Help us help new players!

After dying repeatedly after being thrown into a 48+ battle, suggest to deploy to a smaller scale fight.

"Look for alternate routes out of the spawn room" after running out the same door X times and getting insta gibbed.

Also id like to throw my vote in for a help channel that can be toggled off, where you can ask and get help maybe even invited to play with some more experienced players for a better experience and smoother learning curve.

I wish I had known you would nerf every new gun I purchased.

How about some really basic stuff. Call me an idiot (everyone does) but I found out from reading posts about how to wield a knife, change seats in a Sundy, how the HA shields work together (ASC/resist etc).

I never knew the [ and ] keys zoomed the minimap

A tutorial that is specific to each class is what is really needed; not a controls tutorial where it teaches you how to crouch and jump.

Time consuming; yes - but well worth implementing.

New players need to know that stock vehicles are near worthless. Advise investing into rank one improvements at least before they pull one.

Next what I really think would be a good idea would be to implement some sort of pie chart representing how many people are using what. For example your Vs character is thinking about using anything other than the Orion, a quick look at the chart will indicate that 95% of Heavies are using the Orion. Probably best to stick with the Orion.

And you could use that for EVERYTHING from load-outs to weapons to classes. ATM new players are flooded with stuff and information, sometimes when you're not sure about something to just go with the flow.

While yes there are hundreds of Youtube videos and players you could ask but this is a game and not a research project, their attention so far is already paper thin. Quick tools built-in you could quickly glance at is something badly needed for new players.

time to beat a dead horse a bit. the cert system is kind of a mess right now and if we could bring back the old cert menu that had ALL of the potential certs and unlocks and stash it somewhere i think it would go a long way towards helping people make decisions when leveling up since they can more easily access ALL of their options.

besides that, TEACH PEOPLE HOW TO USE THE MINI MAP!!!! i don't know about other servers, but on connery i am almost a tactical god simply because i keep an eye on the mini map. there will be an enemy marker constantly appearing right in the middle of our lines lighting up almost constantly and NO ONE WILL EVER NOTICE. 99% of the time i am the one that goes and hunts down the sniper randomly murdering people from 10 meters away from our primary sunderer, because absolutely no one else will notice.

the mini map tells you almost anything you ever wanted to know. most of the time i expect to get accused of using ESP hacks or something, because of the situational awareness disparity between me and almost everyone else.

you should make it clear to players that shooting mines DETONATES them, so that we can end the tradition of players blowing up a friendly sunderer by shooting the mines under it to learn the lesson. also new players should be clearly shown what all of the mines, C4, and grenade indicators look like so that they aren't just dieing because they didn't know what was dangerous.

show players what cloaked enemies look like.

give some sort of indication what weapons can or cannot harm armored vehicles, and show people which flavors of vehicles are armored vs. the ones that can take damage from any weapon source.

allow new players several free weapon trials so that they can have first hand experience when choosing which weapons to invest in at the start so they are less likely to be stuck with a weapon they don't like early on.

We already know the cert screen is coming back. It's been announced at SOE Live, we don't have any ETA but we know they heard us and it's coming back.

finally, thank god.

Will be much better to divide new players and veterans. Let beginners to play first 25-40 br (for exemple) against begginers. They will start game against players who are not complitely certed. Without all this nightmare in planes and tanks.
All the time we have locked continents. On this continent devs may move new players. Since new alert system is brocken... i will suggest to rotate continents for new and old players as warp gate before. And bring old alerts with capturing of bio labs and amp station with XP boost reward for winners untill next alert.

I think it is important to HARDLY recomend newbies to spawn vehicle in stations where there is no fight, at the moment they first spawn it.
Because what uses a nice tutorial message if they get blown up by a pack of tank mines before the platform, or if they are surroundet by 20 enemy tanks.

I would suggest reccomend them to spawn on the warpgate BUT only if there is some fight going on in like 5 hex.... because driving above the whole map wouldnt be ether fun ^^.

On my youtubechannel, i am always working on videos with the basics for some vehicles, you could implement such videos in the game (maby in the right top corner`?) where they get shown the absolute basics of some Vehicle, while they can try out what they see.

Some good stuff here, and glad to see SOE looking at their New Player Experience, which is rough.

I've been here about a week and am a rts/fps/twitch vet so here comes some impressions.

I really dont mind the immediate hot-drop on new character roll, its a rude awakening but fits so well with what makes this game fun to play over the competition.

What I dont want to see is detailed tutorials for each and every class. That's the community's job and is already well accomplished. Someone early in the thread mentioned embedding vids into your engine. If you want class tuts then use community ones in this fashion.

