New players in advanced matches

[NallyNally]

Well, talking from (Extremely foggy) memory and what I've heard, novice games ARE THE DEVIL. People do whatever the hell they like including just spamming skills for chievs. My personal experience was only slightly better because I started off as a pilot with friends and a 4-pack. (Of the 4 of us, of course, I am the sole survivor.)

I would just make sure that the novice games are mandatory and enforced by CAs more often. Then again, you can specifically offer to run sandbox drills or tutorial games for newbies and people will just not give a damn.

And in the end that's part of the playerbase retainment issue: People just don't enjoy the game for more than a few hours of "HURR DURR I AM TRIPPUL GATLEEN SKWEED, I RAM PURRAMIDIONS" because the meat of it is in pulling off stuff (Whether effective or silly) with random people over the internet. Getting your ass handed to you is not very fun. And without the proper knowledge and at least a little skill, you WILL get your ass handed to you, OFTEN.

[TeddyBearMafia]

After a set of 12 straight wins by assorted high levels in Ressorius' 4v4 last night, I feel like some of the discouragement felt by the opposing team at 12-0 and 12-1 matches is very real. Watching the entire opposing team clear out is no fun at all, and prompted me/xemko/others to switch to the other team to try and balance things out. Again, however, it is hard to both fly on a high level and explain mechanics at the same time, when so much of the learned flying habits that I and others have are reliant on gunners and engineers being where I expect them to be.

As such, we die and I have trouble explaining to my crew precisely why. A number of them end up blaming themselves and apologizing for things they had no control over. It's a bit unfortunate, but there's a lot of depth to GoI that has to be experienced rather than shown for people to really understand. For example, captain teamwork: crazy king is almost incomprehensible to newish players, and even 2+ deathmatches will result in steamrolls due to not just refined ship composition but experience flying in formation with other allied ships.

Now, I've seen lots of new players also stick it out and do a really great job of learning and adapting, and in pretty much every lobby the advanced players will try and help new players with their loadouts, but I'd say this is more the exception than the norm. However, I don't think there's much to do about this: I don't want to tell people they're 'not good enough' to play with me, I think competitive is the only realm where that kind of exclusivity should happen. I had a lot of fun as a newbie when experienced players let me on their ship and tolerated my noobishness, and I learned quicker that way, as long as someone kept explaining to me WHY I lost/died. I hope that's the kind of supportive environment we continue to propagate so the player-base can grow.

[Kaeldian]

I haven't logged much time, but I'm starting to see a hint of the depth the guy above me talked about that's hard to explain unless you experience.  I spent a great deal of time as the main Engineer on a Junker last night.  After a bit of time, I found myself locked into a "cool down pattern" that I never grasped until I snapped out of my "zen state" and realized I was unconsciously doing it.... I was actually repairing and chem spraying in a certain pattern in an optimized patrol route that kept the ship repaired and running.  I was hitting things in such an order that little time was wasted waiting on cooldowns..... 

Those of you who have played awhile probably understand what I'm saying.  But try to explain that to a new player..... they have no idea what a cooldown is half the time.  They just keeping hitting things with their hammer/spanner/pipewrench.  It doesn't occur to them move to something else while the cooldown is running....

[Squidslinger Gilder]

Well on the bright side with the scramble option there is a lot less QQing about stacking. Newbies would join and get 5-0'd all the time and then cry about it everywhere.

I kinda miss giving them my comfort response: "It isn't stacked if the opposing team manages 1 point!"

Course that wasn't very comforting come to think about it. But it was the truth. If they managed to score a point then it meant they actually learned something and applied it. Their side would just never hang around long enough to be able to learn more than that. Just little balls of rage unwilling to put any effort in turning that from a 5-1 to a 5-2 and eventually...they'd force the "stacked" team to start using serious builds.

[HamsterIV]

@Kaeldian
I am glad you are finding the depth to the engineering game. The time management aspect is one of my favorite aspects to GOI. Once you get really good, you can even add weapon usage to your repair routes.

[pandatopia]

I think once you hit 15 there needs to be a "pilot berserk" option where you can kill one of your crew.

