New player experience: Tutorial "Harmless" combat is rage-quit difficult.

Ezren

Ezren
Crimson Kaim said:
...is not only a pathetic demand (similar pathetic to the degree you find my response pathetic) but also a logical irrational demand since it's not the origin of the faced obstacle...
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Are you posting via Mad Lib or what?

Your post does nothing for anybody. It's all about talking trash and speaking nonsense. I can see you trying to sound smart by mentioning "scientific analysis" but it's surrounded by this thick, impenetrable cloud of clueless ranting.

If somebody finds this thread searching by Google, they're going to look at some helpful posts, glance at yours, shake their head, and move on.
 

NorthernDevo

NorthernDevo
crispience said:
New player here (PC, keyboard/mouse) and I gotta say the "Harmless" combat tutorial missions in the newbie Pilot's Federation District are so frustratingly difficult they make me want to just give up this game and move on.

There is so much for a new player to learn already, shouldn't the first experience of combat be rewarding and enticing instead of rage-quit inducing?

At the very least, Harmless opponents should NOT have their shields come back online after a few seconds... Talk about kicking a new player in the teeth, over and over and over.
And after 45 minutes of trying to stay on this peon's tail chipping away hull armor 1% at a time, just when it seems I might actually get him, he just high-wake frameshifts out.

Does Frontier even want new players? Great way to drive them away...
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First of all, welcome to Elite Dangerous!
I feel your pain - I really do. Of all the skills to learn, combat is the hardest.
The tute is supposed to be hard - it's more of a goal to pass than an introduction. It serves as a worthwhile training ground for quite some time into your combat experience.
Yes, you're right - the first few (hundred) times are hard - they introduce you to the realities of ED fighting. Even once it becomes easy the tute becomes a useful 'safe' practice area where one can develop and improve new skills.
Commander, don't be discouraged - as far as I can see, you're right on track.

For now, let me suggest an alternate course to rage-quitting: Stay in your free Sidewinder and find yourself a low-threat REZ.
Resource Extraction Zones are the best friends you have; they are perfectly designed for the new player. They have:
1) Plentiful smaller, low-grade enemies to shoot at.
2) LOTS of Police protection who will immediately identify and attack any bad guys.
3) Obstructions (asteroids) to fly around and build SA (Situational Awareness).
4) Action, providing for a screamingly fun and enjoyable fighting experience.

Lo-REZ sites are AWESOME for learning. Enemies will (almost) never shoot at your ship; they either run like hell away from the cops or try to target the biggest threat - again, the cops. You merely need to fly along with the cops and get a few shots in. If you hit the bad guy and do damage to his hull, you get the rank points and the bounty - cash in your pocket. More importantly, by flying with the cop ships you're learning to fly within a group, build SA, learning to effectively manoeuver (which is the single hardest aspect of combat) and learning to IFF on the fly. (LOL trust me - while accidentally popping a cop ship may only garner a stern warning, shooting one twice and seeing half a dozen Anacondas turn from green to red and target you really reinforces the lesson: don't shoot at your friends. :ROFLMAO: )

You're good, Commander - you're on track. EVERYONE has frustration when learning how to fight. Fly thee to a low-threat REZ site, me son - your rage will transform to sheer joy.
o7!
 
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Morbad

Morbad
Aashenfox said:
It's easy for us veterans to forget just how difficult it all is when you first start out.
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Now I'm reminded of what a pain it was to get past level 7 in the original Descent.

Ezren said:
I suspect he's in the chain of missions in the permit-locked starter zone, as one of them early on is a combat mission. If this is the case, he should be upgrading his weapons a bit before heading off; I'm pretty sure that's suggested along the way.
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Know of any videos of anyone doing these missions? Sometimes just seeing that something can be done is motivation enough to go out and do it.
 

JetsonRING

JetsonRING
Combat is probably the single most difficult aspect of the game, partly because there is so much else to learn, like how to fly the ship.
A lot of players cannot beat the combat tutorials at first especially the advanced combat tutorial so, don't sweat it..
If you come back to them in six months you might be amazed at how easy they have become to beat.
I would say, stop worrying about the combat tutorials. You can play the game forever and almost never take part in combat if you don't want to.
Combat is something you will probably want to start slowly, to dip your toes into the water, so to speak.
To be competitive in combat your skills own need to improve and your ship needs to be improved, so leave it for later when you have played for a while and your credit balance has risen to a point where you can pay to improve your ship.
For now just learn to beat or escape interdiction attempts. Eventually as your piloting skills improve you will get tired of running away from fights and start wanting to beat up on players who try your patience. o7
 

Jaggedmallard

Jaggedmallard
Aashenfox said:
It's easy for us veterans to forget just how difficult it all is when you first start out. I feel you OP, but as others have said, compared to the skill cap, this is really not even on the scale. It took me a year to 'git gud', but the journey was decent and the reward worth it.

