Help us help new players!

I actually don't think that tips about keybinding would resolve the issue of new players being unable to survive their first hours. Yes, reminding that a weapon has multiple fire modes, that you can crouch and such things has it's advantages, but telling them that if you aim for the head, you have more chances to kill the enemy before he kills you, has a better effect.
The tips should include gameplay informations such as the weak armor on the back of the tanks, the recoil patterns, the function of various attachments, the class of weapons (pros and cons of carbines, assault rifles, lmgs, etc.), the special roles of each class (reviving, healing, repairing, tanking, mobility, etc.).
For example, the first time a player takes a class, he could be prompted with a summary about the pros and cons of that class. In this example, if I take infiltrator as new player, I expect to have information about: cloacking devices (visibility varying on speed), weaker armor, recon devices, hacking. with light assault, I expect tips such as "you can fly, don't run in the face of your enemies: get them from the back". When I take a medic, for the faction's sake I'm expected a lot of big arrows on corpses screaming "this dude is dead, take your 100xp by reviving him!" (nah, that's a joke, but a reminder that you have to revive people...that would be nice).

Last time I remember seeing a lot of them at once.... I kept having to spam Sector chat with:
"If you are an engineer with Mines in your 4 slot, YOU CAN STILL DEPLOY AMMO, just press 5, then B"

This should be like a constant reminder that pops up for all engineers everytime someone is aiming at them Voice-Comm'ing for AMMO

THIS. SO FREAKING THIS.
As simple as it is, me and all the friends I managed to drag into this game at one point, we all forgot to equip the shiny new nanoweave armor we unlocked.

But yeah, if your system could actually show little videos that showcased the abilities... That's something Wrel have been suggesting for a while, and if you take a look at Blizzard games for instance, you'd see how to do it properly. Every single ability in the game is shown through a 30s video and you can make a better choice. You could showcase a video where guy with flak armor walks through an explosion without dying and someone without flak that dies. Same thing for nanoweave, showing that you can take some extra bullets before dying. It could be quite simple to do.

That is some babysitting but those kind of visual explanation are a way better experience for new players I think. Because having to read wall of text and go to wiki articles to figure stuff out is not really how it should be.

The biggest thing that harms new player experience (and new player retention of game itself) is when they get farmed. We have entire outfits dedicated to stat-padding by farming spawn rooms and unsuspecting players. I've lost track how many friends have stopped playing due to being farmed and being new.

Thus, new players should be educated by the game on how to avoid being farmed.

General advice:

- Don't rush into battle, especially if you already died several times in the same place.
- Don't run alone, stick to friendlies.
- Don't rush for objective - it is most probably defended and if you are alone you will be killed.
- Keep looking at your map and see where your allies are. Support them, don't run alone.
- Stay in cover.
- Keep looking at that map.

A lot of these short tips should be put between the loading continents screen.

Some of the lesser known keybinds on the loading screens, like B to switch fire modes and engi turret, chat commands, stuff that even vets might not know.

I think it would help a lot if the game pointed out new things and rewarded players for examining them, ala Planetside 1.

expand the tutorial by implementing learning courses for infantry combat, support, vehicles and aircraft into the game. but also combine them with cert rewards to give new players an incentive to go through the tutorial in the first place. additionally, these cert rewards will help them start out easier in multiplayer later. examples below:

infantry training course:
- kill 5 enemy infantry dummies at the shooting range (reward: 2 certs)
- kill 5 enemy infantry dummies at the shooting range with headshots only (reward: 3 certs)
- kill 2 enemy infantry dummies with an explosive (reward: 5 certs)
- capture a control console (reward: 2 certs)
- defend a control console (reward: 3 certs)

support training course:
- provide suppressive fire with an lmg against infantry dummies (reward: 1 cert)
- heal 2 friendly infantry dummies with medic tool (reward: 5 certs)
- repair 2 friendly vehicle dummies and one Max dummy with repair tool (reward: 8 certs)
- fly ontop of a small building as a light assault and deploy a squad beacon (reward: 4 certs)

vehicle training course:
- hop onto a Flash and drive to a waypoint (reward: 1 cert)
- get into a Sunderer, drive to a waypoint and deploy the AMS (reward: 3 certs)
- get into a Lightning, drive to a waypoint and destroy 3 infantry dummy targets (reward: 5 certs)
- get into an MBT, drive to a waypoint and destroy 2 vehicle dummy targets (reward: 8 certs)

aircraft training course:
- get into and take off with an ESF to float in the air for 30 seconds (reward: 5 certs)
- fly from waypoint 300 meters to the next waypoint (or something similar) (reward: 10 certs)
- land with an ESF without damaging it (reward: 8 certs)
- attack and destroy a tank dummy with ESF rocketpods (reward: 12 certs)
- attack and destroy an aircraft dummy (floating in the air) with the ESF's nosegun (reward: 15 certs)

(total reward to obtain: 100 certs)

As you can see from pages in this thread, many like the idea of SOE approaching current streamers and ask them to make some videos, as we suggested.
Videos are not equal to experience, but they do help a lot. I still don't know what generators to destroy in what order so that an Amp station can be taken.. I have no idea! Pretty sure newbies won't know either. Videos do help a lot.
SOE does not need any resources for it, just email the likes of MattiAce, Vrel etc.. tons of good players out there that would love to help. And, as suggested, give them in-game credit.

Another way to give new players "experience", would be to make them invincible.. yes, I said it, but wait, they can walk around, kind of like an allied cloaked sniper.. we can see our allied cloaked sniper.. in that same sense, you could let new players spawn and watch a battle, they can be in the battle, but nobody can see them, and they can't shoot anyone.. that way they could follow other allied players around, and see what they do and 'experience' the game. Give them a "silent player" option.. they can only be there and watch

An instructional video on how to use chat would really be great. I still don't know how to change the color or size of the text in my chat... no clue. I don't know where to find the instructions for that either.

