Too many of my friends trying Destiny 2 haven’t a clue on how to start the campaigns

[Young Liar]

Yeah, echoing the people who've said this is Bungie deliberately relying on its already dedicated playerbase to tell their friends who've never played Destiny 2 how to play Destiny 2.

We already know how effective it is for a game to have its diehard community be the ambassadors for the game. It's worked for the Souls games, and from what I've gathered, it works for Warframe, too. I just wonder if this strategy will work out for Bungie, that whatever frustration that's being voiced out here and in other enthusiast sites is just a blip, and that the newcomers who've gotten turned off from the game instantly because of this lack of structure are a tiny minority.

 

[Deleted member 1635]

Yeah, echoing the people who've said this is Bungie deliberately relying on its already dedicated playerbase to tell their friends who've never played Destiny 2 how to play Destiny 2.

We already know how effective it is for a game to have its diehard community be the ambassadors for the game. It's worked for the Souls games, and from what I've gathered, it works for Warframe, too. I just wonder if this strategy will work out for Bungie, that whatever frustration that's being voiced out here and in other enthusiast sites is just a blip, and that the newcomers who've gotten turned off from the game instantly because of this lack of structure are a tiny minority.

Click to shrink...

It's certainly possible that anyone frustrated is a tiny minority. If nothing else, they are making it crystal clear who their intended audience is with this release.

 

[twdnewh]

So happy to see this thread. Im a returning player who never finished the original campaign, and I'm so lost and confused about what to do next to progress the campaign (still am) and thought it was only me.
Hope it gets sorted

 

[Kitten Mittens]

This is extremely counterintuitive to me.

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Basically Destiny 2 came out and they made it easier to get to the end game content, which was good. But there was no real end game content in launch D2, so new players reached the end and left. The hardcore remained, and complained about the lack of things to do. So instead of seeing the actual problem, which was the lack of interesting stuff to do, Bungie determined that the problem was that gamers were seeing that there wasn't enough to do too quickly, so they added grinds upon grinds to slow their progression down and to give them the impression they were actually working towards something meaningful. Problem is, as they just proved by moving everyone to light level 750, there's absolutely nothing meaningful about light levels other than walling off end-game content behind a grind. So what they end up with is the same exact situation - new gamers leave, the hardcore remain. They're trying desperately to turn more new people into hardcore players by giving the game away for free though.

 

[Keikaku]

Played through the campaign at PC launch and quit. Tried it again now and have no idea what I'm supposed to do. Did one those "good old" go there and protect the ghost while it's doing something quests and deleted the game.

 

[Spaltazar]

So happy to see this thread. Im a returning player who never finished the original campaign, and I'm so lost and confused about what to do next to progress the campaign (still am) and thought it was only me.
Hope it gets sorted

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from what i have read, if you did not finish the campaign before, you need to completely restart it at that amanda npc. you can't carry over your progress from before

 

[Deleted member 3812]

from what i have read, if you did not finish the campaign before, you need to completely restart it at that amanda npc. you can't carry over your progress from before

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This is complete bullshit to me if this is indeed the case for players who transferred their characters from the paid version to the F2P version. I hate that I paid for Destiny 2, progressed quite a bit in the paid version and now in the F2P version, my progression doesn't carry over from the paid version, WTF Bungie?!?!?!

 

[Loxley]

+1 to the "Confused as hell new player" pile.

Bungie really need to implement a better, more intuitive way of guiding new players through the shear dirth of content they're bombarded with when they first enter the game. Clearly marking main story quests (and their chronological order) would be a huge help.

 

[Bold One]

Yeah, echoing the people who've said this is Bungie deliberately relying on its already dedicated playerbase to tell their friends who've never played Destiny 2 how to play Destiny 2.

We already know how effective it is for a game to have its diehard community be the ambassadors for the game. It's worked for the Souls games, and from what I've gathered, it works for Warframe, too. I just wonder if this strategy will work out for Bungie, that whatever frustration that's being voiced out here and in other enthusiast sites is just a blip, and that the newcomers who've gotten turned off from the game instantly because of this lack of structure are a tiny minority.

