posted by
Fuego
October 16, 2023
"Welcome, traveler. Heard you're new in town. Mos Eisley can be a dangerous place. What can I help you with?" - Gendra, New Player NPC
One of our strategic pillars for the next phase of our project is centered around building a best-in-class New Player Experience. Implementation of the tutorial and beginning to rework the structure of the legacy is just one of our first steps to help new players get acquainted with the galaxy. Star Wars Galaxies is a big and complicated game, so there’s a lot of work to do to get a player educated about how the game works if they haven’t played before or have been away for a while, especially given the number of core mechanic changes unique to Restoration. Our Special Envoy for New Player Experience in the Galactic Senate, Banth, has also been instrumental in helping us identify and remove “papercuts,” or small frustrations that can pile up. We’ve seen exciting and positive results so far in better easing players into the game and look forward to more changes our design team is working on that help increase retention and get players up to speed faster.
-Aconite, Developer
The stars aligned for us recently to deliver on something we've needed for a long time: an actual tutorial! We are making the New Player Experience a big focus for us in the next year, and the 1.1.1 update was our first push, with the revived original CU tutorial, a revamped beginner quest experience, and far more opportunities for credits. If we can create an experience that draws in new players and helps them understand and enjoy this beautiful mess of a game, the entire server will thrive.
-ornj, Developer
Within the game code sometimes you find fragments and relics of the past. In the case of the Restoration New Player Experience, parts of the original Combat Upgrade Tutorial were preserved. Upon opening it up, there was quite a lot of clean up necessary but were able to get the space station and quests within the space station functional once again.
The Space Station experience is more or less linear but takes you through the foundations of Star Wars Galaxies.
Previously, new players were thrown straight into the Legacy quest line with an option to go to Gendra. Now upon completing the Space Station tutorial, players are only pointed to Gendra. Gendra has a much expanded series of quests to learn more detail about the game. Although Gendra already existed as a helpful NPC, players often skipped straight over them in favor of Legacy. Gendra is now the singular point of contact while players gain their footing, where they can learn about various professions, get their new vehicle, and get started on Legacy.
Expanded Tour of Mos Eisley Services
Combat Professions and Skill Trainers
Non-Combat Professions and Skill Trainers
Crafting Items
Resource Surveying and Sampling
Dancing and Playing Music
Harvesting Creatures & Healing
Vehicles & Repairs
Signing up for Pilot Squadrons
Getting the Legacy Quest Start
As time goes on the team intends to add more quests to Gendra to help players get used to Star Wars Galaxies.
With the traditional SWG skill tree, there are so many different professions that players want to re-spec quite often to try out varying plausible combinations of professions. At the same time, in terms of gameplay loops, leveling or re-designing your character isn’t the most engaging. After receiving resounding feedback that Battle Fatigue needed to go, Developers wanted to decide upon a replacement mechanic. As a result, Rested points have now replaced Battle Fatigue!
Many already know that experience gain is already tuned up 500% versus the Live version of SWG. Well, we decided to turn it up a bit more as a positive incentive to visit your local Entertainer. Rested points accumulate while watching an Entertainer and you will have a 50% bonus to all XP earned with Rested points. These points drain both over time and with each time you gain XP.
Credit generation and the economy has always been a hot topic at SWG Restoration. One of the cornerstones at SWG Restoration is trying to create a stable economy in part by restricting multi-accounting and limiting AFK bots. Recently, a change in the logistics of verifying multi-accounts was implemented and last year there were big shifts in anti-afk mechanics.
In an attempt to balance credit generation, the upper ceiling of credit generation was lowered last year with Chassis Dealer adjustments. Now on the flip side we are raising the floor so to speak on a few different options to create better balance.
Star Wars Galaxies can sometimes feel like a job in space. For some, that's part of the appeal. For others, that's exactly what kills the game for them. So one of our goals now is to enable credit generation from a wide variety of play styles and not force everyone to a certain type of activity (for example, space). Long-term you should feel rewarded for playing whatever it is you love to play.
-ornj, Developer
The Legacy Saga, as preserved from the original game, provides a journey across the Galaxy to see many places they may not have known existed. Experience gain on this solo path is a great way to level up but now players are also rewarded with more credits as the quest moves on. Scaling from 2,500 credits all the way to 70,000 credits, the overall journey rewards over 3 million credits in its entirety.
Prior to heading to the Squill Cave, Watto now awards players a set of beginner armor of your choice. The stats are not as good as crafted armor but still prepares you for a little bit more challenging content.
Jokes aside, the Legacy Series packs in a lot of content and can be a cool way to level up, gain credits, and experience the Galaxy before branching out into other endeavors.
Now admittedly mission terminals admittedly aren’t the most engaging content but they do serve a purpose especially for newer players. Having a wide variety of rewarding options is what is important going forward. Want to quest? Want to run destroy missions? Want to track down animals? Want to craft items? Want to entertain? Want to be in space? You get the idea.
Adjusted payouts:
And in the near future we are working on rewarding players for additional playstyles –such as PvP, which has never really had income on our server.
Check out the patch notes at:
https://swgr.org/post/update-1-1-1-0-the-last-update-before-jedi.2099/
May the Force be With You
SWG Restoration Staff
