Why we REALLY need playerbase growth

[Spunkmeyer]

peet's comment about a community split got me thinking... I'll put this out there so those of you who are truly addicted may be tempted to contribute a bit more

As you can tell by the leaderboard, we have an active playerbase of about 400 people. This lets us have pretty good games, most of the time.... OTOH, you can't really get a decent game going outside "prime-time", it's pretty impossible to get a big game going, a lot of delays since nobody will comm, squads can't always show up with a lot of players etc. This is all stuff you are familiar with and don't really worry about much. It's been like that forever, right?

The REAL problem is the bottleneck we have in terms of developers, modders, modelers, trainers, writers etc (and I'm sure on the administration side of things as well.) There are often just one or two people who are key in these fields and when they drop off the face of the earth, as it happens, it's a huge PITA to find a replacement and progress slows down to a crawl because the available 'talent' pool is so tiny. If the playerbase is bigger, then so are the potential volunteers to fulfill these positions.

There are big projects that can help a lot:
*Make the game visible on Google (including things such as a name change since Allegiance is such a generic term, other SEO, more content, but opening up the forums would be a good first step)
*In-game tutorial/hints. This is a huge amount of code work, but the improvement will be tremendous.
*An effort to weed-out 'hidden exceptions' in the core or make them visible in the user interface in a bid to simplify the learning curve. (The rip indicator on IC miners, upcoming miner capacity bar are good examples of the latter)

But the key to getting a bigger playerbase is doing what's already being done, but better. You already know the people responsible for getting this stuff out there (kudos, I'd name names but I'm sure to miss quite a few). We need:

*More, better, clearer documentation
*More 1on1 live newbie training
*More proactive in-game help offered to newbies (who don't know what they don't know)
(BTW, if you are going to boot a newbie for destructive behavior, PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE, tell them why and that they can get back in with a new nick. A lot of commanders are simply not doing this)
*More promotion

Food for thought. Allegiance with a 2000-strong playerbase will be five times better than it is today, not because we'll have more players on the servers, but because we'll have a lot more people improving the game as well.

[Mastametz]

While I agree that improving the game in many ways is...good....
Having a larger player base won't automatically make everything sunshine and rainbows in the Allegiance community.

The forum will be flooded with "I got booted for sucking" threads, and if you try to encroach further on a commander's booting rights, there will be nobody left to command this game at all.
You'll have more people to delegate tasks to, but at the same time, more people to hold up projects by not completing their tasks; More opportunities for certain immature developers to freak out if they aren't getting their way and try to ruin the game for everybody; More opportunities for a mom to look over her kid's shoulder on the forum and decide to spearhead a pointless lawsuit based on some nonsense she read; the list goes on.

This community is not PREPARED for a larger player base. Enforcement is not PREPARED for a larger player base. Development is not PREPARED for a larger player base. The server admins are not PREPARED for a larger player base.

Enforcement has to get their priorities in order and stop establishing the precedent that it's okay for people to complain about nonsensicle things and waste enforcement's time.
As it is we suffer from frequent server instability and crashes, the servers are going to explode if the player base multiplies 5x, and I don't think " getting better servers" is going to solve the problem.
TE and such have to figure out a way to put them in a place of immunity as far legal issues go or you can bet your ass they're just going to leave completely do to stress caused by paranoid people.
and what about core development? Not that anyone takes Community Core seriously anymore anyway.... but what happens when get a thousand new players who are bad at the game and then decide they are qualified to contribute to balance discussions? This is why trying to make changes based on a democratic process...and democracy in general... is stupid.

Frankly I think trying to make this game mainstream is incredibly unrealistic. There's so much work to be done to make that feasible that... might as well just make/find a new game.
Games with large player bases have a HUGE dedicated team of PAID staff to handle things. and even at that, said games are ridden with bugs, balance problems, and compatibility issues.

Hell, we're still suffering from code bugs left in the game since it was released, not to mention all the additional code bugs created since core changes started being made.
The entire game needs to be rewritten.

[LANS]

QUOTE *An effort to weed-out 'hidden exceptions' in the core or make them visible in the user interface in a bid to simplify the learning curve. (The rip indicator on IC miners, upcoming miner capacity bar are good examples of the latter)[/quote]
There's still quite a bit of hidden info required to be any good at the game. Effective scan range still needs to be calculated by hand for the most part, but I don't expect any of this to change anytime soon.

QUOTE *More, better, clearer documentation[/quote]
Check the wiki, do it yourself.

QUOTE *More proactive in-game help offered to newbies (who don't know what they don't know)[/quote]
Some of us do this when we can, its hard when newbies don't read the chat anyways.

QUOTE (BTW, if you are going to boot a newbie for destructive behavior, PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE, tell them why and that they can get back in with a new nick. A lot of commanders are simply not doing this)[/quote]

http://www.freeallegiance.org/forums/index...showtopic=61882

[raumvogel]

I think we should take 2 factions and give instructions to newb commanders on exactly what to buy, in what order and how to manipulate the miners. Then when 2 newbs decide to go against each other, they will both have instructions on how to play against the faction that they are going against.This will reduce the stress of commanding and may produce more commanders. The few we have boot quickly out of frustration, which is understandable, but not good for the player base.

