I was thinking along the lines of short term, and basics such as; "what's a nan?" "Can we get Cap Ships" "I want to command" and the many others that I see go across all chat daily by new pilots, and the small percentage of more experienced ones trying to help them.
I entered a sector yesterday to see a newbie flying one of my team's GT scouts. He was attacking the hell out of somebody, but nanning him at the same time. There is no telling how long this was going on before I got there. I tried to pm him to explain, but don't think he saw it. I finally just podded the poor sap he was attacking and entered next sector to look for miners. He followed me, and once I began to attack a miner, he did too...healing the hell out of it! lol! I spam a waypoint for him to try and get him to see the "press insert to accept" in bold red and press it. Got podded in the process, and then the newbie bravely began to attack (heal) the defender. It was at that point that the vet defender typed in all chat to explain about the unique gt scout gun mounts. Poor little guy.
I can only imagine what was going through his head when he was attacking to no avail.
Down to under 700 actives on the leaderboard :(
As Forrest Gump said: A Newbie Server is like a box of chocolates... 
I'm not poo-pooing the idea of helping folks... it's just that it's difficult to predict how co-operative any group of newbies are going to be. Sometimes you get a good batch who are truly interested in learning some aspects of the game. Sometimes you get a bunch that just wanna blow things up without wanting to first learn which weapons/ships are best at doing that. Some are just incapable of reading/responding to chat and/or direction. *shrug*
But knowing that, a couple of helpers could first cull the server population of the unteachable, for instance, before they proceed. That would probably increase the success rate, and lower the frustration level of the helpers.
I'm not poo-pooing the idea of helping folks... it's just that it's difficult to predict how co-operative any group of newbies are going to be. Sometimes you get a good batch who are truly interested in learning some aspects of the game. Sometimes you get a bunch that just wanna blow things up without wanting to first learn which weapons/ships are best at doing that. Some are just incapable of reading/responding to chat and/or direction. *shrug*
But knowing that, a couple of helpers could first cull the server population of the unteachable, for instance, before they proceed. That would probably increase the success rate, and lower the frustration level of the helpers.
Like mentioned before:
Lets raise the newbie-server-rank again.
We see now that the newbieservers are deserted, because simply too few people can play there and no newbie waits for 1hour to get anotherone to join, so they can play 1v1 for another hour until maybe some teammates show up.
You can get rank 4 in very few days, it depends how many hours you are online, that's not even enough time to get a halfway acceptable key mapping set-up.
I agree that newbie-server is bad and all, but I'm pretty sure that without it I would've never started playing Alleg. Main Server is so frustrating most of the time if you're new that you really appreciate the short newbie-games in the beginning, where you can fight against enemies of your caliber.
Lets raise the newbie-server-rank again.
We see now that the newbieservers are deserted, because simply too few people can play there and no newbie waits for 1hour to get anotherone to join, so they can play 1v1 for another hour until maybe some teammates show up.
You can get rank 4 in very few days, it depends how many hours you are online, that's not even enough time to get a halfway acceptable key mapping set-up.
I agree that newbie-server is bad and all, but I'm pretty sure that without it I would've never started playing Alleg. Main Server is so frustrating most of the time if you're new that you really appreciate the short newbie-games in the beginning, where you can fight against enemies of your caliber.
Let's not change the newbie status to a higher number. If you may recall, when we allowed up to and including 7s, there was quite a degree of whoring going on... the 7s have a very distinct advantage over the 0s and 1s. It wasn't pretty. When the 8s started showing up on the Main Server, they simply had no clue how a real Allegiance game was run. So it was decided that by dropping to (4) was long enough for someone to orient themselves to the game, get the keys mapped, etc. but not so ingrained to think that Out9 and capships was the norm.
Also, with changes to the client, we were now able to launch our own games and limit the skill level accordingly. I've seen plenty of Novice games being launched and played. Folks have plenty of choice but their exposure to "True Allegiance" arrives earlier, IMHO... and that is a Good Thing™.
Also, with changes to the client, we were now able to launch our own games and limit the skill level accordingly. I've seen plenty of Novice games being launched and played. Folks have plenty of choice but their exposure to "True Allegiance" arrives earlier, IMHO... and that is a Good Thing™.
The topic is how to get more people to play Allegiance, not how to make Newbies better players. The former has to be addressed before the latter. I would argue that having more people play on the newbie server raises the odds that more people will stick around and play Allegiance, and y'all can worry about making them good players later. If there are fewer people on the newbie server, odds are fewer people will stick around and play Allegiance, and in the long run that is a much bigger problem than having less competent players.
All I can tell you is that when I first started playing, which was I think a couple of years ago or a bit more, there was pretty much always a newbie game going on. I can also tell you that if I didn't have the chance to play on the newbie server, but had to start out in the main games, where people were constantly shouting stuff I didn't understand and where you couldn't do "fun" things like capship wars or whatever, I probably would not have become a better Allegiance player as a result at all. I probably would have simply quit, since I never would have had a chance to get into the game to the point where I'd realise that non-newbie games are actually fun.
All I can tell you is that when I first started playing, which was I think a couple of years ago or a bit more, there was pretty much always a newbie game going on. I can also tell you that if I didn't have the chance to play on the newbie server, but had to start out in the main games, where people were constantly shouting stuff I didn't understand and where you couldn't do "fun" things like capship wars or whatever, I probably would not have become a better Allegiance player as a result at all. I probably would have simply quit, since I never would have had a chance to get into the game to the point where I'd realise that non-newbie games are actually fun.
qtfMakida wrote:QUOTE (Makida @ Nov 14 2008, 02:22 AM) If there are fewer people on the newbie server, odds are fewer people will stick around and play Allegiance, and in the long run that is a much bigger problem than having less competent players.
Last edited by unison on Fri Nov 14, 2008 2:15 am, edited 1 time in total.
I know I've asked before but... isn't anybody here a (non hated) member of the Something Awful forums?
That place has incredible numbers of gamers, and many great indie games like Dominions 3 have threads promoting them there. If it comes to that I'll start paying the registration fees and try to write a good plug for Allegiance there... but it would be better if it was done by somebody who's already a member, I think.
Do we have anybody there?
That place has incredible numbers of gamers, and many great indie games like Dominions 3 have threads promoting them there. If it comes to that I'll start paying the registration fees and try to write a good plug for Allegiance there... but it would be better if it was done by somebody who's already a member, I think.
Do we have anybody there?
<bp|> Maybe when I grow up I can be a troll like PsycH
<bp|> or an obsessive compulsive paladin of law like Adept
