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Tutorial improvements


mj2002

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I have created a new character and ran into a few issues that I believe could be looked into;

 

1) Inaccurate information for locking vehicles.

 

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In the tutorial, you are directed to rent a car and explore the city a little bit. At the first stop, you are directed to buy and phone, and lock the car using L.

Rental cars cannot be locked. Either rental cars should be made lockable (they are in real life, but this is obviously a whole different discussion for another thread), or this information should changed to indicate that cars in general can be locked, but this particular car cannot. Otherwise, new players are given confusing and misleading information that degrades the new player experience.

 

The fact that the rental car can be easily stolen, or mixed up with by another player when parking at one of the tutorial stops doesn't help either. A functioning lock will help here.

 

2) Walls of text whilst driving through town.

 

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New players should not be made to drive and read at the same time. Either you are telling people to be careful when driving around, obeying the rules, or you are making them read walls of text. Please, not at the same time. Either people will not look around and miss the opportunity to see what is going on around them, or they're going to not properly read what is being presented to them.

 

Solution, direct new players to parking lots near the areas that are being discussed. Let them ride past the police station, stop nearby, display a message about EMS for a minute or so, then give the next waypoint (if possible). This is better for the new player's experience, the information that they take in, as well as the players around them.

 

As the tutorial continues, players are lead out to the county. During this trip, more information is given. This is far better executed in my view, since this is highway driving. Being in a speed limited rental vehicle, this leaves time to read.

 

3) The Vespucci clothing store.

 

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Please switch away from using this store as one of the first suggestions to head into. It is incredibly confusing for new players to be teleported from an entrance into a store, which has its own normal exit doors. I cannot be the only one who, with their first character, walked into this store, spent a good time changing clothes, only to walk outside again and not understanding why they are now somewhere else in the city. The Little Seoul clothing store is on route in the tutorial, please have players stop there for clothes instead. 

 

Otherwise, it needs to be more thoroughly explained on what this teleportation does and how you can get back.

 

4) The driver's test

 

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There are numerous issues with this test, most of which are probably known. I'm sure this is being worked on. 

Above is just one of the issues. Being kicked out instantly when trying to enter the driving school vehicle. Needed admin intervention here. I'm sure this doesn't happen every time, but still.

 

5) Resuming the tutorial

 

Please have /setstep give text feedback on being activated. Currently, you have to look at the map to figure out which step you are at, going by the navigation system. A better experience would be to also repeat the text that belongs to this step, so it is obvious that the tutorial is active again. A navigation point is easily overlooked.

 

Resuming the tutorial may also create red waypoints that serve no purpose, as they cannot be activated at certain times.

 

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6) /vrent

 

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This command seems to give no text feedback when it being used (after /changechar, it seems). I can't tell whether or not if it was successful when I tried this command, if the renting was already extended, or not. It just doesn't give any feedback at this particular stage. In this particular instance, it may have been bugged due to /changechar or through some other reason.

 

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Following all the steps required, following directions of staff and support, still my primary mode of transportation is removed without me being able to do anything about it. Either way, a bad new player experience. 

 

I was able to see this coming and drove as close to the nearest car rental place in the city as I was able to.  Now imagine this happening when you are in Blaine County, farming. It was fine when there were so many new players that you always ran into someone who could help you out, but this is no longer the case any more.

 

After the server restarted, I got a new rental vehicle, though the rental window was not visible. It might be due to an interface problem. Can't give any objective information on this.

 

The image below doesn't exactly inspire confidence either. It just appears as if the command doesn't do anything, as the timer keeps going down.

Luckily, this time, the vehicle didn't disappear.

 

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7) Advertising EMS/factions/POI.

 

The tutorial singles out portals and job opportunities for new players to starting working at the Police Department or the Sheriff's Department. This is great, but it begs the question as to why these are chosen over any others. Is there a shortage of applications at these factions? Are new players encouraged to get into LEO roleplay over other factions? 

 

I understand the benefits of explaining to new players where certain things can be found, but this really should be changed or expanded. Instead, why not take the player on a tour past several places and opportunities? To name a few;

 

- The city hall for government, politics or perhaps DOJ

- Explain the concept of banks and their commands

- The beach for lifeguards, explanations about ships, etc.

- Paleto Bay to show that there is more than just the city

- Grapeseed, Sandy Shores, and or Harmony for opportunities for roleplay in these areas and appropriate atmosphere.

