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Improving The New Player Experience

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Keshi

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So, I actually clicked on the Register button in game today, and wow, it brought me to a tutorial! I went through that and it looked great! There's also a skip button with this tutorial, which I think is another great idea. Only a couple minor details (such as a small story introduction) prevent this from doing the job of Vega 2 in a much better way. Thumbs up!

But that wasn't how I started. I started by registering on the website, and when I did that, I could just log into the game without hitting register in game. Doing that brought me to Vega 2, where there was [another] tutorial. However, my impression of this tutorial was radically different: I felt the Vega 2 experience to be excessively and unecessarily drawn out, excruciatingly boring (no challenge), and repetitive. It also made the game feel cheap and a bit strange that the enemies did not shoot back.
After I started playing, I introduced a friend to the game, and as soon as she hit the scout killing mission in Vega 2, she said "I really hope those scouts shoot back, this is rather boring..". It took a bit of effort to convince her that the real game was in fact not about running around aimlessly shooting way too many things that don't shoot back at you.



Ideas:
  • Replace Vega 2 with the practice room tutorial, perhaps slightly elaborated, and just put players onto Vega 1 after the tutorial. It'll make the game look much better to new players. While Vega 2 does the job, it seems the practice room tutorial almost does the job as well, and provides a much better early experience, scaring away fewer newcomers. Removing Vega 2 will miss teaching the player how to Orbit, but that tooltip can be easily added somewhere.. the beginning of the story might need a small modification though...
  • Or drastically shorten the Vega 2 experience. Shorten the kill scouts mission by 80%. Remove the kill 2 scouts 2 drones missions, they serve no purpose and are confusing because there's no indicator on how many drones and scouts remain.
  • Make scouts shoot back. if the player gets low on health, give them some special newbie protector shield or something since they supposedly don't know about starbases yet?
  • At the very least, make vega 2 skippable. It's quite excruciating.
  • Shorten the time to go from level 1 to 4 (and vega 2..) by at least 50% to hook new players better.
  • Player retention.. is always good, isn't it?

Summary:
There definitely needs to be a tutorial before Vega 1. However, i think the tutorial experience in Vega 2 is about 5 times too long, and although I did come out of it with a grasp of basic controls and pod collection and map usage, the first time playing through it felt already twice too many. It would probably be a good idea to give new players more exciting encounters earlier in the game such as just putting them onto vega 1 after they know the basic controls. Also, it would be nice if the tutorial is skippable in case of players that already know the controls, especially given one that long.

Feel free to disagree.
 

defacto

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What about giving Vega 2 an area that is locked until you unlock Hangar? Mantis there is easy but shoot back.

I mean rank 4-5 Sentinels + Eliminators + Some Harvs.
 
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lance

i think that all mantis on v2 should be designed like harvesters.

For example, after killing a certain amount of scouts, eliminators drop in to kill you. or after killing drones interceptors drop in.

I will admit that v2 is excruciatingly boring now, and the 2 drones 2 scouts mission is just rubbish. There needs to be some challenge, even if its meant to be a tutorial planet.
 

sbatten

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I think the idea behind V2 is that newbs don't get podded. How many might get scared away if they are podded several times right off? This set up ensures that you don't get podded until you have had a little time to get a bit of practice shooting and using other controls like collector and AB and possibly rep droid. Honestly, I think you can do the whole Vega 2 experience in less than one hour of play time, not too bad really.

Chas88
 

nebulaman

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i remeber a mission on v2 where eliminators come down and start shootingh you...scared the bejezus out of me...asnyone know what it was?
 

defacto

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It was the tutorital but they changed it... :(

When you was cloes to dying, they started to miss you :LOL:
 

ZeribreX

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They came down when we shot loads of Drones, regardless on mission or not
 

defacto

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According to ivanova in the mission ´´blaster tech´´ they come down when drones are attacked. However, they only do that in Blaster tech and Tutorital Mission.
 

sbatten

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That just sounded very very disturbingly wrong Zeri .... :eek: :eek: :eek:

Chas88
 

Keshi

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I totally agree that the new player should not be podded until he learns how to control his ship. But that's what the other tutorial is for. Have you looked through that? I think that one should be presented to all players upon first log in (it's skippable) regardless of whether they registered on the website or registered through the game.

The problem is that even if it is currently an hour of play time on vega 2, it's 15 minutes worth of learning, and 45 minutes worth of reinforcing the idea that the game is ridiculously boring and pointless.