[Psychosis]

QUOTE (raumvogel @ Feb 27 2011, 12:27 PM) I think we should take 2 factions and give instructions to newb commanders on exactly what to buy, in what order and how to manipulate the miners. Then when 2 newbs decide to go against each other, they will both have instructions on how to play against the faction that they are going against.This will reduce the stress of commanding and may produce more commanders. The few we have boot quickly out of frustration, which is understandable, but not good for the player base.

how about you have the ACS standard opening set pre/defs, so you literally unlock tech in the order that a good ACS com would?

that would actually be a really cool training core, hella linear

start by clicking your proposed game path, it then unlocks your correct builds
once you have completed the basic purchases, it then unlocks some tech
simple linear progression to endgame.

[SP4WN]

QUOTE (Spunkmeyer @ Feb 27 2011, 12:41 PM) The REAL problem is the bottleneck we have in terms of developers, modders, modelers, trainers, writers etc (and I'm sure on the administration side of things as well.) There are often just one or two people who are key in these fields and when they drop off the face of the earth, as it happens, it's a huge PITA to find a replacement and progress slows down to a crawl because the available 'talent' pool is so tiny. If the playerbase is bigger, then so are the potential volunteers to fulfill these positions.

The problem with this is, as you well know, is the simple fact that a large majority of allegiance players are extremely vocal, obnoxious and ungrateful bunch of bastards(no offense), which really turns off a LOT of people who can and have developed for allegiance over the years. The community likes to bitch and whine about development like their opinion is the only one that matters and they deserve to make the final decision. Considering the work isnt paid, the only real motivation for doing the work is literally seing the game become bigger and better while you have a hand in it, and the loving kudo's from your peers.

QUOTE (Psychosis @ Feb 27 2011, 06:47 PM) how about you have the ACS standard opening set pre/defs, so you literally unlock tech in the order that a good ACS com would?

that would actually be a really cool training core, hella linear

start by clicking your proposed game path, it then unlocks your correct builds
once you have completed the basic purchases, it then unlocks some tech
simple linear progression to endgame.

Thats a really good idea

[Aquamarine]

As a new Noob, I can't complain about help offers in game. The documentation on the Wiki is fine, at least for scouting, probing and nanning. The tutorial vids in the forum are a very nice thing too, and there's enough guidiance material available to get a fresh player online.

I think that the problem is the learning curve of the game itself. I've been flying Falcon 4.0 now for almost 10 years and was looking for a new challenge, that's why started playing Allegiance in the first place. I'm not afraid of reading through lots of text, and I'm used to follow orders, even if that means that others on my team get the kills. I simply believe that both the first and the latter scares the average gamer away.

I tried to recruit some friends for Allegiance, but as soon as I mentioned team oriented gameplay, most of them rejected. They prefer games like CoD where they constantly complain because nobody covers them.

[Mastametz]

There's a reason Allegiance is abandonware - not because Microsoft doesn't have the time or resources to deal with hacking/cheating/bugs and other such bull@#(!
but simply that Allegiance-Is-Too-Difficult-To-Play-To-Be-Lucrative.

Companies that want to make money make easy games or nerf their hard games until they become easy.

See: Blizzard.

Vanilla WoW vs present day WoW.
Every expansion and patch they make the game progressively easier as to appeal to a larger player base, because it makes the most money.

[HJ_KG]

,

[Jersy]

I like the idea about the "NewbCommCore" with predefined tech progress.

It got me thinking a bit and I brainstormed up a few other ideas:

In-game step-by-step guide:
- Chain of devels with clues in their description. Researching devel equals moving to the next clue.

LiteCore
- Simplified core with less options and maybe just one techpath and faction, aimed at small-ish fast games on small maps (where one game should never last more than 45 minutes). More "Counter-Strikish", could be said. Easier to understand, less game mechanics to learn. Not more than five roles to assume (commander, scout "engineer", dogfighter, stealthfighter and basekiller would probably be a good starting "five"). Keep the more complex cores, so that more challange awaits those more capable.

Basically, if large companies get more players by making their games easier, then the same tactic can be used in allegiance, because with cores, it can be several games in one neat package.

Any form of "Drone Core" might also help a bit, since it would allow the minimum of two players to actually have fun, when nobody else is around (when someone now want's to bring some people to Allegiance, he has to throw a whole LAN party, which would probably end with "Man, I don't know how to play this game, let's play Unreal, dude...").

In short:

One of the possible sollutions might be more cores, each one taking the player a bit further up the learning curve. Maybe CDT-ish courses/tests/etc. for official advancement from "level X core" to "level X+1 core" (of course, nothing would prevent anyone to just hop in all the way to the most complex core).

...

Oh man, so much words - I did it again... I hope not all of it is a complete nonsense :-D