How to improve the new player experience

[Ghoest9]

The only was to to make the game better for new players is to get rid of the old players.

[Rahabib]

After listening to the Reach Cast show with Archlegger, its apparent what the issue is. Yes the game is complex, but the new player experience really needs to be in place for the PS4. Its on there that they will see the greatest growth of new players (basically everyone) and none of them are going to pull up youtube and watch videos before playing.

However, if we can keep them playing, it will benefit us. They will then sink "new" money into the game which keeps the lights on for the developers that will then roll it out to both PC and PS4 players. Essentially, the console players will bank roll the PC players - a new influx of lots of cash.

Thats why they want new player experience. New PC players come in trickles but its going to be no where near the scale the PS4 will see early on. They need to hit that just right.

Lets face it, PS2 is very different than COD (on the surface) for console players. It will take a while for players to realize that capturing bases etc. doesn't really do anything, so then they will sink money into weapons for the death match mode that is PS2 today.

I hope as soon as they get the new player experience down, they focus on some real depth to the game, not just complexity and new content. New content will wear off fast. Hossin and Amerish will be great, but in 3 months we all know everyone will be back in Indar. Until we can get real strategic value where each territory won and lost can carry over to other territories and continents, people will just play where the farm is and not where it helps the faction.

[Palerion]

I would venture to say part of nailing the new player experience is not throwing them into terrible, one-sided fights where they can't even exit the spawn. Which basically comes down to map design.

I was on Esamir yesterday at some facility, I forget exactly what it was called but I think it was something chemical plant. We were losing pretty bad but the way the facility was laid out we weren't being killed as soon as we exited the spawn. We had a perimeter around the spawn that allowed us to walk out safely. The battleground was mainly outside of our base, where the enemy held the points, we were able to actually go on the offensive instead of being pressed into our spawn. I could circumnavigate as a light assault or go head-on as a heavy assault with no overwhelming deterrents, such as enemies perched above raining fire onto the spawn or vehicles with HE making movement impossible.

So, yeah, we've got the Amerish update coming up. As long as spawns become more defensible and less camp-able I'd say that adds a lot to the new player experience. Being victim to zerg after zerg can be demoralizing and a huge turn off for new players.

[Binkley]

I had the idea today of giving low rank players a kill cam. That idea could be extended in other ways to make new players stronger until they get their sea legs. For example, give players <BR5 more health.

[JohnnyRicardo]

When I kill very low battleranks doing something very wrong I usually give them a tell about how to approach that situation different. It can't be easy joining Planetside these days.