New Player Case Study

Now I am no game design specialist, or anyone who knows anything, but I *am* a huge forums backreader/lurker. I have read tonnes of threads talking about "earlygame changes" or "new player retention" and one problem is they never have enough data of new players. Today I decided to remedy this somewhat, and provide raw data for more suggestions. Please note I am not suggesting anything myself, just offering observations.

File on my Subject
Username: Resnicu
Skin: red with a villager head
Class: Mage
Selection Mechanism: they were the first to answer in chat.
Former Experience with Wynncraft: none
Former Experience with similar MMORPGS: a lot

My methods:
I waited by the entrance hall of the ragni castle where people spawn after the tutorial, and said hi to any username i saw in chat. Resnicu was the first to respond.

Story of what happened.
I said "hi" and shifted a few times.
Subject did the same.
I said "wait here" and went to lobby to switch to his world.
I asked him what he was doing.
He said "trying to find ragni"
he was trying to use the teleportation scroll the king gave him to *get* to ragni, not realising it was right outside the door. I led him to the entrance of ragni and let him talk to tasim. I then watched as he followed the beacon (he is good at following beacons) and i saw him talk to Enzan.
I asked him "can i follow you and observe how you react to earlygame wynncraft?" And he agreed, so I disguised as a chicken to be unobtrusive and followed him until he began the Infested Plants quest, at which point the study ended.

First quest: enzans brother.
Subject spoke to enzan, and then immediately started sprinting down the emerald trail, heading straight towards the beacon and not bothering exploring the path or pigman cave. He talked to therck and headed into the cave. He tried to explore the side area under the identifier, but realised it would lead the wrong way and continued back. His strategy was to defeat all the mobs in one segment, then fall back. I did kill one mob that was sneaking up behind him but didnt help when he was trying to attack mobs. He eventually got the energy mushroom, looting chests along the way, but then (this is an important point).
He ran back the way he came, down the cave, past all the mobs, and back to therck, instead of going forwards through the cave. After talking to therck he got the reward, but didnt bother exploring or going up the stairs for the Secret Discovery.

He then went into his content book, and tracked the next quest, Poisoning the Pest, and instead of going back to ragni, made a beeline to the next quest. At this point he was still in a Tosach and Oak Wood Wand
(note: i asked him about his tutorial experience and he said it was clear that he was meant to identify the tosach)

Poisoning the Pest.
Subject talked to Cevalus, but had trouble picking up the rat crate. He was rightclicking rather than leftclicking on it, which led to him having trouble til he figured it out. He went in and mostly avoided the attacks of the boss. Inadvertently I drew most of the fire while he was poisoning the water, making it slightly easier but tainting the data a bit unfortunately. He then did the cutscene and left.

Cook's Assistant.
of the 3 quests i saw him do, this was the hardest for him. He started by trying to follow the beacon so hard, he ran into a window, reinforcing the problem of blindly beacon following. When he found his way in, he revealed that he was lost because "he didnt know where to find ragni"
he was laboring under the misconception that he would go to ragni and *then* go to the ranch, and he at no point realised that he was *in* ragni, instead trying to use his teleportation scroll a few times. When I explained to him he was in ragni, he immediately understood to go north, but then ran into a second problem. If you go north from the cooks house, you run into those little patches of wheat inside the wall, and he thought this was his destination.
I told him that to harvest it he needed a scythe, and he asked me where to get tools.

I gave him the hint that he was meant to go North of ragni, not the north side of ragni. he then went around the wall and headed to katoa ranch. At this point, another low level player on the same world started the same quest, so subject may have been influenced by this, but I believe it was negligible.
He then tried to harvest the wheat around the base of katoa hill, before going into the farm proper. He then spoke to the farm assistant and figured it out after that. After trying to kill me, who was still disguised as a chicken, for eggs, I switched into a human form and let him go on. He got all the materials perfectly, and then stopped, checked his questbook, and then started walking around a bit aimlessly.
I asked him if he was lost as to what to do next, and he said "I don't know whether im just supposed to get the items, or to give them to the cook as well."
I said "why not try both just in case," after which he returned to ragni but got lost in the way and took a bit of time to get back.

Final questions.
I decided to give him a final questionnaire as to what his thoughts were on various things. I asked him "how is it best to level up" and he said "quests mostly"
I asked "how likely are you to keep playing wynncraft" and he said "very, i like mmorpgs and this one is good"
I asked "what are your thoughts on professions, gathering, and crafting?" and he said "they are cool"
I asked him "what would you do if you found an unidentified rare dagger that you couldn't use because you are a mage?" and he said "sell it or trade it"
I asked him "where would you sell it," he responded "idk," so I explained the blacksmith
I asked him if he would have preferred a stealth puzzle in poisoning the pest instead of a boss fight, and he said No, he liked it the way it is better.
I asked him "what is the hardest/worst part of the game so far?" and he responded "figuring out where to go"
I asked him "what are you going to do next" and he said "identify some items, then do the next storyline quest"
I then paid him 2 emerald blocks for his troubles, and let him go on his way.

Conclusion:
I hope this has provided useful information to people who want to improve the game on how a newbie might approach the game. It seems like the problem in this case was that my subject was reliant on beacons, and when there were none he was lost.
Thank you for reading-Tzelofachad​

 

Bro found salteds alt

 

Subject seemed too familiar with the game at some points in the study, and when I disguised as a cow he thought i was him and tried to move me. Suspicious...

 

Btw, since you have HERO rank you can just type "/switch (world number)" to quickly join a world without having to go to the lobby

 

this is content. i need more

 

this is neat but also hilarious to read wtf lol

 

I didn’t realise analysis of early-game experience from new players was something I needed

 

We need more of these

 

I love this.

 

I prefer jelly butter and peanut sandwiches

 

my favorite part was where the newbie is good at following beacons

 

Cannot believe bro called him a "subject" 6 times... he has a name you know! /sarcasm

 

oh i thought it was champion locked

well maybe i'll do it again if i find another newbie who knows how chat works

i try :)

i guess i will make more!

your wish is my command

aww tysm

die die die scum scum scum pit of hell drum drum drum

mmorpg pilled newbie, i think

resnicu is a dumb name anyway /sarcasm

 

incredible research. very insightful.


also as a player of 5 years, I also blindly follow beacons

 

learn to vaguely follow beacons

 

I am naught but a moth

 

Back in MY day quests didn't HAVE beacons! You kids have it so easy nowadays! We would walk in the general direction of the coordinates and spend AN HOUR finding EVERY npc!!! Grumble grumble kids these days...

 

REAL

 

Super interesting, good questions at the end too
its kinda funny how after all this effort the #1 problem he faced was navigation lol. I remember having to find NPCs with coordinates while my quest book spammed my chat

 

i mean its kinda what i expected lol