Click to shrink...

Most newcomers just google or youtube the steps to get in the activities, thats what I did when I was a newcomer, look at me now.

Whilst the onboarding should have been a priority, its not the death knell for New Light, some will be turned off but I think if the moment to moment loop works how it should, most wold keep playing till they get bored or it finally clicks.

 

[Deleted member 8166]

I've played destiny1 in beta and all through TTK.
I've played some destiny 2 on my xbox.

I am so lost and with the annoyance of having to buy shadowkeep on every device I want to play it on...I'll probably just leave.

 

[SteveWinwood]

yeah the onboarding has been really bad

it tries to show you every little thing you can do but it weighs them all the same. go try each multiplayer mode! just as important as all these other things that are clearly what people come to these games for. strikes are just random missions I guess? just give me an in game wiki that explains in plain words 'this is a weekly rotating playlist of whatever' 'these are raids multiplayer strongly recommended' also just tell me what its safe to dismantle or keep, if you're going to give me stupid inventory limits give me something resembling a guideline here (I've just been using if it's not purple in the trash it goes, purples go in the vault until I know what I'm doing even though their power levels suck after 30 mins so...)

ive settled on i don't really mind, I can use google, it's not any more confusing than it would be if i had jumped into any other mmo 3 or 5 years into it (although now all the old wikis are super out of date and not seemingly updated)

but I'm probably the minority though. I don't know how many people who are trying it for the first time are going to stay with this set up

 

[Starlatine]

I already gave up. Even jumping blind into PoE was far more accessible than this. I can find my way on the PoE skill tree easier than i can find a quest on destiny.

 

[Bold One]

It's pretty straightforward honestly, even if it looks overwhelming at first.

Download New Light.
Play the first mission.
Get to the tower and go to the Hanger and see Amanda Holiday.
Grab the legacy story missions and complete those.

From there, you should know if you want to pay to play more.

If you do, grab Forsaken and play the campaign for that first. The Year 2 pass for Forsaken is now free, so you will have TONNES of content that is still relevant.

From there you will know if the new expac is for you, and New Light comes with the first mission to get you going.

Click to shrink...

If youre feeling stuck, follow these steps.

 

[True Prophecy]

I'm a returning player (stopped after finishing Forsaken) and it's been a really bad experience so far. I've had to google how to progress a couple of quests as they're so poorly explained, and I'm now at a point where the next quest requires kills with a machine gun. I don't have a machine gun. I asked in the D2 thread and someone suggested getting one from the forge. Just looked that up and this is what's involved :

Visit Spider in the Tangled Shore
Enter the Annex area of the Tower and talk to Ada-1
Get a Weapon Core from a Black Armory Crate, and collect 25 Compound Ether from Fallen enemies
Get multikills and Hive kills using a Power Weapon
Defeat 25 Powerful Enemies
Collect Radiant Seeds from Powerful Enemies
Return to Ada-1 and visit the Volundr Forge

I'm not sure I can be bothered to be honest.

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Honestly if you can not be bothered doing that the game probably isn't for you... Destiny is full of quest lines like that. It also does not take that long really.

In saying that a MG will drop eventually just playing the game.

 

[Duxxy3]

It's not as well guided as Destiny 2 (at launch) or Destiny.

 

[Zeouter]

Yeah, this came up on Waypoint / Vice Games.
Hiding it behind Amanda is a very odd choice.

 

[MAX PAYMENT]

Destiny's menus are confusing. Every time I come back to the game I feel like I have to relearn it.

 

[Deleted member 4072]

People need to be handheld this much to find stuff? Jeez.

 

[Schierke Mori]

Yeah, it took me about 5 hours to find out that what I was doing wasn't the legacy content.

I finally found it, but going through the campaign missions was way too easy, since you start at 750 Light.

