The new player experience™ in numbers

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The current state of the silver and research XP economy is a hot topic right now and something that always comes up is how this affects new players.
Most people here are pre-merge veterans and it’s not always apparent how things look like for new players from our point of view.
So, as an experiment, I made an alt-account to document how things are on the other side. Hopefully this will find some use here.

Here are some concrete facts and numbers how the new player experience really looks like:

-A new account starts out with a regular infantry squad, a sniper squad and a starter tank.

The sniper squad is probably the most questionable choice here.
If you ever wondered why there are always so many bad sniper players in BR123 matches, this is likely the reason why.

-Your first 2 matches will be against AI opponents (and I think a few other new players can join as well).
After that you are already thrown into the regular meat grinder. (Maybe I overperformed in the first two matches though and regular players can stay in AI-land a bit longer?)

-You start out with 20000 Silver at the beginning.

-There are quite a few additional silver rewards a new player can earn.
Stuff like achievements and 3 unique tasks, that give 2500/5000/10000 Silver each, that you can complete by just finishing 3 battles.
I played 3 matches with the test account, let’s go over the silver gain:

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First 2 matches I got ~1000 Silver per match, farming AI is stupidly easy but new players will likely use that time to get familiar with the game instead.
The third match was in the regular matchmaker, your starter squads severly underperform against pretty much anything.
I got 600 Silver but a new player will probably earn much less.

2000s through easy achievements like completing one battle etc.
additional 2000 Silver for ‘harder’ ones like achieve top 1 or wipe a squad in 5 seconds

6000s for first kill with pistol/bolt-action/melee/smg/machine-gun/grenade
1000s for first tank kill
1000s for finish a battle in top 30%
1000s for completing research 2 times in a country
1000s for completing research 3 times in a country

300 for getting Private
300 for getting Corporate

2500 for finishing first battle
5000 for finishing second battle
10000 for finishing third battle

2000 for first battle pass stage

-This means a new player has starting funds of around 55000 Silver.
And after the first few matches you pretty much earn silver at the same rate as other players.

-Your first initial research target is always the submachine gun.
So this is why medics are the next most likely soldier type you usually see in low BR matches.
It only takes 5000xp and is quickly finished. The next target is automatically set to the next smg in line.
Other nice looking research targets are the AT rifles and planes which also only need 5000 xp.

I emphazise this because the engineer squad is very unattractive at this point. They are locked behind the next set of bolt action rifles (boring) and they take a whooping 33000 XP to unlock (46000 for the Japanese, RIP).
This is why you see so few engineers and rally points built by noobs.
In my opinion you can’t make engineers such an integral part of the game and also have them unlock so late.

Getting your starter squads competitive costs a small fortune
Let’s go over the most pressing expenditures:

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upgraging your first vehicle: ~8000-10000 Silver

enlisting soldiers to fill your first squads:
3-4 for the infantry => 9000-12000 Silver
2 for Medics => 6000 Silver
2-4 for Sniper => 6000-12000 Silver

TNT charges for every soldier : ~10000 Silver
(TNT is your only way to reliably kill tanks as explosion packs are still locked until you reach Tier 2)

Equipping your other medics and infantry men with smgs: ~3000s

Equpping your infantry with better bolt-actions: ~5000s
(I find some starter-rifles like the non-USMC Springfield very hard to use)

And flasks, binoculars, backbags etc, but most are still locked until you reach Tier 2 or finish upgrading your squad, so let’s ignore them for now.

Coincidentally this tallies up to around ~55000 silver again.

-This means you can easily spend your first 55000 silver just to get your first squads up to speed.
And this does not even include your later essential squads like engineers, more BR2 equipment to be more competitive and effective in the current matchmaking and other niceties like backbags, more grenades, AP-mines etc. and not to mention the need to buy every additional vehicle you unlock.

Conclusion:
New players have it pretty bad. Even if there was a BR1-only matchmaking, they’d be starved for funds just to outfit their BR1 line-up in a competitive manner.
Both the silver economy and the research values for the first squads need to be looked at again to make Enlisted more new player friendly.

PS: Back when I started playing (shortly after the pacific campaign came out, I think), I got free premium during my first few days. Is this not a thing anymore or was I just lucky and happened to sign up during a promotion?

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New players have it even worse than before the merge.
Back in the day at least they had a chance to play underpopulated campaigns and not get farmed/stomped that bad.
But now there are even more veterans playing against them.
Veterans can spam 3 assaulters squads, max level weapons and best vehicles while new players struggle to understand basics.

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Research values I absolutely agree, especially for rifles.

For one, rifles do not differ that much from each other.

And for the other, they unlock several new squads.

