I'm seriously worried about the new player experience

Rolfski · 2012-11-12, 02:08 AM

I think SOE made a big mistake on this one and really underestimated the importance of this. It looks like the new player experience will be at best inadequate and frustrating at launch.
After you choose a faction (no decent info on what to choose), you will be thrown in a vague and generic tutorial video (implemented in latest patch) that doesn't stick at all (and probably no option to re-watch it) and smashes you into a hot zone. In the current game, good luck after that but at launch, you will probably get a few bare bones missions that will hopefully explain some raw mechanics under 3 minutes and that's it.

In a best case scenario, new players will hopefully immediately get a grip of the potential of this game and stick to it to educate themselves. In the current situation however, many of them will probably feel lost and bored immediately and uninstall it from their drives. Which is a shame and I fear SOE is not doing enough effort to have this improved at launch.

I did some lone wolfing/ casual gaming with a new character after the latest patch. The experience is still boring and frustrating if you don't know where to look for. You still spend a lot of time finding action (the map activity indicators are still broken) and when you do, you have no idea whats going on and you die fast. I just don't see this solved at launch.

The problem is the unwieldy, overwhelming, complicated UI and the feeling of being completely clueless on what to do as a new player. You end up in a fire fight around some base and you hear messages like "SCU, compromised" but you have no idea what it means (what the heck is a SCU?) and what you should be doing in this base because the cluttered, hard-to-read maps are still borderline useless in the thick of the fight. No clear direction whatsoever on how to cap a base or complete secondary objectives. Why you particularly should cap this base in the first place isn't clear enough either. The UI is still too messy and it raises questions like: This amp station is helping my turrets but also giving tank resources? Shouldn't this be for tech plants only? And what do these connected benefits mean? Apply these to this base only? Confusing stuff, at least for new players.

I really hope SOE will have this fixed at launch but I'm worried they won't. I have a hard time to understand why they are seemingly not putting enough effort into this. An excellent new player experience is imperative if they want to prevent this game from ending up like PS1 did.

Btw: there is already discussion about this in this topic but imo it's important enough to give it a separate topic with a proper title.

BouncingCzech · 2012-11-12, 04:08 AM

You could be right, I can see how the game could be pretty confusing for a new player.
Having said that though if you look at something like EVE Online their new player experience has always been notoriously bad and that hasn't hampered the success of the game hugely.

In EVE the complexity and the WTFness of the game encourages you to join a corp. (guild) and learn from the veterans.

Kind of a positive thing in a funny kind of way. I can't comment on the new video tutorial as I've not seen it as yet but there's no way they can explain all the subtleties of this game in one video!

Rolfski · 2012-11-12, 04:46 AM

Originally Posted by BouncingCzech

Having said that though if you look at something like EVE Online their new player experience has always been notoriously bad and that hasn't hampered the success of the game hugely.

In EVE the complexity and the WTFness of the game encourages you to join a corp. (guild) and learn from the veterans.

I actually think it really has hampered the success of Eve Online and I am the perfect example of that. As intriguing as the game concept of Eve is, I could never get into this game since it launched. I tried 5 times (!) over the years and tried a corp as well (RvB) but in the end that game just feels like work to me and not fun. I don't mind a steep learning curve but in Eve Online that curve just wasn't fun for me.

Anyway, I'm not too worried about the Eve Online type of audience to get into this game. I'm worried about the average gamer that likes to play fps casually to get into this game. This is the critical mass that SOE needs to sustain their F2P model and so far they have not done a good enough job to capture the interest of this audience after firing up PS2 for the first time. Hamma's and Jennyboo's troublesome report from MLG got me worried in particular about this:

GhostOneBravo · 2012-11-12, 04:53 PM

As a new player to the Planetside universe I would say you are correct. I really have no idea what I'm doing, where to go, ect.

SturmovikDrakon · 2012-11-12, 05:01 PM

I'm still confused as to how someone could be so lost. If you've played Battlefield and you see capture points, it should click in your head immediately on where you should be going

But anyway

While I like that they've made the tutorial videos, I feel like the entire message was rushed.

Crator · 2012-11-12, 05:07 PM

Originally Posted by SturmovikDrakon

If you've played Battlefield and you see capture points, it should click in your head immediately on where you should be going

The objective is to remove the "ifs" from the equation. They want as many people as possible to pick up the game and play it.

Babyfark McGeez · 2012-11-12, 05:52 PM

I'm slightly worried about the new player experience too.

They sacrificed so much to make this game "suited" for players who have no idea what planetside is, and yet forgot to also make a proper introduction.

Picture this: New player starts, gets thrown into a hotspot, chaos everywhere and he probably dies quickly. If he's unlucky he ends up in a spot that is being overrun by enemies, thus after being directly thrown into the battle without any "real" tutorial he will now experience being spawncamped (yeah, that's my pet peeve for tonight lol).
Now he allready died atleast twice in a short time, and still has no idea what the heck is going on. Now he tries some other bases, but since nobody really cares defending things the bases are either empty or also under assault.
More dieing ensues, player says "f- this" and logs off.

