We should not let...

[fwiffo]

QUOTE (Kumquat @ Jul 21 2010, 10:40 AM) The reason numbers have dipped is because pickup games are terribad. The average skill in Allegiance has dropped so much it is pathetic. Cadet is also a shadow of what it used to be. We used to have some of the best guys in the game sharing their tips and secrets in the cadet program, now it is a bunch of craptastic monkeys with spreadsheets trying to train these newbs and doing a terrible job at it. I mean seriously, when P1 and Jarvis are cadet advisors you might as well just pack up your toys and go home.

You know why the edit Kumy - SCW

this sort of sentiment has no place in allegiance and must be condemned. teaching newbies/cdts basic skills does not require you to have the creme de la creme top gun style skills. it takes patience, commitment, determination and a certain apathy towards all those who have nothing better to do but to complain about how things are but have yet to raise one finger to better the situation. change does not come overnight and blaming p1 and notjarvis for the lowering of the avg skill in allegiance seems shortsighted given the short time they've had at their jobs.

if you think you can do better, by all means, show some initiative and try.

[uberkill]

So I didn't read the whole thread, and my absence from Alleg pains me. I still lurk the forums, but the thing is, I'm running a dual boot with Ubuntu. When I boot into Windows, it literaly takes a half hour to be ready to go, and I'm too frustrated to play. As soon as the new security client is available and working for linux, I'll hopefully be back to playing.

Tl;dr: My computer's a POS and I can't stand windows vista.

[Jimen]

SHUT UP ABOUT BALANCE. The reason we keep losing noobs is because they can't just jump right in and play because you dumb @#$%@#s give more $#@! about total AS and who you want to have a tea party with than you do about forcing the newbies to wait in the lobby for fifteen minutes to get in the $#@!ing game. Because everybody jumps on the stacked team the instant they get a chance, the only team a newbie is allowed to request to join is the stacked-against team, which often simply ignores the newbie until he or she throws a huge @#(!-fit over not being allowed to play, and quits forever (while NOAT makes fun of them). That is one of the TWO BIGGEST REASONS I've seen for newbies quitting. Not "oh I guess this is probably the reason newbies are leaving", I mean THEY GET SUPER MAD IN NOAT, DECLARE THAT THEY ARE "TIRED OF THIS @#(!" OR SOME EQUIVALENT, AND THEN ARE NEVER SEEN AGAIN IN ALLEG". Take your $#@!ing theories and your goddamn assumptions and stuff it, you asses. Nobody wants to wait more than three minutes to play a $#@!ing game that they're still trying out, especially when the wait involves dicking around and doing nothing while watching you boring $#@!heads bull@#(! about nothing in NOAT.

That goes for the wait BETWEEN games as well. Yeah, sure, the excuse is that everybody gets burnt out after a long game. No. Bull@#(!. When there's half an hour between games, it's because everyone waited twenty minutes for two people to step up and comm, and then nobody joined for ten more minutes because if neither comm is a well-known supervet, most $#@!ers don't want to commit to a team till they see which way the stack's going to turn out. That is why people start 3v3 games with the rationale of "$#@! it" - there's a few pilots out there who absolutely refuse to join a game until about a minute after it starts, and neither stackers nor antistackers will join until there's a clear stack to base their decisions off.

Stop suggesting technical @#(! and FIX YOUR OWN DUMB @#$%@#S. The most important part, IMO? We need MORE COMMS so that we're able to GET comms at any time of the day, and so there's a better chance of two EVEN comms being on and willing to comm at the same time.

[Hellsyng]

QUOTE (lexaal @ Jul 21 2010, 11:32 AM) #1 Autodraw after a longer period of stack?
#2 dependant on stack: damage/hull/speed reduction.

I like these personally.
Also +1 to Jimen

[Broodwich]

fed: hello allegiance, its been xxx months since my last huge troll thread
alleg: come on now fed, we've seen this before
fed: no sir, im holding on too tight. ive lost the edge. I'm going to have to make another alleg is dying thread

[Jimen]

QUOTE (fwiffo @ Jul 21 2010, 02:39 PM) this sort of sentiment has no place in allegiance and must be condemned. teaching newbies/cdts basic skills does not require you to have the creme de la creme top gun style skills.

You say that because you haven't seen what they're teaching the noobs lately. Regardless, I agree that the quality of CDT-II has no bearing on newbie retention, because anyone who sticks around long enough to get into CDT-II is probably around for keeps. Notice that I say "long enough". That's a big sticking point. Most people who're going to quit outright will quit in the first couple of weeks. What's the average wait-time for getting into CDT-II now? Two months? It used to be even higher, and in that regard there HAS been some improvement...but the fact that intermediate help and tips are only available to people who satisfy super special conditions is a good way to turn people off. Why the hell aren't topics like "how to fly your $#@!ing ship" and "ints for dummies" be public? Well, with Cadet II going up on the wiki, maybe they are now. So +++ to that, I fully support. But there's still plenty of progress to be made, and I think there's a relationship between the lack of decent commanders and the fact that there's very little in the way of commanding hints&tips available because ACS is a super exclusive rockstar club for potential supercomms only.

[Freyja]

QUOTE (BackTrak @ Jul 21 2010, 06:38 PM) I'm just trying to think of some way to reward people for coming back to play the way other games do.

From a game design point of view, it's simple, aside from basics like gameplay and graphics and the like, almost everyone likes milestones, achievements, awards, medals, and that whole slew of things. Take some of the more infamous games of late that offer nothing but those pats on the back; Farmville and Evony... both those games complete suck in every way possible, but you get shiny little things for playing them.

It may sound pointless but it's what a lot of people like, so figure out a way to implement a profile in the allegiance game, have little things like;

-Rank
-Stats
-Achievements (AFS ACS)
-Medals (Qualified Miner Killer, Approved CapShip Pilot etc etc)
-Trophies (Squad Tournaments, Annual MVPs for best scout best int etc etc)
-Squad tag or graphic
-Naked picture of player XYZ with Brood
-Other random things

[Jimen]

QUOTE (Broodwich @ Jul 21 2010, 02:54 PM) fed: hello allegiance, its been xxx months since my last huge troll thread
alleg: come on now fed, we've seen this before
fed: no sir, im holding on too tight. ive lost the edge. I'm going to have to make another alleg is dying thread

This ain't Fed's troll thread no more. Yeeeeeeeeee-haw!

[SaiSoma]

QUOTE (cashto @ Jul 21 2010, 12:49 PM) Simpler solution: raise the limit on the newbie server. The argument always is "well, they'll never learn there". Well, my take is that ever since the newbie server was effectively rendered useless, there's no safe place for clueless newbies to $#@! around until they decide they want to put the effort to get good at this game and play with the big boys.

+1

I started on the newbie server as I wanted to learn the game a bit and play without getting pounded. If we just allow (and encourage) @HELP to sit on the newbie server so there are folk there, it might just work. @Alleg's are the police of alleg, @HELP are the handholders. They SHOULD be only allowed to wear that tag on the newbie servers . .but then I'd probably change the name to "Training servers" . .just mo.

[HSharp]

I miss the academy, I quite liked that style of special manual to learn which the wiki is lacking. I never took cadet but just read up on the academy, the wiki does host the same material but the academy layout just seemed much more interesting.