The New Player Experience (Long, Big Bug Report @ End)

[Orrion_the_Kitsune]

This account was originally created to test out the recent new player experience, as the last time I went through it was in 2016. To summarize, it's better than it was but is still incredibly buggy, very obtuse and would still drive someone away because of how anti-fun it is in parts. Previously I was going to post this once I finished Sedna, however after some thought finishing Uranus seems like a good stopping point to begin on this post as The Second Dream follows and if someone has gotten this far, I can't any longer claim them to be new.

It would be appreciated if veteran elitism is avoided unless you have experience with the modern New Player Experience, which I will refer to as the 'NPE' from now-on. My previous account was MR16, had SP unlocked, most quests completed, etc. so I know enough about the game to do something like this.

1. One of the first issues you'll run into is the Stalker. I'm not sure if DE has balanced him properly following the 2019 update to statuses, as at Lv10 his Dread will do a mere 100-150 damage but his slash proc will do ~350 per tick. This is increased to 225~ base and ~1.3k per tick, respectively, allowing him to instantly kill frames like Inaros. I assume this is a bug because the damage of slash procs is supposedly based upon the damage of the attack and not some arbitrary slash damage multiplier. By R30, you should have a weapon strong enough to one-shot him (before he can shoot you with Dread) however that's no reason to let an oversight like this persist.

2. The progression is better than it was, but is still a problem. Despite the game showing you ways you can farm other frames, until you learn about dark sector missions - which no new player will, as they are very out-of-the-way - you'll be missing non-flawed mods, endo and a way to level new frames/weapons reliably when you get them. Since low-level enemies give very little affinity, you'll often end up leveling your weapons w/ spy missions which is pretty boring. Please add a dark sector objective around Mars' junction, maybe for Earth's dark sector mission to introduce players to the idea of going back to previous planets to farm.

3. Due to issue #2, the frame you'll most often use is Excalibur and his 1.5 abilities, or the other newbie frames and their easy-to-spam abilities. Most of the variety will come from different weapons, which won't be used most of the time because they'll end up too weak to be of use unless you go to previous planets and grind low-level content that no-one's playing through and that gives very little affinity. Hearing "just progress more" after six planets of Excalibur is very good at disincentivizing further investment into the game.

4. The codex is completely missing important information about things like abilities' interactions with one-another. This is especially bad for frames like Mag and Volt, which are the other options newbies have to begin the game with and rely heavily on abilities' interactions to produce powerful effects. The wiki has most of this information documented, but new players will have a hard time navigating it and there's no direct link or allusion in the codex to the wiki. Add a little header to the codex with a link to the wiki.

 

5. It's insane how hostile some veteran players are to them. While it's rare, the hostility is usually very strong when present. You can have entire parties of 3 leave during boss nodes, for example, and when asked the most common reason is "They don't know what to do" which is pretty self-evident. If this is a response to new players then no wonder only ~40% of people play past two hours. Very few of the people hating on newbies will even introduce them to the wiki, strangely.

5. Hijack missions are unusually difficult for their placement in the star chart, exceeding the difficulty of the bosses of that planet. You'll often have the rover/core at ~25% by the time it arrives at extraction with you, and this is for someone fully versed in how to play the game. I can't imagine how new players have it. No-one does Hijack either, so you're stuck suffering it alone.

6. This probably qualifies as a bug as well as an issue new players will face, so I'll put it here too. For some reason, Ruk will randomly snap to different animations while he's supposedly doing something else. This makes his weak points difficult to hit for no reason, as he's supposed to be sitting still when casting abilities.

7. Fissures spawn on Earth for the Lith junction objective, so why not on other previous planets for the Meso junction objective?

8. Grineer spy missions are great, however they're a tiny bit clunky because the wandering security bots' visual cones extend further (by about five degrees) than the visual indicator shows, and about 5 meters further than their visual cone fades. They can sometimes see through walls too, which is odd.

 

-- Bugs that affect new players --

9. Pets attack Cambion Drift wildlife, making capture difficult with one equipped. This is not the case for the Plains.
10. Cambion Drift has a few issues with crashing during the Heart of Deimos quest. It happens most often on the Enhanced graphics engine, following cutscenes.
11. Cambion Drift framerate is total garbage w/ the Enhanced graphics engine, but similar to other areas' with the Classic graphics engine.
12. Cambion Drift objective targets not spawning during 'Purifier' bounty mission objectives, sometimes resulting in the secondary objective being impossible. A subset of this bug is that the visual markers for the plants will refuse to spawn too, sometimes.
13. Cambion Drift has excessive flickering if the 'Dynamic Lighting' setting is disabled. Other maps have flickering if it's disabled, but the flickering is less obvious..
14. The Dynamic Lighting setting causes excessive bloom and reflection, regardless of map or other settings.
15. You cannot enter the Necralisk if you leave a party while standing in the transition area.
16. Physics are weird for Valkyr's Zip Line when using the Synthesis Scanner, but not the Condex Scanner.
17. Pets proc Arcane Fury and benefit from the buff, despite not being... er... you.
18. Joining friends in the Cambion Drift or the Necralisk only works 15% of the time.

[JackHargreav]

Shouldn't this be in feedback?

[Orrion_the_Kitsune]

6 minutes ago, JackHargreav said:

Shouldn't this be in feedback?

I dunno', I assume that since the feedback megathread is for the current expansion it shouldn't but I could be wrong.

