I recently joined the 0.9 test server that's 20+ days in. It has seen a number of players join and leave the game, so there is some need for new blood to come in and fill some old shoes. However, since the server is on high coop mode, it takes a lot of effort for a new player to catch up and be productive. It would be nice for some sort of catch-up mechanics to exist to bootstrap new players during the mid/late game.
Currently, this is what you should expect as a newbie:
- Someone should provide you with good food so your skill point gain would be higher
- Someone should trade low-tier raw goods and sell you mid-tier building blocks and furniture to help you with skill gain
- Someone should sell you skill scrolls
What might be nice to have in addition to that:
- A way to boost skill gain early - you want to catch up in the amount of skills you have. It might be nice to say, give you a boost until you have 15-25% of the skill points of the top player perhaps. This would help new players without affecting those that have been around for a few days.
- A way to boost levelling up your skills - this could either take a form of boosting you based on the number of players higher in the skill than you (10 players have carpentry 5 and you're carpentry 1? Have a 10% boost to learning it or something). Alternatively, high-skill players could perhaps turn research into some skill boosters that give you a certain amount of XP. "Want to learn masonry fast? Have a Masonry 7 player turn Geological Research into skill boosters that get you XP". The boosters could only give you a few levels in a skill, but would still be quite useful if they'd get you to say, level 3-4. This would also create a market for low-level research papers during the late game...