Closed Discussion Progression quests at world start

[Mintyfresh]

This months topic has been brought directly from the people in charge of game development, so these are questions (in particular but not exclusively) that the development team would like answers from the community regarding:

1. How do the current quest lines force players to act in ways they may find strategically disadvantageous?
2. Do the quest lines do a poor job at teaching the basic because Tribal Wars can be approached from many different strategies?
3. How can we teach players the most important information for early success without “forcing” them through specific quest lines?

1) If you are smart then you can predict roughly what people/new players will be building and then take advantage of that. I.E its not until i think 76 village points that players get the quests to get starter spears/swords so you know its highly likely that the village is a free farm (out of BP). Its also incredibly static and one-dimensional. Do XYZ with no consideration for any variables and inevitably whenever you follow a set course with no deviation you will be taken advantage of by people who have the experience to be flexible.

2) I'd say its okay at teaching the very basics but does a poor job beyond the first couple of days worth of building. For some reason the quality and quantity of quests drop off dramatically and instead turn into very boring and poorly thought out "build 20 claypit and have 5k units" or something like that which is not interesting or engaging or particularly useful for players to grow. There is no kind of indication of the different build paths you can go with your village - i.e. defensive orientated or offensive etc so most new players end up with an awful mixxed build that does nothing for them and their player development

3) I'd say either free open world sandbox environments (like those tutorial worlds i mentioned) where experimentation and stuff is encouraged. The other possibility which i feel has some merit would be for actual guides to be commissioned from the community. As in rather than having 0 support and 0 interest and 0 involvement with the guides that people sometimes make to actively encourage and ask people to create them. Perhaps offer some kind of tangible rewards maybe for quality content? I think that would be a good idea

Let me know your thoughts

 

[nightblade.greyswandir]

1. How do the current quest lines force players to act in ways they may find strategically disadvantageous?
2. Do the quest lines do a poor job at teaching the basic because Tribal Wars can be approached from many different strategies?
3. How can we teach players the most important information for early success without “forcing” them through specific quest lines?

1 and 3. First few minutes, almost an hour of the tutorial is dynamic and interesting. Then you have to wait too long to get to the next step. Maybe making a kind of tutorial for building, troops training and basic terminology that can last for a few hours before a new player starts the real game. So small sandbox world, 15x15, with very high speed, all premium on (so they see benefits and want to buy it) where there is 4 red villages in corners that will send attacks on you from time to time. This should be saved in the memory of your browser so you can stop and continue in a few hours. The tutorial is done after you noble 1st village, optimal would be after a few hours of the game. Then you can go to start screen for starting normals game, with tutorial again, but this time much more like, or exactly the one that we already have. Also, players with less than 50 hours of playing should have 3 or 5 village move to another place, and it should be in place with a low concentration of higher point players. I see new players lose interest when they see 10years of experience guy who spent 5k PP to grow on new world... wich looks like you have kind of superman next door, who do not open your mails and attack you on 7thd and 2 minutes.
BTW I do lot of guides and tutorials for engineers, for CAD design, so I know how hard is sometimes to build perfect learning tutorial, and I would volunteer some of my time to help with setting up and/or testing this kind of mini world.

2. The actual questline is too extended as it lasts a few days, people lose the thread of it, and do mechanical click when asked. There is no explanations of different options to proceed from some points depending on what is going on in outside world (for example if you have crazy neighbour that grows on PP), when it would be good time to concentrate on more troops, when to build more buildings when to build troops, what are the meanings of some terminology players use, how to set up scripts, where to find them, etc...

3b. I would make guides for lot of segments of the game if there is some PP to earn. Or just we can make guides as marketing for our Mentoring skills, and new player can give us grades from 1 to 10 where higher grades give free MA, LA and 20% res bonuses. Basically one month of the free (all PP options) game for top grade. Maybe no limits of numbers of students, but I do not know how to reward people who are really good in mentoring and are getting very high grades from multiple students... maybe they deserve to play the game for free (or give them 1-10% or PP that their students buy in first 6 months based on grades they got). don't know, you have to do cost assessment on that one. So back to the first sentence, if we make good guides we will have more students.

 

[Seven Devils]

Tbh, i think the quests does what they are supposed to do. I mean, you can't really make quests until 100 village, at some point you have to play the game yourself. However, i do think maybe some random quests would be nice and give a interesting way to look on how to proccede. For example, as we have daily bonuses, why not have a daily quest that will be during the protection time? It could be random/or the same for everyone but random on every world etc etc. It will give you some sort of bonus for completing it.

 

[focushor]

Tbh, i think the quests does what they are supposed to do. I mean, you can't really make quests until 100 village, at some point you have to play the game yourself. However, i do think maybe some random quests would be nice and give a interesting way to look on how to proccede. For example, as we have daily bonuses, why not have a daily quest that will be during the protection time? It could be random/or the same for everyone but random on every world etc etc. It will give you some sort of bonus for completing it.

that would be quite nice, yeah

for example, recruit 100 scouts
or
recruit 30 units from the workshop
or
either have your wall 20 already or bring it up two levels

daily quests have potential

 

[nightblade.greyswandir]

that would be quite nice, yeah

for example, recruit 100 scouts
or
recruit 30 units from the workshop
or
either have your wall 20 already or bring it up two levels

daily quests have potential

maybe scout 5 barbs, or farm 10 barbs, but no recruiting, as that can unbalance noobs that will build 100 scouts (or any units) in the wrong moment just because of the quest.