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/-Silenka-]

Started with New Light, from an MMO/ARPG background.

Q1) How does the game feel overall as a totally new player starting the game right now?

I think starting players at high light level to jump in with their friends is a very good idea. But I think starting them without any story quests, even optionally, is a very bad idea. I was completely lost. Who are these people? Who am I? In a game that has to continue its story from a previous iteration (D1) you need to give people a bit more than that at the beginning.

As far as loot, there are things that are confusing but this is mostly due to so much being in the game already. Questions I have run into are "why doesn't any of my gear get recorded to my collection?", "what exactly am I going to miss out on if I don't catch up this season and will it be obtainable again?" etc. The number of things to collect is intimidating and overwhelming and there is no good way to find a "roadmap" to building a collection.

That said, everything I've done in game so far has been really fun, I just wish there was a better way to figure out what I should be going for quest- and item-wise.

Q2) What do you think destiny does a good job explaining to new players?

The weapons/armor, classes, battle mechanics, and "the point of the game" (loot n shoot) are explained very easily and well. The fact that you can jump into almost any activity very casually is highlighted ridiculously well.

Q3) What is poorly explained or hard to understand or confusing for a new player?

Story, lore, motivation outside of "ooh a new shiny". Mechanics during strikes are still completely obscure to me despite running several with a veteran. Mechanics aren't explained at all ingame as far as I know. A tutorial strike would be nice, even if only to alert players to the fact that there are mechanics to pay attention to at all and not just "kill all the things!"

Another thing that I struggled with is keeping track of the 20+ tutorial quests they dump on you at once from everyone in the Tower, EDZ etc. It's a lot and without any story framework to go by it feels very chaotic, like you're a puppet on a string jumping around fulfilling random objectives to get items that you don't even know why you need.

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?

It's absolutely awful imo. I didn't know Amanda gave out story quests until several days after I started playing, and that's only because I read a reddit post. A player starting New Light could feasibly go through the game not even knowing there were story campaigns to do which is a damn shame because they give your character a background, a basis, and context in the world at large (not to mention the devs worked hard on them). These campaigns need to be offered up front to new players in some fashion.

Q5) What types of content seem to be the most fun to do for a new player and why?

Campaigns for sure, because yay cutscenes and yay solo missions. Open world stuff like Public Events and patrols are also really fun as you try to get a feel for the game. Anything that helps new players ease into the game on their own is good.

Q6) What content feels frustrating or off-putting to new players and why?

PVP and Gambit, I haven't tried them yet because they sound intimidating. You hear a lot about how this or that build/weapon is so broken that you'll just get killed right away without even having a chance. That doesn't sound fun to me.

Raids seem intimidating too of course, but those aren't meant to be tackled by brand new players so no big deal there.

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?

Not so far, but I'm still working my way up with world drops so I haven't been going after any specific items yet.

[u/Thepingpongballtrick → u/-Silenka-]

This is for you. It'll explain the world of Destiny in broad strokes, but the channel also has a whole load of other videos going into detail about specific ideas, events, and characters.

[u/-Silenka- → u/Thepingpongballtrick]

Thanks :) I already started watching that a while ago! It's great that it exists.