Stuff not shooting back does not reflect well of what the game is like at all. And, there's no challenge, thus no fun. The tutorial room avoids this problem as it is very obvious that it is a tutorial and not really reflective of the game.

One possible solution to podding (and restarting over and over) of the new player might be to have an npc engineering ship follow the new player around, and only help out when the player gets low.
Another would be to have it just fly down from orbit when the new player gets podded (but without a respawn button unless you want him to learn about starbases) and materialize him. He won't have to start over this way..

Vega 2 needs some challenge, and shortening.
 
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lance

ZeribreX said:
I found they came down whenever I shot a load
that has to have been deliberate :LOL: :LOL: :LOL: :LOL:

serioulsy though, V2 deters more players then it hooks, so it needs to be refined
 

ZeribreX

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It was fine when they came down, more exp for me and cry dropped from them too
 

sbatten

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First time I did the little tutorial in the hangar, it was just barely enough to know how to target and fire. I don't think it is long enough to get you prepared to SURVIVE in PG. Think about real life military. You shoot a lot at targets and practice, practice, practice before ever going into live combat. Why is that? So you can survive without getting podded, so to speak. You need to get well acquainted with your equipment before going to live round combat. I know what the problem here is. The veterans that have come over from the older servers like Askone, into Solaria to start a new pilot, are VETERANS. Hell yeah they will think V2 is noob city and long and boring. But you need to try to remember back to when you were a green noob, playing for the first time. If they dropped you right into V1, you would have podded over and over and become very frustrated with the game until you learned the basic ship controls. Try to keep that in perspective. Another slant is to remember what a royal pain in the hiney V4 was your first time through! This time on the new server, V4 is a damn cake walk compared to the Moon! The ONLY time I podded on V4 on Solaria was due to connection problems. That is because I am a veteran pilot now. Noobs will still find it just as challenging as I did my first time through. :)

Chas88
 

Keshi

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sbatten said:
First time I did the little tutorial in the hangar, it was just barely enough to know how to target and fire. I don't think it is long enough to get you prepared to SURVIVE in PG.
I agree. But I think that tutorial is exceptionally clear given how short it is, and provides a good setting for introducing basic controls. I did not mean to say that it is an adequate comprehensive introduction on its own, in its current state.
Naturally, it is yet an incomplete introduction due to missing a few elements that are better introduced in the real game world, such as map function, etc, but all in all, it is a much more enjoyable (and skippable for those already learned) experience than Vega 2!
sbatten said:
You shoot a lot at targets and practice, practice, practice ....
In my opinion, that's not what tutorials are good for. Games are only interesting so long as players continue to learn: learning from the introduction of new gameplay content as rank increases, learning new tricks from other players, etc. To completely master the game before you start the game, is to make it a total bore. Similarly, a single player game with 50 completely identical simple levels presents little opportunity for learning past the first level, and thus quickly becomes boring.

The job of the tutorial should be to present the player with the building blocks that they can use to improve. And the first challenges should thus be appropriate to their skill. Surely, I agree that there is a bit of a gap between the tutorial and V1, but I think that the non-v2 tutorial presents things surprisingly clearly, and shows excellent promise as a good introduction. I'm still slightly mystified as to why new players registering through the web site have no chance to see it.

Worthy additions to the brief tutorial may include a drone that shoots back at you. And if new players see the tutorial first, then enemies on vega 2 should definitely shoot back, after the first mission at the latest..

Unlike you, I started on Solaria, so I have definitely not forgotten my experience of playing this the first time. :)

The first time i went through V2, it didn't seem particularly fun. It took me all of the first mission to get the basic hang of moving the ship towards a target and shooting the blaster. Sure, there was something new every now and then, but I felt rather strongly after clicking on an enemy and then pressing 1 for the 50th time after the first mission, that the designated 5000 practice presses of [1] to follow in the next few missions were rather excruciatingly excessive. Even without first seeing the other tutorial.

Since V2 attempt to take the role of teaching new players the controls in a very step by step fashion, I think it should be skippable as well. In your military, having to go through boot camp every time you transfer to a new unit might seem a bit silly, no?

When I made a second account to play with my friend, it only looked even worse. I felt that this game was worth offering some feedback and suggestions on, especially given how badly the critical early experience represents the fun factor of the game.
 
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