Why we REALLY need playerbase growth

notjarvis · Post by **notjarvis** » Wed Apr 27, 2011 12:08 pm

quackdamnyou wrote:QUOTE (quackdamnyou @ Apr 27 2011, 05:16 AM) Spur-of-the-moment suggestion: maybe we could get a new welcome thread in this forum with, you know, a welcome message at the front?

The new one OK?

girly - it depends what parts of the forum. Read only access to the whole forum would be bad as yp's experiment showed. If it were possible I'd be temted to have this forum visible (but I'm not sure what ipb allows for specific sub-forums)

Cookie we've been trying to run open sessions for a while from AFS, they aren't closed when the guys can run them.

Problem is new players who have no interest in AFS are also more likely to be the ones who want to dive straight in the main game and not leave it.

quackdamnyou · Post by **quackdamnyou** » Wed Apr 27, 2011 3:41 pm

notjarvis wrote:QUOTE (notjarvis @ Apr 27 2011, 05:08 AM) The new one OK?

Perfect! Thanks!

QUOTE Problem is new players who have no interest in AFS are also more likely to be the ones who want to dive straight in the main game and not leave it.[/quote]

In my opinion, those ones with no interest in AFS are not the ones we should be cultivating. The ones we should be cultivating are the ones who actually get to the point of reading the documentation. A lot of guys who started at the same time of me stuck around. And I think that was, in no small part, due to the fact that I read all the documentation, it was useful and accurate to the game, and the first time I joined BV was sitting in the lobby and asked me if I'd signed up for Cadet yet. There were a lot of active mentors at prime time. I even did it for a while. People helping out with balance. And a lot of bans handed out for treating newbies badly, which of course led to drama. And there was a notable shift about expected conduct. In my opinion, we chose to give certain unruly veterans room to stroke their personalities and in turn we burned out some of our best people and lost a lot of opportunities.

HSharp · Post by **HSharp** » Wed Apr 27, 2011 4:01 pm

I've said it before but I liked the old Academy page not because of the content compared to the wiki now but how it was delivered. Still I didn't do CDT anyway and I don't think it was a factor in me staying in Allegiance just in me being better then the average newbie because it was interesting to read. I think for making me stay I just had fun in my first few games, that is what we should be doing, I see people talk the talk but frankly if your not playing games of Allegiance then you have newbies waiting ages for a game to start with two horrible comms who no vet wants to join resulting in a confusing game.

Want to make a better Allegiance? Then get more people playing good games of it. It's no good advertising or prettying it up when there is nothing to play or it's a horribly matched game when you do play.

Bard · Post by **Bard** » Wed Apr 27, 2011 11:11 pm

girlyboy wrote:QUOTE (girlyboy @ Apr 27 2011, 06:41 AM) Read-only access for guests wouldn't be so bad, would it?

Yes, it would.

We did that *once* for a very short period of time a few years back. The spammers we STILL get TO THIS DAY on this forum are a result of that.

The only thing that free registration regularly slows down or inhibits is lazy spammers. Having the forum indexed AGAIN would be extremely, EXTREMELY bad.

BillyBishop · Post by **BillyBishop** » Thu Apr 28, 2011 3:47 pm

Lately I've been noticing a lot of newbs that think they have a clue, demanding command in prime time and all that good stuff, one of the causes of this is partly based on the ranking system and it's super speed rank boost of newbies. There is a serious problem when new players go from (0) to (5) in a week or whatever and suddenly think they have a clue, even if they don't know what a nan is.

My point being is this, it's harder and harder to tell which new player has the basics of alleg down because their ranks are so totally messed up, can we not for the love of god or money use AllegAge as a governor (limiter) on ranks, they still advance, though since there is a (admitedly somewhat skewed) time component with AllegAge, we'll better know the newbies ability wihtout having seen them before.

Yes I know AS has system (that doesn't work) in place to (sort of kind of) have new ranks within reason, it doesn't do what I suggest.

This isn't a post on ranks per se, it's a post on newbie ranks being horribly messed up.

