Two Player Case Study 2: Electric Boogaloo

After the amazing community reception to my previous thread, I wanted to make another one. As a reminder, this is not showing any specific opinion on earlygame design, it is just data for other people to use in their arguments.

Subjects: Ysadalawaa and Gargabo
Selection Mechanism: I waited in the entry hall to the Ragni Castle for new players, and waited for one to spawn who met the following conditions:
1: had not played before
2: answered my chat and party request
Gargabo told me that they didn't have time to engage in my study, as they were playing with their friend Ysadalwaa (referred to below as "Ysa"), so I decided to invite them as well.
Status:
These players were in a private voice chat the whole time, so they could coordinate without my knowledge, which was good as it allowed them to operate as one player would, without my intervention. They usually explained their plans.
Prior Experience:
They had both played FFXIV, which I presume refers to the MMORPG Final Fantasy 14, and both had played Hypixel Minigames, but neither had any experience with Minecraft MMORPGs
Interview:
They both said the tutorial was straightforward, and Gargabo was impressed with the polished game mechanics.
Ysa seemed enamored with the crate system (they had claimed their 3 free heroes crates, as this was during the Heroes Festival), so I showed off my newly acquired Seraphim Relik, (sorry cant resist bragging), and told them it was from a crate. I quickly explained that it was not p2w gambling/gacha, and told them crates were just for cosmetics, and the weapon itself was an ingame item. Ysa is, as they colloquially say, a fiend for gacha, and began opening crates. Once they were done, I began the observation.
Observation:
Last time I used a disguise to unobstrusively observe, but because I had recently gambled it all for a sick Sword and Shield black market effect, I had to just fly around above them trying to not get in the way.
They began by speaking to Tasim at Ragni, and then immediately running to Enzan. They ran down the Emerald Trail, veering off to the right to kill some mobs. They found a fishing miniquest, and were briefly confused by it before getting back on track. After killing some more mobs (gargabo told me they wanted to level up), they went back to the trail. Gargabo seemed distracted by the guild territory banner, so I told them that it was for guilds and not important right now. They then went to Therck and started the main part of the quest.

In Enzan's Brother, they went into the cave, briefly going into the Identifier Basement Hallway, before going back on track. They each killed the mushroom once, and escaped. They both seemed eager to loot chests along the way. After finishing the quest, they did not try going up the stair. Garga asked about what skill points to allocate, and I said to do whatever complemented your weakness, like defence to dying, and strength to weakness. I wanted to do a test of the secret discovery, so told them to go up the stairs. They both ran and jumped into the water, and went through the cave again. They went up a second time, and one of them found an Unidentified Helmet in the chest, and the other found the corroded key. They did not care about the key, and told me they wanted to do the "side quest cook assistant" to use First Steps. I told them that the difference between side quests and main quests weren't that important at this stage, and they went to Ragni Cook.

Cook Assistant:
This quest was very simple. They talked to the cook, followed the grook, and went to the...
NOOK OF THE GROOK FROM THE COOK, IT HAD THE BOOK THAT IT TOOK FROM THE COOK, THE GROOK IN THE NOOK HAD TO LOOK AT THE BOOK THAT IT TOOK FROM THE COOK, WHAT A ROOK WAS THE GROOK IN THE NOOK THAT DID LOOK AT THE BOOK THAT IT TOOK FROM THE COOK IT FORSOOK...
oh yeah they went straight to the roof of the katoa farmhouse and went back to the cook to finish the quest. They decided to run on a straight line to ragni, following the beacon.

I had to go to dinner so I had to end the observation, but I did an exit interview
Exit Interview:
I asked them what they would do next, and they said they wanted to work on levelling and attributing skills before doing Poisoning the Pest quest.
Both wanted to play more, and ranked Wynncraft 8 or 9 out of 10
I asked them what their favorite core feature/main mechanic was.
For Gargabo it is the combat and character progression and skill/ability trees, especially classes/archetypes.
For Ysa, the best thing is the aesthetics
I asked them for their favourite individual feature.
For Garga it was the cute Grook.
For Ysa it was the weapon designs (aesthettttiiiiiiiics)
I asked them for their least favourite parts.
For garg it was the underdeveloped social aspect, i.e guilds, friends, and parties.
Ysa's least favourite is skill/ability trees because they were confusing and too much reading.
I wanted to know what they knew about proffing, so I asked "if i told you there was a way to create your own items, how would you guess that was done?"
Gargabo guessed that the crafting system would be similar to their FFXIV experience and from seeing the woodcutting prompts on trees, they assumed that there were certain production classes/subclasses that specialised into harvesting and crafting, that could create gear and sell on player market.
Ysa had no idea.
I told them there used to be a proffing tutorial in the Cook's Assistant, and asked them if they would rather it still be there.
Ysa would prefer prof tutorial, and Garg says they like profs but not everyone would want it.​

 

Wait, are you serious? The Cook's Assistant quest used to have profession tutorials in it? Why on Earth did that get removed? At least add it as an optional dialogue tree with additional quest rewards if you follow through with it before completing the quest.

 

This is the kind of great content I signed up for.

 

yup
you used to buy milk, kill chickens for eggs (because that makes sense) and harvest grains so the cook could make another cake.
the original had no grook

 

Wait when did they change it

 

Rekindled update

 

Wasn’t exactly a tutorial, it just required you to fetch wheat grains without explaining how to do so. It also cluttered the beginning of the game with too much information, the quest is only level 3. Currently underwater introduces you to professions later on at level 8, so this kind of introduction is still in the game. Underwater also gives you a free fishing rod right away, unlike old cook assistant that had you figure out what and where a tool merchant was at level 3

 

i guess that makes sense. The dream would be a quest somewhere around level 10 that explained tools, gathering, crafting, and stressed that it was COMPLETELY OPTIONAL but that it had upsides and downsides, but still explained it well. It would be hard to do but we need to break out of the loop of "Bad Profession Quest"-People complain about it-"no profession quest"-people complain-repeat

 

Honestly, even as a new player, it shouldn't be that hard to find out how professions work. The nodes have holograms that tell you to either left or right-click on them and if you do so without a tool it will tell you that you need to use one. Plus, once you get to Katoa there was (still is?) a bored farmer NPC that told you where stuff is. I guess they could've made them tell more specific/helpful information.
Anyway, figuring out how to gather isn't too confusing, it's what to do with the materials afterwards that usually stumps new players. The old quest might have been a bit misleading since new players might've thought that professions are solely for quests. I think that it would've been a more proper tutorial if the milk was an ingredient and you used it together with the eggs and the grain in a cooking station to craft the cake yourself.

One of the first things you see at Katoa Ranch is a tool merchant.

I'm not a fan of the new quest rework because it takes away the purpose of Katoa Ranch and makes the bucket merchants useless (and ironically makes them more confusing to new players).

 

ignoring the fact that players don't read
there is actually a description on the mats the says what profs they can be used in and also mentions housing if there's something to buy with it.
not that it's super helpful

 

Yeah, I know.

 

I forgot about that npc, youre totally right about that, i still think it was too early to try to teach players about profs though, its most peoples 3rd quest ever, and newbies were very often confused about the quest in the discord, i dont see that anymore since the rework. I agree that its a shame katoa isnt used for much more (except ig tunnel trouble? Barely?)

 

I hadn't thought of Underwater as being that kind of quest... It'd be nice if he had a little cooking station on his ship, and gave you some Suspicious Grain to cook a meal with that creates a quest item to bring to him before you get the Waterbreathing helmet.

 

This is a really interesting idea

 

Dirty Crook