Focused Feedback: New Player Experience (NPE) Improvements

[darkgob]

Looks like it hasn't been updated here. but:

  

On 2/13/2024 at 10:37 AM, The Curator said:

Icons of recharging powers no longer shrink when the recharge timer is enabled, to make them easier to see behind the number.

 

Nope.  Not a fan.  I rely on both of these behaviors.  Please make this an option.

[Random Robot]

15 minutes ago, darkgob said:

Looks like it hasn't been updated here. but:

  

 

Nope.  Not a fan.  I rely on both of these behaviors.  Please make this an option.

 

Agreed, I use the recharge timer to keep track of powers with long (1min+) recharges but use the icon size to keep track of powers with short recharge so I can check them with my peripheral vision without having to shift my focus to the power tray. This change will make things harder for me, not easier. Have Recharge Timers and Icon Shrinking as two separate options so people can customize their experience.

[Fade]

One more voice for the "shrinking power icon support" chorus. This seems like the kind of thing that should be an option.

 

1 hour ago, Doc_Scorpion said:

So, what exactly does this setting do?  I've played with it some and can't figure it out.

 There is a subtle "sparkle" effect that plays when a power is finished recharging by default. This disables the little sparkle.

[SaxyGuitar]

It'd be cool if we can get something like this for MM in all the other tutorials. It explains a lot about MMs, and new players will never see it if we recommend them to go to with Red or Blues side at the start of the game. City of Heroes is the only MMO like this with a pet class like this so I bet people would want to try it out, and this would help.

 

Edited February 16 by SaxyGuitar

[gameboy1234]

1 hour ago, SaxyGuitar said:

It'd be cool if we can get something like this for MM in all the other tutorials.

 

Gotta agree.  While I don't think we should hold up the release candidate, plopping another NPC into both Outbreak and Breakout with some additional info should be a priority as soon as RC is out the door.

 

[Number Six]

4 hours ago, Fade said:

One more voice for the "shrinking power icon support" chorus. This seems like the kind of thing that should be an option.

 

 There is a subtle "sparkle" effect that plays when a power is finished recharging by default. This disables the little sparkle.

 

It also disables the shrinking icons altogether, even when NOT using the recharge timer, as well as the exploding "0" animation that coincides with the sparkle if you are using the timer in Centered mode.

[Number Six]

Also I'm not going to clutter the options menu with it since there's already too many esoteric things in there, but if you really want shrinking icons combined with power timers, I just added a hidden /tray_always_shrink command. It persists in your account settings so you only have to use it once.

[Doc_Scorpion]

16 minutes ago, Number Six said:

Also I'm not going to clutter the options menu with it since there's already too many esoteric things in there, but if you really want shrinking icons combined with power timers, I just added a hidden /tray_always_shrink command. It persists in your account settings so you only have to use it once.

Make sure it goes into the patch notes so it eventually finds its way into the wiki - we don't want it too well hidden...  🙂

That being said, I'm of two minds on the countdown timers.  For my main attack chains (where things recharge in less than 20-30 seconds, often much less) they strike me as somewhat distracting.  But for nukes, buffs, rezzes, and various other things where the recharge can be from 30 seconds to over a minute (or even longer)...  That's where the recharge timer really shines.

But I would hesitate to recommend a hard cutoff wrt to recharge times because that's going to be a very much a YMMV thing. 

[Number Six]

22 minutes ago, Doc_Scorpion said:

But I would hesitate to recommend a hard cutoff wrt to recharge times because that's going to be a very much a YMMV thing. 

 

You should keep an eye on RC3...

[c0]

Quote

• The power recharge timer now defaults to on (Center).

• When centered, the recharge timer slightly increases in size as it approaches 0, and has an extra animation when the power is recharged.

• Icons of recharging powers no longer shrink when the recharge timer is enabled, to make them easier to see behind the number.

• New settings added to control power tray animations and add more customization options (format options, color coding, opacity) for the recharge timer.

 

Request: Add an option to invert the color gradient when enabling color coding for the recharge timer.  Current it goes green (long recharge remaining) to red (almost ready).  For me I'd like red to be stop and green to be go. ☺️

So maybe instead of Disabled/Enabled it could White / Green to Red / Red to Green

[Blackbird71]

18 hours ago, Number Six said:

Also I'm not going to clutter the options menu with it since there's already too many esoteric things in there, but if you really want shrinking icons combined with power timers, I just added a hidden /tray_always_shrink command. It persists in your account settings so you only have to use it once.

 

The option is appreciated, however I'm not a fan of "hidden settings," as it's too easy to forget they exist or how to use them.

