/trade 101 : dedicated to help new comers with the game. Answers/Tricks/Mentoring

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Devonor wrote:

Spoiler

I think for many newcomers stats and items is what confusing them . They realize the game is all about items and stats . i met a guy like that i wanted to help out with tips . he thanked me by giving me all his items and quit the game . i tried to make him change his mind but he said : he wanted to kill monsters and have fun , not playing a stock market game , quoting him . He was overwhelmed by how much he needed to learn about the game and he didnt want to bother even if he got a mentor in me for free.

 I guess that there are millions of "Looky Loo's", new players that hear about PoE, come in and play the first few zones, see the multitude of stats of each item (and sockets and links), get a glazed look of data input overload, quit, and never come back. There's nothing we can do for new players that are wanting a super dumbed down arpg. In that case PoE is definitely not the arpg they are looking for. There is nothing you or I can say to keep them playing longer to get past the new player drowning in a sea of stats feeling of PoE. I'll have to think on this to see if there is any way that we can help new players to not just throw up their hands and say "no mas" and quit when they don't know anything about anything in PoE and all they see is a the mountain of stats.

 One thing that I remember as a newbie way back in CB PoE was the difficulty of understanding gear sockets and links and how the whole gem system (skills and supports) worked together to give us millions of combinations of ways to kill monsters. That definitely took me a few weeks to get reasonably comfortable in my understanding of their usage. Of course then there is the huge passive tree. There is just no way to easily ease a player coming here from D3 or TorchLight or any other arpg that does not have a passive skill tree system in it into how to use it. We will need to publish better guides on how to use the passive tree.

 Right now I see the largest impediment to helping a new player over the initial hurdles of PoE is getting better help inside the game itself. GGG being the very small company that it is has never had the human resources available to really improve the in-game help for new players. New players are just thrown on the beach and pretty much must fend for themselves without a helping hand to guide them. Some love this "learn by doing" and "trial and error" approach to playing PoE but I can see that many could be very intimidated by the lack of useful help early on (without needing to google for it) and quit. GGG would do well to have more links to additional website information for new players.

 

so, a couple things here.

I like the idea, but in and of itself it can't work. In order for it to work, a couple things would need to happen. /global 101 would nee to be the default global channel an account goes to. But for that to work, you also need your global channel to be remembered between play sessions/global connect sessions....which would be a QoL current players would like anyways. /802ers would never have to manually join again, cancer 1 would always have cancer, etc.

 I went back to find the comments by Chris about new players stopping at Normal Brutus. I found it at 38:40 time. Chris basically states that because PoE is free-to-play they get millions of new players trying it out and stopping at Brutus battle. Chris thinks it's just the nature of the "free to play" mentality of trying out many games each week but not staying very long in any single game. Chris even admitted to only playing League of Legends for like 1 minute and quitting. So for PoE the challenge for us is to figure out a way to get new players hooked on this arpg before the Brutus battle.

 I created a new Scion build to see if Spectral Throw has been bufffed:

So I reached Normal Encampment without speed running in 2 hours 45 minutes. I got the Medicine Chest and did the Flooded Depths side quests to boot (skipped Mud Flats Necro side quest). Nothing here would/should be difficult for any new player that has played any other arpg. GGG changed Normal last fall to make sure new players could learn their way around PoE without dieing and quitting. It can't be watered down any further so what's causing the high drop out rates of new exiles?

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Arrowneous wrote:

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Sexcalibure wrote:

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ladish wrote:

I like the idea of a qa style chat for discussing game mechanics, build advice etc but I worry it would degenerate into giz me free stuffz.

lets hope not
when everything is handed to you, you dont learn shit

 Good point. Are new players expecting to breeze through Normal without breaking a sweat? Do they want everything we learned the hard way handed to them (entitlement)? If so then we must inform them that PoE doesn't play that way.

You don't recall "Where's Oak?" Considering that GGG redesigned the game to avoid that problem, I would say that these problems are not always things that many players will figure out by dying and trying again.

