New Tutorial Type - Teach people how to use the BGS to RP

[CMDR Corlas]

Let me clear right off the bat, because I know a bunch of you just love to troll on suggestions with complaints, without even trying to comprehend what's being said: This is not about teaching people the detailed mechanics of the BGS. So anyway, on to the post:

I think many of the complaints of "there's nothing to do in this game!" are rooted in a lack of understanding of the BGS and the mission board. Most people just see the mission board just a bunch of random fetch, deliver, and kill missions. If they're well-versed the game, they understand that the kinds of missions they see are affected by the BGS, and by their rep with the faction offering it. But it's equally valid - and far more rewarding if you value role playing gaming - to realize that it's also an ongoing narrative for a faction in a given system. The problem, I think, is that the game does nothing at all to call attention to this fact, and the "gameplay", as often described by community tutorials and the like, consists of "do this activity to grind money".

So I suggest tutorials that teach new players how to play Elite: Not in terms of mechanics, but how to see the gameplay, as an RPG, that's already there. These tutorials would not be connected to the live galaxy BGS.

So for example, a "Mercenary" tutorial would walk the player through:

1. Using the Galaxy Map to find a system in a state of War or Civil War, and going there.
2. Looking at the factions involved in the fight, and how to pick a side.
   1. Do you want to be a pilot who fights for the underdog, or for the establishment? (Show how you can see how powerful a faction is in the system)
   2. Do you want to fight for a cause? (Show how to look at what governments the involved factions are)
   3. Do you want to fight for a superpower? (Show how some minor factions are allied with a superpower)
3. Have them sign up for a quick 2-kill mission, and send them to a basic CZ to complete it.
4. Call attention to the fact that wars aren't just killing, and how logistics missions on the mission board contribute to the cause.
5. Victory. Have one faction win, and point out how the player helped make a station change hands.

You could do one for an "Aid Worker":

1. Using the Galaxy Map to find a system in Outbreak.
2. Going first to an appropriate nearby system to load up on the sort of supplies that will be needed.
3. Taking them to system in Outbreak, and explain how selling the commodities helps.
4. Going to the mission board, donating some of the profits of the sale via one of the donation missions.
5. Taking a mission to deliver more needed supplies.
6. Success, you helped end the Outbreak! Explain how these actions can help end an Outbreak in the full Galaxy.

You could do these for any number of possible in-game-careers that the BGS supports and encourages via both general BGS and the missionboard/BGS interactions: Scavenger. Miner. Trader. Smuggler. Assassin. Pirate. Terrorist.

I think, as players, we often forget that we can use the BGS in this way, to RP our character, and it's not something that's made clear at all to new players, many of whom are simply "taught" by the community to play Elite as a grindfest for bigger spaceships. And in all honesty that a tragic loss, because this game is so much more.

So teach people how to play it, Frontier.

 

[Screemonster]

1. Victory. Have one faction win, and point out how the player helped make a station change hands.

I would love to see metrics available in-game for each cmdr's personal contributions to whatever is happening in the system, even if it's just the last tick.
Like some abstraction of how many inf+ (or inf-) you contributed to each faction's pool, compared to the total transactions that took place in the system that day overall. Traffic reports don't quite cut it as you don't know how many of those were just passing through without docking, how many just turned in a delivery from somewhere else and only contributed a couple of inf, and how many came in and did an exploration data dump.