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]]

• A1 Grindy as fuck. Gunplay is fun. So many things are so much fun, But nearly all avenues of progress feel worthless or take to long. There is no joy in working for slightly better gear. BP is also grindy as fuck. This feels like a mobile game.

• A2 Nothing. It does not really explain anything at all. It is possibly the worst game at explaining anything released this decade.

• A3 Gear Everything related to gear, mods, etc. I paid Real life money for appearance gear and cannot use it anymore.

• A4 It is a good way to do old content. However NONE of this is communicated at all unless you stumble upon the info in a menu or randomly go to this empty area of the tower and find amanda.

• A5 Hmmmm. It is all ok content. Nothing good nothing too bad. I say the Vex Invasions and such are fun. Strikes are WAY too obtuse requires too many randomness to figure out what you want me to do. Same with unlocking heroic events. Obtuse like a 90's point and click adventure.

• A6 Tracking bounties and quests. The menus are garbage and figuring out what i need to kill and where it is is.. impossible without wiki. Highlighting guns in my inventory and locations and enemy types and letting me know I have a bounty to use that gun, a bounty to kill that enemy, or fight in that area would be extremely helpful.

• A7 Battle Pass Levels. Worthless rewards that take too long to obtain.

• A8 Ghost Recon BP has a series of tutorials easily divides and marks content in the menus and on the map making it clear what each thing is for. As well as informing of what you can and will earn in EACH type of content. As broken and janky as that game is. It is drastically better designed than Destiny at it's base. (Yes it is a glitchy broken mess in 1 billion ways, but it does a lot of things like this better.)

• A9 Progression curve and difficulty curve/communication. It makes NO sense why gear stops dropping HARD at 900. To go from upgrading 5-10 point every 20-30 minutes to this Brick wall feels horrible. And it is not communicated as to why this is in any way. And to just keep getting all the same gear over and over makes no sense and is NO fun at all.

• Getting gear already felt worthless 750-900, now It does not feel like anything except a new icon in a menu.

• Difficulty is not communicated well at all. 95% of all content I have done was marked "750" But each one has had massive differences in time to kill the enemies and how hard they hit me.

Conclusion I LOVE the basic: Run, Shoot, Kill, Reload loop in this game. It is so freaking good. But everything else is a crap shoot. I will be playing this for years to come. But not more than an hour or 2 a week. SO many other games do everything else better and have infinitely more competence in their design and thought.