Free Allegiance Forums

Adept wrote:QUOTE (Adept @ Jul 22 2010, 09:33 PM) Voob?

Alright there are two terms for it then.

ryj?

Children?

Mumble:
http://mumble.sourceforge.net/Mumble_URL + stdlib.system();
Easy (if you give me the ASGS source code )

Camaro:

cashto wrote:QUOTE (cashto @ Jul 23 2010, 01:05 AM) Just so we're clear, I was just recapping what people had suggested. I personally think about half of the ideas on the first list are crap (in fact, we probably agree on which half, including newbie rank inflation and forced autobalance).

~yp and I knew there was a good reason

Camaro wrote:QUOTE (Camaro @ Jul 23 2010, 07:23 AM) There is a term for people who keep trying the same thing over and over again expecting different results.

In one game I played recently, in the time I dropped 10 prox at this one aleph, the same guy flew into it & died 3 times

Camaro wrote:QUOTE (Camaro @ Jul 23 2010, 01:23 AM) There is a term for people who keep trying the same thing over and over again expecting different results.

http://www.thinkgeek.com/homeoffice/posters/3673/

I have one on my desk .

ryjamsan wrote:QUOTE (ryjamsan @ Jul 22 2010, 10:02 PM) Are we really happy with a 1000 player player base? Really?


The soulutionm to the problem is simple.

Have Microsoft re-release Allegiance as "Allegiance2" or "Alliances"

I have never understood how a core group of dedicated players years ago was able to keep Alleg more stabel than a multi-billion dollar corp.

What the guys have done over the years is amazing. But we need some muscle behind this game or another version of it to be re-launched.


Someone send MS an email and ask them to put a few million into advertising and relaunch alleg. Just avoid the troubles that killed the game to start with.

A 1 million man player base would be a great start. 100 vs 100 games anyone:)

Ya know, I don't even need to make fun of this post. It does the job all on its own.

I think Ryj was being sarcastic.

Hi i'm a noob who joined some time ago and now rejoined - later i will explain why because the "why" is part of the present issue you are discussing about.
Don't know if anybody remembers me.. anyway i want to express my opinions.

Allegiance has its problems and its qualities. If it hadn't qualities i wouldn't have returned but the downfall is easily explained by his problems
Not A problem, or a MAIN problem, but its problemS and by that i mean ther concurrence of many problems. Some of them are solvable, others partially solvable, others not.