[JackHargreav]

4 minutes ago, Orrion_the_Kitsune said:

I dunno', I assume that since the feedback megathread is for the current expansion it shouldn't but I could be wrong.

I was thinking about dropping this into General feedback, here:

https://forums.warframe.com/forum/21-general/

[TaricTheAncient]

Not to sure about the hate thing i mean i always help out beginners if they ask nice and i got time and i see alot of others doing that in recruiting channel as well.

Of course there is kids who started playing a few years ago and speed ran through everything n now get grumpy when others ask for help but the real veterans are all age 25+ by now n usually more mature then that.

Also no one should play with bloom on...just dont.

Great points though im sure De will revise the beginner stuff at some point after New War.

[Orrion_the_Kitsune]

19 minutes ago, JackHargreav said:

I was thinking about dropping this into General feedback, here:

https://forums.warframe.com/forum/21-general/

I'll ask the mod to move it. It's early so it may take a while for them to respond.

[Orrion_the_Kitsune]

20 minutes ago, TaricTheHealer said:

Not to sure about the hate thing i mean i always help out beginners if they ask nice and i got time and i see alot of others doing that in recruiting channel as well.

Of course there is kids who started playing a few years ago and speed ran through everything n now get grumpy when others ask for help but the real veterans are all age 25+ by now n usually more mature then that.

Also no one should play with bloom on...just dont.

Great points though im sure De will revise the beginner stuff at some point after New War.

Yeah, I changed the wording a bit. Most of the people I've met who notice my MR are pretty chill, it's just a handful during boss nodes that are questionable.

[Monolake]

The progression is bad because its tied to RNG mod drops. New players don't know what drops where or how it even works - everyone thinks levels matter, yet they mean nothing on the weapons without mods. (It's supposed to be better now, but last time I ran a fresh account like 3 years ago I couldn't get Serration to drop till final planets dozens of hours in and I beat starchart with the broken one). At least you get elemental mods easily now, but still its never explained. Make a quest with clear directions that step by step drill it to players to farm mods, upgrade them with endo and put on their weapons. Give directions where to farm "hey tenno there are some cool mods for your gun hidden in those spy vaults - you should raid them!"  -  its that simple. Thats what any competent developer would do. But DE spends millions on fluff with full voice-overs yet cant make anything related to actual gameplay and progression. The complete opaqueness is what prevents WF from mainstream success. 

XP gaining system in WF is one of the worst - unintuitive and very badly designed and it's never explained. I bet you even most at DE dont understand or remember how it works and why you need to unequip weapons and leach to level them up quicker.  Needs rework, needs to be transparent, new players need to be told to use stealth bonus and spy for quick solo leveling etc. Give more bonus XP for first time node-completion to help newbs.

Hijack missions only seem hard cause you never learn to use your abilities. They could do a dedicated mission for every starting frame to get players to use and understand frame abilities.

Old bosses... just forget it, they are bad and DE wont remake them. At least they remade Jackal.

 

 

[LuckyCharm]

Its been many years since i was a new player but the amount of hidden systems ive had to explain to newbies would definitely sour a new player. Most recent example is I have a friend who's just making it through the star chart and has been complaining about how his damage is so low compared to everyone else. Linked his build to me and he was running a gas build vs grineer. 

Why is that an issue? Gas on paper sounds good right. Making weapons aoe and deals poison over time? At least by description. What it doesnt however tell you is grineer armor types have resistances to certain damage types like gas that arent explained ANYWHERE in game from what ive seen in a place thatd be accessable when modding. 

Syndicates are another that needs explanation as youre not introduced to them and unless you go to the board you wont even know you can pick one and rank it up to get things. 

Clan research is another. Theres a bunch of content hidden behind having a clan and that whole dojo system feels a lil disconnected and not explained. 

Long build timers for quest stuff doesnt help either,not sure if its been changed since I did em but building stuff like your kubrow, arcwing, railjack etc taking hours or days to complete feels bad if its a prgression stopper. Weapons and warframes sure, take your time, but things required for mission stuff shouldnt be so restricted if youre at that point

[Orrion_the_Kitsune]

49 minutes ago, LuckyCharm said:

Its been many years since i was a new player but the amount of hidden systems ive had to explain to newbies would definitely sour a new player. Most recent example is I have a friend who's just making it through the star chart and has been complaining about how his damage is so low compared to everyone else. Linked his build to me and he was running a gas build vs grineer. 

Why is that an issue? Gas on paper sounds good right. Making weapons aoe and deals poison over time? At least by description. What it doesnt however tell you is grineer armor types have resistances to certain damage types like gas that arent explained ANYWHERE in game from what ive seen in a place thatd be accessable when modding. 

Syndicates are another that needs explanation as youre not introduced to them and unless you go to the board you wont even know you can pick one and rank it up to get things. 

Clan research is another. Theres a bunch of content hidden behind having a clan and that whole dojo system feels a lil disconnected and not explained. 

Long build timers for quest stuff doesnt help either,not sure if its been changed since I did em but building stuff like your kubrow, arcwing, railjack etc taking hours or days to complete feels bad if its a prgression stopper. Weapons and warframes sure, take your time, but things required for mission stuff shouldnt be so restricted if youre at that point

I def. think a summary of who the damage type is good against (ex. +++ v. Grineer, -- v. Corpus) would be very helpful to new players. So would including hidden mechanics in skill descriptions. Most of the quest items have short build timers thankfully, ranging from a minute to ten minutes, so they have fixed that at least.