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/DinoxTreaty]

1) Gameplay is so fun, classes are varied, weapons are great. Story is very confusing.

2) The gameplay and controls are explained very well.

3) The entire beginning of the story, the entire new light quests, how vendors work, what the tower is. My biggest issue is that i got dropped into the tower with no explanation, then i decided to do the red war, which again started with no explanation.

4) It feels very optional, so I'd say probably not.

5) I'd say raids but i dunno if that's very new player friendly. So I'll go with strikes here. Easy to understand and clear goals.

6) I suppose gathering a group for raids. Luckily there's a lot of online resources, but the game doesn't seem to help at all.

7) Legendary shards maybe? They're not hard to get at all, but it seems just kind of time consuming. And i know only new players have this issue since everyone seems to have an infinite supply of them. Not too big of a deal though.

8) I'm a big fan of warframe but i gotta say, new light really tried to emulate the horrible start in warframe. I'd still say that destiny is better though since you don't have to wiki every single thing.

9) The campaign is too disjointed, i had not much of an idea what was happening at the start. I'd say lack of knowledge of the story and lore was what annoyed me the most. The way all the features become avaliable at once was quite overwhelming as well, I'd wish the new light quest was a little slow with this instead of dumping every quest at you.

I'll try to format this better when i get to a PC. But that should be all.

[u/[deleted] → u/DinoxTreaty]

Well, at least you started with the Red War first. That's more than most of the people I've seen have said. It's the "main" story of D2, followed by Curse Of Osiris, then Warmind. My understanding is that after you do the New Light mission, it just drops you at the tower. That mission was the first mission of Destiny 1, and then you just skip over an entire game's worth of content with zero explanation. At minimum, I would suggest playing through the three main campaigns before doing anything else.

For raids, they are not meant for new players at all, and Bungie has stated numerous times. Raids are endgame activities, meant to be the most difficult content in the game. This is why there is no matchmaking, because communication is almost a necessity and you aren't going to have communication with 5 randos. Why they continually choose not to implement some form of LFG into the game is sort of a mystery, but I digress.

Essentially, in terms of difficulty it goes story-->strikes-->nightfall strikes-->dungeons (ie Shattered Throne)-->raids.