Free Allegiance Forums

Honestly I think people should fly the tutorials before they join.

I know, I know, the tutorials aren't great... but even something as simple as "this is how flying works in this game" is indispensable before throwing someone into the game. You can't use Cadet to teach flying either. I know we created the "Nanning" tutorial, but is there any way we could touch up the actual tutorials better? In my mind the best way to keep people is to give them an idea of what kind of movements they'll have to make in Allegiance.

Something as simple as showing off the sidethrusters and a little bit of static target practice would be perfect. Just enough to give new players a taste of the physics engine so they're not overwhelmed in the live environment.

I am very skeptical of video tutorials. I think hat the more time we make new players spend watching videos, the more time they will spend wondering why they aren't playing the game and get bored. I don't think that they shouldn't be there, we can always make some if they want a reference if they forget something, but the primary way to teach new players how to play is with engaging tutorial missions, maybe even a little mini-campaign to introduce the players the concepts piecemeal. I realize that may be beyond the scope of anything we are willing or even capable of doing, but dumping a lot of information on new players before they've even flown a ship isn't the way to go about it in my opinion.

The most basic thing we could do would be to at least update the existing tutorials to a more sensible control scheme, though.

I just popped a couple of posts on Reddit:

http://www.reddit.com/r/freegames/comments...r_first_person/

http://www.reddit.com/r/freetoplaygames/co...person_shooter/


Edit: If anyone directed from the links above happen to read this post, feel free to join our Mumble server:

mumble.alleg.net

Port 64738

everywhere116 wrote:QUOTE (everywhere116 @ Dec 23 2014, 09:23 PM) I am very skeptical of video tutorials. I think hat the more time we make new players spend watching videos, the more time they will spend wondering why they aren't playing the game and get bored. I don't think that they shouldn't be there, we can always make some if they want a reference if they forget something, but the primary way to teach new players how to play is with engaging tutorial missions, maybe even a little mini-campaign to introduce the players the concepts piecemeal. I realize that may be beyond the scope of anything we are willing or even capable of doing, but dumping a lot of information on new players before they've even flown a ship isn't the way to go about it in my opinion.

The most basic thing we could do would be to at least update the existing tutorials to a more sensible control scheme, though.

Huge concern:
Newbies are so far down the skill level they stand no chance at all in the main game. They get confused by the controls, get bashed about by the grumpy pants vets, and the vast majority go somewhere else for their fun as the choices of games is virtually unlimited now.

So yes it would be nice to have a better tutorial. And ffs yes it would be quite dandy to reconfig the base keyboard, update the tutorial to accept it, and heck while we're at it redo the whole reconfigure your keys the way you wish. And wtf lets go for it and say yes it would be nice to have a way to integrate the newbs in with some kind of gentle dunk in the main game.

Now Treebeard might think I'm a bit hastey but most mortal (and elves too tbt) would consider waiting another errrm 12 years for any of the above to occur to long to wait.

So honestly videos are the ONLY option currently availible to help, in a new way, to achieve the vital newb -> voob -> vet in a quick enough manner to improve the retention rates

Voobaliciously With a Pinch of Salt Yours
TheSerbs 34th favorite goat milker

phoenix1 wrote:QUOTE (phoenix1 @ Dec 23 2014, 07:36 PM) Honestly I think people should fly the tutorials before they join.

People want to play, not to spend 30min doing tutorials.

Even though we all know how hard alleg is, a new player that has been playing CS, BF4 & etc is damn convinced he will pwn us all with his 2337 skillzzzzz.

Something in the lines of what Fwiffo used to do, along side with a server proper for newbies, would help way more. Or a background history of this game in a single player campaign covering all aspects of the game.

Dogfighting non-stop 2 waves of enemies coming from the same aleph, also gets boring.

The problem is twofold:

First, we get maybe one newbie at a time. How is flying by yourself on the newbie server any more fun than the tutorials?

Second, we don't control when the newbies decide to try the game out. They install, get the message that the best games are in the evening on fridays, and then what? What if the Designated Newbie Teacher was busy, say, out with their gf?

What we need is a way for the new pilots who are excited about trying out this new game to 1) have a controlled environment in which they are taught the basics of the controls and 2) be able to do *something* the minute the game is installed rather than waiting until whenever.

Obviously having someone do what Fwiffo did would be a huge blessing and awesome, but even if someone was willing to spend that much time and energy, it wouldn't be enough.

phoenix1 wrote:QUOTE (phoenix1 @ Dec 27 2014, 01:35 PM) The problem is twofold:

First, we get maybe one newbie at a time. How is flying by yourself on the newbie server any more fun than the tutorials?

Second, we don't control when the newbies decide to try the game out. They install, get the message that the best games are in the evening on fridays, and then what? What if the Designated Newbie Teacher was busy, say, out with their gf?

What we need is a way for the new pilots who are excited about trying out this new game to 1) have a controlled environment in which they are taught the basics of the controls and 2) be able to do *something* the minute the game is installed rather than waiting until whenever.

Obviously having someone do what Fwiffo did would be a huge blessing and awesome, but even if someone was willing to spend that much time and energy, it wouldn't be enough.

You clearly misread what I said. I didnt say to implement back what Fwiffo did, BUT SOMETHING SIMILAR. Maybe I should´ve used the word itself, instead of some weird expression I guess.


