As one of my longer-term projects I am working on overhauling the help center.
I would like to start considering what a new player might find difficult: e.g How does Guild Wars work? Please consider the existing content of the help center where there is existing info already:
Also, is there anything else you feel is in dire need of being covered there (e.g. Soulforge)?
Existing suggestions (from comments below):
Guilds: The importance of joining a guild as a new player, how to find a good guild (not using search), not joining low/moderate activity guilds,
There are very few information ingame about various things:
How certain traits really work (thereâs just another recent thread about the âextra Manaâ traits working for single troops or the whole team)
How to gain treasure maps (the game only kindly tells you that you can gain them via cascades after you actually had a cascade⌠which took me over a week to get.)
That all troops from all kingdoms can drop from chests
A good explanation about how important guilds are so that players have an idea before joining one
How tribute works/how important it is to level up your kingdoms vs. getting stars for them
How the Arcane droprates are in explore vs. other gamemodes
How to gain more weapons through Mana Mastery (leveling them equally)
Guilds - their main function in the game as a whole and how to get in one that doesnât stunt your forward progress. The in-game information is basically non-existent and the help center information is woefully inadequate for guiding new players into using this system well, which is night and day for early player experience.
Bits of information that would be misleading to new players, especially the last sentence:
And things like this:
Path of least resistance here is the guild search system, so that is what an average player is more likely to use. And it doesnât really work in its current state, because most guilds with open enrollment are dead guilds, an overwhelming majority in fact. And you really have no basis for comparison for what is acceptable for guild requirements and what you can expect back out of them when you are first starting out, you have to dig in and do your research on the forums or learn the hard way from having a bad experience. A guild with no activity is by no means a subsitute for searching for an hour or so so you arenât meandering through the next couple months.
Iâve seen it happen time and time again - people to just try and use the in-game guild search system to try and get in a guild as soon as they can, landing them probably in a guild that has less than 30k gold total in weekly contributions across all players, usually donated by the person joining the dead guild and maybe one other player. We see people on the formus that landed in dead guilds and steer them into better ones, but how many are just giving up entirely? This was my experience in the very early stages of the game (had to have been about 3 years ago by now) that led to me dropping it completely at the time. Granted, my experience was long before this information was available, but even if it was, Iâd have had no reason to look on a faq on a support site because I thought the starting progression level of the game was too slow, I just would have assumed the game just progressed too slowly for my tastes (which I did).
Thanks guys! Some of those points can be added to the FAQ Sheba. The others need to be reworked into the articles but Iâll see what I can do.
I would also like to note that a lot of these articles are very old so I apologise if they inadequate and not up-to-date. ps. I just updated the Status Effects article, finally!
From what Sirrian told us, status effects will look different in 3.3. again as to not block any numbers. You might have to update them again.
Also I admit I didnât check the FAQ before making my list. I have actually no idea whatâs already in there and whatâs not.
Oh, thereâs also the fact that I didnât know until I checked the forum that levels/traits/troops start adding less points to kingdom power after a certain amount of each has been reached. âŚI dunno if thatâs in the FAQ, either. I admit Iâm too tired to check now.
I think levelling up troops (souls) and accessing higher level stones and troops (ie crafting) are difficult in the early weeks of playing.
So suggest there is some guidance on various methods to gain souls (challenges, treasure hunt, troops which produce souls such as Valk/TDS/Pharos/Dark Troll etc, troops with necromancy such as Warlock/KoS, various armours, ring of Wonder, killing enemies in explore and PvP). Maybe even suggest a very basic soul-farming team which players could get early (Warlock-valk-Warlock-Warlock dragon banner).
For Crafting, give guidance on opening the kingdoms quickly (Blighted Lands & Drifting Sands) which will allow completing dungeons daily, levelling up the forge etc
Perhaps some details of Leveling and Ascension in combination with soulsâŚ
I witnessed the craziest thing in Global Chat today. A level 1,020 player Ascending ~400 troops to Mythic in alphabetical order one after another. Obviously someone just told him/her how to do that.
The boost ratio on spells always looked like they were supposed to be multiplied instead of added per Troop.
Understanding that the drop rate in explore is the same regardless of difficulty.
Traitstones
How to get them
What they are for in both kingdoms/troops
Guardians dropping in 40k chests until they are all to Mythic. The first time you open a 40k chest and instantly are like âwtfâ when you see âwhite troopsâ that arenât supposed to be there. Excitement is quickly replaced by confusion.
I saw a newer and mid player having a very heated discussion over game mechanic, mana drain and magic. Turned out that that new player didnât have this option enabled and confused Magic and Mana. Thank goodness I pointed it out and resolved the argument.
Imagine, I only discovered this⌠I forgot, level 900+? And by then was so used to not having the numbers there that they irritated me and I switched them back off. So I am now, level 1181, likely the only player in that level range not playing with Mana numbers on (on purpose).
