Allegiance as private club

MrChaos · Post by **MrChaos** » Mon Jan 18, 2010 8:08 am

Ok I've got something to say on just one thing Phoenix. We are very poor at retaining new players for even five games that count. There is no arguing the point. You can choose to accept or not as you wish. I am stating this with out bias or opinion. Why this is very open to discussion

To the rest of what or how we deal with @help I leave that to others since I wear the tag because I agree with the program. If changes are made I disagree with then I'll reconsider my participation.

Yes the @help on the newbie server is a good thing and as Camaro mentioned two is better then one. I alternated between commanding and coaching as the comfort level of the players who came and went seem to dictate. After about 1.5 hours I was toast and needed a break. The TeamSpeak idea is stupendous, please let's do it. Adept and Gandalf both posted very positive reviews elsewhere, may experience is very similar today. Did we "succeed" only time will tell but I think the answer is yes.

Your Pal
Mr Dress-Up

notjarvis · Post by **notjarvis** » Mon Jan 18, 2010 10:03 am

phoenix1 wrote:QUOTE (phoenix1 @ Jan 18 2010, 07:52 AM) I'm not sure what your point is.

@p1
I think juckto was criticising Adepts claim to be speaking for @Help and Marketing in the title of this thread. Nothing more.
@p1(again)

phoenix1 wrote:QUOTE (phoenix1 @ Jan 18 2010, 06:14 AM) 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.

This sounds like you are saying there are no problems at all. There is a problem in that the number of active players is decreasing, anyone can see that.

@MrC - What p1 was arguing in IRC was that maybe that's normal for on-line games that you have a such a low retention rate. I'm not sure whether he had any better suggestions though. TO me this comes across a little as pedantry and/or head in the sand about decreasing numbers.

Finally.......
My two pennies worth. I've said what I feel about the newbie server before. We should try and get active games going on it more. Not through rules -through encouragment. Forget about the bad habits- we want the new players playing games that are fun for them. We can retrain them later.

I liked the idea of having a newbie server specific core however.
Would it be possible to have a map set up where both teams start with all 3 tech-bases available? Then new players could try out all the different ships right from the start.....

Edit: minor changes. Removed slanderous comments about MRC and Chimpanzee at behest of my lawyers

Edit2: The chimp story stays out, as the chimp pressed hard and he has expensive lawyers MrC!

MrChaos · Post by **MrChaos** » Mon Jan 18, 2010 10:16 am

QUOTE @MrC - What p1 was arguing in IRC was that maybe that's normal for on-line games that you have a such a low retention rate. I'm not sure whether he had any better suggestions though. TO me this comes across a little as pedantry and/or head in the sand about decreasing numbers.[/quote]

Agreed, I got it, and to take the varnish of it:

So let's @#(! can this point and move forward. Allegiance needs to do a better job of retaining players no matter what, since we do not have the resources to have such an abysmal failure rate on retention and grow into a healhty community again.

edit: notJarvis I want the slanderous chimp story back in or you will hear from my representatives good sir!

Jimen · Post by **Jimen** » Mon Jan 18, 2010 10:33 am

There's no denying that our retention rate is comparatively low; what people likely disagree on (though they're having trouble expressing it) is how much we can improve it - obviously, a 100% retention rate is impossible, and while we know our current retention rate is low, how much each major cause of low retention contributes to our total is a hard thing to figure out. For example, the question is really "how much can we improve our retention rate by doing X reform to the current @Help/newb server system?". Adept thinks his idea will raise retention a whole crapload, P1 and I think it'll do very little, and P1 offers some much, much better ideas that should help newbies a fair bit.

Also, now that I've been reminded, it seems that there's an ASGS announcement that automatically informs people when they're no longer eligible to play on the newbie server...but for some reason (possibly a problem with the auto-bump to 5?) it's sent out when people reach rank 6 rather than when they're bumped to 5 - I didn't get it until I hit 6 briefly last week.

notjarvis · Post by **notjarvis** » Mon Jan 18, 2010 11:29 am

Jimen wrote:QUOTE (Jimen @ Jan 18 2010, 10:33 AM) Also, now that I've been reminded, it seems that there's an ASGS announcement that automatically informs people when they're no longer eligible to play on the newbie server...but for some reason (possibly a problem with the auto-bump to 5?) it's sent out when people reach rank 6 rather than when they're bumped to 5 - I didn't get it until I hit 6 briefly last week.

Feel free to bump my topic here

fwiffo · Post by **fwiffo** » Mon Jan 18, 2010 11:31 am

when i started playing, i didnt even know newbies are supposed to play on the newbie server.. i just hopped on to main right from the start and by the time i learned that there was fun to be had in the newbie server, my rank was already too high

ever since ive been too afraid to click on the newbie server for fear of that auto-ban...

from what i can remember, lots of people on main were very helpful, spidey in particular was very patient answering all my newbie questions. i wouldnt worry about the newbie servers teaching bad habits as these will be quickly "corrected" once they experience main. i dont think it'll make much difference which server newbies joined up as long as they could get into a game and play. after all, by downloading the game, they signed up for an ONLINE MULTIPLAYER game right? no point playing it single player or with 2v2 when you can have typical 10v10s on main...

SaiSoma · Post by **SaiSoma** » Mon Jan 18, 2010 1:42 pm

Ok P1. I'll make this short (posting from my phone is no fun).

I heard you state tht you don't think there is a prblem with retention w/alleg? It sounds like u are saying that things are fine as they are. If I'm wrong, then please tell me what u think the issues are and what ideas u have to address them. Don't respong to my ideas. Pretend I've never said a word. Post your own thoughts on the state of allegiance.

I'm NOT being sarcastic. I'm seriously interested in hearing what u have to say

Adept · Post by **Adept** » Mon Jan 18, 2010 6:48 pm

Cable wrote:QUOTE (Cable @ Jan 18 2010, 04:40 AM) I like the idea of @Help hosting new player games. If we had two @ help Commanders and restricted all new folks under 5 to those servers during certain hours. I would think that could work. It would take some coordination though.

I've done this with SouthPaw.

It was a success, the newbies had fun and are still around.

Elzam_ · Post by **Elzam_** » Mon Jan 18, 2010 6:57 pm

This falls back on my idea with the 2 experienced comms just sending orders to cons and whatnot and letting the newbs fly around shooting each other up.

TeeJ · Post by **TeeJ** » Mon Jan 18, 2010 8:04 pm

To the topic of not seeing @help tags; most of those involved with @help are also involved in many other things within the game or their own squads. This implies that those in @help are productive members of this community and wear many hats (not ^).

I don't mind wearing my @help tag, but I don't log in with it everytime for one reason; Sometimes I am in a mood to where it is very likely that I am going to tell someone to $#@! off while I am logged in. When I very first got the tag we were using hiders for them. I logged into a semi-latenight game to where a particular person and I had a nice (sarcasm) exchange of words. Once I realized I had the tag on, I esc x'd and came back under my main nick to berate him as he deserved.

I said this early on after @help was created....I am doing nothing really different than I was before the tag was created. I try to answer questions and help as best as I can. I do this because it was done for me, and it fits inline with my personality in all other life domains; helping others.

I can do this with, or without the tag, and I do. However I feel it is important that we wear the tags on the Main server so that if a new pilot is there, and he is aware that we @helps exist, they know who to ask.

*makes note to wear @help tag more often.* Guess I will have to keep my med levels more "even".

PS for pure awesomeness, copy and paste the link in my sig. I promise it is not a Rickroll, or anything of the sorts.