We should not let...

[Elzam_]

Thing is, what's the point of these changes if you keep the newbs but lose the vets? Allegiance is a fun game. In all honesty, if a newb does the training missions, they should be OK in a game. They know how to nan, how to control their ship, and how to fight. Odds are, they're gonna ask questions when they get in because they *WILL* need help. If they don't, well in my opinion, if you join a game, don't know how to play, and don't wanna ask for help, you probably don't want to play and will leave. It doesn't hurt to just tell a newb to come along with you on your epeen raising mission of whoring the other guys to at least raise their confidence. I don't mean to make newbies sound like dogs, but if you pat them on the head for peeing on the newspaper instead of the rug, they'll continue to pee on the newspaper. POSITIVE REINFORCEMENT WILL TEACH NEWBS TO STAY BETTER THAN NEGATIVE REINFORCEMENT!

tl;dr

If you change the game to fit newbs but it gets rid of vets, you killed allegiance to save it. Teach newbs in game, compliment them for doing something right, point out what they do wrong so they don't do it again. Mission accomplished.

[Youngmoose]

QUOTE (Elzam V. Branstein @ Jul 20 2010, 03:23 PM) If you change the game to fit newbs but it gets rid of vets, you killed allegiance to save it. Teach newbs in game, compliment them for doing something right, point out what they do wrong so they don't do it again. Mission accomplished.

Vets are NOT the lifeblood of this game. Newbies are. There are less then 5 people in this community whom I would deem indispensable. Everyone else can and eventually will be replaced. Alleg is dying now. Changes need to be made.

Another suggestion. According to the leaderboard, the mean AS rank is 7.5, the median is 8.3. Rewrite autobalance so that if a team is down AS only an 8+ can join it. If a team is up AS, only >8 can join it.

[SaiSoma]

QUOTE (Youngmoose @ Jul 20 2010, 04:27 PM) Alleg is dying now.

I would disagree with this statement. Everyone keeps saying that, and I'm tracking the number of active players and it isn't going "up" but it does vary and there are cycles. I wish we could see a history of active players for the last 2-3 years, but we can't. We're now tracking that info and are already seeing trends and will continue to do so.

Yes, we need more players, but no, I don't think Alleg is dying. If you think so, please post flyers, call people, etc, and help marketing get stuff done. I'm out of time right now or I would be pushing it more myself.

[Elzam_]

QUOTE (Youngmoose @ Jul 20 2010, 05:27 PM) Another suggestion. According to the leaderboard, the mean AS rank is 7.5, the median is 8.3. Rewrite autobalance so that if a team is down AS only an 8+ can join it. If a team is up AS, only >8 can join it.

Are you saying Newbs are without value?

Spidey v Terran (Names chosen at random)

Spidey is up 10 AS. So he gets a newb. Team numbers are 11 v 10 with spidey up a newb.

New newb wants to play. Either A. Spidey can pick him up and unbalance the teams further (12 v 10 and what if it's a fake newb?) Or random player X has to fly for Terran with a rank greater than 8 So newb can play.

If we go with A. Spidey can raise a newbie army (that'll have fun) and destroy the opposing team (Do NOT use decimate when trying to convey the idea of "Destroy" btw. It means a whole new thing) and Terran's team will be upset that they lost to NUMBERS not to a team. If we go with players continually needing to join the other team so newbies can join then they're still waiting in NOAT.

EDIT: All this is purely hypothetical.

I notice there are a greater number of newbies nowadays, surely you can get a bunch of em to a side game and teach em the ropes? Let's say I decided to make a side game for newbs, just get me another commander (Yiggz, Sarajevo, someone willing to organize a training game like AFS does(?) *Not in AFS anymore, don't know what goes on) and you can go about teaching them that way.

[Youngmoose]

Perhaps dying is too strong of a term, but the fact remains that our numbers have steadily declined over the past 3 years.

[Xeretov]

QUOTE (Youngmoose @ Jul 20 2010, 05:27 PM) Rewrite autobalance so that if a team is down AS only an 8+ can join it. If a team is up AS, only >8 can join it.

Put an exception for anyone with a newbie tag in there though. I often convince a comm who is down to accept a (0) if there's another (0) I can get to join the team thats up. They both get to play and neither team gains or loses anything. By the time they lose the newbie tag they should understand why they can't join, but imo not before.

This would need cooperation from comms to those directing newb traffic.

QUOTE (Adept @ Jul 20 2010, 05:01 PM) c) Be extra nice to newbies.

I think some newbies need a firm weeding out though. Namely the loudmouthed VC spammers who call us retarded for trying to explain ranks or nanning to them. They are incredibly frustrating to deal with.

[Youngmoose]

QUOTE (Elzam V. Branstein @ Jul 20 2010, 03:35 PM) Are you saying Newbs are without value?

I said nothing of the sort. If you want inferences, then an accurate one would be: Newbs generally have less value to a team than vets.

