Feedback And Thoughts On The King's Recruit Changes.

So, some changes to King's Recruit got pushed today. Made a new class and played through it, so I guess I'll go give my thoughts. But first, here's a summary of what was changed.

Spoiler: Changes

• After you first pass through the gate to Wynn, a soldier talks to you rather than the Old Man.
• All NPCs that can be clicked on have "Right-click with an empty hand" on top of their head.
• The new soldier NPC asks you to enter a cave to retrieve an item. This replaces the stage where you gather 2 materials.
• Said cave has very short parkour, and a passive lvl 0 "Stone" that you must destroy to pass.
• At the end of the cave is a chest with white particles, masquerading as a T3 or T4 loot chest. Right-clicking it gives you two materials for your class, and an unidentified helmet.
• A new stage is added between visiting the destroyed bridge and talking to the guard; it involves identifying your helmet.
• This new helmet is a unique item with health and XP bonus.

Previously, I thought the tutorial wasn't the strongest, as it felt too hand-holdy and over-prioritized professions. Now, I personally think this is an overall solid improvement to the quest: identifying items is an important part of the game, and it's nice to have a tutorial for it. The section where you get the item also kinda teaches you that you can kill those passive level 0 mobs, and that for some quests you'll need to right-click on stuff. The cave segment also helps make the player feel like they're doing stuff, rather than just clicking on nodes.

That being said, I feel like the tutorial can still be improved, and that's through an addition emphasis on combat. Combat is the core of the game, not parkour or running away from mobs. Profs may be an emphasized part of the game now, but the entire reason you do that is so you have good items... for combat. I feel like more of the tutorial should be spent fight groups of mobs with more variation: do we really need two segments where you kill a singular enemy? The part where you run away from zombies isn't super useful either, but it's probably really cool for new players.

Additionally, it should be mentioned at some point that spells can be used for combat, not just quests. Maybe add brief fighting segment after you destroy that boulder, where Aledar tells you that spells will help you in combat?

Some other thoughts:

• The cave parkour doesn't seem super important. Most minecraft players know how parkour works, so maybe replace that segment with a part where a 3-health slime attacks you and you have to punch it to death, idk.
• The T3 white particles on the cave chest should be replaced with the more common brown T1 particles.
• Soul Points should be mentioned at some point in the tutorial but I have no way how to include them. Maybe the King could mention them?
• Add some secrets to the tutorial area, similar the dog from the pre-1.18 King's Recruit. A big part of Wynn is exploring, and the start of the game being linear might give the wrong impression.
• Never remove that one area right before Ragni's castle, it's one of the most beautiful areas in the game.

TL:DR: I like the tutorial a lot more now, but IMO combat should still play a bigger role.

Anyway, this was my feedback. Keep in mind that I am one lone player, who's probably the furthest thing from a returning or new players. Let me know your thoughts on this in the comments if you want!

 

I think that there should be NO crafting in the tutorial. Otherwise great improvement.

Maybe bring the old map back?

 

Is getting crafting materials from chests a bit misleading, or is that just me? Anyways, it's definitely an improvement, although I'd agree that some more combat would be nice (particularly spell related stuff)
The item identification is pretty neat and was definitely needed

 

I personally haven't done the new tutorial for obvious reasons, but I actually think these two sections are really good learning points for a new player.

The first of the two combat sections introduces you to essentially what are basic enemies. They don't have much special about them and you will be able to kill them with ease. The second section is more important though, because this section teaches the player that there are going to be stronger variations of mobs roaming around the world, which effectively will act as a mini boss of sorts. These generally are key guardians or unique mobs that guard some loot chests (ex. the Lion in Lion's den).

These sections could be improved, however. The first section could be improved by adding 1-2 more enemies. The reason for this is because the player very rarely will encounter anything in Wynn that is a pure 1v1. I'm aware the section after the "miniboss" has multiple enemies, ranged and melee alike, but since their aggro range is abysmally low for some reason, I find it safe to assume that players run past the majority of them. You would need to decrease the speed of the zombies of course, because right now it's supposed to catch you off guard, and that could be fixed by just adding some dialogue saying like "wait, there's more! kill them!" or something like that.

