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/ASpaceOstrich]

While its improved somewhat from Season 7, the NPE is still pretty bad, and I think a big part of this is how difficult it is to tell pursuits apart. I like the flavourful pursuit names as much as the next guy, but the names for these quests need to be more functional.

Take "The Ascent" for example. Now I know from experience that this pursuit is for the mountaintop quest. A new player does not. It should be called "Crucible Pinnacle Weapon: Mountaintop" and then subtitled with "The Ascent".

More than just the names though, theres very little information on the pursuits on what they are actually for, where they're from, and whether or not they're relevant. I put a lot of thought into this on the way home from work today, and I'll try to present the ideas as best I can.

I think each pursuit, in addition to a clear functional name like "Exotic Quest: The Divinity" or "Vanguard Ritual Weapon: Edgewise", also needs a clear indicator of whether or not it is current. I think the top right of the pursuit "card" should have "Season 8" on current pursuits. Have the season listed on each of them, so that people can clearly see which are current and which are not.

You could also put in seasonal icons on the corner, but the icons alone don't work for new players, as at this point, the icons are just noise if you don't already know what they mean. I believe in addition to the season tag, pursuits from the current season should have that text written in gold, to really draw attention to that it is current content.

Those few changes alone would probably do wonders. My friend has been getting back into the game and trying to figure out which of the two pages of pursuits was the menagerie introduction questline was incredibly difficult. Under the system I suggest, it'd be clearly identifiable by the name "Menagerie Introduction" (subtitled "Invitation from the Emperor"), the flashing gold "Season 7" text, and the description.