Alain Colcer
Quantum Cats Syndicate
0
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Posted - 2011.11.25 12:24:00 -
[1] - Quote
NPE needs to be split into several "stages".
Aura 5-mission set is Excellent, little improvement needed there, if any.
Its the Career agents that haven't been reviewed properly. A newbie player should be strongly encouraged to run the Career Agents after Aura. currently there are 5 career agents (10-missions each):
-Military
-Industry
-Business
-Advanced Military
-Exploration
They are meant to be run independently (except for the adv military one), but in reality many of the missions in industry require you to fight NPC rats, same happens in the in Business missions. If someone chose industry before military (i personally tested it) finds himself struggling with combat because of lack of equipment and skills.
My suggestion is to split all areas into basic and advanced, making basic a prerequisite of the advanced ones:
Basic Military Training 5-run set
Basic Industry Training 5-run set
Basic Business Training 5-run set
Basic Exploration Training 5-run set
Basic missions provide the most important skills and show basic concepts in each topic. Then after you "unlocked" ALL the basics, you can selectively run the advanced courses.
Advanced missions are a 15-run set and are centered around providing equipment and income to the newbie. This means you give more time to the player to train skills, get used to modules and acquire wealth.
Finally, "geograpy" is another thing that should be improved. Currently there are 3 starting locations for the each NPC empire (each school). However there are also 3 sets of Career agents spread out. I know this was implemented that way for the "dragon patch" when Eve China was launched, but creates the possibility for a player to run 3 times each set of career agents.
My suggetion is to create a single set of career agents (4basic +4 adv), place them in a specific "newbie" constellation for each empire and design all the missions with the idea of traveling within that constellation as part of their design. Players often do not grasp the concept of "travel" in Eve in the first few days, it will also help the GMs to "police" and "help" newbies in those 4 specific locations across the server.
Currently we also have the newbie epic-arc, "Blood-Stained Stars", and excellent set of missions to earn isk and which sort of explain the current sleeper threat along the geopolitical composition of the Galaxy (as fiction and basis of the RPG aspects of the game). However this Arc should be suggested to the player once he has completed all the basic courses and not before. Currently, the epic arc is mentioned to the player after completing the Aura missions, and more often than not, the new players struggle againsts some of the NPC rats in the missions or lack the proper ships to complete them (at least i did if bypassed all the career agents).
Data centers and Circle Agents (not sure if these still exist) should be mentioned to the newbie player as a mean to create "contacts" with the goverment institutions on each empire.....that way the grinding of standings at the beginning is not so boring. Data centers themselves should have some of the tag requirements adjusted a bit too
If all these aspects of the game (which already exist) are properly tackled into the NPE framework as a single path for the new player, provide fun, isk and tools to break throught the difficulties of starting, i am sure you will find a much better retention rate for trials. |