I was playing the game with a friend who is very new to it. I was looking forward to playing with him so I could discuss the opinion of a neophyte who steps into the game with little to zero knowledge of it; overall I'd say he had a mixed impression. And now I'm here in the forums to contribute my grain of sand based on what he experienced.
When it comes to gameplay there were no negative points. He was mostly experimenting with different characters to see which one he liked better; and yes, he was having fun with that.
The problems arose mostly from the UX/UI. Starting with the long rewards screens. My friend was having fun learning how to play and he wanted to keep on playing without interruptions, but he found the post-match screens to be a hindrance. First the featured player, then Cortez telling you the score and rewards, then collecting the rewards and the experience, then opening the adventure tab and waiting for the dailies' animation (and god forbids you level up). Alltogether those screens interrupt the flow of a gaming session that won't be compelling for a newcomer that just wants to familiarize with the game as quick as possible.
Then he stumbled over the most recent addition to the game; the Epic Forge. He was testing the waters with different characters and was wondering how to make them stronger. When he figured that he could build several different weapons for each character he was more than interested! But as soon as he opened the forging interface his interest decayed over a cloud of confusion. "this is not intuitive at all", "I don't even know what i'm looking at" where a couple of his opinions.
Ultimately he decided not to mess with the crafting because he didn't have enough parts to build the guns; which was yet another issue, he wanted to gather more parts but he had ran out of dailies, leaving him with no options. All that made up for a rather discouraging progression experience.
So my suggestion sums up to a single word; synthesize. I don't know when people stopped complaining about the long reward screen; but I remember it used to be a recurrent topic several updates ago, and it's still a problem; and MSE keeps aggravating it by adding and adding stuff. Please; just shorten the goddamn screens, it's easy... synthesize.
Now the forging is a more complex topic; but I'll agree with my friend here. It is not intuitive, it is confusing, it is discouraging, and it also needs to be synthesized into something more comprehensible and user-friendly. Honestly I can't imagine what the purpose is with the over-elaborated complexity of the modding system, but i suggest to MSE that they approach to it differently. If they are going to make the game challenging, let that be in the missions, rather than the crafting; because that just makes a poor UX (if not boring).
