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
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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