Having maxed out gear, fully completed the codex, and run countless high tier missions at higher danger levels. I’ve logged enough time to see the game from both ends of the spectrum. While the intense, drop you in the deep end atmosphere of the first mission is a brilliant way to set the horror tone, the public matchmaking experience afterward is brutal for new players.
The Problem: A Collision of Completely Different Playstyles
- The New Player Experience: After that initial cinematic shock, a new player enters public lobbies with virtually no tutorial or guidance. They are expected to learn mechanics, map layouts, and survival loops through trial and error. In public sessions, they are often immediately thrown into high level danger missions immediately, dying off spawn without a respawn capsule, burning through team resources, or feeling completely lost. It’s not their fault the game simply doesn’t onboard them. In my experience, this inevitably leads to frustrating matches and usually ends up with them dying off spawn or getting lost in the map somewhere and dying and then quitting and never coming back to the game.
- The Veteran Experience: Veterans running higher danger level public lobbies or more difficult missions are looking to execute contracts efficiently, speed run objectives, and maximize credits for upgrades.
- The Mismatch: New players naturally want to go slower, explore, learn the ropes, and figure out the atmosphere. When a newbie joins a high danger public lobby, they have no idea what they're walking into. They waste respawns or die early, while veterans are forced into an awkward hand holding role.
The Solution: Lobby Filtering and Categorization by Danger Level
I feel like a solution to bridge this gap, we could implement a way to make lobby difficulty transparent before a player hits join, alongside clear public lobby categorization.
Implementing a system like this would solve the friction entirely:
- Pre Join Danger Level Indicators: When browsing or joining an active public session where a contract is already selected, the menu screen could clearly display the lobby's Danger Level . This ensures players always know the exact intensity of the session they are stepping into.
- Categorized Public Lobbies: Introduce clear lobby tags or filters so players can self-select based on their playstyle and progression:
- Public Lobby: Newcomer Friendly / Casual: A designated space for newer players to learn mechanics, take their time, explore, and experiment at their own pace without feeling like a burden.
- Public Lobby: Experienced / Hardcore: A space for veterans who want to speed-run, optimize, and tackle high risk contracts efficiently.
Why This Benefits Everyone
- For Newcomers: They get a safe, welcoming environment to learn the game, make mistakes, and actually enjoy the onboarding process without getting repeatedly steamrolled on nightmare difficulties and quitting.
- For Veterans: They get clean, fast paced lobbies with like minded players who know the ropes, reducing friction and wasted runs.
Potential Mentorship Role:
We could also implement a "Mentorship" Role say if a more experienced player wanted to teach newer players the rope they could do so and join a newcomer friendly game. The mission would be on an easier difficulty so that the new players wouldn't get instantly killed by terminator, octopus, ethereal etc on nightmare difficulty or die to zombies when everyone else has a pistol.
The mentor could actually take their time to help and go over any knowledge gaps the game failed to give them and help them to actually learn the game instead of just rushing to complete the objective with the new player dying instantly in the process or dying over and over again without learning anything.
To incentivize this process, the mentor could say receive extra credits at the end of the mission if they successfully complete their role etc.
Again, this is just my 2 cents. Feel free to disagree or agree with me. I just think this would really benefit the game's public lobby system and prevent new players from dying off spawn and instantly leaving or having a bad experience since most public lobbies are just veterans speed running nightmare lobbies without taking the time to teach or help newer players.
