thank you for providing a starter deck in diplomacy, this should help many new dippers to get started with less frustration!
If you have any other suggestions that would help players get over the diplo hump, feel free to share it. We're always open to ideas.
i think the biggest hurdle for new players aside from not having a pre-set deck is the complexity of all the terminology. When we explain things to fledgeling diplos in game we don't use terms like flattery and demand. we simple refer to all the colored dots as fuel. fuel to play, fuel it gives the npc, and fuel it gives you if you play a card. that usually makes the lightbulb go on and they are able to start winning parlays. also, there are quests on the starting isle that require more presence than they can acquire for the quest levels. What they don't realize is that civics will give them the necessary presence. This is a pretty difficult concept for someone that doesn't even get the idea behind diplomacy yet. Rather than monkey with the diplo gear that is already available on the vendor , or via initial quests, I would have the trainer simply award them 5 presence of each type for completing the tutorial. This is still short of what they need without acquiring gear, but it is within reach if they do a few parlays and some of the starter quests.
I can only speak for myself, but I played VG at launch and have returned to it 2 or 3 times since, each time trying Diplomacy and each time giving up on the first part of the tutorial because I simply don't have a clue what it's all about. I'm sure it makes perfect sense to those familiar with that kind of gameplay, be it through past experience with trading card games, Magic the Gathering or whatever, but to someone of mature years (and who is old-school and not looking for the modern hand-holding aspect of most MMOs these days) for whom it is a completely unknown style of gameplay the whole thing needs a very simple and clear explanation at the outset. I'm sure I'm not the only one to enjoy the adventuring and crafting but to have given up totally on the Diplomacy which is a shame.
the tutorial is repeatable but at some point you would likely receive a quest completion flag. Ceythos figures that stuff out. hopefullly not a can of worms
I would like the option to skip the tutorial!!!! I have 5 lvl 50 diplos... Yes I am clearly sick in the head.... but I also dont think I need a tutorial...
FWIW, I've run through the tutorial two or three times now. Take a brief tour of my mind and see if you'd stay interested in the parley sub-game. The tutorial starts out by saying you have only two cards, "Snippet of Wisdom" and "one other card." And it says that, if this is your first time (which it is), all five slots of the tray will be gray/blank. I open my Abilities "deck" and see (roughly) what's suggested here: five cards in each of about five or six categories. I open my strategy tray and find three cards: "Snippet of Wisdom," "Piece of Mind," and "Bit of Charm." Confusing, but I press on. "Once you click complete below, you may engage me in parley." Already?? Ok, where's that complete thingy? Do they mean the Complete button like on other quests? Well, I don't see one of those. Do they mean the "Farewell" button? Or this option that says, "I would like to complete this tutorial now?" Well, I don't really want to complete the whole tutorial yet, but I guess that's the closest match. click "A parley option on a character will look like a pen and inkwell with a title next to it." Hmm, I wonder what "on a character" means? Oh, wait; here it says, "You should now see one of these Parley options below, entitled 'Parley Part One'. Click this option...." Ok, it actually says "Parley Part One: Convince." I guess that's close enough. click The next bit, playing two cards, goes rather well. After I play the second card (assuming "Piece of Mind" is the "right" second card), the dialog invites me to move my mouse over the various board parts and read the associated tool tips. I dutifully wave my mouse over anything that looks interesting and read it. Nothing else happens. What am I supposed to do now? Did I miss a part of the board? Am I supposed to play this third card? It didn't tell me to, and I'm only supposed to have two cards. Should I click "Listen" based on the instructions of what to do when you don't have a card (but I do) or don't want to play a card (do I want to play this card)? Ugh! Ok, I'll play the card. Whew! Things moved forward. I read a bit more and get to the end. "If your opponent gets to zero dialog points before you do, you lose." Ok, got that. ... and? Dead screen again. Well, no more cards to play (unless I happened to have filled my tray with five cards at the start, which I did my first time). I guess I'm supposed to click "Listen" now? Bueller? Bueller? click More instructions about parley, again ending without telling me what I'm supposed to do next. Am I doing well? Things seem to be moving in my favor, but I feel like I'm flying by the seat of my pants. Deep breath; continue on. "The dots under the four colored icons in the middle represent 'Expression', which will be explained further on in this tutorial." (A) I hate statements like these, and (B) are the dots themselves Expressions or are the four colored icons the Expression and the dots a "counter" of that expression -- like, do I have 4 dots of Happy and 2 dots of Angry or some-such? "To bring it together" -- oh, good! I need a review, because I'm very confused right now -- "the number in the wax seal on the upper right corner of your card is its Influence." Wait, have we covered Influence before?? Did I miss it? scroll up I don't see it. So ... not a review, then. Alright. Wax seal, upper right corner. squint Ok, it sorta looks like one, even though it's oval, and most wax seals are round. Also, there are two numbers. Are they both Influence? Mine and my opponents? All I know is that it moves the Parley Indicator towards me. So all cards move the indicator towards me? And I win by having the indicator on my side?? How can I lose! Oh, and (once again) still no indication of what I should do next. Maybe the "Listen" button means I'm listening to the instructions? "Clicking the Continue button will erase this dialog" ... Um, again: there's no "Continue" button. There's a "Complete" button. Is that what you mean? Before, you asked me to click on "complete," but it was a dialog option and not a button. Well, there aren't any dialog options, and the only visible button is "Complete," so I will "a s s/u/me" once more. Wait! Was I supposed to click on the "strategy" dialog next, the quest or the parley part two?? I forgot! I begin Parley Part Two. Once again, after playing the first card, no instructions on how to advance the