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Feedback and Suggestions / Re: Making new players stay
« on: May 16, 2018, 02:32:42 pm »
The bottom line here is that there is no way to fix this problem without addressing the central issue of why novices lose (and they get disheartened because they are regularly defeated). Novices lose because Muse gives them the freedom to screw themselves.
Back when I played I sometimes had novices on my ship that followed my instructions, listened and learned. Under those conditions we have a decent shot at winning, even against experience opponents. Even when they lose they still take pride in going toe to toe against players with many more games than them, the game is still fun. When I've had the reverse, when novices wouldn't follow instructions, listen to advice or were generally assholes, defeat was all but assured. I was willing, although not to the degree that many CAs are, to put up with the awful experience this game frequently presented coaching novices, because of the positive experiences that went along with it. I can well understand why many folks are not so willing. Vets and CAs are not to blame for the teaching experience being an unstructured mess.
If you want novices to stand a chance against vets then they need vet captains, and those captains need total control over their ships. Sometimes you can get that by being a personable and friendly individual but if you want that to be a consistent experience then you are going to have to empower the folks you want to lead these novices. Otherwise it will be an unpleasant experience and rather than suffer through another extinguisher / spray / buff novice who wont listen the vets will team up with folks they know are reliable.
If you try to force vet players to babysit novices without giving them the ability to structure the environment, then all that will happen is the community will get even smaller. Vets leave all the time, I know plenty of old hands who no longer play, me for instance. If you try to force vets into leading novices more will leave unless something changes about that experience, and what is proposed here wont change enough. My suggestion, if the algorithm detects that a lobby is heavily stacked, it sends every player a message to that effect, and asks players if they would prefer to switch to a 'Structured Lobby'. If some threshold of players present agree then the lobby is algorithmically re-balanced distributing the players but with several important differences. (1) Captains can send any player on their ship to a spectator slot. (2) Pilot selects all load out options including kit for crew (3) If 3/4 pilots agree then one of the other pilots is demoted to crew and algorithmically replaced from those players present.
No solution which depends on splitting the community will work as the population is too low, and players are voting with their feet when it comes to coaching novices within the current framework so any solution dependent on people magically changing their attitude there is also doomed to failure.
Back when I played I sometimes had novices on my ship that followed my instructions, listened and learned. Under those conditions we have a decent shot at winning, even against experience opponents. Even when they lose they still take pride in going toe to toe against players with many more games than them, the game is still fun. When I've had the reverse, when novices wouldn't follow instructions, listen to advice or were generally assholes, defeat was all but assured. I was willing, although not to the degree that many CAs are, to put up with the awful experience this game frequently presented coaching novices, because of the positive experiences that went along with it. I can well understand why many folks are not so willing. Vets and CAs are not to blame for the teaching experience being an unstructured mess.
If you want novices to stand a chance against vets then they need vet captains, and those captains need total control over their ships. Sometimes you can get that by being a personable and friendly individual but if you want that to be a consistent experience then you are going to have to empower the folks you want to lead these novices. Otherwise it will be an unpleasant experience and rather than suffer through another extinguisher / spray / buff novice who wont listen the vets will team up with folks they know are reliable.
If you try to force vet players to babysit novices without giving them the ability to structure the environment, then all that will happen is the community will get even smaller. Vets leave all the time, I know plenty of old hands who no longer play, me for instance. If you try to force vets into leading novices more will leave unless something changes about that experience, and what is proposed here wont change enough. My suggestion, if the algorithm detects that a lobby is heavily stacked, it sends every player a message to that effect, and asks players if they would prefer to switch to a 'Structured Lobby'. If some threshold of players present agree then the lobby is algorithmically re-balanced distributing the players but with several important differences. (1) Captains can send any player on their ship to a spectator slot. (2) Pilot selects all load out options including kit for crew (3) If 3/4 pilots agree then one of the other pilots is demoted to crew and algorithmically replaced from those players present.
No solution which depends on splitting the community will work as the population is too low, and players are voting with their feet when it comes to coaching novices within the current framework so any solution dependent on people magically changing their attitude there is also doomed to failure.
