New Player Experience & VR

[ArmedZealot]

I know when I first picked up Planetside 2 I found my way to the VR building right off the bat to get all the XP rewards I could from using each weapon and vehicle.

This helped me get familiar with my empires abilities and their weapons. After the VR building I went around bases during the capture timer to collect as as many bonuses as I could. This got me familiar with the layout of certain bases and what those bases had to offer.

As a new player, the incentive to do these things was the XP in it, which could get me up a BR or two if I remember correctly. As a budding soldier it got my feet wet on how to play the game intelligently.

How will Planetside change the new player experience, if at all? Will we still have the VR building? Will we be able to try other empires vehicles and weapons as well this time since we can't create alts to other empires? Will we still have the XP rewards for finding something new? How would the community change PS1's NPE?

[Thomas]

Hehe you could get up to BR5-6 just doing all that stuff in the sanctuary.

[Mechzz]

Hehe you could get up to BR5-6 just doing all that stuff in the sanctuary.

I loved the way the dummies on the range would wave back at you and yell "hiya" or "help" as you shot them.

[Stardouser]

Didn't they say no VR?

And it's a shame too. VR is a great place to do weapons testing of all kinds.

[ArmedZealot]

Didn't they say no VR?

And it's a shame too. VR is a great place to do weapons testing of all kinds.

http://i.imgur.com/hJvNW.jpg

Wat?!

Too far SOE, too far... I hope not.

[Stardouser]

Well, I admit, it's just something I heard a couple of months ago and probably not an official announcement but I could have sworn I saw people on this forum who thought there would be no VR.

[Shogun]

i remember t-ray or higby saying that there is no vr room because you don´t need to cert weapons and can just grab the weapon of your choice and test it anywhere...

but this doesn´t apply to vehicles. yes you don´t need to cert them, but you need to buy every single vehicle you want to test or crash. having a vr environment to learn some cool tricks with the vehicles would be a benefit.

without this, people who suck at flying may lose interest in aircrafts because they had to sacrifice too many ressources to learn to fly properly.

[Ieyasu]

I loved the way the dummies on the range would wave back at you and yell "hiya" or "help" as you shot them.

I loved the way they would magicly slide out of the way if you zoomed in on them with a sniper rifle sometimes...

[Pyreal]

Well the game is a FPS, it won't be too difficult to figure things out.
'Accessibility', remember?

The Mission System will offer new players XP while getting their feet wet for the first time.

[ArmedZealot]

Well the game is a FPS, it won't be too difficult to figure things out.
'Accessibility', remember?

The Mission System will offer new players XP while getting their feet wet for the first time.

The mission system is meant for everybody though right? It's kind of hard to expect someone who doesn't know what an equipment terminal is to use the mission system off the bat.

[Stardouser]

Well the game is a FPS, it won't be too difficult to figure things out.
'Accessibility', remember?

The Mission System will offer new players XP while getting their feet wet for the first time.

Things that increase accessibility usually decrease depth and longevity. They want people to stick around so they buy from the cash shop, so BF3's brand of "accessibility" would not be wise.

I'm not sure what the mission system has to do with being able to go into a VR station and try out weapons for free, with no resource cost, no live deaths to hit your stats, etc.

[Bags]

VR was pointless, I never used it as a new player except to get 5 levels.

[Zulthus]

VR was pointless, I never used it as a new player except to get 5 levels.

http://clean.alltheragefaces.com/img/faces/jpg/misc-got-a-badass-over-here.jpg

It was great for new people to get a feel for the weapons and vehicles.

[Atheosim]

VR was pointless, I never used it as a new player except to get 5 levels.

I used it even at max BR to practice managing CoF bloom and various other techniques. I found the shooting range useful throughout my ps1 career, but on the other hand the vehicle VR was sort of useless outside of getting some XP when you first start.

[Graywolves]

For now I believe they've said no to a VR but that they might have something to help newbies.


I'm personally hoping they do an offline training thing and have challenges like in SC2 so players learn how to deal with certain scenarios. Like how in SC2 you learn how to deal with a zerg rush or early zealot pressure in PS2 you might learn how to fight aircraft or prevent a MAX Crash.

[Mechzz]

VR was pointless, I never used it as a new player except to get 5 levels.

That was the point. +1

[Bags]

Then just give players five levels and save 'em the time of equipping everything.

If you wanna practice your COF bloom or whatever, take a galaxy, fly it out to nowhere, and shoot rocks or something.

[Mechzz]

Then just give players five levels and save 'em the time of equipping everything.

If you wanna practice your COF bloom or whatever, take a galaxy, fly it out to nowhere, and shoot rocks or something.

First time I played the game, I enjoyed it. It's there for the first-timers. Also, this was very new to most of us 9 years ago. Not so necessary nowadays.

[Atheosim]

Then just give players five levels and save 'em the time of equipping everything.

If you wanna practice your COF bloom or whatever, take a galaxy, fly it out to nowhere, and shoot rocks or something.

But the fact is that it helps to have the actual hitboxes to practice on.

[Stardouser]

Then just give players five levels and save 'em the time of equipping everything.

If you wanna practice your COF bloom or whatever, take a galaxy, fly it out to nowhere, and shoot rocks or something.

What about the player cap? You might only be 1 in 666 players but do we want to encourage doing that?

[Immigrant]

I don't see the need for infantry combat VR however I would like to see tank driving (maybe) and especially aircraft flying VR simulator (this is a must imo) available either online in bases (you get to VR console and then you enter a simulation areas - which could even look differently to actual game world) or offline simply to avoid learning to pilot in actual persistent game world. There should be small xp rewards when finishing a simulator for the first time but being able to attain BR5 without engaging in actual combat is completely absurd.

[Neurotoxin]

Aside from getting new characters to BR4 in about 30 minutes, VR really was a great place to try stuff out. It was the ideal place to practice bailing from aircraft so they'd explode on a specific location, or running a Lightning through different parts of the river to see if it can get across before the 15 second oxygen timer expires.

I honestly don't know why there isn't an Advanced VR system that will allow users to try every weapon with every combination of customization, in order to figure out things that they like and want to purchase for use on the field.

VR should most definitely be something that goes on independently from gameplay on servers. Players waiting in a queue to join the server with their buddies can practice and prepare with their downtime, but it wouldn't affect the server population. Whether its a shared VR server or not, I'm not sure.

But who knows, maybe they'll make P2P singleplayer / limited multiplayer missions that people can play while they wait? Or just a PlanetSide clone of Tanarus (Smedley directed that!) or Infantry could be fun too...

[UKSwiFT]

Maybe an offline area or something to teach about basic game mechanics. Something I dislike in many shooters is that there is rarely any guide to help you with the multiplayer beyond trial and error whilst being shouted at. I found this extremely intimidating when I first started playing competitive multiplayer 'back in the day'. I would of quit if it wasn't for a handful of decent people to take the time to explain it.

I'm much wiser nowadays, being able to use all my experiences with the different games over the years, but every time I see a game without any helpful information beyond random 'tips', it frustrates me. Educate the player, teach the player. Sure they'll figure it out eventually(hopefully), but why put them through it?

I consider myself a veteran when it comes to the FPS genre, but even so I would go through such a training area just in case it teaches me something new. There's no excuse for ignorance.