[PoptartsNinja]

17 hours ago, c0 said:

 

Request: Add an option to invert the color gradient when enabling color coding for the recharge timer.

 

I was a bit worried about this so I had to check it in person, and it goes from blue to green to yellow to red. So, not as bad as I was expecting and it's an optional feature.

 

If the devs are willing to entertain the idea of variants for the color-shifting option, a colorblind mode where it shifts along the value spectrum (Dark gray to white?) or goes from a dark-ish purple to light blue would also be nice. I'm not colorblind but I have friends who are.

 

The growing icon was friendlier to the colorblind, so I'm definitely for keeping that as a menu option.

[Jimmy]

New Player Experience (NPE) Improvements - RC3

With everything finally becoming official, we're at the beginning of a new era for the game, and it is time we become better stewards of the core game itself. The first step is to start making some improvements to the new player experience (or NPE, as the cool kids refer to it) to remove some of the small "pain points" experienced by new players (you may have noticed a large influx of them recently!).

 

Character Creation Guidance

We cleaned up some of the language and graphics during character creation and tutorial selection to guide new players toward creating their characters in the easier starting areas:

• Updated text to nudge new players to start in Primal Earth, not Praetoria.
• Updated text to nudge players towards Breakout or Outbreak, not Galaxy City.
• RESISTANCE and LOYALIST are now colored blue and gold in the text descriptions (in the same way HERO and VILLAIN are colored blue / red).
• "City of Heroes: Freedom" and "City of Heroes: Going Rogue" graphics replaced with "Primal Earth" and "Praetorian Earth" graphics.
• Kheldians now show stats during AT selection (instead of a series of ?s).
• EAT descriptions updated to state that they are not recommended for new players, cannot access the tutorial, and are locked to (start as) specific alignments.
• Origin selection guidance text updated to clarify that it's primarily a narrative choice with minimal gameplay significance.
• Several AT descriptions updated to correct poor grammar and remove needless gendering.
• Several AT stats updated to better reflect their abilities (also, Kheldians now have stats instead of ?s).
• Replaced all the ugly dashes (-) with pretty bullets (•).

Access to Travel

• New characters will automatically start with Athletic Run (players can swap this out at S.T.A.R.T, formerly P2W, for another version).
• Passport (and Long Range Teleporter) is now unlocked by acquiring any 10 exploration badges, instead of one exploration accolade. This doesn't affect characters who already own Long Range Teleporter, and the Pocket D unlock method is still present.
  • Note: For technical reasons, this only counts exploration badges collected after the patch.
• New characters are given 30 minutes of the LKT-1700 Rocket Pack when training to level 2. The description informs players how to get more.
  • Swapped from Sky Raiders Jet Pack to LKT-1700 Rocket Pack.

Origin Attacks

• Damage is now more consistent during the early levels.
  • It is now scale 1.00 at levels 1 through 10. This damage declines linearly, starting at level 11, and ending at 0.30 at level 17 (previously the damage began dropping off from level 2).
• Endurance cost removed.
• Recharge reduced from 4s to 3s.
• Range increased from 45 feet to 80 feet to match most ranged attacks.
• Now added to the tray upon character creation.
• Power icon colors updated to Inherent color scheme.
  • Note: The existing icons still exist with their old file names if you were using them for macro images.

User Interface Improvements

• All three main power trays are expanded by default, and pre-set to tray 1, 2, and 3 rather than all being tray 1.

  • Additional trays added with the + button now default to tray 4, 5, 6, etc.

• The inspiration tray is in its expanded state by default.

• To avoid confusion with Sprint, Prestige Power Slide is now no longer added to the tray upon character creation.

• Fixed a bug which sometimes caused power trays to be completely emptied if a new character zoned or logged off before moving powers in or adding extra powers to the tray.

• Power trays now default to showing the first associated key binding instead of slot numbers.

Options Improvements

• Power recharge timers now default to on (Center).

  • When centered, the recharge timer slightly increases in size as it approaches 0, and has an extra animation when the power is recharged.

  • Timer text scaling no longer changes based on time remaining and is just a flat size increase for single-digit numbers.

  • The power tray timer defaults to shown for powers with an estimated recharge of longer than 5 seconds. This can be changed in the options menu, or a custom value may be set using the /recharge_timer_threshold command.

  • Icons of recharging powers no longer shrink when the recharge timer is enabled, to make them easier to see behind the number. Veterans used to the old behavior can override this with /tray_always_shrink 1.

