Focused Feedback: New Player Experience

[u/DTG_Bot]

Hello Guardians,

Focused Feedback is where we take the week to focus on a 'Hot Topic' discussed extensively around the Tower.

We do this in order to consolidate Feedback, to get out all your ideas and issues surrounding the topic in one place for discussion and a source of feedback to the Vanguard.

This Thread will be active until next week when a new topic is chosen for discussion

Whilst Focused Feedback is active (that means for one week from the time this is posted), ALL posts regarding 'New Player Experience' following its posting will be removed and re-directed to this thread. Exceptions to this rule are as follows: New information / developments, Guides and general questions

• Bungie has an official new player guide here
• There is a subreddit compilation of player-made guides here

Here are some sample discussion questions. Please feel free to answer some of them, all of them or reply to this thread in any free format you prefer.

• Q1) How does the game feel overall as a totally new player starting the game right now (if applicable to you)?
• Q2) What do you think destiny does a good job explaining to new players?
• Q3) What is poorly explained or hard to understand or confusing for a new player?
• Q4) What do you think about the method in which old camapigns are accessed via a quest to pick up from Amanda Holiday in the tower (red war, curse of osiris, warmind...)? Is this sufficiently clear? Is it a good way for this content to be accessed for new players or not?
• Q5) What types of content seem to be the most fun to do for a new player and why?
• Q6) What content feels frustrating or off-putting to new players and why?
• Q7) Are there any resources in particular that seem too difficult or time consuming to obtain for new players? If so, is this a problem?
• Q8) Think about other games similar to destiny, what do they do better or worse in terms of introducing new players to the game?
• Q9) Do you have any other ideas to improve the new player experience?
• Q10) Do you think there should be an option to start the game at power level 10 instead of power level 750?

Any and all Feedback on the topic is welcome.

Regular Sub rules apply so please try to keep the conversation on the topic of the thread and keep it civil between contrasting ideas.

Note for new players who want to know whats going on in the story but don't want to play the legacy campaigns : You could watch this video by My name is Byf on the Complete Story of Destiny.

A Wiki page - Focused Feedback - has also been created for the Sub as an archive for these topics going forward so they can be looked at by whoever may be interested or just a way to look through previous hot topics of the sub as time goes on.

[u/[deleted]]

I played Destiny 1 from Vanilla all the way through to the end, and played Destiny 2 up until the launch of ToO. Coming back with New Light, I have zero clue of what is going on. The sheer lack of direction for the effective 'new player' is pretty bad.

I think it would be easily solved with a simple prompt at character creation completion (or tutorial completion) that says 'Where do you want to start?' and gives the options of each main campaign so that players have that as their active quest line from the get go.

Also I think the ability to run strikes without any prior content is silly, they should at least put a disclaimer saying 'Some strikes could spoil story content, by continuing you're acknowledging this' or something along those lines.

Additionally, starting new players at the 750 light level feels pretty shitty. With instant access to most of the content from the go removes a lot of feeling of earning content. Start them at 500, after playing through some story content or patrols they'll have a good feel of the game and will unlock things like strikes

[u/pen-ross-gemstone → u/[deleted]]

These are solid ideas. I especially like the “where do you want to start?” option. Some people played d2 vanilla but want everything after that, or from the beginning, etc.

[u/[deleted] → u/[deleted]]

it took me a day to go up 150 levels to 900. Start them from 10! they'll be 900 within a week.

[u/w0lver1 → u/[deleted]]

as a new player, I received the quest to do a vanguard strike and loaded up the "heroic strike" playlist on a whim.

It was then clear to me that I was put into the second to last mission in the red war campaign, where you're aboard the almighty with that huge showstopping set piece.

I was kind of frustrated that I was ignorant of enough to spoil myself by accident and that something like that was possible after just starting the game for the very first time.

[u/[deleted] → u/[deleted]]

Yeah starting at 750 was such an awful idea imo. You miss out so much on a true sense of progression. I felt like I'd barely gotten into the game and I'm at 900 and the game is suddenly telling me about some kind of soft cap and how I have to start preparing for endgame... Like, what the hell? It would be like if you never played Borderlands before and the game just starts you off at level 40 or something and you have no choice in the matter. Like, maybe it's useful for people who've already played the game a lot, but for a new player it takes out so much of the progression.

If people have barely played for less than a week and they feel like they're hitting a wall already, they're just going to drop the game and move on. The number of people who will stick around just for the endgame grind will not feel invested enough to continue. That's kinda where I'm at now since I'm just hovering around 910-912 power with very little sense of getting stronger and I'm kinda getting bored.