Just a few days ago, my character was in act 1 normal (to swap masters) and a player whispered me with some very basic questions. The player knew PoE was hard, and was concerned about their skill choices and how critical they were. They weren't to Merveil yet, but they were already worried about "bricking" their character.

I gave the player a few basic pointers and a little bit of a confidence boost and they were happily along their way again.

..........

Little things that experienced players take for granted, can seem to be big obstacles to new players. I think the 101 channel is a great idea.

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Arrowneous wrote:

I was shocked a little to hear ..Chris state .. in the State of Exile ... that about half of all new players that try Path of Exile quit at Normal Brutus because they think he's too hard.

I am shocked that you are shocked at that - really, is it that hard to see? I've a lot of friends that have tried PoE, thought it was great, but just moved on after a few days because without understanding the mechanics it seemed too difficult.

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Arrowneous wrote:

If nearly half of the new players stop playing at that early boss then either they should never be here in the first place (this is not the arpg they are looking for) or are completely clueless as to how to play an arpg.

And if PoE is one of their first arpg games? Should they need a degree before they are allowed to play PoE?



Lastly, what is the cost of this channel to people who don't want to help?

NADA.

So what level of concern should they exhibit over whether the channel is useful?

NADA

Don't thank me,

De Nada.

 I think new players should have at least attended the Springfield Heights Institute of Technology (S.H.I.T.) to have some kind of arpg tech knowledge.

 With 0 arpg knowledge (newbie has never played an arpg) that is going to make a PoE 101 primer much more difficult. For example, "now boys and girls you must learn how to use a mouse and keyboard at the same time and you must know your left mouse button from your right". I over-dramatize for effect but you get the idea. There are things that we have to assume and will expect any new PoE player to know before washing up on the beach. We can't help new players that don't know nothing about an arpg and expect him/her to be up to speed by the Normal Brutus battle.

 I would recommend to new players that they not be concerned that they're first build is not going to be endgame viable. For a new player the 1st build or 2 or 3 will probably not be endgame viable. The first few builds are just a part of the PoE learning curve and as such should be viewed as throw away builds. New players should also know up front that PoE is not a one and done arpg. You shouldn't just make a build, play through 3 times, run a few maps, and then quit never to return. PoE was designed for repeat play with the vast array of skill combos and as such this huge pool of build choices means multiple character builds. PoE is definitely not a Whimseyshire arpg.

 OK, enough said. So now the hardest problem is going to be getting new players to come into the PoE forums seeking help. This thread is going to get buried real quick.

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Arrowneous wrote:

 ...for PoE the challenge for us is to figure out a way to get new players hooked on this arpg before the Brutus battle.

 I created a new Scion build .... I had no difficulty at all dispatching Brutus with a half dozen circles of him strafing with my ST fist and killing a few skeles to refill my flasks. ... If you look carefully I have 6 unused passive points just to see if my knowledge and use of PoE passive tree was making Normal Brutus a piece of cake. ...
By the time I got to the entrance to Merveil's lair I had already maxed out my cold resist (79%) so I mostly face rolled her 2 forms. Normal Merveil is a very easy battle if you have maximum cold resist.
So I reached Normal Encampment without speed running in 2 hours 45 minutes. ..Nothing here would/should be difficult for any new player that has played any other arpg. GGG changed Normal last fall to make sure new players could learn their way around PoE without dieing and quitting. It can't be watered down any further so what's causing the high drop out rates of new exiles?

You hugely underestimate how much easier your knowledge makes it. I remember when I was new: Merveil was a real battle. We'd do her in party, everyone open their own TP just in case, and batter away usually with a few deaths. Vaal Oversoul, the same. And don't you recall all the "Oak carry" parties because some players struggled so? And that's just the combat mechanics, which in PoE are pretty trivial .