Not to mention getting a log of about 50 quests in the first few hours.

 

[WillyGubbins]

Honestly if you can not be bothered doing that the game probably isn't for you... Destiny is full of quest lines like that. It also does not take that long really.

In saying that a MG will drop eventually just playing the game.

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I know, I've been playing since D1 :) It just seems like really poor design to gate main campaign progress behind a specific weapon type. Fair enough if it's something optional.

 

[Felix Lighter]

What it has trained me to do is to treat it like typical MMO quests. Go to marker, talk to quest giver, ignore any dialog and follow the instructions the questline gives and follow markers. Story is meaningless, none of this is important and for a new player makes zero sense. Just started Destiny 2 for the first time and it feels like to me that the dev is telling me "don't get invested in the story, it's not why you play these games."

I'm not a person that needs a story to motivate me to continue if a game plays well but the biggest issue I have with the new player experience is how aimless it feels. I'm just doing things but I have little understanding of how this is progressing me. I'm getting better gear but am I doing it in a meaningful way or just dragging my feet, doing filler non-sense? It all feels the same so as a new player I have no idea where I should be focusing my time. I imagine the solution now is to just look at leveling guides.

 

[Sedated]

Starting new here. The beginning was similar to destiny 1 start as in ghost finds you, shoot some enemies and then board a ship that takes u to the tower. From here i played red war campaign it was there on the tower. Once done i started osiris and today i finished warmind.

I can get why newbies might find it confusing. I had played only the d2 base game campaign a year ago so i knew what to look for as in i knew red war was the starting campaign. Im betting people who are playing for the first time might be going around from a red war story mission to maybe a warmind and wondering wtf is going on.

 

[vypermajik]

I was there day one and the "campaign" isn't that great. So the faster I can get to shooty looty the better IMO.

 

[LebGuns]

As a Forsaken-vet I didn't know it was this bad. Holy shit at the posts.

 

[headspawn]

Is there a good new player 101 for stuff like this?

 

[astro]

Is there a good new player 101 for stuff like this?

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Yes, go read the OT for Shadowkeep!

 

[Arkeband]

It is incredibly confusing and needs to HEAVILY suggest that you start with the old campaigns, because it's just a complete clusterfuck otherwise. I went around doing random shit, raising my power level by 100 before I was like "what am I even doing?"

Like it gives you quests to do strikes and the strikes are heavily narrative driven and you have absolutely no clue what anyone is talking about, who you're fighting or why.

What's worse is that everything just randomly drops better gear so you don't even have a built-in way to understand what to do next. Why do the story when you can just run around this random planet shooting random enemies instead?

FFS Warframe has better onboarding and that game gives you basically nothing but a star chart, and the real narrative doesn't start until like 40 hours in.

 

[Alvis]

As a completely new player, what rewarss do I get for beating the legacy campaigns?

 

[astro]

It's a really simple fix imo:

Game should drop you into the tower and instantly bring up a tutorial window that says:

Welcome to Destiny 2! To catch up with the story complete these quests (and link them in the window).

If you'd like to skip the story, here's an introduction quest: and give a very easy to follow introduction quest that runs you through patrols and the various activities, strikes, and maybe even ends with an exotic quest that gets you into the way quests are handled.

Paid Shadowkeep users are in for a better time as they will get the campaign which kind of shows you who to follow quests and bounties, but for new players - especially FTP - it's obviously super confusing.

At the very LEAST, the old campaigns should be in a pop up window or even on the MAIN MENU.

 

[DrScruffleton]

Only reason I was able to figure it out was because a friend whose logged a lot of hours told me. I told him the missions I had been doing, he was super confused why bungie made it so I had these missions already. I guess some of them were end game content that I was given in the first hour of playing.

 

[astro]

As a completely new player, what rewarss do I get for beating the legacy campaigns?

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You will get gear as you level, and any legendary gear you find can eventually be infused to max level. So it is not without any rewards. It is worth doing because it will show you the story and give you an idea of how the game is structured.

