Hey guys i'm probably fighting a losing battle with this especially so close to the release, but the beginning of the game is now completely wrecked for me and others, since the coldharbor intro now sends you to the main town instead of the tutorials islands as it was meant to be, its very very messed up and new players will not have a clue, the npc speech is all messed up too..

Confusion at the start of a game is bad..

• As it is now

Coldharbor - Main town - (teleport to) Tutorial (if you wish) this makes very little sense game progression wise and really has destroyed the beginning game experience..

• What i propose

Coldharbor - Tutorial - (teleport to) Main town (if you wish) this at least has some semblance of progression and the impatient players can instantly jump to their main town after Coldharbor, to do whatever, the rest of us that actually enjoy a semblance of story and can just do what the game was designed for..

Everyone happy sort of.

Although I dislike the majority of your posts, I find myself agreeing with this. I made a DC character for the first time today and after leaving Coldharbor, I didn't even have a quest (maybe that was a bug).

I only got to the tutorial island on a hunch that there would be an optional quest for it if I ran to the docks.

This is how i made it there, literally had to ask people in chat how do i make it to the tutorial area, because its very vague and confusing, personally this is really poor design and new players wont even know to ask, they will just play confused and probably go "this game is bad" because they have no idea what they are doing etc

At least my way they have the basic choice to start in a designed area then go to the sandbox world or just go straight there..

They changed this a while ago (although we're only seeing it this weekend with this current build that was previously on the PTS), my understanding was that they got a lot of feedback about how forcing you to go through the tutorial "island" after Coldharbor wasn't "open world" enough to be an Elder Scrolls title. I can understand where the Elder Scrolls fans are coming from, but it's still an MMO and there has to be a certain progression in order for the storyline and character leveling systems to work properly. Seems they took this as a quickfix and didn't really think it through very well.

I played as AD the previous beta weekends, and really didn't feel like being sent to Kenarthi's Roost was restrictive in any way, since you could walk out the gate and go whatever direction you wanted and complete the quests in whatever order you wanted (and the level of the opponents you faced were not too far above or below throughout the whole zone). I started a character on DC this weekend and found that as soon as I had finished the first 3-4 quests in Daggerfall city, that I was left with only a few level 7-8 quests and I was still only about half way through level 4. I managed to find my way back to Stros M'kai and finished that along with Betnikh before returning to Glenumbra at level 8, so skipping them doesn't seem like much of an option anyways.

I feel as if we just got a glimpse of how it will work, and they just didn't touch up the quests or dialogue yet. When I got to the tutorial island, the ships captain (I don't recall her name) said something like "Oh, you're finally up..." I am assuming this is a remnant of the old version and assume she is who grabbed the player upon escaping Coldharbor, but I don't know.

I really hope we get something more as in better progression as the beginning is currently a mess.

This is one of those decisions that I didn't understand from either party's perspectives.

Players want freedom, and they don't like being confined to little tutorial islands when they start off...fine.. that's a fair statement. Especially for an Elderscrolls game. But each alliance has tailored quests and content on each of those islands. Why wouldn't you want to play them?

I guess the argument could be that they (the player) might have made another class under the same alliance and they want to skip the islands and jump right into it.

I wonder how people are going to feel when you have play levels 1 - 25 again when the game is released.

***

They should probably force the "tutorial islands" until you have completed them at least once under each alliance. But even if that existed I would still go to those small islands. The fact that everything is level-zoned creates a totally different form of restrictions.

Completely agree

The whole setup as it is now, is quite baffling.. seems like a knee jerk reaction to please a certain group of players, which in the end may damage the game badly.

I support the idea. This is about progression not freedom.

I don't believe that "lot of feedback" existed, just some egomaniac reviewers who wanted insta characters to go PvP , and the idea grew up in some tormented minds.

I'm not sure that is the case but even so my way would still keep those players you talk about happy

I thought some of those quests were a little tough. One gave me a L7 ring as a reward when Im only L4!

I completely agree with this!! I was so mad when I found out I had to actually search for the other islands! I felt like I was biting off more than I could chew at such a low level being in the main cities. I wanted to progress, take it a bit at a time, get to know different places. I had to ask people in chat as well to figure out how to go back and do those. I had to find the quests myself rather than coming across them in my adventures which I do not like doing because it just feels... wrong to me. It isn't what I'm used to doing.

I knew there were some people that wanted to be able to go straight to the main cities and that's great for them, but I wish we had the option to do so. They give us an option to skip Coldharbor after going through it once, and I chose to skip that since its always the same exact thing over and over, but I didn't want to also skip the starter islands. They should give us an option for EACH. Why didn't they think to do that? That way we don't have to go running around like a headless chicken trying to find the islands ourselves.

Spot on.

Who ever made this decision was:

either totally overworked (I hope this is the case),

or totally drunk (I hope not).

Either way, I hope this will be corrected speedily.

Yes. It took me a long time to even figure out where the boatswain even was, and I had to talk to several people to get it done. They could have at least put the boatswain at the entrance of the docks or something. Too confusing.

By the time I even got to the boatswain, I was already head deep into quests and leveled up quite a bit, so I had no interest to go to the starter island.
(Yes, I like saying boatswain) ^.^

O.o

It's a sad day when giving a little freedom and expecting that your playerbase can fine their way to the docks (hint: 'm') is a terrible terrible thing. I just remember why most mmo's drive me crazy. *sees visions of Neverwinter's blue gps system*

I hate it now. I just wish they kept it the same. Let us choose whatever weapon we want and then when we leave cold harbour we get to the first island and by the docks where you arrive theres a quest marker with an npc who says "hey we need help, in 'insert name here', come now or stay and explore this island.

Agreed. New players on day one will not even know about the starter zones. They can be easily missed in the current design.

And then hit a wall with the city quests that are 4 levels or so higher than them, then complain or worse still just leave saying the game was unbalanced and much too hard, not knowing the true game was circumvented to please an impatient minority

Finding the docks is not the problem. it is the awkward feeling of returning to the starter islands from the main city.

A theme park won't become sandbox just spawning characters in a big city or in the middle of nowhere. By the contrary, it breaks the story progression and sets the player mind in a blurred starting point.

Yeah I'm at a loss here. ZOS just can't do anything right it seems. They get feedback that the start was too on rails and directed. They adjust it. Now the feedback says its too open? lol ok.

Ideally, I think it would be best if on your first character in a faction you were required to do Coldharbor and the starter island. Upon making a second character in the same faction that you already progressed through, there would be an option on the character creation screen to skip Coldharbor.

Whether you go through Coldharbor or not, you will then be dumped on the starter island, but one of the "backdrop" NPCs that previously had nothing to say to your first character would then have a quest that would take you to the main city.

(And I know the correct spelling of Coldharbor, but... 'Murika! lol)