Accepted Reduce the Mastery Grind

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Handsome_Will

Civil Gamers Expert
Mar 25, 2021
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I'm making this suggestion because I've had a lot of complaints made to me by people I've recruited into IVG, as well as older players, that it is too difficult to achieve high masteries. This has made player retention very low for recruits - I've had 29 new players in IVG (meaning new players assigned a new unique ID, so ignoring old players rejoining) since the Mastery system was implemented according to my tryout logs, and the only ones still in the regiment are ones that have been recruited in the last two days. Each and every one has asked me when they can unlock a particular job (usually anti-armour or recon) and react negatively when they realise how much grinding they need to do.

One of the key points made about the Mastery system was that people would be free to move between regiments without losing their progress - this is of course true, but when I've spoken to other players on NWO about playing in IVG, the idea has been rejected by multiple people on the basis of not wanting to restart their grind for specialist jobs. The idea to increase regimental mobility seems to have backfired in this way and is achieving the total opposite, the only group with freedom appears to be NHC and SC, as they slowly gain XP in all branches it is quite easy to move into whichever Regiment you prefer upon resignation.

What does this suggestion change/add/remove:
Make the grind for higher mastery levels easier to achieve. I suggest this to be done in a few possible ways:
A flat multiplication of all of the XP gains. Progression feels a lot more reasonable when a multiplier is active on the server and feels like it should be the baseline.

Adding more ways to gain XP. The trainer program and staff rewards are great but of course do not affect the majority of players. Some of the regiment-specific XP methods such as Vehicular regiments gaining XP for resupplying FOBs should honestly be present for all regiments. Especially since every regiment needs to resupply FOBs.

Increasing the XP given for specific XP methods. Some of these methods are almost worthless. Sharpshooter mastery can gain XP for vehicle destruction, which is nice, but it takes far too long to get to 15 Mastery (I'm still 900 XP away), which is basically required for this bonus to even apply, and even then, appears to give terrible XP rewards - when I've gone to the trouble of grenading or KwKing vehicles I've only received 15xp.

Possible Positives of the suggestion (At least 2):
Increased player retention as newer players can see more visible progress early on: new recruits often to very poorly in wars, which is understandable as they haven't experienced enough of the server to do well, but it means that my new recruits can take up to 4 wars to reach level 1 mastery, which is obviously not fun for them and I believe has contributed to people leaving the server.

More people utilising specialist jobs: Each regiment relies on each other. SWB rely on IVG for anti-air and anti-armour, the whole team relies on STS for hacking, etc. There are currently only 2 people in IVG who can access the Anti-Armour job, and only Zeus (due to the recent SC resignation) can access Recon at the time of writing. This has led to roles being massively underutilised across NWO and NATO which leads to less interesting wars.

Possible Negatives of the suggestion:
People who have already achieved high masteries could feel cheated.

Potential infighting if people can't agree on who gets to use recon/anti-armour, etc.

Based on the Positives & Negatives, why should this suggestion be accepted:
I think the positives hugely outweigh the negatives - there has been a big slump in activity since the update first came out, especially on NWO, and I don't think it can all be attributed to Christmas and New Year - the way the system worked previously had big negatives, of course, and I do certainly prefer the concept of mastery, but I think it has the aforementioned flaws which need to be ironed out
 
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-support
As much as I appreciate it can be an absolute grind, the mastery system is supposed to encourage player retention and it's supposed to make unlocking certain jobs feel rewarding as opposed to just being something you unlock at MSGT.

For unlocking jobs: it used to take 2 weeks for a player to get MSGT (and access to snipers, for example), nowadays it comes down to the effort the player is willing to put in. Play less? You don't get the jobs as quickly. Play more? You unlock them sooner.

I agree that certain jobs should be spaced out a little bit more, someone said in ISAF that all the jobs were unlocked at level 20 which shouldn't be the case at all, but the most powerful ones such as Recon should absolutely be at 20.

If a new player has access to the best jobs within a week then it'll just kill the server, it'll be people fighting over the most OP job slots and it'll mean newer players have a much less dynamic playing field (if everyone is level 20 then they are far, far behind).
 

Handsome_Will

Civil Gamers Expert
Mar 25, 2021
31
16
91
-support
As much as I appreciate it can be an absolute grind, the mastery system is supposed to encourage player retention and it's supposed to make unlocking certain jobs feel rewarding as opposed to just being something you unlock at MSGT.

For unlocking jobs: it used to take 2 weeks for a player to get MSGT (and access to snipers, for example), nowadays it comes down to the effort the player is willing to put in. Play less? You don't get the jobs as quickly. Play more? You unlock them sooner.

I agree that certain jobs should be spaced out a little bit more, someone said in ISAF that all the jobs were unlocked at level 20 which shouldn't be the case at all, but the most powerful ones such as Recon should absolutely be at 20.

If a new player has access to the best jobs within a week then it'll just kill the server, it'll be people fighting over the most OP job slots and it'll mean newer players have a much less dynamic playing field (if everyone is level 20 then they are far, far behind).
My point is that retention is not being encouraged, as I said I've had 29 brand new IVG members since the update and the only ones I still have are the ones I recruited today and yesterday. There's surely a healthy compromise between new players unlocking things on their first day and grinding for weeks to play sniper
 
My point is that retention is not being encouraged, as I said I've had 29 brand new IVG members since the update and the only ones I still have are the ones I recruited today and yesterday. There's surely a healthy compromise between new players unlocking things on their first day and grinding for weeks to play sniper
I agree there should be room to unlock things within the first day, absolutely, but I think the issue of player retention is less to do with mastery and more to do with how the server is.

In my last DB for NATO I lambasted the playerbase for purely being minges, we have people in leadership positions who are known to purely minge about and yet nothing changes. New players, at least on NATO (and I can only assume NWO is in a similar position), just think it's acceptable to go around minging during peacetime. There's no organisation or desire to actually roleplay anymore. Giving them access to a sniper quicker won't change that.

People join for a milsim experience and they find that the lunatics are running the asylum, those who do actually want to play it like a real military just leave as they think it isn't for them. The only people who stick around are those who want to minge about, it's been this way for well over a year now and it's probably too late to actively attempt a revival that would work. Bringing back NATO was the last chance and now we're back again at like 60 players peak.

It's not the content that's at fault, it's the playerbase
 
+Support
A lot of writing but no info on how long it takes to hit certain masteries, without which I can't make any changes.
Increasing the XP given for specific XP methods.... Sharpshooter mastery can gain XP for vehicle destruction, which is nice, but it takes far too long to get to 15 Mastery...
Some of the regiment-specific XP methods such as Vehicular regiments gaining XP for resupplying FOBs should honestly be present for all regiments. Especially since every regiment needs to resupply FOBs.
 
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we have people in leadership positions who are known to purely minge about and yet nothing changes. New players, at least on NATO (and I can only assume NWO is in a similar position), just think it's acceptable to go around minging during peacetime. There's no organisation or desire to actually roleplay anymore
!!! Well said !!!!
 
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