Questions:

Do new players have a choice of what militia gear they receive after completing an objective?

Any thoughts on giving new players an Omega Booster instead as to give them a bigger boost before throwing them into the fray?

Increased WP prerequisite before leaving the Academy?

Tutorial on how to call in an orbital strike?

Still need to increase the WP limit for the academy.
Keep them sheltered long enough to fall in love with the game.
We can surprise them with r4pe and all that once their hooked.

-snip-
I also think they should be UNCAPPED to a certain SP level (10m my opinion)
-snip-

Still need to increase the WP limit for the academy.
Keep them sheltered long enough to fall in love with the game.
We can surprise them with r4pe and all that once their hooked.

10m might be high because it would be easy for people to grind alts for different roles. This could negatively impact booster and AUR item sales. But, I'm all for new players being uncapped up to about 4m SP. This let's new players get a few proto items or some decent core skills.

Can we please get a Dev comment on this? This seems like its been a glaring issue for far too long.

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listen for once. a new player should play amongst other new players for a while.. not 1-3 maps

like a week or 2 of consistent playing

let them get their feet wet, don't push em off the deep end.

I also think they should be UNCAPPED to a certain SP level (10m my opinion)

but something to help boost along the new player to help create a slightly more even playing field.

tutorial looks nice, something that would have been a KEY addition like.. when open beta dropped...

perhaps will help with a new wave of mercs? I guess we can be cautiously optimistic

+1 for removing SP cap (up to X million)
+1 for extending Academy period
+1 for newcomer active/passive boosters

It'd be neat if 1.5's Squad-Finder and future Matchmaking worked together.
Maybe assess a squad's cumulative SP and queue accordingly.

The vets would get better fights and incentive to pair with recruits for training.
The recruits would be sheltered from pubstomps and high attrition rates.

yea the # would be up for discussion, as I can see your point... but something greater than the current cap for new players to help bridge the gap between those that have been playing for a while and the new player that the game so desperately needs to thrive

And new aggravating players would not go into FW where they loose the matches for their team.

Good stuff, this is nice progress. Don't forget you lot that this is the start, it's not fully fleshed out by a long way, only so much can be delivered at once. Getting the core stuff done first makes sense, and the blog says they decided the target audience is those who already have some FPS experience. That means you don't need to teach someone how to switch weapons or throw grenades.

Still needs a lot more, as others in this thread have noted/suggested:

1. Longer stay in the academy queue, with an option to queue into the regular matches or continue to queue into the academy. Ex From 0 to 4,999 WP you can only queue in the Academy, from 5,000 to 9,999 WP you get the option to queue for either Academy or Public Contract. At 10,000 WP you're forced into Public Contracts.

Also, Academy battles should only be Skirmish. Ambush is awful and isn't goal-oriented like you seem to be focusing on. Domination doesn't make sense because most newberries aren't going to know/know how to use drop uplinks so they'll spend most of the game running back to the objective.

2. No SP cap per week until they hit 5 million or so.

3. Double SP per game until they hit 3 million or so.

4. One 7-Day Active Booster non-transferrable on all new characters.

5. One Respec token non-transferrable on all new characters.

I'm not sure if you've ever watched video clips of people playing dust for the first time while "thinking out loud" into a mic, but there is a lot of confusion about really fundamental gameplay mechanics that seem so obvious to us (like "cooking" a grenade) shooting the enemy MCC, what supply depots are and how they work.

The other point is that a massive portion of DUST's audience may not be FPS vets. I have played very few hours of FPS online multiplayer games prior to DUST, myself. I think CCP may find that marketing DUST to RPG fans who "finally have a shooter that rewards strategy and character growth" may end up yielding the best returns by a big margin. These players have the potential to be the most dedicated of them all, and may need more schooling in FPS gameplay mechanics than FPS junkies who are always moving to the latest shiny release.

No I've not watched that but can imagine it happens. I was just pointing out the target audience CCP has identified as mentioned in the blog. I'm not an FPS player myself, never have been until DUST, but I picked up some of these things from just playing and reading forums.