I personally researched up to the Mosin M44 on Soviet to unlock Engineers and Radio Operators as I needed them for quests. On USA, I never even touched the rifle branch.

And I’ve heard it several times on this forum: SMGs are the go-to on low BRs. It’s, like you said, the default first unlock even so the devs are just as aware. And on the tedious road to unlocking enough SMG units, all you can really do is alternate between sniper and medic, perhaps pick a tank if you get lucky (Most beginners don’t care to learn how to pilot a plane even if the unlock is 5000 exp as well).

I agree with your perception of the new player experience. I’ve saved up 70k silver (that includes the 55k you calculated) and I’m at ~80 hours in matches, with my only silver purchases being research tree unlocks. I still don’t have the research unlocks that I actually want to play so I’m just forcing myself through the grind with snipers, medics and preferably the plane if I can get it. It’s atrocious.

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When I was grinding for panter A in 2 week, after I finish the grind it cost me 82 500 silver to unlock all the tanks I need and I was broken at 1 500 silvers in reserves so they need to lower the price of vehicule.

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5

first of all squads should be unlockable separately from weapons or at least emphasize this in tech tree somehow, perhaps squad icons idk

it’s confusing.

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6

You can already see which unlocks have squads with them. Weapons and vehicles that have a squad associated with them have a small icon in the research box. You can click on it and by the weapon preview, there’s a place to see exactly which squad you will get with that research.

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This is what I thought…

The game becomes so much more enjoyable once free of grind. But it took me 3 yrs to reach that, and I still have 4 or 5 unlocks to get.

But a tip, go for engineers first if you want to maximize your income. Rally points give you passive xp (and thus income) each time a teamate spawns on it. And it maximize your victory chances, which if you do win, boost your income by 1.5X

Also, at low br, it isn’t that much smg that is go to, but bolt actions, surprisingly. As a veteran, I get downed more by newcomers that carefully shoot with rifles, than newcomers dashing foolishly in the open with smgs, just spraying left and right without aiming.

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8

This is important

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9

Snipers instead of Engineers being the first unlock has got to be the worst thing they kept from before the merge.

The economy is also shit.

The rate you get exp is the same, but…

Tier 1 Guns = 1 SWO pre-merge
Tier 2 Guns = 3 SWO pre-merge
Tier 3-5 Guns = 5 SWO pre-merge

I soldier = 3 STO pre-merge
II soldier = 6 STO pre-merge
III soldier = 9 STO pre-merge
IV soldier = 11.5 STO pre-merge

You also have to PAY for your first copy of a gun. You don’t even get the first copy free.
Likewise for tanks.

The only good thing the post-merge economy did is consolidate all the orders, but you’re in an overall shittier state to acquire silvers.

Amazing.

5 Likes
10

Yeah that a real problem to unlocking new squad. A solution would be when you reseach the weapon you get automaticly the squad but not the weapon.

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This is a helpful synopsis, and shows that there has to be a separate approach to introducing the player to different squads /roles.

I think DF will have to make some decisions on what constitutes unlocks as the game development moves forward.

I would suggest that any player essentially starts with all Level I soldier squads. The level II, III and IV squads can be distributed across the BRs and the current unlock trees.

This simple feature will make it possible for a player to make some selections as to what they field in their available slots. Intentionally this will also put pressure on the player to purchase additional squad slots in order to gain better tactical flexibility in any given game - this is the pay off for DF/Gaijin as a F2P game.

It also alleviates many of the issues you raise and more importantly gives the player the critical selection of specialist squads which promotes the more tactical game, rather than focusing on the SMG as you write and effectively falling face first into the run and gun spiral. The TNT is also a noteworthy remark and it continues to perpetuate the arcade notion that the game has to have this infantry gotcha, because god forbid someone spawn something else than an assault squad and have to deal with tanks with AT weapons…

So I think its now a no brainer - all Level I squads need to be opened up immediately from the outset. The level II, III, IV squads can be ground out later as the tech tree progresses.

The economy side of the game incl silver earnt for various tasks is a separate issue all together that limits progression in the game writ large and also needs some serious consideration, but there are also numerous threads on this issue as well.

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12

Engineers should be first squad.

Silver income really needs increasing

I didnt find it hard to unlock items at a rapid rate.(with the usual daily xp bonus)

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13

Same, but i, can not buy them, have like 7x tanks in US, still unbought, just keep researching, as i cant afford to buy when it researched.

Only just keeping up with the INF USSR, as i unlock them

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14

Yeah…i only had a few items to unlock, but my funds have only been going backwards…

Lucky for me i already made my fortune. Newer players are ferked

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15

Well i had 192k silver when i got back, i even bought more, and i am still at 38k, not cool

PS i don’t need the tanks etc, had everything wanted before merge, just not the wealth :rofl:

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