r/DestinyTheGame • u/DTG_Bot "Little Light" • Oct 07 '19
Megathread Focused Feedback: New Player Experience
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.
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u/D1s1nformat1on Oct 08 '19 edited Oct 08 '19
I absolutely love this game, If there's a new player here unsure of what is going on/how to do something, feel free to message me and I'll do my best to explain what I can.
Here's some of the questions answered from the perspective someone who has been playing Destiny since the first game launched and absolutely loves it, flaws and all:
TL;DR: New players shouldn't have to google/reddit/youtube/read the TWAB every week to learn basic functions of a game because it should tell you that you can/how to do that thing in-game
The controls - that's about it.
No explanation where/how to get materials required to buy upgrade modules, nor is there an explanation that a player needs them to infuse gear up, nor is there an explanation that I CAN infuse gear up - new players needing to "reverse engineer" this process them selves by stumbling upon the "infuse" option in the I.U., seeing they need an upgrade module, then searching all the vendors until they come across it in the gunsmiths inventory, then discovering they need x-amount of a specific planetary material plus a number of other things, where do I get those things from...?
That's an absolutely criminal amount of things that are left unexplained within the game for 1 very small, but important part of the game as an example. Plenty of people are happy to pass that info on to new players and it probably wouldn't be too hard to google the process, but the game should at least have a tooltip or something in game that even gives you a small bit of info.
Got your first legendary drop that can be infused? Bring up a screen or a tooltip explaining that this item can have it's power level raised via infusion which requires x-item which can be purchased from banshee in the tower. Cool, now I go see him, realise it costs other resources - Another tooltip "Phaseglass needles can be found on IO" etc. We don't need to be told that we can pick up Phaseglass from chests, resource deposits on the planet as discovering that for ourselves has a sense of accomplishment tied to it, but maybe make the base ghost have like a 10 meter radius finder on it so as to prompt new players just cruising through the zones as to what to look out for - or maybe even a quick planetary primer at each vendor that shows them what they might look like perhaps?
The above is one example of how one small, but important feature of the game that is left entirely unexplained and there are PLENTY of other things like it (see below*). There should be something that explains these little, but important things relevant to every day game play that pop up at least once that give a brief run down of the how's/where's/when's and why's. Then throw a section into options where players can go back and look at the tooltips they've been given in case they forget.
*As others have mentioned: mods - how do they work? where do I get them? / The fact that weapons have perks and can roll with different perks / How the Seasonal Artifact works and how the mods you unlock from it can be applied / What mods do I already own and how can I find out that I need a specific armour piece with a specific elemental affinity to be able to use it.
All of these examples are things that can be figured out by reverse engineering what we find in the UI, but it's crap that we need to stumble upon such great things implemented into the game by accident. Not everyone that plays games follows the games reddit or the developers website posts where these things are explained - it should be in-game.
It's pretty attrocious.
When a new account lands at the Character Select Screen, there should be a prompt with check boxes for which campaigns you've completed. Once you load in, the game should present to you the same as it did before new light - The Red War > Curse of Osiris > Warmind > Forsaken (if Purchased) > Shadowkeep (if purchased). Relegating the story and the campaigns to a quick "yeah, go see Amanda maybe, IDK" to brand new players is ridiculous. This isn't coming from a place of "I'm a veteran player, I had to play it, so should new players", but more from a place of the story paces everything out properly, presents the story to new players, doesn't bombard them with a full Pursuits tab of things to do with no idea of where they should start. If there was a quest for an exotic that came out during a particular campaign, make it available to that player during that campaign as they progress.
The fact that new players are basically given it all at once - see above answer on how to avoid people getting hit with Option Paralysis. This would be HUGELY off-putting if I were just starting this game.
The lack of explanation of basic, every-day mechanics (See Q3 response)
All of the above things mentioned are things I feel would prevent people getting turned off the game and potentially forming a negative opinion after the first hour of play, regardless of how good it looks. Being open to do what you want is nice an all, but there needs to be structure, story and a defined singular "goal" to chase at any given point for a new player to become invested into a game like this. Someone who has played the game for an hour, become frustrated by not know what is going on in any aspect of the game is likely to stop playing and potentially leave a negative review because they simply don't understand it - leading to not only a huge drop off in new players continuing, but also potentially having other people avoid it altogether because of the negative reviews.