- The airfield to explain about aircraft and helicopters

- The university area (ULSA)

- Weazel news to introduce the news media factions concept

- Let players refill their (rental) car's gas tank at a gas station

 

Perhaps this turns into a really lengthy tutorial this way, but you can still cancel this at any time you wish, but does give new players a better understanding of whats going on in the server.

 

8.) The job center.

 

This is not such a big deal, it actually does its job fairly well. I just wish this was a location where you could get a scripted job.

See this suggestion I posted a while back.

 

9) The dealerships and shops 

 

The tutorial is strict in directing players to one dealership for new cars. As far as I can tell, nothing would be lost from directing players to any of the other dealerships or 24/7s as well, perhaps at random? This would be a slightly improvement, but nothing major/important. Might be too much work to be worth the effort, but having players be shown different areas of the city is always an extra nicety.

 

Specific to dealerships. I think it is a lost opportunity to wave players off and tell them they are unable to buy their first vehicle now. The fact that they cannot afford a very cheap vehicle at this stage, to help them move around, leaves them dependent on rental cars. As long as there are no serious player-run car rental businesses, this is unfortunate in my view. If nothing else, at least recommend players to buy a Faggio. This is especially relevant because of the next issue.

 

10) The farm and the end of the tutorial

 

The tutorial guides players to the farmland next, sending players out this far into the county is not a good decision. The farming system is really neat and really begs for more attention and expansion (see this great suggestion). As far as a new player is concerned, the tutorial continues by explaining the farming system, but then stops after the grain farmed has been sold off.

 

Then what? The new player is in the middle of nowhere, likely with no one else in sight. If anything, the tutorial should continue and drop players off in a better, more central location. Either that, or a menu could be shown to direct players into different directions, such as the ones mentioned in 7) above.

 

If the player loses their rental vehicle at this point, it is truly a terrible experience for someone who is not familiar with the games interface. At the very least, direct new players to the taxi services/phone directory so they can have a good chance of finding a way out. Alternatively, players can be directed to try different money making jobs, such as fishing.

 

A better solution would be to direct them to a central location in the city, from where they can start their experience.

 

 

These are just a few points that I noticed whilst making a new character and following along with the tutorial. Thanks for reading.

 

 

 

 

Edited by mj2002
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I've never liked the idea of a tutorial in an opened ended game like a role play server telling you to go to specific places. I really think it should just be a camera pan around the various locations with some text accompanied, the current tutorial to be perfectly honest just isn't very good and feels rushed together. 

 

I could be totally wrong but I believe that the current tutorial is also missing quite a lot of commands. Something as simple as /me or /do is not included in the tutorial at all, there's a lot of really great rpers who have come from other games where the emote command is not /me and they're never told it. 

Edited by Torlo
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I'm a newbie and the teleporting thing is freaking confusing.  I went into a shop, came out and was somewhere totally different and then I'm stuck with no vehicle and there's no obvious way to get back to where you were.

 

Also yes, being stuck in the middle of nowhere without your rental vehicle sucks ?

Edited by Paenymion
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I think sending the new players to random shops around the city instead of one specific shop(in this case Vespucci) would be nice. It's probably a good thing if their first experience on the server isn't getting robbed by someone camping the shop.

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  • 2 weeks later...

I'll pin this for top priority changes, thank you for the feedback.

However I'll address directly some points here:

 

1) Inaccurate information for locking vehicles.

The rentals not being able to be locked is a bug we need to fix, the tutorial isn't inaccurate.

 

2) Walls of text whilst driving through town.

As of today I have no better way of doing it and it adds the text after X seconds, not just a big wall at the same time.

We tried a camera system - but everyone was spamming out of it and not reading the text.

 

3) The Vespucci clothing store.

Yes, thank you.

 

5) Resuming the tutorial

We didn't plan on letting players resume as they wish with /setstep, it's a debug command to use only if you get disconnected

 

6) /vrent

I'll do some quick changes about it, thank you.

 

7) Advertising EMS/factions/PO

Honestly, there is lot of things to talk about. Too many, we try to quickly cover stuff but I cannot add everything. Especially factions are often moving their location, lifeguards might not be around for months too, it's not a very good idea to introduce smaller ones.

 

9) The dealerships and shops

I don't plan on changing the dealership for now

 

 

10) The farm and the end of the tutorial

The tutorial ends at the beginning of the farming job, it's written there.

The goal of this job was to host new players, to get the new players out of the city if they didn't have friends / people to RP with to begin with. It's intended as is, as there was too many new players rushing the trucking job and disturbing everyone's roleplay. I'll change the rental system to make it more friendly about it and make sure they don't lose it.

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