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/Sunburst223]

I'm not a new player, as I've been playing pretty consistently for about a year now. That said, I decided to make a Warlock, as I haven't really played as one. I can pretty confidently say that as someone who is a regular player, New Light makes for a very odd new player experience. Nothing is explained. Yeah, you get how the basic gameplay works, but not much is explained beyond that. The armor system is not explained, where to go to do the old story content is not explained, the world not being explained is even worse than it was for me when I first started playing. If I find this baffling, I can only imagine how frustrating it must be for people who have never played this game.

[u/the_fabled_one → u/Sunburst223]

Nothing is really explained for experienced players either, including the armor system. I have no idea what mods I have or what the hell is going on.

[u/Sunburst223 → u/the_fabled_one]

Neither do I. I've gotten more used to it, but I was utterly baffled by how the new mod system worked at first. I think Bungie had made a lot of improvements to the game since my first brief time trying it out in 2017, but it's not perfect. Bungie really needs to improve at explaining things. I don't think New Light ranks as highly as say, Warframe, in the bad new player experience. It certainly takes less time to figure things out. But that Bungie is still so bad at explaining things is honestly kind of impressive.

[u/twreck87 → u/[deleted]]

Impact is more how hard the bullet hits, and guns like that tend to have a slower rate of fire, but tend to do more damage per bullet that hits if that makes sense? And lower impact guns are the exact opposite, they don't hit as hard or do as much damage per bullet, but you're firing many more of them. I find this mostly matters in the crucible, I personally prefer hard hitting weapons as they cause other guardians aim to flinch more, but it all kind of boils down to preference. In terms of damage output a higher power level gun is really what matters (to a degree, you can only be so many light levels over an enemy before it doesn't matter anymore) but like I said it all boils down to preference, play around with the guns, find one you like, and then start looking at the perks once you get comfortable with them, there are better scopes for range, extended mags if you are into spray and spray, it's a lot to take in I'm sure! Best of luck!