A Great New Player Experience

[Light-Wolf-001]

Dear Tenno and individuals alike, this is a proposal to improve the New Player Experience, its intended to be a suggestion, thoughts share and overall discussion about the state of the NPE and how to make it better, its purpouse is not to generate an actual change or state that this is the "DEFINITIVE" solution to an existing problem (thats up to DE to decide) so reader discretion is advised, feel free to agree or disagree with any of the points and leave your suggestions as I am but a Tenno and might be wrong in many things, if the Orokin made mistakes (mistakes that made the entire space as we know it erupt into a violent war) why wouldn't we right?

Note that DE is already working on a rework for the New Player Experience (point I forgot to address but was thankfully reminded of) so this proposal is only posted with the intention to express my personal thoughts about the NPE and how it could be improved even further after its rework (considering not everything or nothing at all in here might be taken into consideration for the upcoming Heart of Deimos update).

As this is a very extensive proposal and I have no intention to bore you or waste your time, I've taken the liberty to divide this entire writting into different sections that are the following:

- Introduction

- Proposal

- Training

- Gameplay

- Conclusions

So sit back and enjoy ladies and gentlemen, for this is, a Great New Player Experience

Introduction

Okay I'm gonna start with saying, thanks for taking the time to read this and yes the title is right, Great New Player Experience in Warframe. As most of us know (after playing for a lil while) being a new player is one of the most confusing and some times annoying places to be in this game mainly because, well... you don't know anything at all. In this topic, I dont intend to go deep into why this is currently not a great experience or how to make it easier to progress when starting fresh, since there are already a buch of videos and most likely posts about that, what I'm aiming for with this is to propose an entertaining and unique way to improve this new player experience for the better and also give more experienced players a chance to participate in this endeavor.

Proposal

To get a better understanding of where I'm going to with this, I would like to suggest watching the Warframe Trailer (E3 2013) either before or after reading all this, you all ready? here it goes... how about we make it so that experienced or veteran players can help new players learn the ropes and both parties will benefit from it, on paper sounds cool doesn't it? but how about in actual practice, well allow me to give you a perhaps difficult yet simple way to do it that I came up with thanks to a youtube comment in the Trailer I previously mentioned that reads, and I quote, "Oh s**t, think about this! The tutorial mission is actually pretty difficult, but the game calls in three players (or npc warframes) to assist in your escape. That way new players would be able to get a taste of just how freaking badass you can become."

The core of this game mode or mission (whatever way you may call it) would be so that just like the Steel Path allows for more experienced players to tests their builds to their full extent and force them to some times even "succumb" to the meta, this new tutorial would have to make new players use their starting arsenal to its full extent. For instance, just like invasions allow you to "pick a side", the player gets to choose not only their starter frame but also, the starting tutorial or intro they want to take either Solo or Co-op, for Solo there shouldn't be much of a change, however, it allows players to have that starting experience on their own if they wish to or if no squad is available. About the squad, it would have to be (in my opinion) integrated by 3 experienced Tenno and the experience factor would have to be measured either by hours spent in the game, mastery, progress unlocked so far or a combination of the three, now another thing thats important, is that not only the squad members would have to be experienced Tenno but also, committed in helping this Tenno, I assume this could be done in a similar fashion in which moderators, admins and so on, are picked or selected and aproved in different servers hosted by community members in games like CSGO or GMod, obviously this would have to be done by DE themselves along with support from the community to select said candidates for the New Player Experience Training as I would like to call it.

Training

Since anyone can reallistically be experienced at the game, provided you played and farmed for long enough, the previous point is of extreme importance since those Tenno would be in charge of most of the knowledge new players are going to have about the game, so lets say DE can approve or reject any application to be a Tenno Trainer, also track their progress and or positive/negative feedback about them and such, for this, it's also very important to consider that not everyone would be interested in something like this and might want to get some sort of incentive for helping alot of new players and having an overall positive perception of their teaching methods and such. To be honest I would be content with a Forma a rare mod or heck even an Orokin Cell bundle or anything really, since I'm not really suggesting this as a way to actually get rewards or anything but to genuinely help new players since I love the aspect of players helping players and forming a more united community overall, mostly because when I started playing this I really felt welcomed and helped by the community. So yeah rewards for mentors maybe, will have to see which ones would be nice but not really the core of this proposal.

Now before we get into this any further, I must bring up something else and its that, stuff like this (mentoring, teaching new players the ropes) is something that fortunately is already being done by various well known and friendly clans, content creators though their channels and clans of their own and aswell by a vast majority of experienced players that actually care to lend a hand to less experienced ones from time to time, but here we are talking about the New Player Experience, something thats integrated already in the game but hasnt been quite polished yet because lets face it, a game so big and with so many things to do like Warframe, is hardly ever going to be easy to understand as a newcomer and not everyone has the time to read a 100 pages of the wiki even if everything its literally there, but it can indeed be a smoother and overall enjoyable experience from the get go.

Gameplay

We talked about the "selection" process for mentors or trainers, but what about the game mode itself, well, once a new player has chosen the Co-op experience and successfully found a squad of dedicated players, how about the mission doesnt start at level 1-3 to "go easy" on the newbies and actually start it at a difficulty that pushes them to actually read and listen to what the Lotus has to say about their abilities and such. Once again I have to state the obvious to not generate confussion, for this to work some tweaks would have to be done such as, providing the player with a few starting mods pre installed in his chosen warframe and weapons as to buff them a bit to at least be able to damage the enemies, and things like not allowing for Operator use for the mentors since that would spoil a big part of the game's plot (unless the newcomer doesnt really care about that and asks).

