Jaysyn Larrisen
OSG Planetary Operations
Covert Intervention
1050
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Posted - 2014.05.28 17:54:00 -
[1] - Quote
Good discussion, guys.
Couple basic thoughts on possible NPE ideas.
FIrst, with the potential complexity and depth of Legion (and with Dust to a degree) well thought out clean tutorials are pretty critical even before you deploy for your first match. The Aura tutorials in EVE are actually not a bad way to go for a start point. The main issue is that they only scratch the surface...however they do guide you through several mechanics, fittings, and broad play options.
Strikes me that moving away from a raw WP academy graduation requirement would help...make it a bit more task based. In the merc quarters Aura could walk you through the NEOCOM, fittings, skills, basic concepts. At any time you can opt to start your ground training and in a similar fashion to EVE the missions are role specific. You select the Logistics Training option and she gives you a brief run down of what Logi's do and how the racial variants differ.
Aura sets you up in a starter logi fit and during the course of the mission you drop x number of hives or uplinks, rep some stuff, shoot some stuff, ect...you hit your task gates and then the session moves you to a either a PVE or PVP area in the logi set up and you play a match. At the end Aura recaps the key points and asks you what training session you want next (Assault, scout, heavy, ect).
Quick note here...the training also very much needs to cover the market and ways to make ISK via selling gear and salvage. Again, similar to the Business Agent training in EVE it should give you the idea that there is clearly more going on that just pew-pew!
This is pretty standard fair for most FPS games and easily administered into Legion I suspect. You can cover several facets such as squad orders, HAV / LAV / DS piloting in this manner.
I figure you could make each session between 3 to 7 minutes long and cover a ton of critical facets. You have accrue X number of training tasks complete to graduate the academy. THEN you get put in a rookie pool similar to our academy now and have a WP mark to reach...should take you about 4 or 5 matches to reach.
On to the next phase...Reinforcing the foundation of player retention by using other players.
Once you graduate the academy and rookie matches - the game needs to goto to great lengths to highlight that while solo play is viable it is highly recommended to play cooperativley and consider joining a corporation. To that end, we need a functional Corp / Alliance finder baked into Legion to help with this. In EVE you can run an in game query with the Corp finder to find out some basic things about organizations, points of contact, and information to help you determine if they are a possible fit for you.
Highlighting the aspects of the game that are only reachable through cooperative play such as PC and EVE interaction would be key at this point i think as well.
Last note and clearly not a hot priority...more of a neat to do thing...have some legit cut scenes or shorts that happen when you get in the academy, the rookie matches, and finally get released into general population. The shorts should show examples of things you can do or you are about to do in a cinematic way with some cool factor involved. Use the final cinematic to impress on the newly minted merc their place in New Eden and how they can forge their own path.
In sum...make the NPE something you can hang your hat on as a positive point of the game and spot of pride instead of having a system where we sometimes take up the mantle that you don't deserve to be in the game if you couldn't figure out how to do X on your own.
"Endless money forms the sinews of War." - Cicero
Skype: jaysyn.larrisen
Twitter: @JaysynLarrisen
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