Newbies have it too hard

[(XBOX)EndgameOnyx]

Appreciate the offer, but I'm one of those morons who likes to try to "make his own way". My current goal is to entirely clear the star chart, and then the quests. 

But in all honesty, there were definitely some major barriers in the process. The first one hit around Mercury, when I realized that even though leveling equipment does provide a stat boost, it's nowhere near enough by itself - mods are the real booster. The next barrier hit around Jupiter, when I started running into energy capacity issues with mods, and learned the hard way that you can't have it all - better to prioritize certain mods, and ignore the rest. The last big block was on Lua, when I ran into the issue of "not all similar mods are created equal". For example, PSI mods are pretty useless and waste capacity versus outright damage and elementals. Again, a lot of trial and error, and searching wikis/forums/reddit. 

I think the part that hurts most is that the game does mention the importance of this stuff... but they don't tell you WHY it's important, at least not in practical terms.

[Galuf]

It is easier on PC I think, the population is more verbal and there is fraction of the community that basically live in this game that is happy to take interested new players. The game isn't hard in itself and you can find pretty precises infos online on anything, there is traction on yt so very active youtubers and the wik is kept updated. For the new player experience issues, please keep in mind that WF is a P2W ahem F2P game and so it is to some extent engeenered to generate the feeling of a need for paid services, it is the business model at the end of the day.

[MystMan]

I can imagine the overwhelming content a new player of today would have to learn and take in compared to a new player from 7 years ago.

I started in October 2013, the Gradivus Dillemma event was running during that time, though I obviously had no idea what any of that meant at the time. I had a whole different-looking starchart to unlock (starter planet was Mercury and there were no Junctions and we had a very cumbersome Fusion Core system).  Even back then there were annoying "check the wiki" replies, kinda pointless if you don't even know what keywords to use.   "The thing that looks like that and is used over there" won't exactly offer good search results. 😆

I remember having to open a ticket about something (I forgot what it was about) and through the reply did I learn a way to actually see all the items I owned. I had no idea where to look, the game menu was too cluttered with sub-menus.

As new content was added in small chunks throughout the years, it was easier to learn them all as they were released at a moderate pace.  But today all those chunks together are now an enormous behemoth of content, intimidating new players of today. It doesn't help that they made Plains of Eidolon directly accessible after finishing Vor's Prize.  New players have no mods, no endo, and only starter weapons. They will get slaughtered there, especially at night.

[(XBOX)EndgameOnyx]

4 minutes ago, MystMan said:

It was easier to learn them all as they were released at a moderate pace.  But today all those chunks together are now an enormous behemoth of content, intimidating new players of today. It doesn't help that they made Plains of Eidolon directly accessible after finishing Vor's Prize.  New players have no mods, no endo, and only starter weapons. They will get slaughtered there, especially at night.

This. I can't tell you how many times I've had to check the wiki to find context for the different activities, quests, and locations. Even now, on Sedna, I'm still having to double-check various things and don't even ask me about my understanding of the open world zones...

[Zimzala]

1 minute ago, MystMan said:

As new content was added in small chunks throughout the years, it was easier to learn them all as they were released at a moderate pace.  But today all those chunks together are now an enormous behemoth of content, intimidating new players of today. It doesn't help that they made Plains of Eidolon directly accessible after finishing Vor's Prize.  New players have no mods, no endo, and only starter weapons. They will get slaughtered there, especially at night.

The premise with this line of thought, IMO, is that a new player 'has to know it all from day 0', which is simply not true.

I get that inquisitive gamers will suck up data on a game they like with zeal, and that many think they do, in fact, have to know everything before they start playing, but in reality, they don't for this game any more than they do to start something like STO or any other long-term GaaS game.

That's the player making themselves think they 'need' to know, not the game requiring them to know, out of the gate. The game will allow them to grow and learn, just like it did the rest of us.

IMO/IME, it's the gamers in GaaS games pushing new players to catch up and play with them at the end-game - we do it to ourselves. It's this push by the loud voices of the Internet screaming that only these weapons are 'viable' and you have to rush to get them or be left behind - we do it to ourselves.

[KosmicKerman]

It definitely takes a fair amount of effort to learn how to mod weapons and warframes appropriately and how to spend resources efficiently. But I don't think it's gotten any harder. 

[MystMan]

1 hour ago, Zimzala said:

The premise with this line of thought, IMO, is that a new player 'has to know it all from day 0', which is simply not true.

Correct, but a new player doesn't know what is essential day 1 knowledge and what isn't.

Experienced players know that the first thing a new player should focus on learning is how damage type works (that by itself is already complex enough for them) and enemy weaknesses and collecting the most important basic mods (they don't know which are the basic essential mods) and the endo ("what is endo"?) to rank them up.

All of this critical order of learning is completely unfamiliar to new players (game doesn't demonstrate this order) so they don't know where to begin, hence they just try to suck it all up at random. The junction requirements are a good first draft on guiding this order of learning but it could use some a lot more work .

 

The "training" section of the Codex needs a major update as well. Right now, it's just walls of paragraphs. It needs to be more visual and interactive.

[Zimzala]

19 minutes ago, MystMan said:

Correct, but a new player doesn't know what is essential day 1 knowledge and what isn't.

There are plenty of us that figured it out, so we know it's not that hard, I am not a genius.

The 'wall of paragraphs' is all I need, I don't need or want a tutorial video on how to play a video game, thanks.

[Krankbert]

vor 4 Stunden schrieb MystMan:

Correct, but a new player doesn't know what is essential day 1 knowledge and what isn't.

It's also not like all the necessary information is available in the game in the first place.

FYI, before you waste more of your time, you should know that I've never seen Zimzala not vehemently defend the status quo of the game. If you want to shift his opinion on tutorials, you'll have to wait until DE puts more tutorials in.

[MorradiX]

Talking about too little info;

 

I played and enjoyed this game about a year,until I decided to continue some questchains I had sort of ignored up to this point....

 

Then I discovered *spoilermode* and found that there was a bit more to the game  then I thought   :D   o.O

 

[eboomer]

I think the plat economy is really overly crushing for a new player.  I was super close to walking away for this exact reason.  You have very little in the way of ways to earn plat and it takes something roughly around a thousand plat just to get all the slots you will need for a full arsenal.  I suspect this chases away a lot of players.

[Venus-Venera]

depends on the comparison.
i played eve online for years. this is such an action with loot, excel table and 3 windows with 3 accounts and 2 monitors. you are constantly in teamspeak or discord, etc. you camp 24+ hours at a time.

even after many years you are a beginner and you don't know everything by far.