSQ skips and level 80 skips etc were a bad idea at the time, never mind now, as being thrown into that content straight off the bat is iffy.

Anyway, there are other things that need teaching;

1. How to read.

(I'm not joking, there are too many people skipping everything and not paying attention. Some mechanics are explained via NPC dialogue boxes etc, but some people seem to think reading = hard and skipping = big brain move. For example; The guildhest with the Adamantoise that you need to 'save' and not kill...)

2. How to use the chat systems.

I've run a few dungeons with newer players and noticed that they were radio silent. Then I figured out why. They couldn't use party chat and were typing everything in /say. And that were the responsive ones. I know some people take this for granted, if you've played MMOs before or whatever, you'll figure out chat channels, but some newbies genuinely won't have a clue and that's not good for when you need to chat to them.

I agree with you on the common target indicators, tbh I've been getting by via copying my team when it comes to hiding etc, but very often I'm not seeing what each marker means for each mechanic. Tethers in particular are the bane of my existence at the moment, do I run away? Do I run towards? Do I break them? Ugh. (It's fun to figure them out, but I dread the day I do mechanics wrong and someone chews me out over it. ;_

[Big_Oof]

On the topic of hall of the novice, I've noticed that when it comes to the role I play (healer), there's a huge discrepancy between what the hall leads you to believe you'll be doing versus what you'll actually be doing. Other than the generally useful stuff, like dodging aoe indicators, it prompts you to keep your allies alive. By spamming gcd heals. Surely, those are the only ones that are available at lvl15. But that is SO not how the game seems to work for healers later on, and I'm saying this as I've only just now reached Heavensward myself, let alone endgame. I imagine the contrast is even more stark. So what I'm saying is, even if you do hall of the novice, which is totally not a given, it doesn't REALLY prepare you for much as it currently is. Especially considering how frowned upon sitting there spamming gcd heals is. I don't know if this is an issue other roles face as well but it's definitely very noticeable in mine.

[Tlamila]

Someone mentioned guildhests. Those would be even more useful than the Hall of Novice, if only. If only a few mechanics weren't trivialized nowadays by overlevelling (ex. the ones that require you to kill adds, adds can now mostly be ignored), and if only they gave you time to actually read the instructions that pop up. The problem with the latter is that they pop up once you're free to go, while insted they should pop while you're waiting in the circle, and not let you get out until somebody has had the time to read. As someone who did them all already you don't need to read, but it would be just like when you're witing on a first timer to watch a cinematic.

[PyurBlue]

So what I'm saying is, even if you do hall of the novice, which is totally not a given, it doesn't REALLY prepare you for much as it currently is. Especially considering how frowned upon sitting there spamming gcd heals is. I don't know if this is an issue other roles face as well but it's definitely very noticeable in mine.

It's like that for all roles. The lessons tell you that damaging from the rear deals more damage, without informing you that this is only for a select few attacks that are present only for melee DPS. It tells tanks to pull only the minimum amount possible despite mass pulling being viable from the first dungeon (I don't expect a new tank to pull everything, but they should know that it's possible). It teaches DPS to not even think about attacking something other than what the tank (who will exclusively use single target attacks during the lessons) is attacking, which dissuades AoE use.

I see these as somewhat common points of confusion in the novice network. Those new players willing to learn will pay attention to these things and try to apply them, not realizing that it's only half-advice.

[kaynide]

Personally I’d be fine with a kind of general how to party, then maybe 1 tutorial covering specific mechanics... like using limit breaks or the duty specific action/ability common in 4.0 on. (Lakshmi for example).

Would much prefer 1 single 5-10 min instance to cover an entire expansion packs worth of tutorial tbh to 10 or so 30 sec things.

[Latarma]

Adding to my post for earlier the cannon in castrum meridianum, omg the number of people that's don't know how to use them on last boss.

[EaMett]

Honestly, just a little addition like explaining basic markers. I've played with a few Lvl 70+ that didn't even know what a stack marker was. Kinda scary

[Morningstar1337]

While the hall of novice is nice, a good game is a game that is learnt by playing, so the best update to progression they could do is un-nerf older content.

If we're going that route then there would need to be changes to the DF and its content. As Devil's advocate, i would propose:

1. The first of which would be to make the min iLevel setting the default rather than an option while also having the "go in with the max iLevel for current level" be optional in its place. Moslty applicable to roulette where options are not available bar in-prog
2. From there have (Level X0) dungeons drops going forward drop gear of the same iLevel as the min, as that would now be the max iLevel for the instance, Leveling dungeons are unaffected by this change. Alternative have the gear be tuned instead for meeting the iLevel reqs for Raids.
3. Apply both to Allience raids, Trials and Normal Raids (not Savage or extreme difficulty) for all content cycles
4. If the decision to have X0 Dungeon gear be tuned to meet Raids is taken then have Expert Roulette have dungeons that give out those gear, and then Cycle those out for the next raid tier with more dungeons and thus new gear for meeting that tier's entry level reqs

These changes will kill a few birds with one stone

• Healer downtime an problem? Well now there's less as players will never be overgeared
• CT growing tedious? well now they become more to the point that few would dare queue for them without 2 hours to blow, thus saving alliance roulette
• Likewise the MSQ roulette would be engaging enough that ppl lookign for easy tomes/exp would nope right out and perhaps might allow a roll back on the unskippable cutscenes (but then again as those might also serve to deter said folk prolly not)
• Who knows? perhaps it might also be enough to ensure players looking for a challenge need not look solely to blind runs or Savage/Ultimate for such

Road to 70 is pretty bad, it trivialises content IMO, and one of the best ways for people to learn is to struggle in overworld content. Stand in AoE's in the overworld and die? You'll stop doing it (in theory), whereas if you're twenty levels over thanks to doing one side quest, you'll probs eat the AoE/Special attack and think nothing of it...

Prolly too late for that, but perhaps going the horizontal gear/content prog would would alleviate that somewhat if only because there players wouldn't be as tempted to skip several cycles of content for the new hotness, or in other words the existing content woudn't be "outdated"?

[Tlamila]

Adding to my post for earlier the cannon in castrum meridianum, omg the number of people that's don't know how to use them on last boss.

I don't think that's a case of not knowing as much as not caring, because even after you explain it, even after 5 persons explain it, they usually still continue to ignore the mechanic.

[Latarma]

I don't think that's a case of not knowing as much as not caring, because even after you explain it, even after 5 persons explain it, they usually still continue to ignore the mechanic.

ture but it's still annoying as hell