Chronicles of Esshar as a New (ish) Player
#1
I've been playing this game since February 11th 2021 now. I've never played an RP game like it before, where it's both writing and gaming in one. 
With this preface, I have some feedback I'd like to give. 

I love the game truly! It's the most immersive I've been in an RPG. The fact that people can walk up to you in a scene, start something, etc, is very VERY cool!
HOWEVER
My biggest gripe with it overall is the Lack of Communication / Difficulty finding information AND finding Consistent Information.

As a new player, I expected the information to be on the Wiki, on the main webpage, or on the main forum. Information about Lore, how to join, rules, and character creation. I've since found out that much of it is outdated, or spread across multiple wikis (Also outdated) forum posts and even google documents. It's hard to know what's canon/how things work mechanically. 

I'll try to break it down a little bit more; 

Joining:
When I first joined the game, I didn't know how to get a BYOND account. Then when I did, I thought I could play the game via the BYOND launcher. (I couldn't, because the BYOND launcher does not match the freestanding launcher afaik)

When I did finally get the launcher to work (Thanks to very helpful people on the discord) I got stuck on character creation simply because I didn't know to understand what the different starting points meant, what was limited, what races meant what (nothing mentioned stats, skills or racial traits), etc. Again, discord helped me.  People in the game, players, saved me from not joining. 

Lore:
This sort of flows into joining: Settling on races and places, was hard because the wiki had very little information on how races impact the world, as well as places, impact the world. 

In general; Settings, more races, places, wars, history. A lot of it I only hear by word of mouth of players or mentions in-game. I tend to go "Hmm what is that? What's the Roynish?" and id like to find out. But I'd constantly rely on players to tell me and have to trust their memory/retelling because the info is hard to find, or doesn't exist. 

Since I've started and played for a while, much of the information I'm learning is from players, word of mouth, or me happening to ask the right question at the right time. Things like this come across as frustrating because; How can ask about things I don't know exist?

Game mechanics:
This comes in two parts. In-game (everything in the launcher) and out of the game (Everything on the forums)
In-game: 
A lot of the information given in-game is severely lacking! Descriptions on what the spells do (Consistent descriptions!), descriptions of what status effects are and how they work, how to PICK UP and interact with items, how to open the key-mapping option, how to join teams on raids, how raids work (when matched and when unmatched), how to give money, store money, armor, defense offense, how capture's work (Once you've been captured) how stances vs auras work, global cooldown, RPL vs activity points, buying points, stat points, mana amnesia/blackout etc. The list is very long. 

There's a lot of information lacking that's purely mechanical and that a new player just has to learn over time, or by asking people, or filing a ticket.(For example: Cleanse doesn't clear stuns. Why? When in other games (league of legends) cleanse cleans all status effects. It should be defined, but isn't in game!). 

Out of the game:
Forum registration, hiddens, Journals, applications, events, personal events, logs, and requirements and uses for all

I was almost one month through my first character before I even heard of Journaling / Requests.  This led to feeling very behind, and unsure of what level of journaling IS required to get to things I'd like. Questions of what to apply for, when to apply to it, how approvals work, what stances there are to request, what the stances do once you've got one. (please make a list of ALL the Hiddens/Stances/Auras/Magic tress you can get! Pretty pretty please)

The list is long here too. 

Communication:
Communication between admins to the players (As a whole), tickets, journal reviews, IC announcements, Event announcements etc; 

Overall, communication between player to player has been great! The discord answers, help, etc have been excellent. The Local OOC has been great. I've almost only met kind and helpful players and gotten a lot of help this way. It's truly the one way I've learned as much as I have - through helpful players. 

From admins to singular player (me) the communication has been friendly, but short. If I have a ticket with a complicated question or more than one worded question, I feel I've often gotten a singular answer, and ticket's instantly closed, and I'm unable to get clarification if the answer is unclear. DO I open another ticket to get clarification? Do I dm on discord?

The same goes for the forum reviews; It says in the format that you can ask for advice and discussion, however, when I have I've not received many suggestions, discussions, or advice on how to approach the hidden I want/What my hidden do which makes it even harder to seek out a future goal/direction IN TERMS OF weapons/hidden/Stances/auras. 


Overall; I really enjoy the game. The liveliness of the world, the writing, and the fact that things even ARE interactive, dynamic fighting that's not pre-determined (like it is in regular forum roleplaying) is great! However; Information and communication need to improve. Cuz for me, there's a LOT of things that still make me insecure, due to the inconsistent/outdated nature of the information and difficulty to find it. 