Now you know how to build the tree and do the basics probably without even thinking. The same with skills, supports, evaluating items you pick up to judge if they're worth equipping - when I started I was collecting white 3L items of every kind and all socket colours in case I might need one. (Admittedly that was pre-Vorici and fusing improvements, 4L was an achievement). it's not easy if you're not new to the game. And there are things like selecting better skills; how soon does a new player realise that the new skill might look pretty, but it's level 1 and is better with different supports so it won't work yet?

It's all complicated, and if you're not into searching for and watching tutorial videos it only gets easier after more effort than many are prepared to hazard on just one more FTP game with murky graphics and a fixed, close PoV. And remember how slow and clunky it feels with no gear (and no idea of what to go for) and weak, unsupported skills. I suspect Brutus one-shots are just the icing on the cake.

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Arrowneous wrote:

I would recommend to new players that they not be concerned that they're first build is not going to be endgame viable. For a new player the 1st build or 2 or 3 will probably not be endgame viable. The first few builds are just a part of the PoE learning curve and as such should be viewed as throw away builds.

That's another very good point, though. Remember how long it takes a new player to get close to end-game - it's not a one-session run to A1M, if they make it at all it's going to be 70-80 hours to get there. And that's assuming they even bother getting past Dominus, and the Daresso/Kaom/Piety/Malachai spikes - how welcoming are these to new players?

So after doing that, maybe getting through because they're overlevelled, they face the same thing in Cruel and it gets much much harder.

And if they play on through all that, get to A4C and face the new spike, then the new player slowly realises (or is told) their build is junk and they have to start again.

It's really hard to throw away that much effort, and enjoyment, to face the whole struggle again. And I started when A3 was new... just the first part; going through A4 twice as a new player it would be very dispiriting to find that this was just the training wheels and all my work was wasted.

I don't have an answer, just saying that this circumstance won't encourage new players to become old players. Far more will be repelled than will persevere.

 GGG has always had the difficulty of walking the tight rope in making PoE easy enough to get new players to go through 3 difficulty levels and yet make this arpg be a challenge for veteran players. I think it's impossible to please both ends to the player spectrum.

 As for Act 4 though, most players, old and new, pretty much dislike it. GGG says act 4 is "working as intended" in that they wanted act 4 (especially Merc act 4) to be much harder that act 3. The top elite players have always sucked up all content difficulty and asked for more and GGG has catered to them with open arms and act 4 difficulty is the direct result. GGG always wants PoE to be the top hardcore arpg. Nothing wrong with that. However, just making the act 4 bosses dish out higher damage spikes to "one-shot" our builds in the name of "hardcore" has not been the right approach. Proof of this is in the fact that most of us play up to merc Belly of the Beast and then skip it and go into maps. GGG needs to take a serious look as this and make changes to fix this. For example, I killed merc Malachai once (and only once) just to see how bad it was and to cross it off my bucket list and forever after skip it. Face facts GGG, the merc bosses don't drop shit for loot to justify the risk. GGG failed the risk/reward balance for all of the Belly of the Beast bosses. And without any passive points awarded for killing Malachai there is no credible reason to want to battle merc Malachai.

 One of many difficult balance challenges that GGG faces is that of keeping Wraeclast a wide open arpg sandbox. I think they've done a great job in delivering an open arpg with which we can create a million types of builds. By having as many combinations of skills and passives as PoE has there are always going to be very skilled players that find ways to create uber builds that obliterate everything. The flip side of ramping up the content difficulty to provide challenges to uber builds is that the new players will hit that content difficulty wall, die many times, become frustrated with being unable to kill a boss, and quit. One way for GGG to combat this content difficulty wall in standard leagues is to start at a certain level of difficulty, then when a new player's exile dies then dial down the boss damage a little. So for example, if a boss starts at 100% damage and you die, when you come back in to the boss battle that the damage drops to 95%, and if you die again, then the boss damage goes down to 90% (and so forth). This would definitely help new players get past bosses that their weak build can't take on at full boss strength. This would work for the current active zone, if you choose to reset the instance then the boss would reset back to 100%. This should only be for main content and not extend to maps.

