Monday, September 8, 2014

FW for High Sec - Improving EVE's New Player Experience

Faction War has often been pointed to as a game mechanic in EVE that opens the door to newer players becoming more involved in PVP. The popularity of plexing with frigates, destroyers, and other cheap ships means that younger players can become involved quickly, without needing lots of skillpoints or large and expensive ships.

However, having seen new players struggle first hand, and having run a few 'noob' alts in Faction War myself, militia can be difficult and confusing for new players. There are aspects of the FW game mechanics that are 'clunky' and unintuitive. And, making the jump from high-sec missions and/or the tutorial, to low-sec combat is a fairly large and intimidating leap for young pilots to make.


So, how about introducing a sort of 'Faction War Lite' into highsec?

-A new set of 'Rookie' plexes would spawn in these systems. (For example a Rookie Small Compound, or a Rookie Medium Stronghold) These plexes would give substantially smaller payouts then 'regular' plexes and the NPCs would be somewhat easier to deal with for a solo pilot.

-The old system of 'Occupancy' could be introduced for these systems. There would be no station lockout, thought players could still contribute toward 'taking' a system.

-Faction Police that normally shoot hostile militia in high sec would be a little 'lighter' in these systems and would still shoot hostile militia on stargates and stations, but wouldn't 'follow' them. So, combat inside plexes or off the stargates would go unhindered, but hostile militia would have a hard time camping high-sec gates, or etc.


Once this was setup, I think it would be interesting to introduce a sort of new, advanced military tutorial, or set of 'new player' missions that utilizes high sec FW game mechanics. Players opting to do this 'advanced military training' could be pseudo 'drafted' into militia. They would then follow a increasingly challenging storyline related to the war, which would culminate in a final task of running one or more high sec plexes, and possibly put them into the situation of potentially having to fight another real player.

5 comments:

  1. +1 Something like this made obvious to new players as an alternative to the mining and missioning paths is desperately needed.
    KN

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  2. The current tutorials would make a player think Eve is a game with missions and a couple isolated pvp players. That's detrimental to the game as a whole and leaves New players woefully ill prepared for things like Burn Jita.

    Eve desperately needs content to drive people into pvp.

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  3. It won't work because EvE.
    FW in highsec would be "neutral off grid booster alts heaven". Who is going to shoot your boosting alt in highsec?
    And all those new players trying to get their feets wet and get pwnded by a 1 day old opponent because of ogb.
    Do you think that will motivate new players to stay in FW and try the lowsec part of it?
    Good thing would be: Those career agent system campers trying to bait new players into going suspect would find new playgrounds. Yes, even it is prohibited to bait new players this happens all day. Just let someone else drop a can and claim that it wasn't YOU who baited those new players...
    I like the idea of bringing fights (to watch!) to new players. Not talking about station games at hubs. I remember my first time jumping into Poinen (RvB) because of a courier mission. Suddenly spaceships, suddenly explosions, suddenly panic and an increasing demand to take part in those fights.
    I once started a new charakter: <900k sp but focused, no implants, no ISK, nothing to lose. The only way to stay in ships was to farm plexes and run away. 9 out of 10 fights were lost - but it was fun!. 2h of grinding ISK to enjoy 10 minutes of pvp - that killed the fun I had.
    Joined different corporations - got shot by them, didn't get fleet invites because of low skills, was told to run novice plexes on my own, didn't see anyone online. There is no way a new player can judge a corporation. Ask in militia chat? Ha ha, good one!
    I'd love to offer a solution to bring new players into pvp, but I can't find one that wouldn't be exploited by older players.
    It won't work because EvE.
    It's up to the playerbase to change things, not up to CCP to bring new possibilities to exploit.

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  4. Hmm, occupancy in hi-sec … alliances gain 'Occupant' status by doing …something… on regular basis, and in return they get preferred treatment by the police: less strict customs, teams tend to flock to their system, CONCORD takes its sweet time to respond should the Alliance decide to shoot first.

    …yeah, probably a dozen things wrong with it, but it could bring meaning to hi-sec non-fw alliances.

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  5. Use CONCORD space. (All FW players can go there and fight to their heart's content).

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