You'd have to wear the commander elite costume to do this.

Gentleman pilots will be able to choke out the offending player with their golden gauntlet and throw them off the ship.
Lady pilots will turn them into a pincushion with their rapier.

Doing this will also give your remaining crew a "cowering in fear" bonus where their movespeed is cut in half but repair and reload cooldowns are reduced by half.

You gain rage whenever you use a voice command and crew do not respond in a timely fashion. You also gain rage whenever your ship dies or whenever your crew speaks for any reason. You can execute them at max rage.

[Imagine]

I think once you hit 15 there needs to be a "pilot berserk" option where you can kill one of your crew.

You'd have to wear the commander elite costume to do this.

Gentleman pilots will be able to choke out the offending player with their golden gauntlet and throw them off the ship.
Lady pilots will turn them into a pincushion with their rapier.

Doing this will also give your remaining crew a "cowering in fear" bonus where their movespeed is cut in half but repair and reload cooldowns are reduced by half.

You gain rage whenever you use a voice command and crew do not respond in a timely fashion. You also gain rage whenever your ship dies or whenever your crew speaks for any reason. You can execute them at max rage.

I'm going to hope this was meant as a sarcastic jest

[obliviondoll]

As a relatively new player, I've managed to get all 3 roles up to level 3. I feel perfectly comfortable playing outside of novice matches, but I still like sticking to novice matches at times because it feels less likely to throw me into the deep end against a full coordinated team.

It still happens even there, but it's less prevalent.

As for what I'd like to see, I think that players with only one role above level 4 should keep access to novice matches, BUT should be unable to select the higher-leveled role in novice matches, AND should be warned about the limitation and which role is unavailable when trying to load into a novice match. I'd also like to see players limited to ONLY playing novice matches until they have at least one role at level 3, or two roles at level 2 (basically 2 levels earned, regardless of same or different roles gives you access to non-novice gameplay). It might not be enough to get you good at the game, but by that point, you should have at least a basic grounding in the controls and functionality of the game.

As mentioned, I'm still a recent arrival. Even on my first day playing, less than 2 weeks ago, I was running into friendly faces in novice matches who were quite willing to offer helpful advice. Most of these players had only been playing a few weeks themselves, but as they had more experience than me, they had more of a feel for the game. It was pretty rare for information I heard in-game to contradict the established rules defined by regulars on the forums here - having read the forum and almost every page on the main site, I had as solid a grounding as I could without having the actual experience of playing - often things feel different from how the numbers and words line up.

If the experience I got as a new person is anything like the "average" new player experience, this game is actually one of the more welcoming online games I've played. That's not to say it's perfect (obviously), but Muse have got more right than they've done wrong, and I'm impressed by it.

[Imagine]

As for what I'd like to see, I think that players with only one role above level 4 should keep access to novice matches, BUT should be unable to select the higher-leveled role in novice matches, AND should be warned about the limitation and which role is unavailable when trying to load into a novice match.

Yeah, this sort of thing has been suggested before, but a level, say, 10 something but lvl 1 in everything else is still going to be doing far and away better than most of completely new players just by the virtue of knowing the game better. There has to be a cutoff somewhere, too much can be abused otherwise.

That having been said, and I say this to everyone I meet, once you get your feet under you and get the basics of the games, I highly suggest moving out of novice games asap and into some higher level matches. If you're willing to listen and learn from those and ask intelligent questions from the more veteran players in the game, like 99% of the time they're incredibly excited and eager to share their knowledge with you, and that's when you really get into the meat of the game.

[obliviondoll]

That's a good point.

Maybe your access to novice matches and to non-novice matches should be based on your total number of level-ups earned?

So when you start with only a total of level 3 (0 levels earned), you only have access to novice matches, but you unlock regular matches once you have 2 levels earned (total level = 5). As you level up, once you have 6 levels earned (total level 9 - minimum level required to guarantee at least one level 4 role), you should be locked out of novice matches. This means you could have two roles at level 3, and one at level 4, or you could have one role all the way up to level 7 and the others still at 1, or anything in between. An additional limit of being locked out of novice matches for a specific role when it reaches level 4 would be nice, imo, but possibly less necessary at that point.