tutorial. I suppose you get by now that it's a big problem, IMO. "Card cost is clearly labeled in the middle of the card. The cards you have currently have no cost; the colored icons display no numbers." Hmm. I see the icons in the middle of the card. But ... there's numbers above and sometimes below. Even on the one card I know I'm definitely supposed to have, "Snippets." Sooo, are those not the numbers being explained? I mean, technically the icons don't display a number -- the number is displayed beside the icon. I decide to check the other cards in my Abilities book. Ah! There's one with a number on one of the colored dots that's not an icon, but matches the colors of the icons. That must be what they mean. Ok, got it now. "Notice that during this parley the Expression field has been filling up on both sides." Er, well ... some of them are; some of them aren't. Am I missing something? "Everytime (sic) I play the card 'Patient Words' I give you one green Reason Expression." Oh? I hadn't noticed. Maybe you could tell me before you do it (or do it again now that I know what to pay attention to)? "...playing cards will move Expression around the Gameboard." Really? Move it around? Like tokens in Cribbage, Monopoly or Sorry? How about "playing cards will add or deduct Expression"? After reading the next section a few times, I wish it would have said, "There are five types of Conversations: Gossip, Entertain, Incite, Convince, Interview. Of these five, only Interview allows all (or "any of the") four Expressions. Each of the remaining four prohibit one of the Expressions. Gossip prohibits Reason, ..." etc. ...and now I get to the part about the numbers above and below the icons. Whew! But what do I get? The dialog just tells me that there are numbers and then stops/breaks. Is this a cliffhanger? "This parley is finished, and you have as much time as you like to review this Dialogue. Once you press Continue, however, the text is gone, so make sure you read everything before continuing." I bet you can guess. Yep; no Continue. This time, there's nothing. As far as I can see, the parley isn't finished. The only option is to click the "Farewell" button. I think I clicked "Farewell" the first time(s). This time, I decide to click "Listen" once more and get the "You have won the parley!" message. And the dialog advanced as well! "These training parleys are repeatable, and you can practice as much as you want." That's a very different tone from "Once you click Continue, everything's gone, so read it all while you can!" The "Farewell" button has now changed to "Complete". Heyyy! Complete! Where ya been? This guy's been going on about you. (Still doesn't match the instructions, but at this point, I'm going with hunches.) So everything closes. Now what? The tutorial didn't say what to do now. What's my hunch? Well, my trainer's icon is green. Yeah, I guess I finished both parts of the tutorial, so ... I'm done? Click the trainer, complete the quest. "You require a great deal of instruction before your appearance is important." Boy, you can say that again! I hope the above might shine some light on why more people don't parley. I like to think I'm an "adventurer" more than a "leveler" or a "gold farmer." Plus, I've been a professional programmer for at least 15 years (as in, it's my primary source of income for myself and my family). Keep these two facts in mind when I say that I'm probably more patient than most players, yet I gave up parley after trying to get through the tutorials and feel confident enough to embark on the first quest. Clean up the tutorial, and I expect you'll see more players at least try it.
It's a very intuitive process that doesn't go into words very well, and yes, the tutorial does not have the clearest explanation by far. Much like a bicycle. I can't quite tell you how to balance, but after a few mishaps you start doing it and it never goes away. You need to fix your strategy before beginning a parley. The strategy is your hand of cards. Hit P for abilities book, go to diplomacy, hit strategy. This allows you to click and drag cards into the hand, and Vanguard click and drag is kinda slow. The tutorial says you need to start with a "comment", but that's not a rule. You could use anything with no cost (or if you are able to start with a point or two, you could use something for that cost). Cost = fuel = expression. If you start with a comment, it costs nothing, and when you do, you will see some fuel appear on the opponent's side, and the slider on the right will move your way. When the slider is on your side, you're in control, and that's what this game is about. The numbers on the ends of the slider decrease, corresponding to who had control that turn, and you're trying to keep control until yours hits 0. You gave the opponent some expression, and that determines what they are able to play, then their play gives you some expression, and so on. The cards themselves have a cooldown, it may be 3 turns, it may be 2-4. Generally, a card with a big influence that could move the slider 5 ticks your way, is both going to cost you a lot to play, and give the opponent lots of expression. This is why we use cards that have 0 influence, or even -1. Weaker-seeming cards will either give you more expression, or burn your opponent's. You could just play one influential card, and then prevent your opponent from being able to play at all. Focusing on influential cards for 3 or 5 ticks of the slider is not going to work. It's very important to get used to working with the expression. Influence could also be variable like the cooldown. On the row of colored dots, for instance, if the red one has a 1 above and a 2 below, that means it costs you 2 red (demand) expression to play it, and when you do, it will give the opponent one red point. Likewise, if the blue one just had a -2 over it, that means it does nothing but burn 2 of the opponent's inspire points. On the "interview" type parleys, the actual colors don't matter much, but when you do one that for instance prohibits blue cards, having that -2 blue card in your hand is a waste. I agree that the tutorial has three thumbs and two annular fingers. It's really just that first step that's bewildering, do a few practice parleys and it should start coming together. It's much simpler than the language suggests. Further along, cards get a lot more elaborate than just described, but it's the same simple system. Manipulate colors and remember you win a turn just the same if the slider is one point on your side or ten. Also, when you need some low level parleys, there are a few right around the Tanvu rift you can cycle through pretty consistently. If you need crude rewards, there is a guy at the bottom of the ramp in Hathor Zhi who really is that bad.