HSharp · Post by **HSharp** » Thu Apr 28, 2011 4:31 pm

As far as I know all the newbies that want to command range from rank 0 - rank 8 and are considered newbies anyway, I don't see how having Alleg Age would stop that. You have brought it up like a million times now but no-one apart from you wants Alleg Age!

quackdamnyou · Post by **quackdamnyou** » Thu Apr 28, 2011 4:38 pm

RoyBrown wrote:QUOTE (RoyBrown @ Apr 28 2011, 08:47 AM) Lately I've been noticing a lot of newbs that think they have a clue, demanding command in prime time and all that good stuff, one of the causes of this is partly based on the ranking system and it's super speed rank boost of newbies. There is a serious problem when new players go from (0) to (5) in a week or whatever and suddenly think they have a clue, even if they don't know what a nan is.

My point being is this, it's harder and harder to tell which new player has the basics of alleg down because their ranks are so totally messed up, can we not for the love of god or money use AllegAge as a governor (limiter) on ranks, they still advance, though since there is a (admitedly somewhat skewed) time component with AllegAge, we'll better know the newbies ability wihtout having seen them before.

Yes I know AS has system (that doesn't work) in place to (sort of kind of) have new ranks within reason, it doesn't do what I suggest.

This isn't a post on ranks per se, it's a post on newbie ranks being horribly messed up.

Newbs have wanted to command since there were newbs, i.e. sometime in Beta (or so I hear). It's nothing new. Once they have a little knowledge, they are eager to help keep the game going. They have not yet built up the stomach for spending 20+ minutes between games.

Just ignore them and/or compliment them on their enthusiasm. E.g., "I'm glad you are enjoying the game EagerBeaver123, but it takes a long time to really understand the game well enough to command well."

And also, rank means nothing, especially about command ability. Even the command win/loss statistics mean little, because there is a big difference between small game and big game, or high money and low money. It's a complex equation. Also, the statistics are really old. My record goes back to the very beginning of my career, or pretty close anyway by the time they started gathering AS data. Then again I took two years off. In other words, rank means nothing. The only thing it can tell you is that a very approximate lower limit for a certain player's performance.

BillyBishop · Post by **BillyBishop** » Thu Apr 28, 2011 5:29 pm

quackdamnyou wrote:QUOTE (quackdamnyou @ Apr 28 2011, 05:38 PM) In other words, rank means nothing.

And why then use AS which is an irrelevent system for ranks then, why not use anything else, if realisitcally the only thing most people care about in relation to rank, is relative general skill, which is experience, which is time in, which is roughly equated with AllegAge in the first place.

In general my comment on cute newbies that spam for comm is; learn to fly before you learn to comm, since you can't do the latter unless you know the former. This generally gets the response of the one has nothing to do with the other and then I mute them. Anyway that's another issue, I was just using it for illustrative purposes.

BillyBishop · Post by **BillyBishop** » Thu Apr 28, 2011 5:35 pm

HSharp wrote:QUOTE (HSharp @ Apr 28 2011, 05:31 PM) As far as I know all the newbies that want to command range from rank 0 - rank 8 and are considered newbies anyway, I don't see how having Alleg Age would stop that.

Slower growth in the early stages prevents bloated egos (heh, funny for alleg I know), also it helps more inexperienced comms get more realisitc expectations out of the novice players- basically if it takes a month of full time play to go from (0)-(5) then the comms have more understanding of ability. I realize this is part in parcel with less experienced comms not understanding how/when to accept players for balanced games and as such is partially another issue- it will help though.

HSharp wrote:QUOTE (HSharp @ Apr 28 2011, 05:31 PM) You have brought it up like a million times now but no-one apart from you wants Alleg Age!

Definately only in the mid 100,000's. And many people have agreed with this, it's just not something on the top of peoples minds.

HSharp · Post by **HSharp** » Thu Apr 28, 2011 5:42 pm

RoyBrown wrote:QUOTE (RoyBrown @ Apr 28 2011, 06:35 PM) And many people have agreed with this, it's just not something on the top of peoples minds.

Got any names?