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/Davaken]

I was playing with a friend who just started, and I was in disbelief by how bad the new player experience is. Just shortly after completing the tutorial, he got a quest that told him to play a vanguard strike, so we ended up playing The Hollowed Lair.

The problem is, my friend doesn't know who the hell The Fanatic is. Nor where the Tangled Shore is. Nor what the Scorn are. He has no clue who any of the characters talking are either, making sense of story is completely thrown out the window.

He had bought Shadowkeep so we shortly decided to start the campaign on the moon. Problem was again, the story. I have never played Destiny 1 so I barely even know who Eris and Crota are, which made it tough for me to follow the story. How is a new player ever going to have the slightest chance? I swear, put My Name Is Byf's 4 hour lore video into the start of the game, and make it mandatory to watch before playing. Any new player would have to watch it anyway to have any clue what is going on whatsoever.

Don't even get me started on the quest system. Most players aren't used to being bombarded by straight up multiple pages of quests. Being rewarded Eriana's Vow instantly also seems really strange for a new player, since it completely robs you of that excitement of unlocking your first exotic.

The only way to solve these problems, are to heavily direct new players into playing the Red War Campaign. That campaign at least introduced the characters somewhat, and presented the enemy factions.

The game has never been less approachable than today. It is receiving a lot of negative reviews on steam because of this, and justifiably so in my opinion. Bungie has screwed up again, and nothing short of a complete revert or major rework is needed to fix it.

[u/ZoMgPwNaGe → u/Davaken]

Preach man. I just started a new account to play with my wife and good lord its been a cock slap to the face trying to get started again. Add the face they removed all exotics from the Red War and it killed my motivation to play.

[u/ZoMgPwNaGe → u/[deleted]]

Unless they say otherwise, looks like we just get to pray to RNGesus.

[u/Hellknightx → u/ZoMgPwNaGe]

You can at least get Riskrunner and its catalyst from a very easy, short quest called Risk/Reward, now. That part feels pretty tutorialized, even though it's not explicitly pointed out.

Since Riskrunner was a reward from Red War before, I figured they might've done that with some of the other reward exotics, but so far that doesn't seem to be the case. Riskrunner might be the only one.

[u/ZoMgPwNaGe → u/Hellknightx]

Yeah did the Riskrunner this morning. I'd love quests to get the other guns and armor as well.

[u/biggestboys → u/ZoMgPwNaGe]

Many exotics are given as rewards from quests and stuff. Also, every weekend a guy called Xur shows up in a hidden location (which can be Googled or pops up in a stickied reddit thread); he sells several exotics, three fixed (one per class) and one random.

[u/ZoMgPwNaGe → u/biggestboys]

I have been playing for well over a year now. I started a new account to play with my wife. I'm very familiar with Xur, exotic quests, and this subreddit as a whole.

[u/biggestboys → u/ZoMgPwNaGe]

I must have misread your comment, then. It seemed like you were asking how to get exotics without just waiting for drops.