The New Player experience per the Cryaotic Stream: "It's fun when you're not getting **** on."

I completely understand. One thing that this game does that most others don't is allow new players to compete with experienced players, and that, in my eyes, is the biggest hurdle to making the first experience a fulfilling one. But it is also one of the things that set PS apart from other games and one of the reasons why I stuck with this game coming from BF, you are left with your own devices to become a better player: you have to ask questions from your team, do some research, learn from experience aka die alot. In the end it does build a better community (especially once the mentor system comes out) and its just not about what you unlock but what you learn that helps build a stronger attachment towards the game. Think of a kid learning the value of a dollar... maybe kids are just too lazy these days.

in order to do that, they could drastically reduce the xp gain of ground/air vehicles killing infantry so that farming isnt as rewarding as it is currently

you should of seen what happen to Angry Joe army on Hossin. They got about three hexes out from WG on the NC side until VS cap them back into the WG. The sad part is that it was like 2 platoons vs against like 4 platoons of TR. Angry Joe also rage really hard on stream. I guess that y they call him Angry Joe

Only if they boost vehicle kill exp while in a vehicle and give more points for killin infantry who was recently inside a vehicle. (~10 seconds)

If the other two factions coordinate with each other to gate the remaining faction then any experienced outfit is going to have rough time, there's no way that several outfits saddled with clueless new players going to have a fun time when this sort of thing happens.

PS2 is, and should be, about strategic deployment of forces and local tactical superiority. That means if you don't join a squad and you don't really know what you're doing, you'll likely deploy into a tactically bad location and die a lot. You'll 'get farmed' in that situation even if the infantrysiders get their way and all vehicles are banned or nerfed into oblivion; a spawn room camp with guns works well enough.

What needs to happen to make life better for newbies is
- Stronger encouragement to join squads, possibly including incentives for experienced leaders to run open platoons for them to join. A squad leader will know when and where to move so as not to get farmed
- SCUs in all bases, so the spawn camping phase doesn't happen when a base is totally overrun, and newbies won't accidentally spawn into a camp. How often does the 'reinforcements needed' or instant action drop you into a hopeless base?

The in-game tutorial should make more of squads and outfits and the strategic level of the game, imo. At the moment it's a mechanics tutorial, which is necessary, but leaves the impression that you can play PS2 solo, and unless you already know a lot about it that just isn't really true.

Reducing XP for vehicle-on-infantry kills will reduce the appeal of farming and is probably a good idea, but spawn room HE camping will still be a thing because suppressing a spawn room is tactically necessary as long as 48+ can spawn out of it at any time without warning.

So new players aren't needed?

Ever played EQ2?

Niches have their purpose, but a game down to under 20,000 players world wide -- yeah, it needs new blood.

Which is why it behooves developers to make games worthwhile for new players, as when the veterans leave someone has to replace them.

WoW is learning this the hard way when they got "rough and tough" with Cata and roughly 5 million players left within 1 month and haven't come back when Ghostcrawler told them they had to "l2p".

Anyone remember the John Romero outcome when he told them he was going to make them his .....?

10% should never rule over the 90% of players. This is how countless games died on the vine.

Games must have a steady stream of new players and a means for them to learn the game ... and not just be what is farmed for those "I'm the greatest" K/D hypers.

It's why games like EvE don't really grow (their uptick in numbers was allowing to raise more than 1 clone per training cycle now, where folks just bought other accounts to multibox, instead). Not new player growth.

What EQ2 and WoW lost were the bread and butter players that keep games afloat. The new; the part time players; older players needing timesinks, etc. Disregard them, well, we saw many a game go south, right?

All i saw was headless chickens all over the place who would have been farmed no matter what tools the enemy used. If this thing was a promotion it was horribly planned. At least the streamers should have to know what to do. Best part was when at some point he bought the Burster while actively ignoring the info for the gun stating it to be AA to hunt down infantry and tanks with it...

What this game needs is a redesign of the bases and every base should get a SCU to down the spawnrooms to have a clear line when a base is lost. This game does not need a culling in diversity with taking away explosives and whatnot.

I agree with the promotion effort, my comment was more a criticism of the outfits that deliberately took this opportunity to farm the new players. When you get the level of cross-faction cooperation like what happened yesterday a little more organization by SOE, a few mentors isn't going to help.

Someone with 26,000 kills with a Lightning ... Complaining about the farm ... Irony at it's best

It generally helps to have some experience with whatever you choose to critique.

Mindblowing, I know.

Yeah, when things like that happens, it turns games into EvE.

Why I keep going back to FF off servers (or least 1 or 2), as having friendlies killing you at critical times in games to prevent taking key areas, is the griefing I'm talking about that needs to go. Other publishers understand that goes on, and they don't allow it as 1 bad apple spoils the fun for too many.

In WoW win-trading, if found, can be a permaban offense, too. That stuff is bad overall to the whole reason for even playing.

I dont know what SOE keeps doing to games, but it doesent seem to work very well...

Battlefield allows level 1 to 100 to play together, but again, Battlefield the default server setting is FF off.

FF off prevents many of the griefing you'll find on FF on servers (like friends ganging up on non friends -- which got so bad after awhile, players started reporting publicly bad admins to avoid their servers).

