Mobius Kaethis
Molon Labe.
General Tso's Alliance
1355
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Posted - 2014.03.29 00:16:00 -
[1] - Quote
I agree whole heartedly. New players get into matches still having zero direction or game knowledge. Even the first academy match is too much for many new players.
I recently went into an academy match with an alt I had made to test the improved laser. I always do this when changes drop to test stuff out before I skill into it with my main. At any rate, I immediately went about my business of running a dom solo, all the while shouting commands into the team channel for the one new player I could hear mouth breathing through his mic. I had already capped the point and all the surrounding installations when the first red dot stumbled out of the redline and began to play the game. I believe this was about 5 min. into the domination.
I expect new players to be bad but these players had no idea what to do. They didn't know how or what to hack, they didn't understand that crouching in the middle of the road means I will kill you, and they clearly didn't understand that they should stick with the other players on their team.
After going 34/4 and dropping a solo orbital on the academy match I was sent out into the harsh world of real matches. I squaded up with a guy who had been playing for three days and proceeded to mentor him. He started out playing just like all the blues in the academy matches but after three or four matches getting some 1 v 1 tutelage he was clearly starting to get the hang of the game.
Here is my point. No NPE that relys on checklists is going to get new players up to speed quickly enough. Sure, some rather clued in players will get it and they will be able to deal with the fact that they are going to suck for months to come but most people, even after running through a long list of tasks meant to train them, are still going to be awful players.
What this game really needs is a mentorship system. Players who want to can use one of their alt slots to set up a mentor character. These characters would not gain any skill points, and would automatically be squadded up with new players prior to them being put into an academy match. A mentorship system like this would allow new players to see what it is like to be squaded up, and get 1 on 1 or at least small group tutelage in how to play the game, leading to longer term player retention and blueberries who actually know what they are doing.
The question is what would be in it for the mentors. I have played around with this idea for a while and I think that there are some options. 1) A rewards system similar to what exists for recruiters. Perhaps mentees are even counted as recruits thus making for easier programming for CCP. 2) Nothing, but it would give mentors a chance to sell up their corps. Letting corps recruit hopeful players right out of the academy and allowing small corps to more easily bolster their numbers. 3) Very small Sp rewards for the main associated with the PSN. These would have to be right around 1,000 sp per match which would be in line with the sp you recieved once capped out and would not be unbalancing since it is such a small amount. The downside of this is that players probably wouldn't hop onto their mentor alts until they were capped out.
I will repost these ideas in their own thread as I feel that they warrant that.
Fun > Realism
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