Joining a good squadron makes things a lot easier, mostly in terms of knowledge sharing.
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Especially with M&K, I remember giving it an attempt with M&K, being confused and then going hunting for my old gamepad as the M&K controls are literally like flying a spaceship!
 

Thatchinho

Thatchinho
Ezren said:
Hey I gotta say this might be the most pathetic response I've seen. A new player is struggling with something and you're... gloating? Why did you even post this? Did you sit there thinking "this is a good idea, so many people are going to think I'm so cool!"

Hey but let's get back to the topic at hand. This new player strangely uses the term "high wake", which I wouldn't think a brand new player struggling with a tutorial would be familiar with. Curious.

Otherwise, mostly fine advice has been dispensed in this thread. Excepting quoted above, of course.
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Yeah, I spotted the High Wake bit as well. In fairness though, it’s just a verbatim repetition of what a player would see on screen, so not a real red flag.

(Slightly long in the next bit, but wanted to give a coherent reasoning...)

On another note, there’s nothing really wrong with the response from @Crimson Kaim IMHO. It’s not a ‘you’re the hero game’, it’s a dystopian and uncaring galaxy and it’s not orientated around making it easy for independent pilots.

It’s good for people to get a sense of that.

To put it another way, if someone is almost rage quitting at this stage because they think things should be easy for them (or orientated towards supporting them), they are going to get a massive shock when they’re exposed to the real nature of things. Better that they’re disabused of those notions now, rather than having more and more rage quite fuelled demands for the nature of the game to be fundamentally changed to suit them.

The OP’s getting a reasonably balanced set of responses overall, but that balance wouldn’t be there if no one said the harsher side of things.

It’s worth noting that the OP’s suggestion wasn’t for more support or guidance on the tutorial or anything else that would help them personally get better, rather it was to make the harmless opponents weaker so they could beat them more easily. That’s a fairly global change, and one with impact on the game across the board, not just for the OP, and an impact which some would legitimately see as negative. There’s a certain attitude there in the nature of the OP’s suggestions.

Now you’re a smart person Ezren. Would you say that aforementioned attitude is a good thing which will make a positive contribution to the game and to the community? IMHO, it’s better that someone gets a reasonably direct message about that earlier rather than later, and that’s what @Crimson Kaim ’s post has done.

Overall, IMHO, the OP’s getting a well balanced message.
 

Vandaahl

Vandaahl
crispience said:
New player here (PC, keyboard/mouse) and I gotta say the "Harmless" combat tutorial missions in the newbie Pilot's Federation District are so frustratingly difficult they make me want to just give up this game and move on.

There is so much for a new player to learn already, shouldn't the first experience of combat be rewarding and enticing instead of rage-quit inducing?

At the very least, Harmless opponents should NOT have their shields come back online after a few seconds... Talk about kicking a new player in the teeth, over and over and over.
And after 45 minutes of trying to stay on this peon's tail chipping away hull armor 1% at a time, just when it seems I might actually get him, he just high-wake frameshifts out.

Does Frontier even want new players? Great way to drive them away...
Click to expand...
Ah forget the tutorials. Who reads the manual these days anyway... Just try to learn to evade interdictions and the rest will come in time. This game has a learning curve, don't let it scare you away. If you want some tricks and tips, shoot me a PM, and we'll work something out.

Welcome to our hideout!
 

Thatchinho

Thatchinho
ObiW said:
...snip... Learning on the job is the best training, especially now that credits are much easier to come by. But I think a sizeable chunk of new players expect a lot of handholding (industry standard now), the relative lack of that in Elite is what I still find pretty neat - don't know what A or B does, or what happens if you perform X? Try it, and you'll know! For everything else, there's the web browser.
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Yep. The lack of hand holding, and that your actual skill, ability, knowledge, and experience count more than just increasing a stat, is one of the best aspects of the game (IMHO).
 

robbyp

robbyp
Playing this game with a keyboard would be beyond me.

A nice cheap joystick makes it so much easier.

