DUST Search - CPM Topic: How would you design New Player Experience?

S Park Finner wrote:

It's worth making the point that the biggest hurdle new players face seems to be that they just don't get that playing in a squad is pretty much mandatory right from the start if you don't want to get stomped.

Learning what buttons to press and how to build up a suit are certainly necessary. But when the new player blasts around a corner chasing a squirrel and gets triple teamed by an organized squad he has to feel disheartened.

It would be a huge challenge to introduce squad values and mechanics in a PVE training environment but if it could be brought off it would be a huge win.

Think of a cross between the weapons range and a series of basic manoeuvres -- attack and take a null cannon, defend a CRU, each "mission" would allow the player to try out different fits and different roles. The NPCs on the player's squad would fill in the other roles. The opposing NPCs would have different challenge levels the player's could choose.

This is getting pretty close to a single player game -- but if it didn't allow the player to gain SP or ISK and was limited to basic versions of all the weapons I don't think it would keep players from moving on to the full game. Especially if it constantly reinforced linking up with player corporations.


Author	Thread Statistics \| Show CCP posts - 2 post(s)
Cross Atu Conspiratus Immortalis Covert Intervention 1091	Posted - 2013.06.06 18:04:00 - [1] - Quote Post will be in two parts. Part 1. The first point of focus is a simple reminder/mission statement. The new player exprience (hereafter NPE) is a way for players to learn the game in as ease and seemless a manner as possible. Removing barriers from the game to give new players more acceability and maintaining an awareness that not all individuals learn in the same manner (See VARK). Establish a path to game through the NPE that can be paused and resumed by the player with ease to ensure it is a resource rather than a task. Add PvE - Content of this type not only provides a game mode within which a player can test fits and pratice skills, while learning from more exprienced friends, but also provides the infrastructure needed to create 'training ops' for new players to hone skills and be exposed to game emchanics. Add Shooting Range - An area in which players can test the effect and function of various fittings/weapons by both dealing and taking damage to shields/armor. This allows a bit of "try before you buy" for the NPE and also a resource for acid testing comprehention of game mechancis. A shooting range would also be an ideal setting for a 'Aura' style training op explaining weapon effecinecy vs various target types (e.g Infantry/Vehciles and Armor/Shields) as well as highlighting the target readout to explain the meaning of it's data and how to bring it up in match. Add a Player Arena - The ability to play small scale matches with player defined varibles opens up a world of training tools to the Mercs already in game. Tapping into the community is key to a successful NPE and giving the community the means facilitates this goal. Demonstraitions of basic FPS skills, the effects of identical fits with passive character skill buffs vs without, squad movement and proper use of comms etc. would all benifit from being introduced in a user defined context. Once the new player has been exposed to (for example) issuing squad orders within an Arena session they could then pratice those skills in PvE and later the Acadimy, providing a more granular entry into the full scope of combat in D514. These sorts of community tools would also improve the social aspects of the game by enabling Corps to more readily train new players and new doctrines. Offer a full array of Militia weaponry - One of the primary draws to Dust is it's complexity and diversity, another is it's persistant world and emphsis on meaningful choice. For the new player these two core aspects can become at odds as the most responsible choice for someone new to the game is to stick with what they know, this in turn denys them access to much of the games diversity until they reach a high enough SP total to begin a second specilization. The NPE should remove these constraints by offering Militia gear of each type allowing Mercs to dabble in a bit of anything before commiting their finite reserves of SP and ISK to fully developing a given specilization. For the AUR using players in the NPE offering MLT grade BPOs of most gear further explands this basic drive and allows them a bit more economic flexibilty which in turn opens up the move to more efficent/costly expendable gear sooner, thus expiditing the internal 'path to game'. Improve resource optimization of chat interface - The current chat interface is very resource heavy having more than ~5 chat causes major and frequent client issues such as loading failures and hard freezes. An excess number of personal channles reduces (at the upper levels) the client to essentially unplayable states. This bottleneck on custom chats reduces player interaction thus artifically segmenting the population and reducing the number of 'cross corp' channles and help channles. Chats based on shared interest in a wapon, role, or