Extending Hall of Novice

[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.

[ZiggyE]

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

[Enkidoh]

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.

[Niwashi]

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

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.)

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.

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.

[BrittonWindu]

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

[Solarra]

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.

[Subsonic_GFX]

This is a very nice idea.