 

[Deleted member 5596]

It was so bad I unistalled it after 2 hours of going around aimlessly. Not worth it.

 

[astro]

It was so bad I unistalled it after 2 hours of going around aimlessly. Not worth it.

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Sorry you felt that way, it's a bad intro to the game.

If you decide to try it again, join the OT and discord and we will happily guide you through the opening few hours. It won't take long to get a feel for it.

 

[Nome]

Wait, they got rid of that hour long slog of a tutorial you were forced to do before interacting with another human being?

 

[AgentOtaku]

I bought Forsaken complete awhile back but haven't really had a chance to start it proper. Gonna have to check it out now, lol

 

[jotun?]

Even when the game was new I found it very confusing

 

[VariantX]

As a Forsaken-vet I didn't know it was this bad. Holy shit at the posts.

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Bungie should have just put it in a obvious place in the tower for the next update or give people the option of playing through the campaigns normally in order. all 4 of D2's campaigns all together arent even more than 20 hrs long anyway. There really wasn't a need to rush everybody through. You've essentially lost any narrative reason to care about whats going on and all these people in the tower talking about shit you werent there for because you cant find the campaign lol. The NPC's and world refelected the things you did before and connected you to the narrative, and they just broke that for some reason.

 

[No Depth]

I imagine most will not realize they have to go the "Quests" tab on the map screen and activate any they wish to pursue for them to actually appear on the map. The game doesn't really do a good job of tracking this stuff or hinting how important that tab is. Even when you finish a quest and the next chain appears, the game doesn't always select it for you to track.

So I bet most players blindly access the map, scan around at all the icons wondering where the quests are and end up just doing repeating patrols and world quests because that is all the map is actually showing them!

The "quest" tracker needs to be more easilly accessible and upfront to players.

 

[Error 52]

People need to be handheld this much to find stuff? Jeez.

Click to shrink...

"To start the campaign, that you have no indication even really exists, you have to talk to a random NPC and they never inform you of this"

It ain't exactly obvious.

I think the way the game is structured right now does make sense, but they really need to make it more obvious how to start the campaign.

 

[Deleted member 3812]

I imagine most will not realize they have to go the "Quests" tab on the map screen and activate any they wish to pursue for them to actually appear on the map. The game doesn't really do a good job of tracking this stuff or hinting how important that tab is. Even when you finish a quest and the next chain appears, the game doesn't always select it for you to track.

So I bet most players blindly access the map, scan around at all the icons wondering where the quests are and end up just doing repeating patrols and world quests because that is all the map is actually showing them!

The "quest" tracker needs to be more easilly accessible and upfront to players.

Click to shrink...

I just seen this post after I opened up the F2P Steam version of Destiny 2. Immediately, I'm in a place with multiple icons and the NPCs holding multiple conversations and I had absolutely no idea what icon I should go to first.

 

[Dead Man Typing]

This thread has been educational.
I made a post in the OT saying pretty much this. When I boot up the game today I'll go straight to the campaigns.

You still get experience for doing them, right?

 

[Kitten Mittens]

People need to be handheld this much to find stuff? Jeez.

Click to shrink...

When your game is designed to appeal to people who have only been playing it for years and then you suddenly make a push to appeal to new users to the series, you have to do a lot more than this to get them into the tent. And Destiny fans insulting them definitely isn't going to make them feel all that welcome.

This thread has been educational.
I made a post in the OT saying pretty much this. When I boot up the game today I'll go straight to the campaigns.

You still get experience for doing them, right?

Click to shrink...

If by experience, you mean light level increases, yes. You get that for everything up to a certain point and then it all stops unless you do specific activities that give you gear that will increase light level.

 

[TheGhost]

You get a message to go talk to Amanda no? I saw one on my hunter. They should probably have new players spawn right in front of her.

it's amazing they have all these streamers and play testers and no one thought of that.

