My BR1 friend experiences Planetside 2

You don't have to die much in Planetside, but one of the first things to tell a new player is that sometimes you can't fight out of the spawn room, you have to stay inside and either support or kill through the shields, then redeploy. There will always be times where you are outmatched in a game like this, and times where you can fight properly, you just need to know how to spot which situation you are in.

It's not that complicated. Yeah, there is stuff like implants, suit upgrades, the depot, nanites and the rest but don't drown them with it all at once - you have to throw bits in as you go.

Also a key thing to mention is that you don't need to be shooting through allies to kill people. If an ally blocks your path, in anything but an extreme situation such as a light assault running at a sunderer with C4, you don't shoot. If you do have to shoot in a situation like this, you switch to medic and revive! It's still pointless to try shooting through allies because you will achieve nothing, you have to shoot AROUND THEM, but in a situation like this you can be a little more risky.

For new players especially - its pretty smart to avoid the largest battles. That goes for more veteran players too who get frustrated by spam and "random deaths". When battles get too large it crosses a threshold at some point where you can't be reasonably expected to keep track of most of the stuff going on anymore. Smaller to average sizes battles play out much more "structured" and you feel you have a real impact. That is where I'd be trying to take new players to introduce them to the game.

Also, having someone gun a vehicle turret for you is a nice way to warm them up because it is a somewhat limited role and much easier to wrap your head around until you understand the game better.

-Stigma

lol i couldnt find my qoute "snip"

It saves making a post overly long. Some posters do it, some just leave a large fully quoted... Just depends

ahh that makes sense did cross my mind.. on a side not this community is such a refreshing change to the bf 3 community where battle log tracks all your stata and your ability is judged on accuracy and k/d ratio.. that in my opinion completely misses the point of a team game

This is a great post, but it bares repeating what someone else said: There's simply no way to program in a tutorial as good as a mentor.

What's really needed is a mentoring system that BR1-10s would have to opt out of, and BR50+s could opt in to. It would need to encourage the mentor to help the new player succeed. Perhaps giving a checklist for the mentor to run down and allowing them to earn credit for the new players achievements.

You could do simple things like simple XP bonuses, but really, I think you'd want have to prestige items like special armors, titles, and icons to distinguish them in the crowd.

That was beautiful... :')
With enough kindness, tutoring and alliance, new players will ALWAYS love this game for what it is: Something that is like no other.

It will be hard to find that one mentor who knows all the game but won't teach you just his style. I was lucky when I joined my outfit because we have specialists for certain aspects of the game (dedicated tank drivers, superior ESF and Lib pilots, strategy specialists with real world military experience) - so I didn't learn from one, but from many. I think this is the good idea behind a mentoring outfit.
And a newbie should feel free to leave an outfit if he feels unnoticed.

If you aren´t familiar with shooters then you´ll be screwed for quite some time in PS2. However, I think people who are familiar with shooters and played others like Battlefield shouldn´t have that much of an issue with the game. Then again it´s hard for me to comprehend how a fresh players with next to no PS and shooter expierience must feel. I´ve been playing on and off since PS1 Beta and starting PS2 just felt like jumping right back in with a few new tricks to learn:>

I randomly 'mentored' a group of newbies at Feldspar Canyon once. I taught them how to destroy tanks. I was in a tank, and they were enemies. I showed them what I do when one of them at a time tries to shoot rockets; how I will flee if taking too much damage, and how they can work together to get me. It took a good 20 minutes but about half to 3/4 of a squad of randoms did learn how to deal with tanks, and when they simply cant with the tools they have as Infantry.

To even things up, I came back a couple times and let them blow up some vehicles then kill me, since I felt like I was farming them while teaching. I didnt so much as get a 'thank you', but I didnt need one. They had clearly listened and learned and that was enough for me.

Might be fun to start running newb squads to teach, but then again how would they even know to join?

That's exactly where the game is lacking. There are great yet simple ways to implement mentoring. Here's one: http://dk.reddit.com/r/Planetside/comments/2dyqlu/my_br1_friend_experiences_planetside_2/cjuer4v by rolfski

Or like this:

Regarding that you can't make a tutorial as good as a mentor, I agree. You shouldn't even try. I'd say things were a lot better with the new player experience being something like this:
1. new players logs in
2. new player is sent to complete the tutorial (current one is ok, if tutorial is completed give the quiz gift)
3. new player is asked if he wants a mentor + gift (-50% SC discount and a weapon optic would probably help a lot)

You should be able to ask for a mentor as many time you want. Obviously you get the gift just once, Also put a big "I need a mentor!" button on the menu for everyone. Who knows what it could be used for. Maybe two mentors would want to perfect their craft together or something. Mentors can sign up after ~BR50 and get mentor camo after you have mentored a set number of players. The mentor camo could have multiple tiers like: 5, 20, 50, 100.

I'd be fine with mentoring for nothing since it's fun, but it sure would help new players out to have a visual clue who mentors are. You can even make the camo bright pink, if you are afraid of it getting called OP. Which it most likely will be for apparent reasons.

ps. I would also appreciate the extra attention I get from the enemy when wearing my mentor camo.

I'd love to give a grizzled veteran performance for a bunch of new players, even if I didn't get XP bonuses or whatnot for it.

I just wish there was a system in which I could do something like this.

Maybe SOE could make an in-game mentorship program?