I absolutely would like to see:
Discreet hotkey popups or suggestions in specific situations. Where i suggest prompting a player with a key to achieve something this must pull from his keybindings settings so as to be correct always, dont just prompt defaults, saw this done badly recently and the whole tooltip system was useless to me since i didnt like default bindings.

When i fire my clip low i get a blinking 'Reload'. If I have hints on (this system and all hints must be possible to disable) then it may as well let me know i need R, its 1 extra character.
When I come to a halt in a Sundie with the deployment passive running then i want a '(B) to deploy' hint.
I think new players need most help however with situational awareness. Dropping cold into this game without reading any resources leaves you fairly unable to keep in the action, you dont notice the flow and dynamic of the troop movements and end up offside or behind friendly lines or whatever. If the squad caps an objective and all leaps into vehicles, but I cant find the terminal, I was running kilometers on foot. Tell me when my squad deploys a damn sunderer, because im too new to notice or comprehend just how ninja the spawn system is here. Spell it out, a sunderer has deployed where you are going, you can save 10 minutes of running. We newbs just dont know this. You have a huge world, yet pretty much instant teleports for everyone, yet I didnt realise this for ages.
I dont know how to read the minimap, lot of arcane symbology, was ages before I learned to identify terminals on my own and involved a lot of time exploring facilities that were deserted. You want the new guys firing pretty much non-stop.
I also dont know how to talk to my squad or platoon or whatever without a mic. You correctly make it super easy to squad up, teamwork is so key here, but all i know is 'enter to type'. Who sees that? What channel is it? are there others? I dont know, and I should do at this point.

Thoughts of a newbie going through the current NewPlayerExperience

Explaining vehicle controls like:
Press A and D to stafe (Magrider)
Press shift for Afterburner (ESFs)
etc.
I also think its not only useful for beginers.
For example, I didnt know how to revive after some medic update

As someone who always plays through a tutorial the first time I start a new game, I can say, without doubt, the tutorial for this game sucks pretty badly, and there's really no entry path for new players.

The tutorial needs to be dynamic. It needs to have a series of scripted events that leads new players through situations that actually occur in game.

1. You enter enemy territory via orbital drop pod as a LA.
2. You're shown how to form a squad with the 5 nearby comrades who dropped in alongside you.
3. You're shown how to use squad waypoints, and then your squad assaults the nearby base by flying over the walls.
4. Your squad captures A point.
5. A point comes under attack from a number of infantry waves, and you have to defend the point.
6. A number of your comrades went down in combat, and you're instructed to resupply as a medic from the nearby terminal, and revive/heal your fallen comrades.
7. You're then instructed to resupply as HA and defend the base from (the first) vehicle attack.
8. When the (first) vehicle attack has been prevented, you're then instructed to resupply as an Engineer and repair the base's AV turrets, and place anti-tank mines on the road, in preparation for the second vehicle attack.
9. You then defend the base from the second vehicle attack. Your mines destroy a couple of vehicles, and you destroy a few vehicles using the AV turret.
10. You're then instructed to repair the AA turrets, and defend the base from an ESF attack.
11. After the ESF's are destroyed, you're instructed to resupply as an Infiltrator and scout the area with motion sensing darts to ensure no enemy infantry remain in the area.
12. Your motion sensing darts find a few enemy soldiers hiding, and your squad is instructed to hunt them down.
13. After the hidden enemies have been dealt with, you're then instructed to resupply as an Engineer and spawn a sunderer, in order to drive yourself, and your squad, to the next base.
14. You get attacked on the way to the next base, and your squad mates use the sunderers weapons to defeat the enemy. Unfortunately, your sunderer was damaged during the battle, so you're then instructed to get out and perform repairs.
15. You finally arrive at the next base and you're instructed to deploy your sunderer. You watch as new players, who are not in any squad, spawn on your sunderer.
16. You're then shown how to form a platoon and invite these new players to join.
17. You're shown how to use platoon waypoints, and plan the attack on the base.
18. Alpha squad (your squad) moves to capture A point.
19. Bravo squad moves to capture B point.
20. Alpha squad faces little resistance and captures A point with ease.
21. Bravo squad faces huge resistance and requests backup from Alpha squad.
22. Alpha squad moves to assist Bravo, and succeeds in pushing out the enemy and capturing B point.
23. The enemy comes back with MAX's and wipes out the platoon. The enemy then recaptures B point.
24. You and your comrades respawn on your Sunderer. Your comrades resupply as MAX's and you're instructed to resupply as an engineer to provide support to friendly MAX's with your repair tool and ammo packs.
25. Your platoon manages to push out the enemy troops and capture B point.
26. Enemy soldiers then move on and capture A point.
27. You're told to go back to your sunderer and resupply as a MAX. Entire platoon regroups at your sunderer and prepares to Zerg A.
28. Platoon then Zergs A point, destroys all resistance, captures A, and secures the base.