I hope this review/First impressions (?) comes across as friendly...
Reply
#2
i agree with about 90% of this
Reply
#3
Severely reminds me of when I first played Chronicles, way before the timeskip.

Started in Myllenoris. When I realized I was in a faction at war with Barsburg I quietly stopped playing, and that was obviously the reason! Obviously.

10/10, would definitely go back in time to revive this experiences.

(fr tho. that was probably the most confusing first experience i've ever had and i'm just glad i re-entered the game just when the academy arc had begun, since it meant i wouldn't have to learn any of the immense chronicles lore all in one go. please make the game easier to get into....)
Reply
#4
(04-07-2021, 11:37 PM)Xiga Wrote: Lore:
This sort of flows into joining: Settling on races and places, was hard because the wiki had very little information on how races impact the world, as well as places, impact the world. 

In general; Settings, more races, places, wars, history. A lot of it I only hear by word of mouth of players or mentions in-game. I tend to go "Hmm what is that? What's the Roynish?" and id like to find out. But I'd constantly rely on players to tell me and have to trust their memory/retelling because the info is hard to find, or doesn't exist. 

Since I've started and played for a while, much of the information I'm learning is from players, word of mouth, or me happening to ask the right question at the right time. Things like this come across as frustrating because; How can ask about things I don't know exist?


I have a friendly tip for this! Whenever I return to the game after my breaks alot usually changes, lore is constantly updated and changed... So, I usually play a character who would be oblivious to most worldly affairs. Now, I have been playing this game for a long time so alot of things do carry over but damn...

When I came back to 3.5 I was like... Eos who? Eos what? What's an Achyon? Kek...

Idk! Playing characters that don't know the entire world and learn it through IC, as well as allowing me to learn OOCly is very immersive and fun in my experience. Way more fun than reading a wiki that isn't there...
Reply
#5
One thing that hit me the other day when we were talking about lore, history, events, and much more in voicechat was that someone (I think Howl) said:

"I've learned more about the game in the past fifteen minutes than I have since I started playing."

And it made me happy.
So I hope my rambling has left you with more knowledge than you had before even if you can't remember my character after attacking me within days of existing..!
[Image: nR3lU0X.png][Image: unknown.png]
Vriska Wrote: yeah having an MCU loki icon is pretty cringe huh
Reply
#6
(04-07-2021, 11:37 PM)Xiga Wrote: Feedback

Thank you for this! Perspectives from new players are always very helpful in aiding us figuring how best to make sure people have a good time when they come in and understand everything. I'll look into developing some stuff to make sure that key information/resources are easily accessible and see if we can't make the game a little more approachable! (Once I get this essay done, aha...ahaha...ha...help me)
Reply
#7
(04-07-2021, 11:37 PM)Xiga Wrote: Communication:
Communication between admins to the players (As a whole), tickets, journal reviews, IC announcements, Event announcements etc; 

Overall, communication between player to player has been great! The discord answers, help, etc have been excellent. The Local OOC has been great. I've almost only met kind and helpful players and gotten a lot of help this way. It's truly the one way I've learned as much as I have - through helpful players. 

From admins to singular player (me) the communication has been friendly, but short. If I have a ticket with a complicated question or more than one worded question, I feel I've often gotten a singular answer, and ticket's instantly closed, and I'm unable to get clarification if the answer is unclear. DO I open another ticket to get clarification? Do I dm on discord?

I have a friendly tip for the problem with tickets! I work as a customer service sup and what we do when we're helping out agents is that we typically ask if they have anymore questions before closing the ticket they've submitted. This way it opens up multiple possibilities to explain further in detail about the situation in case the player your helping out is still a bit lost on whatever they're trying to figure out/do! (We usually wait a couple of minutes if we don't get a response and then close the chat, but we always leave friendly advice when we close the chat like. "Enjoy the rest of your shift!" or something along those lines to end it on a positive note. It's something minor but always seems to brighten a person's mood!)
Reply
#8
"It's pretty bad when there's an entire wall of text to narrate and I still have no idea what the fuck is going on"

The new player experience is really, really rough, not even going to lie. The game does functionally nothing to explain, and the startup lore is still focused on the Pandemonium Chase, which, let's be real, no one's mentioned since timeskip (You'd think that'd have been a little more important). That being said, trying to explain even the races in the space of the menu is very difficult.

Maybe a direct link to the wiki screaming 'NEW PLAYERS CLICK HERE' or something, idk. An in-depth new player guide sort of deal, covering all races, major city summaries, and items and functionality would also likely be useful.
Reply
Topic Options
Forum Jump:




Users browsing this thread: 1 Guest(s)