Market recommendations for new players and beyond.

[TinFoilMkIV]

During a conversation about new players and weapon/warframe slots, it came up that (among many other things) the options they have to use the starting platinum on is very obscure. Also by extension the market place does a very poor job at explaining itself to new players as well.

I came to the conclusion that the market place could very easily start new players on a "recommended items" page instead of the current "featured" items, which does nothing for clarity to players who aren't already familiar with the market.

For new players I would definitely put warframe and weapon slots at the top of the page, as these are almost universally recommended purchases for starting platinum, and it is frequently a sore point when a new player is blindsided by the limited inventory space. From there I would also include all the straight credit purchasable weapons, as well as the blueprints for weapons that are available at mastery 0-2. So that new players can clearly see a list of weapons they can potentially make early on, without the confusion of putting the platinum purchase of full weapons over the ability to buy blueprints.

As far as when this feature would be the default, I would say have a check box akin to "don't show me this when I open the market" type deal. I considered having it just stop after a certain mastery rank, but that could cause confusion on it's own for players that rarely visit the market, or just don't know why their home page on the market is suddenly full of things that aren't immediately relevant to them.

 

I would also say that such a feature could greatly benefit from becoming a permanent thing to help guide players in all stages of the game to new or highly relevant items. For higher mastery ranks the recommended page could include things like weapons that require another weapon that the player owns to build. As well as warframes and weapons that just became available for their current mastery rank and perhaps one or two ranks below, depending on the number of items this includes. This could also be a place where there may be enough space to reasonably put the blueprint for listed items next to the completed item to demonstrate that the market offers both options to players, without creating undue clutter in dedicated sections of the market.

Primarily I think something like this would be an immense help to the new player experience, as well as an opportunity to more clearly show equipment options to less new players as well.

Edited May 14, 2018 by TinFoilMkIV