Tutorials are boring, and very few people bother doing them, because like I said, they are experts in BF4, CS, COD "insert random fps".

Back on, cadet was the solution for our tutorial problem, then fwiffo filled the whole left, now we need something else.

So lets sum things up
We need to retain newbsThe current methods need to work betterOur resources are limited and at the whim of the doer

Retaining newbs in Allegiance is a bit like playing fetch with a cat
You need a toyYou need a catYou need a cat who wants to do itYou need a cat who wants to do it and is smart enough to figure it out mostly by themselvesYou need someone to throw the ball and be ready to do it when the CAT feels like it

You get enough cats that fit the above and bingo bango you got yourself one hell of a game of fetch where the cats do the throwing

Right now we have
A toy which could use a wash, is bit lopsided, smells a little funny but by god we have a toyHave access to strays that wander in and outMostly exhibitiing the finicky nature of well a catRequire a special kind of cat, you know the one that makes you rethink the whole dog vs. cat intelligence thingWhile the cat has to be lucky enough to find someone to throw the ball or go figure it out while doing so on the Freeway with the cars swerving at them

So it seems to me we can rinker with the toy to make it more cat friendly, fiddle with cat luring techniques, and practice more vigorous traffic enforcement until the cows come home as we have done in the past

However I'm proposing that we organize a regularly scheduled event where the vet knows their role is to throw the $#@!ing toy while allowing the cat to figure out the fetching. It still requires a whole bunch of dedication, maturity, and patience to be sure but we all know we are looking for that special kind of cat

In the spirit of Apollo 13 where they had only the bits on the table to make something round fit in something square and failure was not an option
Here is what we could do
Have a controlled planned evening that is NOT Friday, Saturday or Sunday where newbss can come for a bit of basic instruction for some in game mayhem with other newbsChosen vets can fly observers only... are they even still an option in game giving very basic instruction onlyWhile singing a gentle presistent refrain of "play the tutorial, watch the videos, read the wiki, take cadet"When they are ready, the rank says so, or they are taking on the traits of a super twink then off to the main they go

It isn't the end all be all solution tbs but at the very least we will end up with less squsihed cats and fewer traffic acccidents... and who knows a few more cats at the same time will learn to play fetch


More like Freebeer and less like Fwiffo approach. Less shouting and pointing with more patience remembering it is about teaching the cat. The goal being less about creating a Las Vegas cat show and more about a happy cat that won't @#(! in your favorite pair of shoes

Archangelus wrote:QUOTE (Archangelus @ Dec 27 2014, 02:20 PM) You clearly misread what I said. I didnt say to implement back what Fwiffo did, BUT SOMETHING SIMILAR. Maybe I should´ve used the word itself, instead of some weird expression I guess.

Oh I'm sorry I'll think slower so you can keep up.

Fwiffo did a lot of 1 on 1 and personal training.

You would like to do something like that.

Something like that requires one or more pilots who are a) able to teach the basics, b) willing to teach the basics, and c) have time to teach the basics.

Even that is likely to fail because the problem is that Newbie@0 will show up to play and one of the few pilots who fit in categories A, B, and C may be at work/asleep/just not online for whatever reason.

Thus, while the plan of having persistently online players who will take new players into controlled settings to work on the very utter basics of getting your ship to move in a particular direction is nice, it's unfeasible. Which brings me to the two problems with your plan:

1) Flying by yourself on the newbie server versus flying a tutorial, which is better?

2) We have no control over when a newbie wants to fly the game and the best results for retaining newbies is giving them something to do right friggin' now.

QUOTE Tutorials are boring, and very few people bother doing them, because like I said, they are experts in BF4, CS, COD "insert random fps".[/quote]
While it might be true that people want to skip the tutorials, it's very rare that people swap genres or enter entirely new games without wanting a little bit of no-pressure action (often against the AI) to figure out what's going on. People aren't going to come here from COD and think "oh man I can play COD, I can definitely play allegiance!" The two games share virtually nothing in common aside from the fact that you can a) use the left-click button to shoot b) guns.

QUOTE oh, and yeah. Tutorials are boring.[/quote]
Boring, but going into a game and not being able to move in a straight line is less "boring" and more "so frustrating people quit the game and don't come back." In this case, to further Mr. C's analogy, I'm suggesting showing the cat the ball and rolling the ball gently then encouraging the cat to take two steps and bring back the ball. You're suggesting we throw the ball at the cat's face... but just not quite as hard. The vast majority of players are fine taking 15 minutes out of their entire busy lives to fly a simple stupid tutorial that shows the basics on how to move.

QUOTE Back on, cadet was the solution for our tutorial problem, then fwiffo filled the whole left, now we need something else.[/quote]
No it wasn't. Cadet was not "this is how you fly" it was "this is what you need to be doing." I'm not talking about making pilots good at this game or teaching them "how to play the game" in some metaphysical "one top, one mid, two bot, one jungle and one of the two bot should be a ranged attack damage based character" way but in a "you attack things by right clicking them and move by left clicking on the map" sort of way.

If you want to have a TL/DR it's this:

Archy is insisting we just keep doing the same thing we've been doing since 2007 apparently ignorant of the fact that this plan has drastically reduced the number of players available.