As a new player I did find the beginning diplomacy tutorial on the Isle to be a bit confusing, namely since it is obviously outdated as you now start with more cards in the deck. But through trial-and-error it is not difficult to learn strategies. You must be prepared to lose parlays a few times against some NPCs in order to figure out these different strategies on how to prepare your deck for a given encounter. However, the most confusing part is how to continue advancing diplomacy after leaving the Isle. On my dwarf disciple I went to the Three Rivers area first and was surprised to find that the diplomacy quests were considerably lower than the adventuring quests in the same area. For example, in Three Rivers the diplo quests are for levels 4-6 while the adventuring quests are level 11-15 or so. Even more confusing is that for some of the low level diplo quests you need high presence. In one quest I was able to parlay with 4 of the 5 NPCs but for one I needed 50 academic presence, which seems very high for a level 5 quest. Only after reading some other threads did I find out that I need to go back to a starter area and complete the diplo quests there, which apparently will give me the equipment that I need to finish the later quests. Maybe instead of a total quest overhaul there could just be more in-game directions from NPCs in the 3 main areas that you can port to from the Isle so that you know where to go first to work on diplomacy. Similarly more in-game directions are needed for advancing crafting. I prefer to get these directions in-game rather than having to read spoilers on the wiki or in forums, but as it now stands you will be lost without doing some outside research.
the changes in the starting areas did muddle some of the diplomacy quest and parlay levels. typically players follow the diplomats saga line (easily found in qa riverbank). The lower level civic parlays help those that didn't start on the isle of dawn but you have to look around more for lvl 10+ parlays with veskals no longer that level. Khal and Tanvu have a full range of parlays you can do, but I still suggest going to qa for your continuation.
Right, but how would I know in-game to go to Qa Riverbank to advance my diplomacy? I only know that now from doing outside research (reading forums and wikis). A simple fix would be to station a few NPCs in the 3 areas where you can portal onto the mainland from the Isle, e.g., a diplo advisor, a crafting advisor and an adventuring advisor. The diplo advisor could have a quest that informs the player that diplomats are needed in Qa Riverbank (or wherever the diplo quest lines start on the mainland). Similarly the crafting advisor could have different quests directing the player to where they can learn their continents next tier, where to go on other continents to learn their particular style of crafting and who to talk to for specialization. Not too much handholding, but enough to make it a bit less frustrating and not require outside research on the part of the new player for very basic activities.
I will also agree with adding some 'advisors' in key locations to help direct new folks. I did manage to figure out diplomacy gameplay through time tested trial and error then finally bumped into the Diplomat's Saga questline but for crafting the story was much different. Don't even get me to recount all the hours I put in trying to figure out the continental style and tier questions before I finally had to resort to the Telon Project website. Made it over the hump with three toons in tier 4, one ready for tier 5 in a bit but the map for the trek was outsourced right there at that initial cusp when leaving the Isle... this is a place where the newest players could be lost to the frustration of not knowing what to do or where to go. Later on it's not such an issue because you've learned the lay of the land but early on it is frustrating enough to lose interest.
the way you would know is the same way you would know in game to go to qa to advance your adventuring. the diplo npc is pretty close to the qa rift. i haven't leveled a toon through iod recently so i don't know what the replacement for veskal's is but the three points where you continue the game indeed have npcs for diplomats that tell you where/what to do. you just need to look carefully. crafting is another story. it probably could use a bit more info in game, but its always easy to just ask in ooc or the /craft channel. i like how things are not in your face. it encourages people to ask and help each other and its one of the reasons why vg is so much more enjoyable compared to everything else on the market.
I don't know what the lead out from the IoD is anymore, but the Veskal's NPC is still there (right by the rift) and the quest still works. I did it last night.
Props there too. But just a bit more clarity especially in the lower levels to help 'acclimate' the new blood in particular. Like it or not, many of our newcomers are accustomed to the spoon-fed linear questlines. A touch more info in the first tiers would eliminate much of the tedium. OK, I am referring more to crafting here too and drifting off topic. just my 2c worth