The "miniboss" section could be improved by just giving it a tad more health and the ability to use a spell. The most "noob" friendly spell at the literal start of the game is light charge, as it does no damage and it only allows the enemy to get closer to you (and isn't as chaotic as light teleport). Of course, the arena would have to be extended slightly to accompany this, but currently the tutorial doesn't introduce you at all to the concept of enemies having spells. This does undermine the clever introduction to spells that is present with Witherhead though (as its safe to assume you saw little to no mobs with spells before you fight Witherhead), but it probably would still work since the concept of Witherhead's mechanic sadly doesn't apply to the rest of the game, with the exception of the corrupted variant, Arakadicus (although the normal Arakadicus is so easy it's pretty much irrelevant), and Yahyabot (i.e using your surroundings to block certain attacks).

As for the run section, this is effectively telling the player that "no, you won't be able to go into higher level areas undergeared, and you will die if you try to fight the enemies". It does that in a somewhat heavy handed way because you literally can't deal damage to the mobs chasing you, but I digress. You are correct in that it's not overly useful because the Pigman Ravine pretty much does the same thing (seriously, looking at the Pigman Ravine entrance and just seeing an all out blood bath definitely either A. scares the player shitless or B. makes them a cocky bastard so they walk into it only to get swarmed by pigman shortly thereafter), but it is still useful regardless. Plus, like you said, it's cool for new players, and a tutorial after all is supposed to be for new players.

Also, just remove crafting from the tutorial entirely, and instead replace the materials you find in the chest with either A. emeralds to buy a weapon or B. if possible, have it where the loot in said chest will give you the basic weapon of whatever class you are.

What I propose is that they add an entire new quest that focuses on introducing the player to crafting (it could be as simple as having the player craft their own weapon by gathering materials, and probably should just be that) and let Enzan's Brother introduce you to powders like it did in the past. It doesn't need to be explained in full for the reason that powders have a description already built into them on how they work, but it would help the player tremendously in the long run if it did still have that brief description from Therck. The only real issues I see with this would be that its more work for the CT to add in a new quest and Therck set would cease to exist (although you could just add the ingredient into the proposed crafting quest with a different name instead).

Alternatively, they could just rework Cook's Assistant to said crafting quest. That quest has no purpose other than being something else for you to do aside from grinding.

This probably would be the best course of action. The King mentions that players die every day ("You might want to train a little more beforehand, though. Many lives are lost every day..."), and you could directly follow up that sentence with a brief explanation of the soul point system. Sure, it's a bit on the nose, but the King straight up breaks the fourth wall by telling you that the online map exists, so it wouldn't be that out of the ordinary.

 

Time to come back I guess
I'll say my opinions bit later

 

I will say, this whole thing has made me realize what absurdly high standards I've mentally set for Wynncraft; I expect more from their quests than pretty much any game I play. They're one of the few games that manages to pull away from pretty much the same "go there, kill that, bring me shiny", which, especially considering it's built in Minecraft, is pretty darn impressive. The only thing more absurd than the standards I've set is how often they meet or exceed them.

 

IMO the new tutorial is too messy. The parkour is too short and in a cramped space, and now the part teaches to new players that unidentified items are only found in chests, and that you can find crafting materials from them, which is very misleading. Also the items go straight in your inventory for some reason (yes I know, chest mechanics etc.). Next, everything goes well UNTIL they randomly throw crafting in your face. This makes the tutorial really messy and I'm sure that many new players might get a bit confused.

Remove crafting entirely from the tutorial already.

 

great change, but yes please add a mention about soul points. My change personally would have soul points be mentioned in like a wooden board right when you walk out of ragni. Would be better to walk by and see the actual text on it's own then some npc telling it to the player, as some players skip the dialogue. Soul points are a huge part of the game for new players, and I have seen countless examples of new players wondering why all their shit has dropped, it could keep players from quitting too.