  • New settings added to control power tray animations and add more customization options (format options, color coding, opacity) for the recharge timer.

  • Added an alternate color palette for the recharge timer.

  • Adjusted timer to always round up when in whole-number mode, so that it is a proper countdown.

  • Fixed recharge timer color setting not saving correctly.

• The game's volume levels have been adjusted to make for a more comfortable experience.

  • The volume sliders now range from 0% - 150%.

  • The 150% setting is equivalent to the former 100% setting.

  • The slider range scales along a curve so that more of the slider results in usable volume levels.

• The "Show Pet Window Option" setting has been removed and is always enabled.

  • This just provides players with the ability to open the Pets window (by clicking "Pets" at the top of the Team window), it doesn't open the window by default.

• Added an option to control power tray labels: Can be set to Key Bindings, Slot Numbers, or None.

• The Auto-accept level changes above or below options now default to level 50 instead of 0, preventing pop-ups from appearing when teaming.

• What was formerly called "Inverted" mouse is now "Normal" and vice-versa.

• The Villain Name and Villain Health Bar UI options now include "Always" in the list of settings to cycle through.

Control Scheme

The game's default key bindings and mouse options have been modernized:

• The default run forward binding now turns the character to face the camera direction. This mostly affects what happens when you press forward after using free look to change the camera angle.
• Running forward with Left Button + Right Button is now a standard run and does not activate autorun.
• Left-mouse-button dragging activates Quick Look mode, which is similar to free camera look with the middle mouse button but snaps back to center when the button is released.
• The default bindings for the top tray (Alt2) changed from Control+# to Shift+# for reduced finger strain on commonly used combinations.
• The pop-up server tray now has default key bindings of Control+#.
• Team member selection bindings moved to Shift+F1 - Shift+F8.
• Default key bindings for collapsing and switching power trays removed. With more trays visible all the time and the extra added trays, having 1 of them change when pressing minus or equals isn't as useful, and it was easy to accidentally press these and cause confusion.
• The previous bindings are available under the drop-down as the "Classic" preset, and should work just like they always have.
• These changes only apply to new characters, and overridden by customized bindings that were previously saved.
• Applying some or all of these settings on existing characters requires either resetting to the default bindings or manually applying the changes.

In-Game Guidance

• When gaining the free Rocket Pack at level 2, you are presented with a pop-up explaining how to get more at the S.T.A.R.T. Vendor.
• Finding your first exploration badge now gives a pop-up explaining that you'll get LRT if you collect 10 in total.
• Fixed and updated the missing Invention tutorial pop-up when reaching level 10 (this pop-up will also automatically unlock the Invention tutorial contact relevant to your faction).
• Rewrote the "You got a Tip!" Pop-up to be more up-to-date and informative.

Miscellaneous

• Pay 2 Win (and Transact 4 Victory) have rebranded as S.T.A.R.T.
  • Fixed several missed P2W strings.
• Exploration badges now award a tour guide tip.
  • The very first exploration badge you pick up does not award a tip (to avoid getting two pop-ups from one badge).

• Exploration badges now grant Patrol XP instead of regular XP.

  • The amount of Patrol XP gained is dramatically higher than the previous amount of regular XP previously gained.

  • The amount scales with level, starting with 1.5 bars at level 1, down to 0.25 bars at level 50.

[Fade]

The /tray_always_shrink 1 command returns an "unknown command" error.

 

EDIT: After the post-update update, this is no longer true. Requires "power tray animations" to be enabled, but works fine.

Edited February 17 by Fade
new build changes

[Lockely]

The power tray slots using keybindings is literally gamechanging for me, and the modernization of the control scheme is going to prevent so much new-player fall-off from everything feeling "dated". Outstanding job for both!!

[Lunar Ronin]

This is just my two cents, but I think changing the default power tray labels and key bindings for a 20 year-old MMORPG is a mistake.  I mean, for me, it doesn't matter because the first thing I'm going to do when Page 7 launches is change everything back to the way it was and save it to my options.txt file.  As options, they're fine.  But for people returning from both live and earlier on Homecoming, changing the way a 20 year-old video game works by default isn't the way to go.  It'll just cause confusion.  City of Heroes is City of Heroes, not any other video game.

Edited February 17 by Lunar Ronin

[StarkWhite]

City of Heroes is a living game attracting new players in 2024.

[Lunar Ronin]

7 minutes ago, StarkWhite said:

City of Heroes is a living game attracting new players in 2024.

 

I understand that, and having the options of changing bindings and controls for them is a good thing.  But changing the defaults for people who have played the game for 20 years isn't a good call, IMO.