That may be exaggerated, yeah, but i think that is what the devs should keep in mind when they make a "everymans" game.

Edit: Solution: A proper bootcamp for new recruits where a comical yelling drill instructor gives out a real introduction to the whole game. Additionally a drill instructor / General NPC in the warpgates that gives further informations on specific topics (what the heck is a SCU sire?).

SKYeXile · 2012-11-12, 06:17 PM

Yea the whole new players thing could have been so much better.

Kitsune · 2012-11-12, 07:19 PM

As a person who never played Planetside 1 but bought Alpha Squad for beta, it's actually not that bad.

Basically, if you just sit down and think about it, all you have to do is follow the other guys and shoot people without triangles. You will figure out the other stuff as you go along.

Much much easier to explain than EVE Online, that's for sure. There's no real money mechanic besides capping/defending bases for certs, so there's no auction house, no crafting, no inflation, no death penalty, nothing to worry about.

The game just SEEMS daunting at the beginning, when all you have to do is move and shoot. If you get lost, just ask a guy nearby or yell out a question, chances are you will get som1 to help you.

And from what everyone says that Ps2 is worse than PS1, you gotta understand, Ps1 has had 10 years of content and stuff. If they did try to implement this game with everything Ps1 had, then this game won't be out till 2014 and new players would definitely have a headache trying to piece it all together.

But it would not hurt to have an instanced training ground of some sort for new people. Like a hands on tutorial of how to play each class to their strengths, like what Star Wars Battlefront 2 did on Geonosis.

Sifer2 · 2012-11-12, 08:41 PM

Originally Posted by BouncingCzech

You could be right, I can see how the game could be pretty confusing for a new player.
Having said that though if you look at something like EVE Online their new player experience has always been notoriously bad and that hasn't hampered the success of the game hugely.

In EVE the complexity and the WTFness of the game encourages you to join a corp. (guild) and learn from the veterans.

Kind of a positive thing in a funny kind of way. I can't comment on the new video tutorial as I've not seen it as yet but there's no way they can explain all the subtleties of this game in one video!

Or you could be like me. I downloaded an Eve trial. Played about 4 hours never even sure if I saw another real player in that time. Those hours were spent trying to figure out what the hell was going on. When I finally got a mission to kill some pirates or something they killed me easily. I uninstalled.

I agree with others in the topic that PS2's new player experience is not ideal. The current version is a half ass video explaining the bare basics then podding you into combat. So SOE's idea of a good new players experience is basically having you feed veterans some free kills.

Rolfski · 2012-11-12, 10:02 PM

As we speak, literally millions of players are lining up for the new COD Black ops 2 title that is launched around now. These players will be very spoiled after their first hours of game play because this triple A production will undoubtedly take them smoothly by the hand and make their first experience with the game an instant gratification fest.

And make no mistake people, this is for sure audience that SOE is targeting with PS2.

So imagine fast forwarding a week or so. After having played the COD BO2 campaign and some mp, some within this audience are actually opening up to new games along the same line.
After checking the decent reviews (8,2 or so on Metacritic) and hearing some hyped stories, they decide to give PS2 a chance as it is F2P anyway.
After just restoring from the ultra slick COD rollercoaster, what do you think will happen when these players fire up PS2, only to get thrown in into some hastily smashed together tutorial that cluelessly leaves them either to die instantly or desperately looking for any action?

BouncingCzech · 2012-11-13, 03:11 AM

It's a fair point, if they don't suck in the CoDees then this game probably won't survive long on just a cult following.

BouncingCzech · 2012-11-13, 03:18 AM

Having said that, one idea might be to have a kind of 'to do list' for new players.

You know how when you sign up to DropBox or some other sites and they give you like 5 steps to get yourself setup on the website.

You could do the tutorial then give new players some basic objectives (with cert rewards) so:

1. Join a squad
2. Take a base
3. Spawn at a sunderer
Etc. etc.

That might be effective enough hand-holding without being intrusive.

Boomzor · 2012-11-13, 04:03 AM

I think one of the reasons they're not doing a final, set in stone tutorial is that they don't know what the final mechanics are at this point in time.

Just think of it, how many capture mechanics changes have we been through during the beta?
I'm certain that past the 20th of November, what we have now will NOT be the final incarnation, just because we've passed a certain date in the calender.

So how do you make an all encompassing tutorial or boot camp mission on a topic that is constant flux?

Basic mechanics like moving around, shooting, using equipment terminals, spawning vehicles and getting around the map are things I assume is safe to say won't see major changes by now and should definitely be included in a boot camp (or even off line) mission or tutorial, and then add on the things that are too vague to explain right now.

LostSoul · 2012-11-13, 06:37 AM

I still do not know what a SCU is though