Extending Hall of Novice

While listening to the most recent episode of Sequence Break XIV (http://zantetsuken.net/sequencebreak...e40-u-wot-mate), the topic of how to teach newer players how to play the game and get them involved in end-game stuff. There are two systems that have been added to help address the issue recently (Hall of Novice and the Mentor Network). Personally, I feel like Hall of Novice was a step in the right direction and I’d like to see them follow it up with more training in a similar vein. This inspired me to do a brief a write up of new training mechanisms I’d like to see them add to the game. Let me know what you think!

Hall of Journeyman
While Hall of Novice focuses on the basic mechanics that are going to show up in the leveling dungeons, the hall of the journeyman would focus on common mechanics/roles that appear in the 50+ plus content. Similar to the Hall of Novice, these would be individual exercises that focus on role training, so they would cover the following tactics/scenarios:

Tank

• Tank swapping - both as the tank w/ hate and as the tank that needs to gain hate.
• Rotating cooldowns - Having a defensive cooldown up for multiple attacks over the course of several minutes.
• Off tanking.

DPS

• More focus on DPSing while dodging.
• Stacking cooldowns to meet DPS checks.
• Threat management while attacking mobs.

Healer

• Healing through burst damage.
• Common status effects and how to deal with them (IE full healing types of doom, shielding to prevent knockback/statuses, etc…)
• The ever controversial DPSing while healing/stance dancing.

Hall of Journeyman would need appropriate rewards to incentivize people to do them, so I would throw out that upon completion, the player gets either a barding or a mount that properly embodies the role that it was completed on.

Hall of Master
While the previous halls were role-based, Hall of Master would be job-specific. The goal of this hall would be to train the player to be able to play their job in max-level content. Each of the floors would be catered to particular scenarios that are likely to come up in while running max level dungeons and trials. Some of the classes I play would probably cover the following:

Scholar

• Pre-shielding a tank buster.
• Using Deployment Tactics + Sacred Soil to mitigate raid damage.
• Recovering from AoE damage (using Indomitability + Succor + Emergency Tactics)
• Pet placement
• Ability synergies: (Rouse + Whispering Dawn, Swiftcast + Raise, Fey Illumination + Whispering Dawn/Adloquium)
• Basic DPS rotation.
• DoT priority/uptime training.

Warrior

• Triple Fell Cleave rotation.
• How to use Raw Intuition and not take all the crits.
• Keeping Storm’s Path and Fracture up.
• Combining offensive cooldowns while MT (Berserk + Unchained + Bloodbath).
• Stance dancing while maintaining hate.

Black Mage

• Basic 60 rotation (Enochian + Fire IV).
• Maintaining Enochian during mechanics.
• DPSing while moving.
• Utilizing procs.
• When to pop the wards.
• When you can move without interrupting the casts.

The above are just meant to illustrate what sorts of training would be involved. The goal being that by the time you’re down with the Hall of Master, you are reasonable at your job in most circumstances. For people learning their jobs for the first time, this training will probably take a while, so the rewards would have to be of commensurate value. I was thinking that this would be a great place to put a relic catch up feature, so that when you complete the training, you get your relic, but a step or two behind current level. This would make the time investment in the training worth it, as well as giving an alternative way to catch up with the relic without needing to do the grind.

Hall of Specialist
This would be the go-to place to learn specific end-game fights. I’d view this as an advanced version of the Stone, Sky, Sea where it’s fight specific, but instead of just being a single long DPS check, each fight is broken into individual phases with each phase mapping to a challenge/floor. It would take place in an actual arena and it would feature a shadow version of the boss. Each floor would focus on the mechanics of each phase like:

• AoE patterns
• Debuffs that need to be swapped/purged
• DPS checks
• How to deal with adds
• Tank busters

I don’t think there really needs to be a reward for this (being able to clear an end-game fight is rewarding on it’s own).

Overall a very good idea, but there's one point I disagree with:

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Originally Posted by Correl

I don’t think there really needs to be a reward for this (being able to clear an end-game fight is rewarding on it’s own).

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I think some sort of extrinsic motivational factor (e.g. a shiny looking armor set) would at least help getting new players started with taking their time to learn those basics.

