PlaneShift

Fan Area => The Hydlaa Plaza => Topic started by: Illysia on December 13, 2016, 04:18:07 am

Title: Intro Quest for Players Skipping Tutorial on New Characters
Post by: Illysia on December 13, 2016, 04:18:07 am
I imagine that most people who look into PS these days are people who played it at least once before. For those that get auto skipped past the tutorial on new characters, they could use a sort of what to do next arrow once they spawn in the city.

I was thinking that they could be automatically given a quest that sends them to go talk to Harnquist or someone that gives quests right away. I think a gold man info window explaining why they have this quest and how quests are chained might be good as well.

As someone who also ran into the wall of gated quests when returning, it can be really frustrating. I imagine it's way worse if you don't know your way around, don't know where to find NPCs, and don't even know who you are looking for.
Title: Re: Intro Quest for Players Skipping Tutorial on New Characters
Post by: Venalan on December 13, 2016, 11:47:48 am
This would also fall into to the realm of nice ideas which needs server and client work so can't be done now. Things like this would be nice once we get into UE4.

I appreciate that it is likely hard for returning players to get started again, but I can't quickly think of anything we can effectivly add with the game code as it is.
Title: Re: Intro Quest for Players Skipping Tutorial on New Characters
Post by: Illysia on December 13, 2016, 04:02:49 pm
Crystalspace is a pain... >.>
Title: Re: Intro Quest for Players Skipping Tutorial on New Characters
Post by: Venalan on December 13, 2016, 05:33:21 pm
This isn't inherently a problem with crystal space. It's just that there is no supported system to allow this to work right now, if we don't add supported into UE4 we will have the same problem.
Title: Re: Intro Quest for Players Skipping Tutorial on New Characters
Post by: Illysia on December 13, 2016, 05:40:13 pm
Yes, but I bet there's far more people who can help you add support to UE4 than can help you with Crystalspace. If I understand, Crystalspace isn't being actively developed anymore while UE is very popular and lots of people use it.
Title: Re: Intro Quest for Players Skipping Tutorial on New Characters
Post by: Eonwind on December 13, 2016, 06:07:44 pm
Yes, but I bet there's far more people who can help you add support to UE4 than can help you with Crystalspace. If I understand, Crystalspace isn't being actively developed anymore while UE is very popular and lots of people use it.

This is exactly why we really need to switch engine.
Title: Re: Intro Quest for Players Skipping Tutorial on New Characters
Post by: Ravna on December 13, 2016, 06:21:59 pm

In this case, no.
As Venalan said, this is not a CS issue, most of the fixes for it would be entirely C++ based.

Now it might be a lot more interesting for any devs to learn how our engine works if it is using UE, but that's a different story.
It is also partially a design choice. I remember back when the tutorial was added, devs chose to not offer the tutorial to anyone who had already done so to make it easier to make alts/etc without having to go through the tutorial again.
We could revisit that choice, or try to come up with a more hybrid solution, like spawning everyone in the tutorial section, but giving players a choice to skip it. (Notice that this does actually take some server modifications.)
Title: Re: Intro Quest for Players Skipping Tutorial on New Characters
Post by: Illysia on December 13, 2016, 06:36:59 pm
I was thinking that removing the auto skip will be needed. I'm currently working on chopping down the tutorial so that it requires less skipping and is quicker to get through. However, I have to work on moving in RL so that is slowing progress on that front.
Title: Re: Intro Quest for Players Skipping Tutorial on New Characters
Post by: Dilihin on December 13, 2016, 06:53:31 pm
How about making quick and slow tutorial? Slow that gets through things throroughly and quick that shows the most essential of gameplay basic?
Title: Re: Intro Quest for Players Skipping Tutorial on New Characters
Post by: Illysia on December 13, 2016, 06:57:43 pm
Well, I was thinking separate the more thorough stuff off into their own optional quests.