This kind of tutorial will teach the most necessry basics to new players:

• How to form a squad
• How to form a platoon
• How to resupply
• How to revive
• How to heal
• How to repair
• How to supply ammo
• How to use certain equipment (jetpacks, tank mines, motion sensors etc)
• How to spawn and deploy a sunderer
• How to zerg (very important for Zergside 2)
• The importance of capturing/defending points
• The importance of repairing/protecting sunderers

And I'd suggest even providing experience for everything a new player does in this tutorial. The experience they gain would be the same as what is normally gained. They would get exp for:

• Kills
• Repairs
• Heals
• Revives
• Ammo resupply
• Being a driver while the passengers kill
• Capturing points

So doing this means that by the time they've completed the tutorial, they've not only gained experience in how to play the game, but also experience and certs which can give them a bit of a headstart when they join the rest of the playerbase. So they could start the tutorial as BR1 and come out as a BR3 or BR4 with enough certs for a couple of upgrades.

The most simple way to help new players would to allow them to gain experience up to a certain BR (say 10 or so) in VR training. It can be spread out based on weapon and target to encourage new players to figure out what weapons are good for which targets and ranges. Adding some moving targets would also help, maybe some hovering air craft as well.

Even better would be to present players with situations and suggest methods for dealing with them. For example, if someone comes across a MAX unit, what they can do to fight it. Have them C4, use a rocket launcher, throw grenades, and use their primary weapon to get an idea of how each works. Other situations could include encountering vehicles, sunderers specifically, spear turrets and terminals (include hacking), and getting hit by each grenade type to learn the effects (mainly flash, concussion, EMP). You could also show the value of cover and positioning by putting VR targets behind different types of cover.

And give new players a solid counter for air units.

Then you have BR10 FNG's instead of BR1's. While a few cant move or shoot too well thats hardly the major issue but a gradual learning curve. VR is great for this, learning to control vehicles etc.

But it's still going to teach them nothing about how to actually play the game. We all know how to play a FPS, we don't know how to play Planetside with its capture nuances, resources, lattices etc etc. Thats what we need to be taught, not FPS 101. Free VR training just leads to them sucking with slightly shinier gear.

Patches that actually work and not break the game.
A friend of mine actually wanted to play planetside2 today but couldnt due to the faulty valk patch, got demotivated and thinking its an overly bugged game (as it already is). He's about to quit the game even before starting, even before " sobbing quietly as they die frequently and traumatically"

Those arent the things that get new players killed. My guess is the problem for new players is that they dont expect that everything is a kill zone. They spawn get to a vehicle terminal and a random aircraft, vehicle, sniper comes along and kills them, if they manage to spawn the vehicle they start driving and end up behind enemy lines just to get killed by the first thing that comes along.

Planetside requires a awareness and alertness no other game requires, since there arent any other games like Planetside 2. It can only be learned by doing and it normaly take till BR 20 to grasp whats going on in the game.

What might work is a battle island or a isolated continent (Indar) for players who create their first char. Send them against each other, till they reach BR20 and know the basics of the game instead of sending them in the meatgrinder with PPA farming BR100s. Or a simpler soluation. A HELP Channel...and a list of chat commands wouldnt hurt either.

In a tutorial,spoken by a commanding female voice:

-Explain to them that there is much more xp to be gained when following team objectives rather than lone wolf playing.
-Give them a hint that supporting acts like repairing/healing/revivng are equally if not better rewarded than being the random HA dishing out bullets
-Strongly emphasise that when in defence,spawn points are meant as places to rush out from,even risking your life and NOT camping sites.Explain that firing from within them helps noone and that if a spawn point is TOTALLY supressed a spawn to another base is preferable.

Do all of the above in a way of "positive reinforcement"=farm more certs rather than "this is how you re supposed to be playing".

I never knew that as a squad leader, I could point at something like Alpha point or a Shield Generator, hold down Q, and highlight the point on the HUD of my squadmates for attack or defense (like in Battlefield) as well as send all my squadmates a unique little tone.

Didn't figure this out after well over a year of playing!