 PoE has never had a difficulty factor control like D3 or other arpgs have. Giving new players the choice to dial down the difficulty until they become knowledgeable enough to then increase the content difficulty to better match their playing skills is important. Without this it becomes nearly impossible to get a good fit of new players skills to content difficulty. Unfortunately, I don't ever see this changing. GGG will probably say it's impossible to implement. The opponents would argue that everyone would just set it to easy, faceroll everything with their knowledge and superior builds, complain that PoE is too easy and I'm bored, and quit. Since I would tie exp to the difficulty, easy would give less exp than the hardest difficulty setting. Also, easy would reduce the drop rates of the higher quality gear. So easy would be a waste of time for veterans as exp and loot quality would be less. But for new players that are babes in Wraeclast it could make a big difference to allowing them to kill Normal Brutus and Merveil and not get killed out too early. Final thought, once the difficulty factor is set at the start of Normal, Cruel, and Merciless it can't be changed. Otherwise I can see everyone playing max hard for higher exp/hour and better drops but then slide down to easy for the boss battle, then slide back up to maximum. That could never work and should never be allow.

 GGG definitely has a difficult job (maybe impossible) to get new players to stay playing long enough to get over the "new player" hurtles but always keeping PoE challenging for veteran players.

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Varana wrote:

You hugely underestimate how much easier your knowledge makes it. I remember when I was new: Merveil was a real battle. We'd do her in party, everyone open their own TP just in case, and batter away usually with a few deaths. Vaal Oversoul, the same. And don't you recall all the "Oak carry" parties because some players struggled so? And that's just the combat mechanics, which in PoE are pretty trivial .

Now you know how to build the tree and do the basics probably without even thinking. The same with skills, supports, evaluating items you pick up to judge if they're worth equipping - when I started I was collecting white 3L items of every kind and all socket colours in case I might need one. (Admittedly that was pre-Vorici and fusing improvements, 4L was an achievement). it's not easy if you're not new to the game. And there are things like selecting better skills; how soon does a new player realise that the new skill might look pretty, but it's level 1 and is better with different supports so it won't work yet?

It's all complicated, and if you're not into searching for and watching tutorial videos it only gets easier after more effort than many are prepared to hazard on just one more FTP game with murky graphics and a fixed, close PoV. And remember how slow and clunky it feels with no gear (and no idea of what to go for) and weak, unsupported skills. I suspect Brutus one-shots are just the icing on the cake.

So very much this. Especially Oak parties :)

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Varana wrote:

It's really hard to throw away that much effort, and enjoyment, to face the whole struggle again.

Heh, I remember when I finally beat Piety - she was The Big Bad then - with my own (second or third) character solo. Damn, that was awesome, I felt like I won the game... but got hailrekt 5 minutes later. Which resulted in a ragequit for quite some time. Because how the eff could I, the noob, have known that resists reduction in cruel were enough for him to permafreeze me? When I didn't even fear Piety's ice arrows?

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Arrowneous wrote:

It can't be watered down any further so what's causing the high drop out rates of new exiles?

ARPGs are actually quite boring to a lot of people. They are a niche genre within RPGs themselves and they appeal to a certain demographic of people. Repetition of endless mouse clicks to hunt items and working over a spreadsheet and calculator to great the ultimate build aren't exactly fun activities.

On the flip side, I've only been playing POE for months now and my first experience as an experienced gamer and Diablo 2/Diablo 3/Torchlight 2 fan almost bordered on yawning until I started to get towards cruel. But I did enjoy the story and aesthetics and discovering world, so it balanced now. Now that the flair of that is gone, quite a few builds have stopped in normal for me, because I didn't like them ENOUGH to push myself threw the chore that is the first difficulty.

To the OP: I find the idea of asking the PoE in game crowd any questions to be a much more painful experience than just googling and doing my own research.