I made a new alt to see what the MP3 experience is like at the moment, and while in some ways it has improved since my last attempt... 5 or so years ago, in some ways it has gotten worse.

Here are a few points I think could use some improvements:

This sign always just makes me feel bad. While encouraging people to read stuff is great, this kinda punishes them without warning and forces people to play the game in a certain way. You can also reach the scene this sign is in before even starting to make the map, which means you'll be forced to look at the shovel for 20 some minutes. Allow people their own form of creativity.

15 minutes is a long time to make someone wait. Especially because the first fight immediately shows the "you lost your first fight" screen if you don't have an aramor (or other offensive creature) without showing the actual fight, so it might take a while for a player to realize what's going on.

Another point is viscosity, which can drain a new player's AP pretty quickly, leaving them stranded.

There used to be people on GWI that helped new players find their bearings. I'm sure there still are, but during my time there I only saw Chewett's bug testing alt. Which makes the flight escape impossible and makes the 3/5 days until you're able to go to the mainland kinda lonely. You can gather resources and explore the island, but other than that there isn't a whole lot to do unless you know what to look for. While I think it's good to encourage new players to explore the island as much as possible, the wait times feel unnecessarily long. In my opinion we should allow players to make their way to the mainland whenever they feel ready, because we can't make them wait when they don't really have a reason to come back yet.

Finally when you come to the mainland you'll have all of MD to explore... And maybe 2 alts to fight against, if people remember to pull them out. The Splintered Apparition isn't really feasible for a fresh MP3 and (at least at this point) the card fights are a lot more complicated than normal fights. I think it would be good if there were a similar opponent to the Splinters that is leveled to MP3 players.

I've been trying to help a few of the MP3s like Turth Speaker but they're basically soft locked behind the combat.

The splintered apparition is meant to be an end game quest for those who understand combat. Unless I wildly misunderstood the quests purpose, it isn't clearable by the fresh accounts because the knowledge required is not that of fresh accounts.

20 minutes ago, Fang Archbane said:

The splintered apparition is meant to be an end game quest for those who understand combat. Unless I wildly misunderstood the quests purpose, it isn't clearable by the fresh accounts because the knowledge required is not that of fresh accounts.

Were not talking about clearing it. Were talking they cant even get a win from the first one because its still tough for them. Almost anything should beat the first one.

22 minutes ago, Fang Archbane said:

The splintered apparition is meant to be an end game quest for those who understand combat. Unless I wildly misunderstood the quests purpose, it isn't clearable by the fresh accounts because the knowledge required is not that of fresh accounts.

When it was created it was stated that it was balanced so that people could farm it when people were lacking targets. Whoever suggested changing it to 15 minutes has somewhat destroyed that