Level gating content is not helpful. If you find your new players are confused by some of your systems, you know what you do? Add tool tips and tutorials.
This is how I imagine a proper revamp of the NPE if you honestly deem it necessary:
You create your character, get the first cut scene, and enter the first instance. You’re greeted with a Welcome to GW2 window, given a brief message about being in a personal story instance, and then given the option to activate the New Player Tutorial right away.
The New Player Tutorial starts off by explain the HUD. Then explains that new skills will open up by using them (as it should be) and goes on to explain the unlocking of utility skills and elite skills later on.
You will then be told about the quest markers and such, and be directed to continue through the instance.
- as a side note I think you should enter into the instance in a safe zone that is easily 3000 range away from the nearest mobs.
Once you start moving forward you will undoubtedly notice the red-named mobs up ahead. When you are 1,500 range away the game with automatically pause and ask you if you would like information on combat in GW2 including weapon skill unlocks, cooldowns, dodging, etc. Each of these can be explained easily.
You then continue through the instance as we normally do.
At some point in the first instance your character should meet up with a “boss” that WILL down you. There’s no avoiding it. Once downed, you will be provided information on the downed state, and be directed to look at each of your skills while downed. Then you are given the opportunity to skill-4-rez yourself and continue with the instance.
Once you have completed the instance and are in the open world you are greeted with a “Welcome to Tyria” message and directed to a Scout to learn about the world. The scouts can be so useful if Anet lets them be. I suggest that when you interact with a scout it starts an unskippable dialog that goes through ALL of the things available to do in the open world. Honestly it won’t take long to explore. Briefly touch on everything from POIs, to Vistas, to Hearts, to Events, etc… and then explain that when you interact with your first POI/Vista/SP/WP you will be given further information on how the system works. The Scout will end by reminding you of your quest/story marker.
Then you’re ready to explore. When you interact with a POI for the first time, a dialog box will open asking you if you would like to know more about it. Simply choose yes or no.
This covers 90% of the simple stuff.
From the moment you enter the open world the game should have a small blinking icon near the top left of the screen that, when hovered over, says “Click to learn more about these in-game features”, and it will then ask you if you would like to learn about each of the options at the top of the screen, LFG, Guild tab, BLTC, etc. And, if you so choose, you have the option to learn about each individually.
I’m sure I missed something, but the point is you can cover most of this with simple tool tips and tutorials. If you think your player-base still wouldn’t get it you could have NPCs throughout the world that provide additional information and tutorials on any subject you may need.
Players are not stupid. They don’t need their hand held for a long period of time. They just need a small amount of information and they’ll be fine. And the option to get further information if necessary never hurts.
But please don’t level-gate everything. It makes the leveling experience way worse, it’s completely insulting to the average player, and it’s horrible frustrating for experienced players that want to level a new character. Level-gating makes zero sense and I can’t believe that this idea passed the initial brainstorming phase at Anet.
I know that it probably took a ton of time to create the new system, but the fact is it just doesn’t make sense and actually makes your game worse instead of better.
I am certain that nothing will be done because reverting a change of this magnitude back to its original format (or my new proposed format
) takes way too much effort, but I guess that didn’t stop me from posting it :P