New player experience is HORRIBLE

I am completely astonished that they chose to start players by dropping them directly into combat, without even a chance to get their bearings. The first thing that happens is they die, usually within a couple seconds of the drop pod landing. I barely survived the landing myself, even knowing what was happening, because it dropped me right next to a group of enemy soldiers with no cover.

Some of you may scoff and say "Well that just gives them a taste of what PS is all about, so its all good." No, its not good. The fact is its a hugely negative experience to happen to someone who has little invested in the game aside from the time it took to register and download the client. If you annoy a new player too much with a ****** introduction to the game like that, and they dont have a financial stake in the game, there's a very good chance they will simply abandon it after 15 minutes.

I am starting to worry that those first 15 minutes of the game are driving away hundreds of players who potentially would be long term, PAYING customers.

I thought it was fun, straight into the action I was like wtf, got an assist on some guy, crouched to changed mouse sensitivity then got shot to death. It was funny, then redeploy right back in the action. It is much better than spawning at the warpgate, especially for a new player imo.

I don't know what everyone's complaining about. I hot-dropped in and I was like, "Yeeee-aaaah Son!" and started pumping lead. Even if you're a newb and you die and least it gives you a momentary taste of awesomeness before you sit and stare at menus for half an hour.

woohoo! I was invited to Beta about a month ago, but never made time to check PS2 out.

I never played PS1 and I have no idea what to expect. The nature of the OP has me quite excited!
Download 85%....

That's SOE for you. SOE goes out of their way to screw their players in an effort to create an environment where the players feel as though they have to survive not just their opponents, but SOE itself.

Classic Everquest maneuver.

Just remember, you can steer the pod. 10000000000000 auraxium for successfully landing on an enemy MAX suit and ruining his day.

i had a fine first drop but i can tell you a few players who droped next to me were not so lucky. i fealt bad killing them but if they figured out how to use their gun they would have killed me. also they chose the wrong empire. droppoding seems like a good idea but in the end they are just free kills to those around them. i saw a gun drop in and immeditly get rocketpoded i bet he had no idea what happened to him.

i will agree to that, i tutorial before that would have been nice, but then launching us into combat would have been a great way of doing it.

You can imagine the tutorial yourself can't you? Anyway it might just have been a mistake, so expect a patch after the whining. But i hope they don't listen, this is what war is like, open the doors, get gunned down by huge cannons or machine gunners. Stop blotting out Dday film footage from your head, grab your grenade throw it, move your butt and wiggle behind something

How about beg and plead for an option to set your controls through the launchpad before playing the game.

1. There are actually people out there that do react very negatively to such first impressions. Whether you think that they should react that way or not is irrelevant, as they are going to do so anyway. Thus this is a problem all by itself.

2. The negative first impressions do unfortunately not stop at one death. After that initial death they still have no idea what they are doing, where to spawn, how the various "hidden" mechanics of the game work, etc. This might leave the player with a series of negative experiences that could cause them to abandon the game.

3. Even if the player does not have these problems(or ignores them), they will probably miss the "real" PS2 experience their first time around. They'll probably just hop from fight to fight on their own and see the game as a series of disconnected fights with little organization or strategy and a lot of downtime.

They have made some videos available which came out at launch: http://www.planetside2.com/game-tutorials

First death may still be jarring but after that they should be in a good direction.

if one death is going to drive hundreds of players away they're not the kinda players you want in game. The drop pod onto ti alloys is slightly silly but at least you're forced into a situation where you have to react quickly.

Big Deal you may die once from the initial fall due to SoE.On the other hand your rght in the action.

I personally didnt die upon landing with 2 different characters.

Maybe its a lack of skill OP

im not a new player, but i was kinda expecting to be able to change my key imputs the way i like, get my graphics adjusted right, all that good stuff. and instead it was drop pod into an nc shooting me in the back of my head, i can honostly say it wasnt fun at all. im not mad about it, but im not too excited either.

i think alot of you are way way missing the point. its not about the one death. its about the setup. this is the first thing a noob (n o o b really soe that is a bad word now?)experiences. if all goes well then no harm, but if he get killed before he can even react i do think it sets the wrong tone. and how does some noob know he going to die 1000's of times, he has no clue of planetside scale, he is still in bf2 mode and in his mind he just went from having a chance at 1st place on leader board to the dude with 1 death and 0 kills, maybe he wants to be a ****** bad *** with 100/0 kill/death everyday. you dont know

I think the instant hot drop into combat is a great introduction into a screen they will be seeing a lot of in their planetside life...The respawn one. But yes that first jolt of adrenalin you get from the get go is what will most likely keep the player base that will make this game fun and scare off they type that will whine in the forums trying to turn it into an MMORPG like Guildwars or WoW.

Yeah i thought that was interesting being dropped right in the middle of stuff before you have a chance to choose any setup

I have no problem being delivered to combat but as an ESDF player who uses inverted mouse and a bunch of other keybinds that I'm used to from months of beta, I would kinda sorta like the option to set that stuff up first before panning around like a drunken frat kid trying to adjust to a non inverted mouse and giving someone a free kill...

I have to admit I was a little put off at being dropped straight into a fire fight. Not enough to keep me from playing the game but I could see having an option to start you off at a spawn point (or a training range) instead of right in the middle of a fight your first time in.

Like I said I am not pissed off about it, but it was pretty annoying. I am not sure if the voice in the intro tells you that your being dropped right into a fight. If he did I missed it. Being gunned down in the 5 seconds after landing without a chance to orient yourself is kinda brutal for an intro into the game. I was hoping to get in pick my class, and set up my controls before getting into a fight. Still I like the game and am looking forward to shooting people in the face.

The intro DOES say "In just a moment you will be dropping into a warzone, land, get to cover as fast as possible and good luck solider.

I don't really like that it throws you straight into the action. While those of us who know Planetside and have played in this beta could more or less deal with it, a new player with no idea what's going on is going to find themselves frustrated very quickly by this.

This also tends to make people ask a question that should sort of worry us. 'What am I supposed to be doing?'

Yeah, we can and do answer them, but the game should at least tell them why they're fighting near the trailer park, and what they should be fighting for. As it is right now, there's very little direction for a new player, and dying within the first few seconds of their first time playing is off putting.

Another problem with this happening is that battles simply don't end. It just sends newbie drop pod after newbie drop pod into the fray until everyone from the opposing empire is at this sliver of land that a handfull of people are fighting for. It's nice to have prolonged fights, but it's not fun to be fighting over the same place forever.