This idea will not solve the entire problem. there is obviously no panacea for this, but I beleive it will help to balance games. How many times have you seen joenoob join a team, only to have 3-4 vets instantly jump on the other team. I've seen it more times than you have teeth in your head. This will force people to balance the game or not play, which is the way it should be. Unbalanced games are not fun, ESPECIALLY for newbies.

[cashto]

Ah, this topic again.

Yes, we're in the middle of the summertime dip, but there is also a secular trend towards fewer players. Well, you can say that nothing lasts forever and someday we're going to have to make peace with the inevitable mortality of this game. But I'm not totally sure I buy that. This is a unique and timeless game, IMO. If people are still playing pac-man today then I'm sure people will still be playing allegiance 20 years from now.

I agree that unbalanced games are part of the problem. But autobalance is not the solution. If someone is faced with a choice between playing for someone they hate, or not playing at all, law of unintended consequences will kick in.

Autobalance for commanders, OTOH, is something I can get behind. AwesomeVet(20) vs UberNoob(7) will never, ever, ever, ever be a balanced game.

But I don't think it's a technological problem, but a people problem. This game that should never ever get started? It happens all the time. Either it gets launched that way, or someone inevitably mutinies. Maybe AwesomeVet thinks he's doing the community a favor by saving the rest of us from the spectre of UberNoob(7) vs SuperClueless(8), but they're not. Even if I'm tearing my hair out trying to get the comm to listen, noob on noob action is still a hell of a lot more fun than the whorefest alternative. No one should ever join a game thinking "well, it's my civic duty to keep the game going even though we have no chance of winning this". That @#(! gets old. It drives a lot of players away.

Late night often ends up dying because AwesomeVet takes GC (Jimmying up the settings purely optional at this point); the only person stupid enough to challenge him in NOAT is UberNoob, and everyone sits around waiting for Ubernoob to get more than three players so they can join AwesomeVet's side, until some point where AwesomeVet says $#@! it, I'll launch it 3 on 3 and people will be forced to join.

Stop. Doing. This. @#(!.

Step down. Encourage a newbie to step up. They may lack many things but enthusiasm is not one of them. You will get a game going.

I believe the newbies are our future. Yes, it is momentarily frustrating to backseat newbies, or even fly next to them, sometimes. But it's a hell of a lot more fun than rushing Rix heavy scouts for the zillionth time in a month, and more than that, it's an investment for a better Allegiance.

If you cannot find it within your inner carebear to advise someone without heaping abuse or discouragement on them, then for the love of god hold your tongue and let someone else do it. A plague of clueless newbies is the best thing that could happen to us. Without them, Allegiance will just be an ever-dwindling clique of die-hard vets who slowly evaporate away without replacement.

[Hellsyng]

QUOTE (Youngmoose @ Jul 20 2010, 04:27 PM) Vets are NOT the lifeblood of this game. Newbies are. There are less then 5 people in this community whom I would deem indispensable. Everyone else can and eventually will be replaced. Alleg is dying now. Changes need to be made.

I believe this is true to a point. But if today all of our vets left and didn't come back this game would lose a whole lot more than just a few players. The vets are the lifeblood that is keeping this game going, but newbs are what gives the game NEW blood and talent into the game making it more interesting. Without one the other just isn't interested.

[SharpFish]

As a 0 said on the server the other day "I have never played any MMO in which the old players so were abusive to the new guys". That is the problem in a nutshell. Look at the thread here the other day in which a new commander asked for advice, and the pages of outright and vicious abuse he received for daring to ask for help. Will he try again? He was explicitly told not to. Equally, telling people to go off and read thw wiki, however useful it may be, before they are so presumptious as to join a game is grossly offputting.

Then there's the stacking. Other people have mentioned this already but it is persistently farcical. What Youngmoose describes happens routinely; you often see one team stuffed full of vets and the other with numbers. It's both ridiculous and pathetic. It is far from uncommon to see games that have 50-80% difference in AS, and it's almost always the case that the stronger team will have the larger number of players too.

There's not much that can be done about this. If you guys are determined to be arseholes, nothing will help. But I will offer one concrete suggestion.

One of the reasons there is opposition to autobalance is that it may put AFK players on teams. So, if you can, change the way it works so that you have to check a box to indicate that you are ready to play, this propblem goes away. Teams are then only assembled from players who have actively registered their presence. This would go a long way to getting games going faster, which new players definitely want, and some way to solving the stacking issue. Just get on a game and go, rather than circling like vultures waiting for a stack to join.

Actually I have another suggestion. In the chat interface it is difficult to talk to new players becuase of all the post mortem stuff from the last game, miscellaneous trash talk, voice chat spam etc. So I suggest that when a game ends, comms should say, in their bold and visible text, that newbs should join Team Chat to ask any questions they have. When everyone is sitting on NOAT shooting the breeze it is basically empty, so lets use it as a venue for talking to newcomers directly.