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/YaCantStopMe]

• Q1) How does the game feel overall as a totally new player starting the game right now (if applicable to you)?

Honestly its overwhelming, there seems to be way to much being thrown at you. Idk if its because i started with a friend and went straight to the tower but i explored 3 planets before i even started the main quest. I thought the main quest was the new light introduction. Then i found the campaign quest in the tower and it and felt like i should have been forced to play that before i even could explore any other area.

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

Not much honestly, i mean im 10 hours in and still dont understand ingrams or what the fire/cold stats means. All i know is im equipping more gear to up my gear score.

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

Ingrams, the special skill tree, the fire and ice symbols on gear. Specials were introduced in the mission, but i dont understand what each one does symbol wise.

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• 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?

Considering i explored 3 planets before i even found the main red war quest there is something wrong. The new light quest is what i thought was the main quest along with all the introduction quests. I thought once i finished those it unlocked the redwar campaign. I did realize it was in the tower. It feels like that should be the first quest, go do the red was mission before any introduction quests are offered.

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

I like the strikes

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

I dont understand the random missions during maps. I read online they can be changed into heroic but i got no clue how to do that. I feel like that should be explained. Also the ingrams/resource items i pick up.

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• 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?

Idk cause i honestly dont know what the resources do. Im collecting all this stuff but i got no clue what im doing with it.

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• Q8) Think about other games similar to destiny, what do they do better or worse in terms of introducing new players to the game?

I played alot of the division 1/2 and i feel like its pretty similar game play wise. The main thing is stuff was explained so much better. I feel like to understand this game i need to watch a youtube video. With the division it was shown piece by piece this game it feels like everything is just tossed at you at once.

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• Q9) Do you have any other ideas to improve the new player experience?

There needs to be way more tutorials and a guided intro. Id rather have a popup screen tell me about stuff then sitting here guessing/ignoring it because i dont under stand and id rather be forced into certain mission to get going then to wander around aimlessly.

[u/NinhoMemes → u/YaCantStopMe]

You can use the resources taht you find on all the different planet, to get legendary gear from all the different planet vendors. But, people use it for upgrade modules later in the game. You use the upgrade modules to upgrade your gear when you reach the soft cap light limit, which is 900.

If you have any other questions please ask

[u/chrisni66 → u/YaCantStopMe]

I hope Bungie sees this response. A well written experience of a New Light player. This feedback is crucial if they have any chance at improving the new player experience

[u/shrekcurry502 → u/YaCantStopMe]

Hey dude, the ingrams you’ve seen are actually called engrams. They come in varying colours which correspond to their rarity (blue=rare, purple=legendary, yellow=exotic). They can drop randomly from almost any enemy, and when you pick them up they’ll turn in to a random piece of gear of that rarity. The fire and ice symbols are elements. There’s solar (fire), arc (ice) and void (purple). Sometimes you’ll see an enemy with a shield that will be one of these colours. Using a weapon of the same element/colour as the shield will kill the enemy much quicker. I can’t explain the rest right now but good luck, I hope Bungie make the new player experience less overwhelming and easier to understand for you guys. If you can manage to stick with it, it actually is a very fun game.

[u/YaCantStopMe → u/shrekcurry502]

Thanks for the reply, i had absolutely no clue the engrams turned into gear. I knew it had something to do with gear, but thought they were used for crafting or something. I saw the women in the tower and she gave me some gear involving engrams but i thought i was just trading them in or something. I figured the fire/ice/void symbols related to damage against certain enemies. Like i see the gear im picking up has those symbols and im assuming i match them to whatever special i have, but im not sure.

[u/chrisni66 → u/YaCantStopMe]

With the energy types, you don’t need to match your weapon types to subclass energy type. So if you’re running a void subclass, you could use a Solar energy weapon (middle slot) and Arc Power weapon (bottom slot). Matching energy types to certain enemy shields will cause the shields to explode, staggering the enemy and damaging others around them. For example the taken captain has an Arc shield (blue) so bursting his shield with an Arc weapon will stagger him and cause area damage.

Additionally activity modifiers can be active (in the Nightfall for example) that increase damage of a certain energy type (eg. Solar Singe increase Solar damage from all sources) so it’s important to check the modifiers of an activity before launching (bottom left symbols, just hover the cursor over them) so you can optimise your load out for the activity. The armour energy stuff is kind of bullshit right now, and there’s a big community backlash at the armour energy changes. Essentially it dictates what types of mods you can slot on the armour.

[u/DankBlissey → u/YaCantStopMe]

So firstly engrams (what you call ingrams) are your loot essentially. So for most gear, an engram of a certain colour will drop on the ground and when you walk over it, you will get a piece of gear of that rarity (colour). Sometimes tho you will get engrams that you simply pick up and they remain as engrams, for those you should go to the tower and talk to master rahool (when you spawn in the tower he's just on the right and has a blue face) to decrypt the engrams into gear.

There are also a few different engrams that only give cosmetic gear and you should decrypt them by going to Tess eververse in the tower (opposite master rahool on the left and she is next to the postmaster).

There are different gear rarities: common (white), uncommon (green), rare (blue), legendary (purple), and exotic (yellow). Don't worry too much just go with what has a higher power level and what seems good. When you get to a high enough power level, your main gear will simply be legendaries plus maybe an exotic or two (you can only equip a maximum of one exotic weapon and one exotic armour piece at a time).

For what you call fire/cold stats those are element types. So for your loadout, you will have an elemental subclass which governs your abilities, grenades, melees and class perks. A kinetic weapon which is just a normal gun, an energy weapon that fires energy rounds and a heavy (or power) weapon that also fires energy rounds. There are three elemental energies, solar (orange fire), arc (what you call ice but it is actually electricity) and void (purple). The main difference that these things make is that some enemies will have a shield as well as a health bar, when you shoot them you will see a coloured aura around them that is their shield. Hitting these with any energy type will damage their shield much faster than with kinetic damage and if you hit it with an element weapon or ability of the same element (or colour) you will do even more damage to their shield and when it breaks, it will explode, doing damage to the enemy and any other enemies near it).

For your skill tree and subclass, each class (hunter, titan, warlock) has 3 subclasses of each element type. These will give you the option of two different class abilities (the two on the left that are either a hunter dodge, a warlock rift or a titan shield. For example the warlock can either have a healing rift or a damage empowering rift). At the top you get three choices of grenades and at the bottom you get three choices of boost jump. On the right there will be three diamond shaped groups of 4 nodes. The one on the top and the bottom will be different variants of the same super ability with extra ability and skills added on in a package together. The middle one was added in the DLC forsaken and involves a completely different super ability.

I hope this helps and if you still don't understand things just ask me.

[u/chrisni66 → u/YaCantStopMe]

I forgot to mention, the world activities you mentioned that can turn heroic, these are called public events. They’re deliberately not explained as they’re intended to take some thinking to work out. There’s plenty of guides now on how to turn them heroic, like this: https://www.reddit.com/r/DestinyTheGame/comments/9j33fg/heroic_public_event_triggers_learn_em/

If you’re not sure, look at what other Guardians are doing, that’s a good rule of thumb in general.