For the missions, it would be nice to, besides showing the different types of missions and what not, also include basic aspects that are left in the dark until you ask another player "how did you do that?", aspects such as what does reviving yourself with affinity actually does or affects you, how to identify caches with sound when nearby, how to not get lost in a map just by openning your minimap and following the general direction of the marker and place markers or even what does "tileset" even means. These are very general and basic aspects but you get the idea, new players come with alot of new questions to be solved. Of course, not all of that knowledge can be provided by the game introduction itself in a few couple missions, so to not complicate things more and change the starting missions radically, the suggestion of having a Co-op intro experience is quite useful, since you dont only get experienced players to help you go through your first missions, but you are also free to ask any doubts you might have about the tutorial aspects or the game in general to them, basically, if you are the kind of player that likes to get social and meet new people to play with, this allows both parties to have a genuine Co-op experience and have fun together!

Conclusions

To sum it all up, what im suggesting in the present post, is to expand the interaction that new players get to experience when first comming to the game, both with the community and the game itself, of course this all sounds like a dream from a hopeful fan of Warframe, well guess what it is, but that doesnt mean its impossible and that it doesnt have solid  points that could be taken and used for something entirely different that can make in the end a truly great experience for the newcomers in this game and aswell in the genre itself of a LooterShooter.

I intend to make a video about this very same topic in the future however, thats when I finish polishing this idea even further so I can explain it in a more understandable and accessible maner so that every point is covered, for now I leave you with this proposal and once again thank you for taking the time to read all this (if you did) and have a good one.

Light-Wolf_001 wishes you have a wonderful time.

[JackHargreav]

New player experience is coming with Heart Of Daddy.

[Sir_Carl]

Might be a terrible time to post this since New player experience is already coming on the next update. After that we'll see, hope its more friendly to new players because this game has a steep learning curve.

[Light-Wolf-001]

I did saw that however these are just thoughts that came to my mind to implement to whatever DE has planned since they might be able to make something even greater.

I just want to see the community grow and maybe something in here hasn't yet been considered for the next update, though I do have my hopes up for whatever they might have planned 😄

[N1vi]

repost this after heart of deimos comes out. from the looks of things, its moreso a rework of vor's prize rather than a proper NPE overhaul

[PancakeLord333]

3 hours ago, N1vi said:

repost this after heart of deimos comes out. from the looks of things, its moreso a rework of vor's prize rather than a proper NPE overhaul

This is something people are overlooking IMO. DE's idea of NPE is basically the first questline and the most basic moment tutorials... ignoring overhauling everything after mercury. But that doesnt even scratch the surface of what's needed, and leaves the game feeling directionless after killing vor..

A proper NPE overhaul would roll in old events as quests so players can actually be led through the star map via a thin veneer of narrative, on top of the gameplay, to experience the story as it ought to be told.

It would also mean "sanitising" the UI - I started playing WF right out of closed beta, when I was looking for something to replace the void that ME3 left in me (Back then WF's pacing played pretty similarly to mass effect, minus a dedicated cover system).

• But one thing that repulsed me like nothing else, and put me off the game till I gave it a second chance a year or so later, was seeing all the warframes and guns in the arsenal that I could buy for plat.
• In and of itself, there's nothing wrong with this, but when they mix in owned equipment with stuff you are prompted to buy if you mis-click, it really makes my skin crawl (even to this day). It also sets out an image to a new player that DE doesn't care about easily/clearly explaining HOW you can get a warframe via gameplay (e.g. Rhino), instead they'd rather focus on sticking buy buttons all over the place, and anyone else still committed can go to the wiki (that their fans seem to happily maintain for free) and read through pages of stuff.
• I get that its an F2P but even UI decisions like this have consequences, with a dedicated market screen there's no reason to still have un-owned things showing up all the time in the arsenal
  • If nothing else, part of a UI pass for a "proper" NPE overhaul would be adding a  "ONLY SHOW OWNED/BUILT" button in the arsenal for weapons & Warframes..
  • and expanding the codex to be more feature rich, user-friendly & easily visible, so you don't need to go to the wiki or "leave the game to play the game" (as much). 

 

[Jim22]

I hope they add new starting weapons for new player experience. 

[BDMblue]

The problem I get from people is after all the into they don’t know what to do. As a 35 year old I played way back in the WTF is this dot am I the dot? Is this a wall? What’s that other dot? Did I shoot? Why am I in a game over screen? Time. So I don’t mind finding stuff out too much, but any one who’s grown up with games bing reasonably playable are not in the mood to start to figure stuff out. They want to be told go here get that ext. 

 

also had 1 guy quit because he saw a gun in the market and thought that’s the only way to get them.

[(PSN)Madurai-Prime]

They need to get rid of flawed mods so endo isn't wasted on them. They need large prompts with large text explaining forma and potatoes and how to mod. They can point out the display on the bottom right of the starchart that shows which planet has which resources.

Then no one should have any excuse for continuing to be so incredibly bad at this game. Give it to em all upfront so they have no excuses.