Just shows that trying to play this game is like going through an initiation ritual in some crazy psycho cult.

Shouldn't be like that.

Good feedback from your experience with a new player.

I think the general recap could summed up as "There is so much to keep track of in Planetside 2, which results in a steep learning curve".

The individual game aspects aren't that complicated when it comes down to it (shoot the right guys, use the correct weapons for that task, support your own guys, know the strategic / tactical maps, know what to do at a base to conquer / save it), but when all of it is dumped on a new player, it seems pretty complicated.

I seem to recall that the most "difficult" of those for me was "shoot the right guys" - at a distance, soldiers really look alike if you don't know what you should be looking for to distinguish them from each other, so Q spoting really helped me out as a new player to make that ID for me.

But yeah, Planetside 2 is like nothing else - for better and for worse.

Well, it belongs... I like the freedom (well, lattice and cont. locking took away a big loaf) - no missions, no NPCs, no one-way dungeons to walk through. There are no priests, no leaders, so there is no initiation. I loved to stumble around, found my role in repairing things and in watching what others do. I had a terrible KDR for over 6 months and I am still recovering from this lack of experience.
A friend of mine, who relied on my experience and learned a lot not in-game, but by me talking to him, he is still a bad shooter. But he is an ingenious engineer and he managed to be a BR100 in just 6 months - with a KDR of 0.25! And he loves the game!

What I am trying to say is: there is a role for everyone inside PS2. That's the magic of this exceptional game. A mentor should be able to support individuals and must not force newbies to play his personal style. Maybe the mentored players should be able to give some props, like mentor points? That would make it worthwhile for mentors to spend time with the beginners...

I (just personally) dislike the idea of 'mentor camos'. But what about a mark next to your name while in a warp gate? If you want to be a 'mentor for general play style', it's a 'PS2' logo. If you want to teach flying, it's a little plane, etc. So the mentor just walks around in the WG and waits for applicants. Or there could be a bulletin-board where you enter a 'course' and a time... (well, that is getting too much of a PS2 university, so I stop here...)

When I was invited to play, I was lucky enough to be supported by a lovely outfit (BRTD).

However, before I even installed, my good friend Zunk made it clear:

"You will die. You will die alot. Only play this game if you can handle dieing alot. However, if you can get over it, you'll learn to die less. And ultimatley, you'll have great fun. But yes, you will die, alot "


Wise words..

My friend gave up shortly after he tried it. much of the same issues your friend came accross, hit him. dying too quick, not knowing where things are, not knowing icons, awareness, things of that nature. But in their defense we know PS2 isnt friendly in that regard. I for one dealt with that and told myself i would get better eventually, learning the basics and advanced mechanics of PS2 was part of the fun.

I just hope your friend sticks around longer than my roommate did. though my roommate has a history of ragequitting lol

I agree

Quoting for truth.

I recently brought in three of my friends and none of them had even the slightest problem figuring stuff out. PS2 is not a complex game, not by a long shot. Your average gamer wont get overwhelmed by the amount of stuff in PS2 as, compared to many games, PS2 doesn't actually have that much going on. Capture points are easy to understand thanks to Battlefield and whatnot. Choosing spawn locations is bloody obvious. Classes are in tons of games and thus obvious. Vehicles are pretty simple. All in all it's just not that hard to figure out if you've actually played games. Maybe if PS2 is your first game, yeah I can see it being overwhelming. But for actual gamers, the people SOE should be catering to, it's simple as hell.

A single player campaign rather than a tutorial would be the best way to make this game more graspable.
Sadly, it'd take another game team just to make a nice, smooth campaign just to serve as an indepth tutorial.

Nothing teaches like self-taught basics with AI that you can defeat, even when you're a bad player starting out as you acclimatize to the weapons and gameplay.
Then, the main game just becomes an absolutely astounding multiplayer that's infinitely longer than the storyline.

I don't know about you, but I don't learn much of anything at all from failure.
I learn what doesn't work, and how there's no way to learn what DOES work til I stumble upon that 1 in a billion combination that serves rather well.
From that first success, I then can craft my strategy to succeed faster, and for longer.
But everyone learns this way (I just learn a thousand times slower than most before that first success, and I make up for it by learning faster than most after I have that starting point) to an extent.

So giving them a campaign that has a the skill level that keeps pace with the average skill level of someone with the same playtime would not only help break through that initial "hard as tungsten carbide" learning curve, but would also give them some easy certs (require they kill so many enemies per section, before the territory is auto capped or something like that. Some system that gives a set total of XP/certs so exploitative players cannot just stay there for a long time and farm the easymode newbie cert feeder) and help speed them into the game we know and love today, while still providing the fluid, learn at your own pace natural curve that we want for new players so they feel comfortable with the game's pace.

Cramming all that info down a prospective customer's throat leads almost exclusively to frustration and eventually abandoning the game.
So learning at their own pace is crucial.
That, and when they feel they're confident at the end of the training section, they will look forward to jumping in and testing their skills against some live human combatants.


I would LOVE to see the tutorial become a short campaign, but I know it'll never happen.
Still, I can dream, can't I?
(After all, I'm NC! I can dream about whatever I want. I don't have nanite dream regulators painting my subconscious red and black, nor alien chemicals and whatnot coursing through my brain inducing artificial comas or something in place of real sleep! Live Free in the NC! )