TOPIC: Feedback about Vets from New Player: Driving Someone Else's Car

Matthew Hayward wrote: They then said something like:

"Yesterday I was on a run with a guy who lent me his whole Paladin build, level 5 and I got to guard 3 players. I had like 50 hitpoints and a +3 Slayer Sword.

It was pretty awesome, but on the other hand, I didn't get to build my own character.

It was like driving someone else's car.

I'm so impressed by this analogy; it seems to capture the essence perfectly.

I personally will never own a sports car; that's not how I choose to spend my money. If I someday get an opportunity to borrow one for an afternoon, that would be awesome and I'd be super excited for it -- but I wouldn't want that to be the first time I ever drove a stick shift, much less the first time I ever got behind the wheel at all! In addition to the complexity factor, I'm simply not in a position to appreciate the experience of driving a sports car if I'm not already familiar with driving an everyday car (or even a beat-up old car).

And most of the time I prefer to drive my car anyway, because it's, well, mine. Especially if I've put some effort into choosing and maintaining it. I don't want to be always borrowing someone else's car.

OTOH if someone offers to loan one or two easy-to-use upgrades, I'm still driving my car but temporarily souped up with a Romulan cloaking device! (or whatever, I don't know anything about cars)

P.S. I've been playing since 2011 so definitely not a newbie, but I am relatively new to the UR+ world, and the car analogy works on this level too. Last year I was excited to try NM for the first time, but I knew my gear probably wouldn't be enough so I asked the veterans for help. They were great! IIRC only around half of the tokens in the final build were mine; that definitely felt like borrowing a car, but I did it by choice and had a very positive experience. This year I had significantly improved my own gear to be comfortable on NM, but was still happy to borrow a few tokens per run to soup it up a little extra (and all the folks who offered them to me did so very respectfully without being at all pushy). On one of them we were talking about maybe trying Epic, so I borrowed a few more things in the coaching room, and we were joking during that run that I was drunk on awesome healing power! (+18 instead of my own +10) My point here is that I think the number of tokens loaned is what makes the difference between driving someone else's car vs turbo-charging my own car.

Also, I'm excited to try Epic next year if somebody can loan me a few tokens.

Newbie perspective - I ran my first 4 runs at GenCon, all setup via forums. I had bought a rare loadout plus TEs beforehand, so walked in hoping to hang @ HC.

I had one run where I was the begger new guy ("anyone got an available charm or greaves") in order to fill out slots.

I had one run that was coordinated via PMs beforehand, so I basically knew what upgrades to expect. (Very grateful. Positive experience.)

I had one run where I and others was kitted in the coaching room with an Epic build. (Very grateful. Positive experience.)

I had one run where my build was augmented in the coaching room to Nightmare. (Very grateful. Positive experience.)

That said, the latter two did have the feel of driving someone else's car, but I knew going in that I was running with NM+ players so was fine upping the level on their dime (as it were). The only issue I had was that I lost track of all the options with a couple dozen slotless that I didn't grok as well as my own build. That and the fear of accidentally losing someone's $1k sword.

I can see where other new players may have been getting overloaded trying to do the basic task of filling the slot layout and multiple people talking about loans.

Having gone through it all, I'd suggest offering new players a few general upgrades rather than full builds. (e.g. Moving from Defender set to Redoubt set or adding Charm of Synergy or Ring of Heroism or TEs or Romulan cloaking device.)

YMMV.

I had one game this weekend that I picked up and I walked in and said that I would prefer running this class and that class and saw the looks on their eyes and just said that's okay. I will play whatever that is left. And we all had a great time!

I would have jumped on driving then sports car. Everyone has a different perspective.