The only thing Battlefield doesn't have that WoW does is no collision mechanics. So unruly tikes can't block entrances and such for "kicks" with FF off (like one tank can block a roadway, and as a friendly can't do anything about it).

Put up bubble shields at every base with a generator powering it at every base, with the generator being placed relatively close to the spawn room so its more likely the base will cap without the shield going down, the shield only stops vehicles rounds from penetrating, also stops infantry AV weapons from coming out.

Vehicles can still fly/drive through the shield but this brings you into dumbfire range. Buff vehicles AI weapons against infantry as they are only in harms way once outside of a base or when the shields go down.

I feel like i just solved the footzerg and vehicle farming all in 1 short post, and enhances combined arms with tanks having to get in close if they want to kill infantry at a base, and requires infantry to travel the wilds with vehicles in tow if they don't wanna get murdered, and once the shields go down it should signal to the defenders the base is no longer winnable as with the enhanced vehicle AI theres hell a coming.

lothbrook: the shields don't work like that in game. People putting up AV turrets in between the shield and protecting the body; people standing and firing rockets through shields; even rifles is common.

It also doesn't stop HE round explosions killing those behind the shields.

Sat through the whole thing and TBH the only thing that struck me was ... What an unorganized cluster **** and what stands out about the " new player experience " is really only how poorly the game helps and explains things to the new player ..

Half finished mission system.
Very basic tutorial system.

First needs finishing , second needs expanding on ( both in the pipeline marked soon )

They seemed more held back by their lack of knowledge and lack of direction than they did by any vehicle spam or OHK's or " farming " ...

Was like watching a baby deer in the headlights ..

The new player experience is important for several reasons. Firstly and most obviously, not everyone is going to be patient and stick it out when faced with what are arguably over powered vehicles which seem to exist solely to one shot kill infantry within seconds of them spawning. That lack of patience is not a character flaw on the part of new players, or older players come to that who are sick of it. It simply means that the game is not fun for many and eventually and understandably they go elsewhere to actually have fun.

Secondly - as has also been mentioned by others - There is no efficient way for new players to get to grips with even the basics of this game, meaning that the already frustrating experience that they face is made worse because they just do not know how things work, what to get, how for example maxing one's medic tool as soon as possible is a good idea for a new player and so on. Very simply - the game needs new players if it is to survive. Add to all this that so many basic mechanics in the game are essentially just broken and I'm frankly amazed that any new player lasts longer than a week as things are right now.

Whilst I and others who have been around for a while may know most of what's what and be able to have fun, and may often be able to find fun a little more on our own terms, for those of us who are not primarily vehicle users who farm infantry, the game is undeniably killed at times by the comparitively low skill (and yes it is), unsportsmanlike and frankly toxic behavior of those who think that gameplay is one shotting hundreds of infantry, especially new players, so that they can pretend that their BR90+ ranks actually mean something and were earned legitimately, when in fact they do not and were not in any ways that matter. At least not in any particularly positive sense.

In fact, in talking to both new and older players, the perception of many that I've come across now is not that the BR100 who just one shotted them from a tank hundreds of meters away is skilled, but that they are either cheating, or don't have enough skill to engage in a real contest on at least basically even terms. That perception, whether right or wrong is what tends to put many off staying with the game and you are left with a small core who are either genuine fans of a game that still could have great potential, or those who really just want to boast about their e-peens and think that sitting in a tank and clicking is some sort of skill.

Either way, this has to change if the game is to survive. And before anyone starts whining about how they learned the hard way and everyone else should too because god forbid we do something about the farmers or make the game actually fun for new players, or they trot out the mantra about 'combined arms man,' save it. It's garbage for the most part, designed to hide the fact that such people couldn't give a flying fart about anyone else playing the game and don't really care if it doesn't exist in a year's time. For the rest of us, who do care and want the game to survive, things must be changed and soon.

Main thing that hurts the game, improperly designed terrain AND bases that do not provide enough protection from ground vehicles OR air vehicles.

From there, the other part that hurts the game is the fact everyone and their mothers AND their unborn children can pull vehicles any time they please.

OHK is fine, I expect to be killed by a tank shell or rocket in one hit if it lands close enough! If someone else doesn't... Somethings wrong with them.

I imagine the new player experience would be better if the bases and terrain were at least designed better. Limiting vehicles is of course never going to happen also.

But to nerf vehicles of any kind anymore than they are now... Just, please... No.

Bottom line is the game just needs way better design in terrain to accommodate both vehicles and infantry gameplay.

And SOE, if you read this, by designing better terrain to accommodate vehicles and infantry, I don't mean for you to make the terrain even worse for vehicles and better for infantry.

The current state of the new player experience actually reminds me a lot of Dark Souls.

There is literally no guidance on that game beyond the first vastly insufficient tutorial blurbs and you have to fight tooth and nail to progress anywhere from the get go, even as an experienced player - it takes a special kind of person to persevere, but when you do, the reward is a complex and enjoyable experience, that in many ways are unlike anything else out there.

Question is whether this design principle is sustainable in an environment, where player retention is important and there is no money up front to play it.