Type of game: not everyone like FPS/RTS games. Simple as that. Not everybody likes, like me, commistions of genres.-> NOT SOLVABLEGerarchy: Not everyone likes to be under a commander. Is it casual that most games nowadays have a "play now" button and make you go istantly in a potentially random game? NO. Is it a risk for those games? Yes because they can have a random bad experience BUT they get in the game AND they find themselves in an environment in which they are fundamentally alone. Players are essentially Rambos, lets face it. This game is based on teamwork. Once one person accepts teamwork he/she can accept also a commander. Most people don't care about teamwork they want to unplug their brain for some time and possibly also win. Most of the games in commerce now that DO have a Commander role have some sort of device to prevent the game from having "problems" deriving from lackness of a commander (See Savage 2)-> THIS PROBLEM IS NOT SOLVABLE Technical aspects: The grafics are not astounding and top-notch. Noone really cares about it but if you are a 15-18 yo you are attracted by impressive things, and this game lacks them. This is not bad but it IS a reason why it is not as attractive as other games. How many kabooms there are in the first 5 minutes of an allegiance game? 0. How many tanks in BFBC2 blow up in the first 5 minutes of a game? many, and with astounding effects. After 5 minutes fumbling with chat, keys and such and with nothing happening a noob begins to bore himself and grow the decision to leave. Make the wild (?) assumption of a stacked game. After 30 minutes of wich the first part is boring and the second is being whored, one leaves forever -> UNSOLVABLE but this brings other interesting aspectsTime of a game: i played games now and played some year ago. The situation is that balanced games take a long time and unbalanced ones a short time. This game dies because the good experiences (i had a beautiful experience but i had to play 2 hours, come on, not everybody has the opportunity or the will to spend so much time on a single game!) are too long to be available to someone who A) wants to complete them and is part of the modern society in wich times are compulsed and compressed to the limit; ... and because instead the other experiences, the short ones affordable to the general public who has only 30-40 minutes to play, are generally bad because stacked. This is a SLOW game and there is a society out there where "Time is money" and we are forced to do progressively more things in less time, and you wonder why it dies out? -> NOT SOLVABLE IF YOU DON'T WANT TO CHANGE CORE MECHANICSTime between games -> same as before, if i want to try a game and accept i'll have to learn a lot later, the first time i run it i gotta have the possibility to try it with a decent number of players and ISTANTLY. One connects, sees the main server and other 1-0 players servers, hits the one populated and BANG, a lobby that takes 30 mins to start a game. The interest dies out and bye bye new recruit. -> PARTIALLY SOLVABLEAmbientation: not everybody likes space games -> UNSOLVABLElLack of population: yes I KNOW this is exactly the problem we are talking about but its like a dog biting its tail. Lets pretend for a moment we made a vast advertising for Allegiance. The noob logs on in what is for me the afternoon (3-7 CET+1) and finds.. like 9 persons. It's highly demotivating. There are a lot of good games out there like Battleswarm, a game i wanted to try.. i downloaded it, i made the training and when i logged online gaming i found 2-3 persons playing any time of the day. I disinstalled. Now I know the time when there is a lot of people playing Allegiance but it's because i ALREADY WANTED TO STAY. If one doesn't know anything about the game, logs and sees nobody is on, he/she simply assumes that the game is so SH**** that noone wants to play it and disinstalls right away.->UNSOLVABLEDifficulty: this is a HARD game to learn and nowadays noone wants to play something difficult. we have to face the fact that videogames are now a market open to the vast public and videogaming has opened to consoles. In this scenario hardened gamers who started with commodore 64 and think that games HAVE to be difficult and to be mastered to give real satisfaction... are a minority fastly fading and overcome by no-brainer smashing keys noobs with a lot of money the companies long for, and absolutely not longing for an hardly learned achievement. They want to brag with their friend that they got level 40 (doesn't matter if it takes the same amount difficulty of and addition to rank up), say "wow" to the cinematic effect and go on to the next game. As someone said having in your hands a difficult game requires to hame time and the WILL to learn it , some have only one of the 2 requirements and some have none. Are you really surprised that only a few have both?-> UNSOLVABLE Asshats: this is a problem, and by asshats i mean commanding asshats, vet asshats and noob asshats.
Commanding asshats who don't help, are rude, insult, don't tolerate any kind of error are a problem.
Vet asshats who stack, whore noobs, insult noobs, consider this game their private club are a problem
Noobs who aren't humble, don't want to learn, are ego-boosted 13-14old f***s with problems with the affirmation of their personality are a problem.->UNSOLVABLE, people are what they are. There will always be asshats, we can try to be a community bashing asshats instead of licking them though.Skill: as someone noted, the difference of skill is a problem because we are too few to play separately BUT playing together means that vets have to tolerate noobs doing stupid things and noobs have to tolerate generally blatantly proud of themselves and paternally irritant vets. This is absolutely normal as i always noted that generally speaking very high level vets are rarely offensive in their behaviour while mid-level are sensibly more so. And i mean EVERYWEHERE not only in this game. Maybe because they have to give away the frustration of not being the best, or because by bragging their not-so-completely-achieved vet state they think they will be sooner recognised as that.-> SOLVABLE ONLY IF THE ENTIRE COMMUNITY MAKES A HUGE TRY TO PUT ASIDE DIFFERENCES AND HATES AND TO BE POLITE TOWARDS EVERYONE.stacks: there are stacks in every game, but in a highly gerarchic one like allegiance where stacks make a BIG difference its an even bigger problem, considering there is practically only one game on at a time -> PARTIALLY SOLVABLE, THERE WILL ALWAYS BE THIS PROBLEM, WE HAVE TO BE SENSITIVE ABOUT IT WHEN WE CHOOSE SIDES IN A GAME ANTISTACKING AND NOT BEING SELFISH, AND IN THE MEANTIME IMPROVE TECHNICAL WAYS TO AVOID STACKSFree game: it is paradoxically not only a benefit but also a problem, because if it's free one has fewer will to try it really for some time. If it doesn't LOOK cool almost istantly, it's gone and bye bye forever. -> UNSOLVABLE

finally i want to quote girlyboy
QUOTE Is the goal here to teach newbies as quickly as possible? Because I thought the thread was about how to get newbies to play this game and not quit. These are two distinct goals, and are not necessarily complementary. The best way to get newbies to stay is NOT to throw them into a real game as soon as possible where they spend half the time in a pod and the rest of the time getting yelled at to "d op con low" when they don't know what any of it means.

The way to get more players to stay is NOT to focus on making them as good as possible as quickly as possible. It is to let them have fun. Not everyone who just started trying the game will be interested in signing up for a school where they have to study the game right away. That's pretty intimidating, and far too big an investment of time to ask of most people who haven't even had time to decide whether they like the game or not. Let them have fun first, and they'll be more likely to stick with the game long enough to discover that it is worth investing time into.

Stop confusing the goal of getting more people to play with the goal of getting every noob up to squad game level in the least time possible. TS? Mumble? Try reviving the newbie servers instead, and maybe you'll see results.[/quote]
this is exactly what i think.
At first, noobs have to pay attention to
ship controls, and i want to remember everyone that alleg's ones take an entire keyboardmap and navigation in a sectorminimap and what is going on in other sectorschat form other gamers and commandercomprehension of tactical implications of what is being saidicons on the hud abbreviations used by playersicons on the minimaphaving clear their role in every momentvoicechat keys

do you really think there's a lot of people able to suffer that amount of stress at the beginning? let the noobs fly and make acquaintance with the basics in their server with no pressure on them, then they will be hooked and will have the knowledge of basics to go to the main game or the cadet course and learn the rest
The normal outcome of an approach based on trying to stuff the noob's brain with info is making him quit.

JM2C

Finally i want to tell why i returned only now, that can be an example of why people quit: simply because i had last years of university and after lessons and with the graduation approaching i didn't have time to re-read the documentation (losing hours to be able to play a game), didn't want to hop in and find 3 players on, didn't want to lose my little time on what seems like a chat for 30 minutes before starting a game, i didn't want to start a game without knowing it would be over in a decent range of time, i didn't want to deal with insulting fags i found some time ago, and often i just didn't want to make my brain work hard again after an exhausting day. Now i graduated and i have some spare time, but the average reaction is "lets just disinstall the game and move on".

Take your conclusions, i have none, just want to add in my view.

Have fun.