Lol⌠Well that might be the biggest issue of all. I use global chat, Discord, and the forums to get all my GoW related info. That is the first time Iâve ever clicked on the actual âhelpâ section. I just spent a few seconds in the game to try and find a link for it and was unable to.
If a tree falls in the woods and no one is around. Does it make a sound?
If a help section can tell you how to play a game, but the players donât know it exists. Does it still help a player?
@Cyrup When I started a while back I only found a few things difficult. some others just âwhat do I doâ or âhow do I do itâ. Those being in no particular order :
As a new player I had a long road in leveling and traiting my troops. But I think thatâs a common thing even now. Just seemed much harder at the start.
I liked the idea of joining a guild. Though disliked I couldnât check a guilds statue status, as I didnât want to fumble into one of those fresh guilds. Yes even as a newbie I wanted a decent guild to be with.
Battling seemed more difficult at lower levels for me. Once I leveled my main more that seemed to just fade away.
I was weary to use refund on a troop when I was new. As I thought it took everything from the troop, including the troop. Yes a silly me.
More clarity on troop abilities in the card, maybe use a âread moreâ option. Even to this day some troops have features that the cards do not mention at all. For example Herald. If Herald kills someone with his attack, his ability is applied to the next target. It says to the first, and technically the first dies, so having his ability apply to the second can get puzzling. There are other troops like this and as a newbie I had to learn some of these little quarks. But it would have been helpful to have expanded explanations on troop abilities. (even Nobends card would say he would reduce randomly a troops attack by x. And always got puzzled when he did a reduction more than what his card stated.) Thereâs many troops I feel that could benefit from a slightly longer description so that a newbie knows everything about them. Thatâs why I mentioned a âread moreâ button so it could just open a expanded window if they wanted to read.
Also the GoW forums has a good presence of the developers in it. Not all games do this, and Iâve played a lot. As a newbie I just assumed the forums were only players. So didnât bother looking at them until much later. Having the developers in a forum is a huge interest for me. So maybe a newbie will also be like me. In that its good to know that the forums have developers mucking around in them.
Just a suggestion here that may also be nice. Including the help section into the game itself. So it can be easily and quickly searched. Also giving it a prominent location on the main screen. So newbies know exactly where it is. Yes hiding someplace may still be helpful and found if searched. Though no questions would arise if its just right there in reach. And they can look up whatever they like as needed. Was just an idea I got looking at @awryan 's post.
Another suggestion and not just something I wondered as a newbie. Even now I have to go online to see what traitstones a troop will need at x2 x3 traits. Listing what is needed on the card at every step would be helpful. Then I can finally play the game and so can newbies. Without wondering what itâll take at x2 x3 traiting for that troop. As its a common thing even now. 1. Get a troop 2. See what it needs for x1 traits but not sure of x2 and x3 3. Go online to see about x2 and x3. 3. decide if I want to do it. ⌠Would be far more helpful if the card mentioned this itself.
For the first year I played I was in my guild by myself, I did not know about the forums or even look at the website.
I finally was about to start recruiting after global chat was introduced but I think we need to clean up the dead guilds and help new players get in the right direction faster.
A lot of ppl on ps4 seem to just join to use the chat room. Seems like us as players are helping more then the tutorials bc all too often I see the most common questions in global.
I think it must be very hard now for new players to come in and enjoy the game at all when everything is aimed at the heavy grinders and top guilds.
Why is this not under official?
All I have to say is good luck and buckle in for a long ride.
We have a link to the help center under âSupportâ.
This is a dream for me but a very big change. Iâve requested this before and itâs possible it could happen but it wouldnât be for a very long time!
Good point! I will definitely consider this going forward, I think thatâs a bigger problem but perhaps something that can be addressed with a few tweaks here and there (e.g. improving help center and redirecting to it, encouraging use of help center in chat or automatic announcements in chat from the game about getting help, etc!)
I see Support as an area to go to for Technical Support. Maybe others see it differently. I believe a very clear link in the game such as âHow to playâ. Would be more beneficial than the current options.
I stated earlier with 100% honesty that I couldnât find the link. Until you told me and then I was like âduhâ game play support. If itâs not clear to me, as an experienced player, who uses the support link weekly. What are the chances of a new player navigating there way there? At the end of the tutorial should be a very clear last instruction âFor further instructions on how to play. From the world map. Please see Settings, Support, Game Supportâ
Or preferablyâŚ
âFor further instructions on how to play. From the world map. Please see Settings, How to Playâ.
This could be fake news, or something I actually read⌠But each step needed to find an answer to a question reduces the probability of finding that answer by 25%.
From what Sirrian told us, status effects will look different in 3.3. again as to not block any numbers. You might have to update them again.
