The new map looks great but…

[Astralporing.1957]

6 minutes ago, Gibson.4036 said:

Good point. So it really should have been introduced better with their introduction. I was just pulling a few common "players don't still don't know how to" things out of my hat.

I can think of places where the story missions do train incrementally in something you will need to know to finish that story instance. It'd be nice if they were tied to what peopel need to know in the rest of the game. We could have been taught, for example, about the randomized ley abilities (I can never seem to remember their exact names) that PoF bounties have during the story, in an incremental way that would have prepared people to do face them out in the world instead of relying on commanders to yell "melee now, range now" or "if you have the orbs on you, get to one of the other orbs". Again, just an example, but stuff like that players will get if they are introduced to them and incrementally tested in them.

It looks like they might be doing this in EoD. In addition to the tutorial "break the golem's break bar" kind of stuff, that water event they showed looks like a more developed, less obvious dodge tutorial than the silly "dodge into the chest once" tutorials in the core starter zones. If so, maybe there will be a smoother learning curve as new players join.

The issue is that how much those "breadcrumbs" teaching you some of the combat mechanics help, depends on ton of things the game cannot really teach you about. Dodging is important, and will let you not die to oneshots, and survive the encounter for longer, but if your damage is not up to par, it won't actually matter that much. It's also much more important to glass cannon builds than nomad/minstrel sustain bunkers. Same with CC - for an "average build" out there, CCing or not does not change much, because for it to matter, you need to be able to capitalize on the broken state window first. Another factor you could potentially keep improving is perfecting your rotations (and learning how to use it in actual combat, when stuff happens that can interfere with it). But, again, for that to matter you need to first have a decent build.

Basically, everything is a force multiplier - but with the most factors for that not being subject to "gradual increase" by learning, being more like binary switches instead. And ones you learn not inside the game, but outside of it.