I fully support this idea! I do agree with MsFo though, rewards would be good to funnel people into the content that might otherwise pass it by thinking that they're playing "good enough" already.

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Originally Posted by MsFo

Overall a very good idea, but there's one point I disagree with:

I think some sort of extrinsic motivational factor (e.g. a shiny looking armor set) would at least help getting new players started with taking their time to learn those basics.

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One of the things I had though of was that for the EX primals, upon the first completion of all the training exercises for them, you could receive one of the token things used to purchase the weapons. That would provide some motivation (saves you a run) without making it "required" (IE I want the armor, so I have to run it).

Can't upvote this suggestion enough. Love this idea.

Although anything that helps a player improve themselves is only a good thing, no amount of training or incentives will make a player who is deadset in their ways change overnight, that is just facing facts. You know, the old "you can lead a chocobo to water but you can't make him drink!" idea. Also technically the way the level 15-50 dungeons are set up, those (along with Guildhests, remember those?) was supposed to be the training for endgame activities, you were supposed to gradually become used to concepts such as avoiding AoE and understanding what abilities to use and when through trial and error while undertaking those duties.

The Hall of the Novice sadly is too rigid when it comes to it's training, as it literally tells you what you have to use to get past the 'test'. A lazy player will simply follow the directions to get passed it... and in an endgame raid or dungeon, still mucks up because they simply do not care or did not take their lessons to heart.

Once again, I don't mean to discount this idea, just I don't think it would help players get any better, in fact it would just be an incentive to make things worse, as idiots would only do it for the 'shinez' and not actually take the lessons to heart and become a better player.

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Originally Posted by Enkidoh

no amount of training or incentives will make a player who is deadset in their ways change overnight

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Though true, that isn't really relevant, as those aren't the players this is geared towards. (And luckily, there's not really very many of those anyway, despite how anecdotes about them make it seem more common than it is.)

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Originally Posted by Enkidoh

Also technically the way the level 15-50 dungeons are set up, those (along with Guildhests, remember those?) was supposed to be the training for endgame activities, you were supposed to gradually become used to concepts such as avoiding AoE and understanding what abilities to use and when through trial and error while undertaking those duties.

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Yes, they were supposed to. But how often does anyone get a chance to run any of those dungeons legitimately, following all the mechanics and really maximizing their abilities? You're almost always going to get stuck with a bunch of endgame players who are just farming it or racing through their roulettes. All the dungeons that people are supposed to be learning from have been turned into mindless zergfests instead. No matter how much someone wants to learn their job, they aren't going to learn much in that sort of run, and getting anything else is too rare to count on.

About the only way to get a good dungeon run you can really learn from is to get a full group who are all on-level for the dungeon, in mostly white gear, and who are all trying to run it perfectly and as-designed. That's certainly not going to happen through DF, and even if you're lucky enough to have a good group of on-level friends and can manage this, you're only going to get one chance to run any given dungeon on-level and then maybe one more while you're only slightly over-leveled for it.

Back when the game had just come out, and most players were new, it was a bit easier to actually practice group dynamics in dungeon runs, but that just doesn't seem to happen any more. I wish learning it there still worked, but unless someone has some feasible ideas about how to keep people from zerging through them, we need to come up with an alternative training ground. That's where Correl's suggestions come in. Sure, it wouldn't help players who don't care about it. (Those players likely wouldn't even use such a feature anyway.) But it would be good to provide players who want to get better at playing a chance to learn how.

Great idea!
I hope the devs see this and it gets implemented!

I really like your ideas and think they would be a great addition to the game.
So nice to see someone thinking positively about how to help players learn their roles and become more effective. Hopefully, somebody official will notice this and put your suggestion to the devs.

This is a very nice idea.

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Originally Posted by Deathgiver

I fully support this idea! I do agree with MsFo though, rewards would be good to funnel people into the content that might otherwise pass it by thinking that they're playing "good enough" already.

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There should not be a reward for this, if there was PFs would require you to have that reward in order to even do the content (think what you like about that, people will complain).

I do like the idea though

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Originally Posted by Lambdafish

There should not be a reward for this, if there was PFs would require you to have that reward in order to even do the content (think what you like about that, people will complain)

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I agree with you.