Either way, I agree with you - if the majority is as you say, then they *do* need to be shown those things - but CCP aren't focusing on them. They're focusing on those who already realise how that stuff works and need do nothing more than learn which keys or buttons to press to take those actions.

Ideally you'd "teach" it all - and maybe that will come. But CCP were pretty clear in their reasoning for their target audience.

Questions:

Do new players have a choice of what militia gear they receive after completing an objective?

Any thoughts on giving new players an Omega Booster instead as to give them a bigger boost before throwing them into the fray?

Increased WP prerequisite before leaving the Academy?

Tutorial on how to call in an orbital strike?

Is there a way existing players can sign up for the free loot? ;)

Will new players be given a small stock of militia weapons/modules/equipment?

Kinda hard to 'make a new fit' without the market if you also have no alternative things to swap in or out of your fit.

Please give them some militia stuff to play with. It's not too much to ask.

- We're not expecting using orbital strikes to be something a new player needs to know about in their first few days!

Hi everyone,

Sorry for the delay in replying to this, I've been out of the office for a while.

Some general things:
- Yes, we'd like to add more objectives to cover a wider range of game activities. We just didn't have time for this release :)
- The Battle Academy is a separate feature; we weren't directly considering changes to it as part of this work



- No, the gear you get is fixed based on your race
- The included booster is just to give players a taste of what boosters can do, it's not supposed to be a crutch for other issues
- See above re academy
- We're not expecting using orbital strikes to be something a new player needs to know about in their first few days!



Nope, sorry We deliberately didn't enable it for existing characters so everyone wouldn't be bombarded with annoying popups.



Yes, the rewards from the first objective (plus the free weapons you get by default) should give you enough gear to have a non-zero amount of flexibility in your first fit. It's an intentionally limited set of modules to ensure the player's not overwhelmed. More rewards come in after later objectives, which we're hoping players will want to then go back and add to their fits.

Ever thought about enabling the ability to quickly invite people who are in an NPC corp to your corp? Tutorials are great, but nothing beats having an entire backbone of veterans to answer you questions and guide you.

...We're not expecting using orbital strikes to be something a new player needs to know about in their first few days!

Created a new alt yesterday to test the new player experience.

First, a few words about the Battle Academy--please pass them on to the appropriate audience. I will grant I'm the only person who graduated the academy in one battle, but I'm not even all that good a player, was using unmodified starter fits (following the tutorial) and I easily made 1900 WP. At least half a dozen of the other players looked like they were set to graduate in the next match. Are players ready to graduate with two to three battles under their belts? Given the performance of both teams in the Academy match I was in, definitely not. No one used drop uplinks, the red team didn't hack any CRU's (which I suppose, given that there's no explanation of what a CRU does, is not surprising), and people couldn't even seem to aim all that well most of the time (although there were some sharpshooters).

I like the objective-based tutorial and wonder whether graduation shouldn't be based on it--with some provisions (maybe a slightly increased WP limit and an option to skip). For a new player to graduate, I'd like to see them fulfill an in-battle checklist: hack a CRU (and have some idea what it does), hack a supply depot, use a nanite injector to revive a comrade, call a vehicle into battle, join a squad, form a squad and issue an order. I would also suggest they receive five copies of a militia fit with a drop uplink and be required to deploy at least one drop uplink in battle. That seems like a lot to get done in a handful of battles, but with a WP limit around 3000, the best new players will probably have 3 matches, and the ones who struggle a bit more will have longer to figure it out. There's a lot of strategy to this game that new players are missing by focusing on the letter.

That said, I think there are some things that aren't going to be accomplished by the objective-based approach. Something as simple as dropping people into battle the first time and having a mini "hit L1 to aim down sights," "press the right joystick to melee," etc., tutorial would be helpful, too. Getting accustomed to the interface is important. And ultimately what I think would be most useful is giving them the option to do a simulation where they can fire a few rounds from each of the weapons and test out all the functionality, as well as having the system explained to them in a little more depth. DUST is a lot more complex than the games even experienced players would be coming from.