Allegiance as private club

[SaiSoma]

QUOTE (phoenix1 @ Jan 17 2010, 10:14 PM) Would you like me to dig out the IRC logs where you tried to pitch the idea of forcing newbies onto the newbie server to me? You spent a long time trying to convince me it was the right thing to do.

I wasn't responding to the newbie server being a bad idea, I was specifically responding to forcing people wearing @HELP to play on newbie servers, which I think is a bad idea.

Sigh. Ok. I'm going to say this one final time. This discussion is NOT about forcing newbs to play on the newb servers. I'm not denying that I have said that in the past, but that's not what I'm putting on the table now. I even asked you to table everything to with the @help idea and start a new disucussion from scratch. I can see that you aren't going to do that. Maybe later you will see what i've been saying

[zombywoof]

What *are* you putting on the table? I commented that I didn't think @HELP should be forced on the server. I commented that newbies shouldn't. You asked if newbies had something to gain on the server, I said "Yes, some of them do."

[Jimen]

SaiSoma, if you accept that forcing newbs onto the newb server is a bad idea, then isn't forcing @HELPs onto the newb server also a bad idea? We've got plenty of resources for anyone who wants to learn how to play, but there's no shortage of people who decide not to bother with AFS, reading the wiki, the ingame training, or the newb server, and hop right into main, where they then ask questions like "How do I make my ship go forward". Yet you're proposing that all the @HELPs be confined exclusively to the newbie server, despite the fact that you acknowledge we shouldn't be forcing newbies onto the newbie server either. Hell, I never played a game on the newbie server either; I wanted to, but there was nobody on the newbie server at the times I played (I'm a late-night person and am thus just as likely to be seen during Australian "primetime" as American primetime...it's something forcing more people onto the newbie server wouldn't change).

[zombywoof]

Thank you Jimen.

Sai, if you'd like to hear my opinions on every subject this thread touches on (mostly newbie retention):

I think that there should be an ASGS message that every player gets when he first logs in, and it should be a welcome message. I will gladly participate in writing it if the powers that be would like. Ideally, the message should include at least the following:

-The newbie server is there for you to sandbox with the controls
-People with @HELP are there as in game help, and will answer any questions
-F1 is also there for in-game help
-@ALLEG are in game moderators, and should be pmed if you feel like someone is breaking the rules. Alternatively, PM an @HELP who can contact an @ALLEG for you
-basics on how to private message, both from in game and in lobby

With an active Newbie server, you will find that @HELP will be more active on the newbie server. It is sort of a catch-22, but there you have it.

We do not need (nor do we want) to complicate matters with hard-coding limits of who gets to go where. I've seen this idea proposed multiple times now, and it was, imo, a bad idea the first time it was mentioned and it has not aged well. I can't tell whether or not you still want to have these hard-coded limits in place, which is why I fight them so hard: I believe they are a fundamentally terrible idea and am afraid they will be implemented. All it takes for evil to triumph, and all (not that these rules are evil or that I'm a good man, it's just that the underlying message of that turn of phrase applies here).

Making new rules will not encourage newbies to stay. Adept is over-the-top and pretty much wrong in his complaint that it's abuse driving people away, but I'll handwave that as him not being a part of that many online communities. Allegiance is, for example, one of the exceedingly few communities that has active rules against newbie whoring. The only thing that new rules will cause is some vets will not like the new rules, and threaten or actually leave over rules that were/are unnecessary.

As I have also told you before (and am now telling the community at large); I question weather or not our newbie retention rates are bad. Of course the ideal is 100% retention (maybe less) but frankly no one has told me what a realistic number is for newbie retention.

If there is a problem with this community it's that we've got a handful of people who take everything way too $#@!ing seriously (myself, for one) and a handful of people who take nothing seriously (psych, for example). At the risk of sounding like an after school special: it takes all kinds to make a world; so instead of seeing this as a "problem" see it as a benefit: for every Adept there is posting about how terrible the community is, there's a P1 or a Spideycw to come in and scream "STFU." As horrible as it sounds, this creates a balance between the two. Besides, we wouldn't be human if we didn't abjectly take extreme standpoints and scream until we were blue in the face no matter how wrong we are.

TL/DR:
Sorry about the WoT, I'm trying to cover as many bases as possible in as small a space as possible. That also means there's no real TL/DR, just this small apology.

[spideycw]

QUOTE (SaiSoma @ Jan 17 2010, 11:00 PM) how often does the avg gamer read about how to play a game or join a school to learn a game before playing it for a while?

I have no idea what the numbers are tbh but this weekend alone I saw 3(0)'s who said how great the game was and how they were joining @AFS and reading up on the wiki so obviously there are some people out there

[l1ngus]

Reading Camaros post I am correcting my earlier opinion of the newbie-server, as I remember my own time on it. It is actually a good place to find out about shipcontrol and basic gameconcepts. Also it is valid to give the new players a place where they can hide, when they need a break from games with a 1:25 k/d ratio.

But to make the newbserver a helpful place we need to work on the following goals:
1) There needs to be some people on the newbserver
2) There needs to be some clue on the server

To make this happen, I suggest to reconsider the automated bump to (5). Also @help people should encourge people to join them on the noobserver. This doesn't need to be enforced in any way. It is just an appeal to the @help-crew to be more active in there (*looks at himself*).
It might also be good to allow people up to rank 7 in the noobserver, as they can bring a good mixture of some clue + things they can hardly try out on the mainserver (I am talking about basicc stuff like bringing a bomber to kill bases. Man was tit a moment of enlightment for me, when I understood how to kill bases as a noob). I know, that noobwhoring by voobs has been an issue before, but with more presence of @help and @allegs on the noobserver we should be able to deal with it.

[zombywoof]

QUOTE (spideycw @ Jan 17 2010, 10:25 PM) I have no idea what the numbers are tbh but this weekend alone I saw 3(0)'s who said how great the game was and how they were joining @AFS and reading up on the wiki so obviously there are some people out there

Yeah I've seen a lot of it. French_Touch is a great example.

EDIT:

L1ngus is right about rank bump, and it's been brought up to the ZLs. Not sure if he realized that or not, just saying. I would be interested to have a status update on how that discussion is going.

[spideycw]

To bring this discussion back to the original point. Asking a stupid question or messing up in game is not grounds for a boot ever.

It's doing the above and either not learning from it 100000 times or insisting for 5 minutes you are correct even though everyone in the world says you are wrong.

[juckto]

Do you ever consider discussing your views with other people involved in @Help and Marketing before using their names and reputation to build your soap box?

[zombywoof]

QUOTE (juckto @ Jan 17 2010, 11:29 PM) Do you ever consider discussing your views with other people involved in @Help and Marketing before using their names and reputation to build your soap box?

I'm not sure what your point is.