Production: New Player Experience (NPE)

[motan]

Among the missions’ rewards, there should be experience, dappers, and equipment such as weapons, armour and jewels. Those should be reward items specifically designed for the NPE with stats you can't obtain when crafting, and would have a name

I strongly disagree with the concept of equipment obtained through any other means except crafting. This game has a player driven economy, let's keep it as such please.

[blaah]

I strongly disagree with the concept of equipment obtained through any other means except crafting. This game has a player driven economy, let's keep it as such please.

actually, it's a good idea to give out equipment thru missions that way newcomer gets a reference point which player crafted equipment is good.

BUT only if it's choice quality, stats around 50% max (or something like that).
100 speed/dmg on weapons, 80+ in amps, should be left to player crafters.

[jamela]

Reference point already exists, blaah - the basic trader bits, which are terrible but still better than nothing.

First and most important thing that Nevrax could do NOW to improve the Experience for New Players, is to make sure the downloadable game installer comes FULLY PATCHED.

*cough* Sorry, please excuse me?

[kaetemi]

This game has a player driven economy

There's an economy? The only thing I see is people giving stuff for free to new players (Not that there's anything wrong with it). At least they will get some fun playing the game now to get new equipment. Missions for dappers and fame are just boring

[marct]

The NPE On the other hand, I dislike the idea of a "universe" channel; I think region is flooded with irrelevant conversation often enough for me to tune out of it completely - I understand that I might be part of a minority, though. If there is to be a universe channel, please patch the "user" channel so that it remembers its settings from one session to the next, i.e. if region/universe/whatever is disabled, it will remain so when I log in the next time.

User chat keeps my settings from session to session as you said. Not sure where the difference is between me and you.

[oldmess]

I strongly disagree with the concept of equipment obtained through any other means except crafting. This game has a player driven economy, let's keep it as such please.

For anything of real power, I'd agree with you. But since this is just for low level equipment that they're going to outgrow quickly anyway, I've got no problem with it. They're gonna get a dump of free low level equipm,ent anyway the minute they arrive from guilds recruiting them.

[dazman76]

This looks like a great idea all-round - thinking back to March 04, I certainly could have used ALL of the things listed here. Combining the areas together is quite possibly the best of these ideas - the newb islands are very isolated and strange places compared to the mainland, and seeing the 4 different ecosystems this early will bring a whole new vision of the game for new players. To top it off, an NPC with limited dialogue could be standing at the entrance to each ecosystem, ready to give the new player a little insight into flora/fauna being witnessed, and to link the four races with their own ecosystems. This NPC would urge people to speak to the other 3, thus giving a nice and quick primer on race/ecosystem.

"Greetings traveller, and welcome to my corner of this island. I am a Zorai by birth, and we Zorai choose to live in, and with, the Jungle." etc.

In fact, if it's kept to short, sharp bursts of dialogue, you could use these NPCs to introduce a fair amount of the game. Not a full tutorial, but the next best thing maybe.

Universe chat channel eh? Haven't seen that since June 04 I think - let's hope it's treated properly this time. It was incredibly useful back then, and also nice to be able to 'conference' over long distances - translating beta situation to live, it could easily bring it's own headaches back.

I'm glad Nevrax are thinking of the new players at the moment - these changes will certainly help when R2 is attracting new faces. With a small team and small (relatively) community, it's easy to cater purely for your existing players - Nevrax has suffered from this, and it's so easy to let it slide in favour of other priorities. A large glass of Kudos for all involved, I think.

EDIT: I don't see any problems with giving equipment as rewards, just make it balanced - is there really a problem with giving away low level gear? As long as it's matched to the players "current level", they should outgrow it soon enough anyway...

[khyle]

User chat keeps my settings from session to session as you said. Not sure where the difference is between me and you.

That's funny. I just doublechecked, and the user chat settings are definitely not kept across sessions, i.e. region is always "on" after login, regardless what I set it before logging off

[motan]

There's an economy? The only thing I see is people giving stuff for free to new players (Not that there's anything wrong with it). At least they will get some fun playing the game now to get new equipment. Missions for dappers and fame are just boring

Any fun a combatant gets this way is done at the expense of a crafter's fun. The right thing to do would be to grant rare mats that a crafter could use to create better than normal items. The end result would be the same, a happy hunter with an uber item... with the added advantage of making a crafter happy as well in the process.

As a side note, I've seen SOE making fools of themselves with ridiculous loot that really killed all the crafting professions in SWG and I don't want to see the same thing happening here... so I think it's safe to scream wolf early and often.

[kostika]

As long as the items given are relevant and not uber, I don't see a problem with giving them as a reward. Newbies outgrow things fast, so I can think of this only as a little bit of good help to keep them in the island so they make sure to learn what they're doing.