[Trexmaster]

The new player experience in Korvara is very hit or miss. The game's been going on for nearly 9 months now so competing with characters who've been established within the first few months of launch is very difficult, in terms of getting RP over others wanting to focus on their long-term RP partner(s). There's a lot of hurdles to jump through to see success starting out, and telling people to 'just rp' to get RP is disingenuous.

It's honestly worrying that people are dismissive of these concerns because they're able to get RP, so why can't this new player? As someone who's been playing Korvara since launch and hardly taken a break from it, I can safely say the experience of not getting yourself involved deeply with any of the factions leads to being dismissed very quickly. New players face the same issue, but now it's even harder to break past the initial struggle of gaining clout and finding a place you enjoy RPing in the environment of as most factions have their cast of popular/longtime characters who will take priority over newbies.

To make this more succinct I'll list out what I see as the current major issues new players face in trying to get into the RP of Korvara.

1. Finding RP.

This is a multi-faceted issue Korvara has, where not unlike G6, it can be very difficult to figure out where everyone even is on Korvara. The map is massive, even more so now with the addition of the new exterior areas following the First Disastrophism. Even once you master the map it takes a non-negligible amount of time to scout out public areas where people are like to congregate for RP.

I did a run around myself prior to this post with 86-89 players online, after about 15-20 minutes I'd looped the original circle of Korvara and found about 22 people. About half were either idle or clearly engaged with someone else or just doing business at an NPC vendor, so not who you'd generally want to approach for RP unless you knew them prior. So realistically about 12 people openly available (probably) to RP. Then you have to factor in "How would my character approach this person and WOULD they even approach this person?" as unless you're making a social butterfly who's the embodiment of extroversion your character isn't likely to start bothering every person they meet on sight. There might be nations your character may not want to go into, further restricting your options on top of all of that.

So if you're factoring all of that in, you might say, only want to RP around one nation, and perhaps not want to engage every single person for one reason or another. So you're likely left with about 3 people, if that. In my past experiences it was not uncommon to have literally nobody in the nation I chose to idle in for weeks at Korvara's launch.

I did not include dungeons in my run as let's be real, most people just want to grind in dungeons and standing around doing long RPs is a good way to get ganked. I watched a dude get vaporized before my eyes by a Spatial Corrupter back attack because he was trying to type at me. Don't RP and grind, kids. (this is a joke, I'll expound on this in another point).

I also excluded restricted interiors, such as prisons, barracks, leader homes, and other private areas that exist in game. This is likely where the majority of players typically are, but I cannot accurately assess this, so I can only go by who I can observe in areas a character with no special clearance is allowed to be.

2. The Lore

It's everywhere and nowhere. The massive nation lore docs (accessible on Discord™) can help get a character started via background hooks and provide guidance as to where to drive their character from creation. The accessibility of said docs depends on the Discord™, which the game nudges you towards on launch, at least. I'd honestly suggest providing a link to said lore when you select a certain nation at character creation. That way people are less likely to miss it and feel more prepared to make a char that meshes with whatever nation they want to make in.

Knowledge about recent events is more difficult to attain. It requires a lot of scrolling through Discord™ or bugging a very nice person to fill you in on relevant details of where you may be starting from, so you aren't totally lost.

The problem with trying to figure out how everything works in SL2 lore-wise in general is a larger scale issue, and more something that's been slowly rectified with the newer wiki. You have to ask a lot of questions to understand what you can and cannot do in SL2, and this can be daunting for newer players. Not much to be done for now beyond asking a GM if you're ever unsure.

3. PvE

The Grind. The main progression and what makes SL2 a game mechanically aside from beating on people. New players will be contending with this on top of their struggles to integrate into their area of choice. A lot of people are more than happy to guide newbies through the process and provide builds that can comfortably clear most PvE encounters.

The problem is its integration into the RP of Korvara. Most people simply want to focus on grinding, thus won't actively try to engage newbies wandering around PvE areas. It is of course not unheard of for people to want to jump in on other's fights to help or RP at anyone they can find in dungeons, but for people who've had to deal with PvE in their attempts to get that 9* they want from the 50+ pool of possibilities among other lengthy grinds, they usually want to kill the monsters and be on their way.

Most dungeon RPing is performed among groups of people who were already RPing prior to entering the dungeon. Since the first few months of Korvara's launch active RP in dungeons is far less common. This makes for another cause to the low number of people available to RP with in Korvara. If they're off grinding in a dungeon, you won't be able to RP with them, or it'll be extremely difficult if you can't weasel into their party somehow.

As it stands PvE in Korvara's dungeons promotes more asocial behavior, as not only do you want the monsters dead faster, you're actively competing with everyone else for limited spawns per 15 minutes, as well as chests that can possibly contain extremely hard to obtain otherwise if not outright exclusive materials  (Dragon Remains, Mushrooms, Wraps of Poultry/Beef, etc). So you want to be faster than the other guys and that means not stopping to bubble up at them, unless you're wanting to be nice and party up (if there's room). So new players get left in the dust here if they aren't being shepherded by a more experienced player.

The second and third issues would require a massive overhaul/undertaking to properly address, so I'll just focus on the first.

How do we make it better for new or yet to be established players?

All I can think of is making a more streamlined approach to creating a new character for newbies (via a step by step guide and help channel(s), and making more integrations to lore docs/notice board posts being made available in-game as opposed to only the Discord™.