playstyle are less commonly able to be imployed. Similarly fewer orginizations provide learning/NPE resource chats beyond a general public lobby. Improving the functionality of in game chats by reducing the resource load would further open up the community as a resource for the NPE. Add in game help - EVE provides a moderated chat specifically desgined to answer player questions and provide direction to resources and feedback. Providing this sort of in game support, whether it be GM or ISD (or both) would be an asset to the NPE. Video Overviews - Creating a series of short video overviews to key game concepts and allowing players access to those videos at will from the merc quarters would engadge aduio-visual learners and provide ready in game refrence for core concepts (such as those covered in the PDF manual) and wide scale elements (such as PC, FW, how D514 effects New Eden, et al). This videos should be kept short so as not to strain either game resources or player attention spans. Unlock fittings window - Allow players to create fittings from and and all assests they possess even if they cannot deploy those fits. Currently players can fit mods they are unable to run but cannot create fits with suits in which they could not deploy. Allow players to create fits based on any suit they own to encourage player expriementaion and exploration. This leads to better game understanding and more solid pre-planning especially for newer players who do not yet possess the SP to test all fits. Further add more detail to the fittings readout. All suit stats should be listed and a third data pane should be added which highlights the base value, skill modified base value, and total value (inclusive of base, skills, and fits).
Cross Atu Conspiratus Immortalis Covert Intervention 1091	Posted - 2013.06.06 18:04:00 - [2] - Quote Additonal post match info - There have been recent improvements to post match info, and they're very helpful but for the NPE they should go even further. Highlight key dust aspects such as clone loss (vs generic "death"), tally ISK/AUR value of personal assets lost in match vs value of assets destroyed, break down of WP sources per match (i.e. what percent were hacks, support, kills, etc), weapon type responsbile for the most of your deaths, etc. Comparason tool - Provide an item comparason tool (ah la EVE) for in market browsing. Providing further ingame tools for players to educate themselves prior to making choices will reduce the steepness of the 'learing cliff'. Game Lore guide - Provide an ingame resource for the lore and history of New Eden to open the world setting as part of the NPE. That's what I can think of off the top of my head. Cheers, Cross
Cross Atu Conspiratus Immortalis Covert Intervention 1097	Posted - 2013.06.07 01:15:00 - [3] - Quote S Park Finner wrote: It's worth making the point that the biggest hurdle new players face seems to be that they just don't get that playing in a squad is pretty much mandatory right from the start if you don't want to get stomped. Learning what buttons to press and how to build up a suit are certainly necessary. But when the new player blasts around a corner chasing a squirrel and gets triple teamed by an organized squad he has to feel disheartened. It would be a huge challenge to introduce squad values and mechanics in a PVE training environment but if it could be brought off it would be a huge win. Think of a cross between the weapons range and a series of basic manoeuvres -- attack and take a null cannon, defend a CRU, each "mission" would allow the player to try out different fits and different roles. The NPCs on the player's squad would fill in the other roles. The opposing NPCs would have different challenge levels the player's could choose. This is getting pretty close to a single player game -- but if it didn't allow the player to gain SP or ISK and was limited to basic versions of all the weapons I don't think it would keep players from moving on to the full game. Especially if it constantly reinforced linking up with player corporations. Agreed that an active part of the NPE needs to be reinforcing the importance and utility of working as part of a team/squad. There's only so much the NPE can do to really teach this tho PvE aspects and tools for other Mercs are both key but even if the NPE taught new players nothing about how of squadding up it should at minimum impress upon them the import of it. If you're unprepared for the experience the first time you meet focused fire from a squad will make you think something in the game is broken Thanks Finner for bringing this point to the fore. 0.02 ISK Cross
Cross Atu Conspiratus Immortalis Covert Intervention 1101	Posted - 2013.06.07 18:27:00 - [4] - Quote There are issues with respecs but I don't want to drag this thread off topic so discussion can be found here. ~Cross
Cross Atu Conspiratus Immortalis Covert Intervention 1108	Posted - 2013.06.08 15:01:00 - [5] - Quote I believe this thread is important enough to warrant a front page position.
Cross Atu Conspiratus Immortalis Covert Intervention 1337	Posted - 2013.07.29 22:52:00 - [6] - Quote Additional thought on improving the NPE, make the recruiting system more accessible to console/new players. Cheers, Cross