SOE, why not try and become THE game with the most and best instructional videos of any game ever? If you can show that you care about new players, you might actually get lots of new players. Great concept.

Something I would recommend having for low BR players is a message that displays over even the deploy screen after they have been killed is a little message like

"You have been killed by an enemy Light Assault. Remember to watch the roofs!"
Or, "You have been run over by a friendly vehicle. Remember to look both ways!"

This could probably be extended to classes too, every time you spawn until you reach BR 10 or something.

"You have spawned as a Medic. Heal and revive your teamates with your medic tool to sway the battle."
"You have spawned as a MAX. Stay with your team to push enemy lines!"

Things like that, just small reminders and tips -as they happen- might really go a long way to help teach players what's going on in the chaotic battles.

It'd be useful if VR had moving targets.

First time lock-on users do not know to hold RMB to lock. I know because I once tried Nemesis and couldn't figure out how to lock on when I was new player.

That "trash from ´03" actually had a proper OFFLINE tutorial that was much more complex than what you get in the current PS2. It only broke after SOE (!) neglected updating the training in around 2004.
It then had to be replaced with the rather improvised in-game/online training system (2005-6 ish) which, again, was still much better than what we currently have in PS2.

Atfer 2004 we urged the Devs to work on tutorials again since the game was complex and confusing, since we lost many potentially new players that otherwise (with proper training/tutorials) might have stayed. WHY did SOE repeat the mistake and release an unfinished game with no tutorials? Why are we - again - losing players due to a confusing and unintuitive game with no (proper) tutorials?


Sorry "DatVanuMan", I get that you didnt like PS1, but there is no need to talk "trash" about something you obviously don't know enough about.

I

I played it for four years before quitting. This game IS SO much easier to learn, the controls are better, gameplay is better, the UI is better... Although they HAVE to stop with the nerfs.

I

I played it for four years before quitting. This game IS SO much easier to learn, the controls are better, gameplay is better, the UI is better... Although they HAVE to stop with the nerfs.

And you dont think you will say the same about Planetside 2 in 9 years?

Besides the point that you completely evaded the topic (namely that SOE repeated its own mistakes and that PS1's tutorial could have easily been improved on (and was better than PS2's)), it is only natural that games evolve within a decade in certain aspects.

Whether some things are better or not is, of course, highly subjective.
- Take controls. Why are they better now? IMHO some controls that PS1 had are sadly missing in PS2 (e.g. setting vehicle's cruise speed, setting up the HUD/UI the way YOU wanted it).
- Why is the UI better now? The HUD is basically the same, except that in PS2(!) it lacks A LOT of functions [like displaying weapons effectivity range, player's deployed CE equipment, customisations such as being able to resize chatwindow, map, add additional chat windows just for /outfit or /squad or /command, moving windows how you like it etc etc].
Of course the "player menu" - if you like to call the screens with char info, vehicles, map, store etc like that - and the visuals are much nicer, but isn't that part of how games evolve?

And whether the game is easier to learn is also debatable, since the game (PS2) lacks a proper tutorial and may be easier to learn because it has been dumbed down. The latter taking a lot away from gameplay due to lack of overall meta and problems cause by that (redeployside, zerg/steamrollside, excessive spawncamping etc etc).

See, it is all debatable, subjective and based on personal opinions. The problem I see is that PS2 took away a lot of the good functionality from PS1 and repeated the same mistakes from PS1 (e.g. client side hit detection, no proper tutorial).





BTW: Anyone else having problems with a slow forum?

Well, I just hated PS1. So many of its features simply drove me away, as they were WAY too hard to understand. On the fourth year, I only made it to BR9. I absolutely sucked at the game, and by the fourth year, I knew everything, or almost everything, about the game. But I then quit. I didn't like the game, purchased a Playstation, and that was all until 2012. I got a VAIO laptop, got Star Wars Battlefront 1 and 2, and then, on May 29th, saw a video of Toby playing a game. It looked epic, new and cool. And here I am now, playing the game that is dearest to my heart. Sure, people have the right to love whatever they want, but PS1 really did a bad job But 2? 2 did it all
2. And yeah, forums are slow as crap, man. So I'm not the only one...

Well, if you played for four years and only reached BR9 that means you only played 1 day each year, because BR9 is only a few 10.000 xp! You reached BR5 after completing VR & Tutorial and BR9 was easily doable in a few base captures (~2000 BEP each for the capture alone).

I would gladly show you PS1 and help you understand its features more deeply, because, honestly, at BR9 you must have missed out on a lot of things

By the way, 2012 Sony Vaio SA(13) here as my mobile rig, unfortunately the last patches utterly destroyed the performance even for this small powerhouse




Anyway, back to topic
SOE and devs: Please learn from the past. I dont want to know how many players already missed the opportunity to enjoy the game due to being utterly confused by the game and its non-existant tutorials.

We forumsiders could "crowdsource" some sort of help-manual, tutorial-videos, popup-text-content etc etc.

Thanks for the offer, man But sadly, I vowed that I would never play that crap again But I heard that PS2 Beta was amazing. I wonder what would happen if SOE changed everything that is available now to Beta power, because I heard that everything in Beta was amazing. People say that the VS was OP!

There was a great video made by Wrel on a topic of Mentor system. I fail to see how this would not solve all the issues.
New people who wont use the mentor system and still leave will be the same who skip all the tutorials, so generally expanding tutorial is a waste of time, when you can just make the Mentor system live and give a little bit of incentive for veterans to use it.