I'd say, give it another go with a easier and more intuitive input method.
 

crispience

C
Thanks for all the replies. Just to follow up:
  • I'm using an Eagle with upgraded 'D' modules (the best you can do in Pilot's Federation Space), a Beam Laser and 2 Multi-cannons (after trying a bunch of different load-outs). That already seems like too much for a new player to do to be able to kill the easiest-level NPCs in the newbie zone. Maybe you should need to do that for Mostly-Harmless NPCs.
  • I have no problems with landing or supercruise (I stored my Docking Computer and Frameshift Assist modules first thing, so I don't use those). I'm fairly comfortable with my key bindings (but can't yet land in a rotating station without using Flight Assist). But combat is another level of precision and fiddling with mouse response curves, etc...
  • I know about pip management, but frankly have no bandwidth for that at all. All my attention is on trying to stay on the reticule, figure out which way the target is facing (which is hard enough), and trying to manage my speed which is a whole other level of tricky.
  • I mentioned the high-wake because I'm just reading about following wake trails, but it's not possible with high-wake because a Wake Scanner is not available in the Pilot's Federation District. It sure would be a better learning experience if NPCs in the newbie zone would low-wake instead.
  • Mining seems to be a complete bust in the Pilot's Federation District. There are no scanners available, so as far as I can tell it is just trial and error with a laser. I can't see how you could ever complete any of the mining missions.

Really the problem is that the bar is so high for tutorial combat and way out-of-line with all the other systems to learn: You need to get every system figured out to such a high degree before you can even have the simplest success. It's not a learning curve, it's a vertical wall.

I'm just saying the new player experience would be hugely improved if there was a better balance of reward for effort at the early learning stage. This could be easily done by:

  • Not having Harmless-level NPC shields come back on after a few seconds. Give us a few minutes to have a chance to learn to target the reticule. That is the single most frustrating thing.
  • Make the reticule (target zone) bigger for Harmless-level NPCs so it is easier to hit and kill them.
  • Don't have NPCs high-wake frameshift in the tutorial zone -- there's no Wake Scanner.

I don't see how making Harmless NPCs easier to kill would degrade the game for the experienced players.

There are so many other games to play these days that expecting a brand new player to suffer through hours and hours of frustration without rewards is really only just going to end up with far fewer players in the game.
 

Thatchinho

Thatchinho
crispience said:
Thanks for all the replies. Just to follow up:
  • I'm using an Eagle with upgraded 'D' modules (the best you can do in Pilot's Federation Space), a Beam Laser and 2 Multi-cannons (after trying a bunch of different load-outs). That already seems like too much for a new player to do to be able to kill the easiest-level NPCs in the newbie zone. Maybe you should need to do that for Mostly-Harmless NPCs.
  • I have no problems with landing or supercruise (I stored my Docking Computer and Frameshift Assist modules first thing, so I don't use those). I'm fairly comfortable with my key bindings (but can't yet land in a rotating station without using Flight Assist). But combat is another level of precision and fiddling with mouse response curves, etc...
  • I know about pip management, but frankly have no bandwidth for that at all. All my attention is on trying to stay on the reticule, figure out which way the target is facing (which is hard enough), and trying to manage my speed which is a whole other level of tricky.
  • I mentioned the high-wake because I'm just reading about following wake trails, but it's not possible with high-wake because a Wake Scanner is not available in the Pilot's Federation District. It sure would be a better learning experience if NPCs in the newbie zone would low-wake instead.
  • Mining seems to be a complete bust in the Pilot's Federation District. There are no scanners available, so as far as I can tell it is just trial and error with a laser. I can't see how you could ever complete any of the mining missions.

Really the problem is that the bar is so high for tutorial combat and way out-of-line with all the other systems to learn: You need to get every system figured out to such a high degree before you can even have the simplest success. It's not a learning curve, it's a vertical wall.

I'm just saying the new player experience would be hugely improved if there was a better balance of reward for effort at the early learning stage. This could be easily done by:

  • Not having Harmless-level NPC shields come back on after a few seconds. Give us a few minutes to have a chance to learn to target the reticule. That is the single most frustrating thing.
  • Make the reticule (target zone) bigger for Harmless-level NPCs so it is easier to hit and kill them.
  • Don't have NPCs high-wake frameshift in the tutorial zone -- there's no Wake Scanner.

I don't see how making Harmless NPCs easier to kill would degrade the game for the experienced players.

There are so many other games to play these days that expecting a brand new player to suffer through hours and hours of frustration without rewards is really only just going to end up with far fewer players in the game.
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I hope this doesn’t sound harsh or like I’m completely up my own backside... but harmless opponents are generally speaking so ridiculously easy to beat in the starter ship (i.e. the starter sidewinder with no upgrades) that it’s a joke. Learning to fly and learning to fight are simply massive parts of the game. Don’t be disheartened. Once you know what you’re doing it’ll be a breeze for you too and you’ll wonder what you ever found so hard. Keep at it mate, you’ll be good!

Edit - and just on the reward front, don’t you think it’ll be rewarding when you get to that level of ability? (And then the many beyond that?)
 
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