[Fade]

11 minutes ago, Lunar Ronin said:

This is just my two cents, but I think changing the default power tray labels and key bindings for a 20 year-old MMORPG is a mistake.  I mean, for me, it doesn't matter because the first thing I'm going to do when Page 7 launches is change everything back to the way it was and save it to my options.txt file.  As options, they're fine.  But for people returning from both live and earlier on Homecoming, changing the way a 20 year-old video game works by default isn't the way to go.  It'll just cause confusion.  City of Heroes is City of Heroes, not any other video game.

I think this one is a "damned if you do, damned if you don't" kind of situation.

New players expect certain things to work in a modern way, like the new "quick-look" feature, turning the camera without turning your character by using left click, which is standard in almost every other MMO I can think of.

On the other hand, existing players either will or will not like the changes based on their personal preferences. Hopefully people know to save their binds and options the way they like them before the update, and load them up after the update if they'd rather have things function as they do currently.

The "classic" default bind profile is probably the best way to handle the situation, though.

 

Which brings me to another point:

1 hour ago, Jimmy said:

• These changes only apply to new characters, and overridden by customized bindings that were previously saved.
• Applying some or all of these settings on existing characters requires either resetting to the default bindings or manually applying the changes.

This part is somewhat misleading. Previously existing characters ARE affected by these new changes (especially noticeable with the changes to free look and moving forward, and the change to how mouse movement auto-run works), but loading a bind file saved before the update reverts them.

[Number Six]

10 minutes ago, Fade said:

This part is somewhat misleading. Previously existing characters ARE affected by these new changes (especially noticeable with the changes to free look and moving forward, and the change to how mouse movement auto-run works), but loading a bind file saved before the update reverts them.

 

That's surprising since binds are saved serverside with the character. Will look into it as that's not how it's intended to work.

[Lockely]

21 minutes ago, Lunar Ronin said:

 

I understand that, and having the options of changing bindings and controls for them is a good thing.  But changing the defaults for people who have played the game for 20 years isn't a good call, IMO.

 

Literally the first thing I have to do with any new player is spend an hour helping them tweak their camera and control settings to unfunk them from the CoH defaults. 

 

I came across a player who unintentionally managed to turn their camera to the side and then couldn't figure out 1) how they did it, and 2) how to fix it so they played through 7 levels of content looking behind them, because the binds are buried in a menu with a billion different options that aren't all intuitive for a modern audience.

 

I'm an old player returning. Even I had to spend time fixing it rather than sticking with the oddity that CoH was even back in the day compared to it's peers.

 

There's an argument to be made for historical preservation but the devs have given a legacy control scheme option for you to do just that. 

[Fade]

I've tested the control scheme changes with:

1. Characters that existed on the Beta server before Release Candidate 3
2. A character that I transferred from Live to Beta after the Release Candidate 3 update
3. A brand-new character created after the Release Candidate 3 update

Characters 1 and 2 had the new quicklook left mouse button features, new mouse movement functionality, new shift+# for the third tray buttons, and the new walking towards a turned camera (free-look) functionality.

Character 3 inherited my default saved keybinds when I created it and had none of these new changes except for quicklook, which seems to be bound to a new "LeftDragWorld" keybind rather than "LBUTTON" like I would have first expected. (EDIT: I think this part is a good thing and I like it.)

Edited February 17 by Fade

[Drakwatch]

4 minutes ago, ScarySai said:

Some powers aren't getting updated cooldown changes, follow up and whirling smash being two rather notable examples. 

 

Do those powers have cooldowns longer than 5 seconds? I think by default they do not display numbers if a power has a cooldown that is less than 5 seconds, if that's what you're reporting.
 

[Drakwatch]

2 hours ago, Jimmy said:

Left-mouse-button dragging activates Quick Look mode, which is similar to free camera look with the middle mouse button but snaps back to center when the button is released.

So, with this option enabled (and it's enabled by default), it makes it -really- difficult to mouse-click drag resize windows on the HUD. Holding left click to resize the chat window will disengage with the mouse prompt and then go into Quick Look mode, so you can no longer click and drag the window.

 

As a note, you can click and drag with left click to move target, navigation, player, and power windows around, but with Quick Look enabled, you cannot move the chat window around.

Edited February 17 by Drakwatch

[ScarySai]

6 minutes ago, Drakwatch said:

Do those powers have cooldowns longer than 5 seconds? I think by default they do not display numbers if a power has a cooldown that is less than 5 seconds, if that's what you're reporting.
 

Ahah, must have missed this. NVM.