We should not let...

[SaiSoma]

QUOTE (spideycw @ Jul 20 2010, 05:26 PM) Very little commentary on the fact that so many people are so horrible now that we lose tons of old players.

I even saw aarmstrong command a pickup game a month ago and state "he remembered why he stopped playing pug's" after the quality of his team was so abysmal. And no his team was not newbies they were people who should have been half decent.

Theory: Get on ts or mumble.

Listen to squad games. 99% of organization is vocal, NOT vc. 99% of the FUN in alleg is TALKING to your friends about what you are doing and how you are helping each other, dogging the other team, whatever. The MOST fun i have playing alleg is when there are great ts or mumble things.

TS and mumble are both dead most of the time when I get on in the evenings. There might a few players, but they don't separate into teams and most players are NOT on.

Can we encourage vets and newbs to get on either mumble or ts?

[HSharp]

The future is mumble so just need to get more people on mumble and advertise the mumble IP so most players know what it is so they can tell the newbies.

[Gandalf2]

QUOTE (SharpFish @ Jul 20 2010, 11:07 PM) 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.

That 0 was a bit of a twit - we explained to him for ages why he wasn't being accepted onto a team that was about 30-40 down in rank, he just yelled abuse at us all - see Sharpfish's quote. That "abuse" was "not letting him play" despite explaining why - and that he would get accepted onto the other team as soon as a spot arose. Eventually he got onto the other team and filled the chat-box up with more useless chat, eg what do I get for a higher rank? What's the point of levelling up then? As well as the odd bit of general "you all suck" abuse that he was giving us before too.

[SaiSoma]

QUOTE (HSharp @ Jul 20 2010, 07:15 PM) The future is mumble so just need to get more people on mumble and advertise the mumble IP so most players know what it is so they can tell the newbies.

we don't even have to give the ip. mumble.alleg.net works.

[RealPandemonium]

QUOTE (vogue @ Jul 20 2010, 07:07 PM) LOL??? Are you serious? If you've played ANY other mmo then alleg would be a cake walk, the only difference is that it's a small community so you see those same vets on a daily basis, and it seems like your getting ridden on more often. Honestly I can't think of a game in wc3 where I haven't been flamed/"abused" for just being worse than other players. Alleg is probably the first mmo i've come to that actually had vets that were ready to help and had a program even dedicated to teaching noobies. So don't use this excuse just because you get picked on.

You picked up the game pretty fast and built rapport with a lot of people early on. I wouldn't call your experience typical. Those less engaged people who quit on a regular basis are, in my opinion, discouraged by the 40 minute cooldown periods between games and the stupid epeen waving that goes on between veterans. Also by comms who never talk to their team or expect their team to be olympic-caliber when many of the team members are still learning, despite having played for many months.

Learning this game comes very slow if you don't have people nurturing you. Not everyone learns well on their own, and the veteran players in this game can appear so caustic, noobs don't care to ask for help. They don't feel that they're welcome to ask. After they've played for several months, they're still learning the game but are expected to perform to a standard they can't maintain. Because the community treats them as if they should know everything, they are discouraged from seeking advice or become complacent with their current skillset because they think they've hit a ceiling that won't readily be passed, if ever. If you don't pick up a lot of the game early on, it becomes extremely difficult to keep clocking in pug time as the atmosphere generated by the community wears you down. At least this has been true in my experience.

Voobs are not lost causes, but the community implicitly treats them as such. Anyone who isn't amazing after a few months is considered fodder to populate pugs. Squads don't pick them up, and they either quit or become starfire, with few exceptions.

[OTDT_Hunter]

QUOTE (fwiffo @ Jul 20 2010, 06:39 PM) what if AwesomeVet commander comes with handicap factor .1 where mining speed is +10% slower, 10% less yield, all ships 10% slower, 10% less ammo, damage, etc etc. similar to the way faction bonuses work but adjustable under game settings (but work across the board on all stats on top of the faction specific perks)

My only concern with this is maybe making gameplay as a whole worse. Maybe it wouldn't do anything to gameplay at all. I do think it is a good starting point for fixing one of the current problems though.

I think people are not really concerned about the current dip in players because of summer. More that we could and should have more players year round then we do. I think the fixes are easy we just don't have the "CEO" to make the decision not caring who it makes mad. Also I think our community suffers from to many chiefs not enough indians.

[link120]

We need more people like TC and fwiffo.

[raumvogel]

QUOTE (cashto @ Jul 20 2010, 05:48 PM) 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.


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.

{RaumVogel} - This is not going to happen. The problem is newbs are scared to command against vets. Then the vet gets discouraged because he A) Doesn't think he will win against the guy who steps up. or desides to give up command.
As I've said in the past: We need to develope an auto-command system like the IROC system of NASCAR racing. The COMMANDERS need to be balanced for the game to survive. How this is accomplished is irrelivent. The end justifies the means. - {end RaumVogel}

It is also important to do the following:
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.

Without newbs...we have nothing to do but whine about the "downfall" of our beloved game.

[Magician]

Here are some of my thoughts.

We tell newbs to play in the newb server before going into a main game. They must think we are bull@#(!ting them by telling them to go play by themselves in an empty server. The dysfunction of the newb server system cannot be ignored. Keeping those servers online with no obvious purpose or goal is just a waste of resources.

Joining a team in a main game is sometimes hopeless... Requesting! Requesting! Requesting! Requesting! Requesting! Requesting! Requesting! Requesting! Requesting! Requesting!

Is this because comms are not paying attention? If so, then R6 should improve notification for comms when new players request. If you can't do that, then make it so that all members of Command squad can accept players. Are comms ignoring newbs? Okay then don't complain when the population declines.

Between-round time needs to be limited and a countdown-clock running. It could be ten minutes to start with and then tweak it from there as experience dictates. When the clock runs out, the game launches no matter what the settings are. Squad games would be excluded. If the teams are grossly imbalanced, the server runs a flush and launches automatically. Then players will have to join on their own. Tough.

Instead of ideas like these, R6 will feature a #bootiny command that is somebody's useless pet project.

[OTDT_Hunter]

I think the hardest fix is the time between games. I think the biggest reason there is such a long delay between games is because during games it can get mentally exhausting after a game is over. Maybe not the 30 or less min games. The games that are 1 hour + are defintly draining. So after the game is over and you still want to play. More then likely you need atleast a 10 min break just to try another game. Maybe this is just for me.

I think the reason it is easier for most other games to start up so fast. Games don't last nearly as long as a game as ours does. BFBC2 round last 10-20 mins thne game starts over. Not nearly mentally draining as allegiance. If I played one round of BFBC2 for a hour of constant play I would need to take a break for sure. Most MMOs you play till you get what you need then quit/take a break. This is where the type of game allegiance is makes it only for the people who really love it to stay for the long haul.