Please pardon the pun (you can thank me later if you steal it, Jagex) I recently had two friends who became interested in trying RuneScape again for the first time in years and the pathways system suggested that they talk to Turael in Burthope to learn the ropes. It goes without saying that it didn't quite go so smooth. In this thread I want to talk about problems that they had with the tutorial and what frustrated them.
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The tutorial forces open interfaces rather than teaching you how to access them.
Whenever something new was taught, such as how to place abilities on your bar, a common question when they wanted to access that menu again was "how do I find this again?" Rather than teaching the player how to find their abilities, the inventory, or their skill interface, it is opened for them, which is jarring to someone who hasn't played in a very long time. The tutorial should assume the player hasn't played before or hasn't played since the Evolution of Combat.
furthermore, they were frustrated by the fact that more tabs were being added to the same window when playing on non-legacy interfaces. So all these interfaces were getting shoved together and they weren't taught how to navigate between them, none the less how to make new windows. I feel teaching people more about the way the interface flows would be helpful in their navigation of the game, especially since one of the big perks of RS3 is how versitile UI customization is.
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The tutorial forces action bars onto the player in ways that are intrusive.
One of the biggest complaints from my friends were that whenever Turael told them to fight monsters, their main bar was overwritten without their permission. So when they had just learned how to add abilities to their bar, it didn't matter because their abilities were no longer exactly where they wanted it. It also forced a second action bar for no particular reason that included 3 extra abilities that just as easily could have been on their main bar. It also makes you place the "eat food" ability onto the second bar specifically. New players should only have to worry about one bar at a time or else it gets intimidating and cluttered.
This is especially made jarring by the fact that only Melee and Ranged does this. When you do your first slayer task with Ariane using magic, she asks you if you'd like your bar overwritten. Turael should do this as well. There is no reason that an existing bar should be overwritten without permission because it frustrates players who already figured out how to add abilities.
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The Ranged tutorial is shallow in comparison to Melee and Magic.
When it was time to try out ranged combat, it taught them how to do fletching, which is very good as it also teaches them how to do Smithing for melee armor and weapons. However, unlike melee, ranged does not give you the option to make anything other than a bow. It doesn't teach you to make armor despite smithing teaching you to make metal armor and magic teaching you to make robes. Instead Turael tells you to take off your metal armor and says "you're now geared for ranged!" which is absolutely untrue you're sending them in naked with no idea how to make armor for it.
On top of that, when you're sent to fight the cows, it is not specified that you have to kill them from outside the pen until you've already killed one outside the pen. Instead it puts the waypoint marker in a weird place without really telling you what do. So my friends assumed they have to go inside the pin to fight. Once they figured it out, I told them they should pick up the drops so that they have the means to make leather armor for ranging. However, this is not taught to them. This is a missed opportunity that could have taught them to make gear with drops from the target they had just slain.
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The tutorial shows how out of date the crafting system is.
One of my friends thought the idea of tanking as a non-melee class sounded really interesting and wanted to make a shield and crossbow for ranged. However, unlike Melee and Magic where a 1H + Shield is available right from level 1, ranged needs 9 fletching for the crossbow and 12 crafting for the shield. I couldn't suggest a shieldbow either because that requires 10 fletching. He was also confused because the leather gloves and vambraces have the same exact stats despite vambraces requiring a higher crafting level. It was frustrating to him because he didn't have the same level of freedom as the other two classes and some things you make with crafting are redundant.
Another frustration that came with this was that he could not check what materials he needed for making things with crafting in the skills menu. Some skills like Herblore are very good about this and let you click on the item to see what it requires to make the item. However, some skills like crafting, smithing, and fletching do not do this. To a veteran this seems like a non-issue, but to a new player it's frustrating because they cannot know what is required to make something unless they already have the material or the look it up on a wiki. The skills menu needs an overhaul just as much as the level scaling for various items.
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This is all based on the experience of people I helped guide through the game via screen share on discord, so I could have missed a thing or two, but I feel there are all things that really should be addressed. I want this game to be accessible to new players like it was in the old days and I know you're capable of it, especially with how you presented the tutorials on stream the past two weeks. The Durael tutorial should be just as accessible to players.
