With regards to making the game "noob friendly", sadly you have to these days. I company I work closely with recently launched on Steam. Fairly solid game, great potential. However, massive drop out even before completing the tutorial due to a slightly confusing message order. If a player gets stuck or confused as to why they are doing something, they'll just drop out and move on. You get one shot at making a good impression these days. You fuck it up, that's a lost customer. That was fixed, but the damage was done.

Gone are the good old days you are dropped into a game to work stuff out. If you have not hooked the player in after a short time, forget about it. Sadly