 

[Deleted member 20297]

Oh, thanks for that! I'm only interested in the campaign so I probably would've ended up trying to Google it.

 

[z1ggy]

Yes OP, that´s exactly what i´m doing lmao.

 

[Abhor]

Oh. So far I've done the quests on Earth and some Strike quests and bounties. Didn't know there was an NPC with all the old campaigns.

I'll stick with the game a bit more, but I'm starting to get the feeling I should just start playing Warframe again.

 

[Dead Man Typing]

You get a message to go talk to Amanda no? I saw one on my hunter. They should probably have new players spawn right in front of her.

it's amazing they have all these streamers and play testers and no one thought of that.

Click to shrink...

I think I saw a message about talking to Amanda, but it wasnt very clear about why I should go talk to her yet. And there was no icon over her, so I just dismissed it.

I'll take some of the blame for not understanding what they were trying to tell me. But they throw so much at you and it's all in-universe terms that you start to filter it all out.

 

[No Depth]

I just seen this post after I opened up the F2P Steam version of Destiny 2. Immediately, I'm in a place with multiple icons and the NPCs holding multiple conversations and I had absolutely no idea what icon I should go to first.

Click to shrink...

On the map screen, tab left to the "Quests" tab. You SHOULD have a few that are worth tracking as a new player. One is to go meet Amanda in the Tower to do the "campaign" missions(ie. vanilla Destiny 2 campaign). That is a good starting point. Meet with her, just grab the 'Red War' campaign item from her which activates the vanilla Destiny 2 missions. Track it on your quest tab and the icon for it should highlight on the planet/map screen. Plow through those missions.

Other 'quests' you may already have are to go meet people at the tower(like Zavala whom gives you quests for co-op strike missions) so you understand who they are and what they do. Take a moment to run around the tower and complete all those.

Basically, the Quest tab is your go-to checklist for shit to do. I suggest checking that tab often and following what those icons say. Most of the icons on the planet maps(like Earth) you see are typically just repeatable open-world quests that give you currencies or faction rep rewards for that area, maybe new random equipment. You need not worry much about that stuff yet. It is confusing as they are everywhere and are hard to distinguish between ACTUAL 'real' quests you have to do. But you'll figure it out.

Bottom-line, your quests tab is super vital. It's like your journal log in an open-world RPG.

 

[astro]

Oh. So far I've done the quests on Earth and some Strike quests and bounties. Didn't know there was an NPC with all the old campaigns.

I'll stick with the game a bit more, but I'm starting to get the feeling I should just start playing Warframe again.

Click to shrink...

If you figured out Warframe, you will have no issue figuring out Destiny.

 

[Deleted member 3812]

On the map screen, tab left to the "Quests" tab. You SHOULD have a few that are worth tracking as a new player. One is to go meet Amanda in the Tower to do the "campaign" missions(ie. vanilla Destiny 2 campaign). That is a good starting point. Meet with her, just grab the 'Red War' campaign item from her which activates the vanilla Destiny 2 missions. Track it on your quest tab and the icon for it should highlight on the planet/map screen. Plow through those missions.

Other 'quests' you may already have are to go meet people at the tower(like Zavala whom gives you quests for co-op strike missions) so you understand who they are and what they do. Take a moment to run around the tower and complete all those.

Basically, the Quest tab is your go-to checklist for shit to do. I suggest checking that tab often and following what those icons say. Most of the icons on the planet maps(like Earth) you see are typically just repeatable open-world quests that give you currencies or faction rep rewards for that area, maybe new random equipment. You need not worry much about that stuff yet. It is confusing as they are everywhere and are hard to distinguish between ACTUAL 'real' quests you have to do. But you'll figure it out.

Bottom-line, your quests tab is super vital. It's like your journal log in an open-world RPG.

Click to shrink...

I'm not a new player, I've played the paid version of Destiny 2, the onboarding for existing players in the F2P version needs to be improved in my opinion.

Thanks for the assistance however.