Does that work better?

[-Muse- Grimick]

Could just give up on the Novice/Vet stuff and take it back to FFA. Then us vets can once again dine on the entrails of newbies while filling our goblets with their tears! Muahahahah!!

Or just give us an ejector seat button. Preferably linked to a gun that can fling them into our enemies when they give us any guff!

"Captain, they're firing noobs at us!"
"Very well, we'll respond in kind! Ready the noob thrower with Noobmuffins and Mr.HugNnoob!"
"Loading up! You may want to block list them now sir, their profanity arming timers are already going off!"
"Excellent, fire the noobs at will!"

This is clearly the new meta.

My crew and I discuss this all the time, and I think we have found a secondary use for the harpoon gun.
Just put the noob on the pooner, and fire him off the ship!

(also works with trolls, singers and your friends)

For a possible, serious solution. The lobby creation menu could have an option to filter out novices.
That way if you want a novice free game, you can host it without shattering the community.

If new players want to play with experienced friends it's still possible, but then the rest of us can play in actual "advanced" matches.

An interesting thought.

[RomanKar]

Let's look at this from a different angle.

How much time did we veterans spend in Novice matches?  I'd say I maybe spent 1 or 2 matches there, max.  You don't sharpen steel with steel.  Novice matches can actually be a breeding ground for terrible habits.  What exactly is a noob supposed to learn from a noob?

In my humble opinion, you either have the disposition for this game, or you don't.  You either want to cooperate, or you don't.  For every terrible non listening noob who buffs the aft gun on a pyri or refuses to "just shoot the darn enemy" or "please repair the hull" there are equal amounts of people who genuinely want to learn and be an important part of the team.

Ask yourself, "How did I learn this game?"; "What was it that really got me hooked on this game?"

I'd be willing to bet my jazz music that the answers to either of those questions is not Novice Games.

[Mean Machine]

Let's look at this from a different angle.

How much time did we veterans spend in Novice matches?  I'd say I maybe spent 1 or 2 matches there, max.  You don't sharpen steel with steel.  Novice matches can actually be a breeding ground for terrible habits.  What exactly is a noob supposed to learn from a noob?

In my humble opinion, you either have the disposition for this game, or you don't.  You either want to cooperate, or you don't.  For every terrible non listening noob who buffs the aft gun on a pyri or refuses to "just shoot the darn enemy" or "please repair the hull" there are equal amounts of people who genuinely want to learn and be an important part of the team.

Ask yourself, "How did I learn this game?"; "What was it that really got me hooked on this game?"

I'd be willing to bet my jazz music that the answers to either of those questions is not Novice Games.

Most of veterans are playing this game for very long time, they started when no one was really much experienced.

I guess you would be surprised how I learned the basics - from novice matches, along with a little guide reading, doing tutorial and spending a little time in sandbox. I checked tutorial in game to see what are the weapons on my preset ship doing and then I went to novice match to try them out. I didn't bother with ammo tough, because I thought it's more important in normal matches and I was right. I was better off shooting with normal ammo than using other ammo that would do more bad than good.

I wanted to learn basics first, so I did and I haven't got any problems when I tried normal matches then, because when captain gave orders and advises, I understood what he's saying, because I knew the basics. When I try to tell my lvl 1 gunners and engineers what to do now, they are confused, because they have no idea even what mallet is. That is if they even listen, mostly they don't.

I am happy to help, but if you haven't done tutorial or you haven't payed attention to it, then you'll have hard time and I'm not going to explain every single person all the basics that they should know already, if they are joining normal match. Sorry, it's just too much and too many of them. Those lvl 1 players keep leaving and new ones are coming, match after match. Sorry, I want to play, not spend 50% time in lobby, because no one wants to listen to captain and change equippment, 30% in game telling them how things works and then only 20% playing, because we'll get destroyed, because no one knows what they are doing.

Sometimes I get a newbie that actually talks or at least reads the chat and he listens! And those players, I am very happy to help them!
Unfortunately, they are rare examples.

[Dutch Vanya]

If you communicate. You are too good for novice matches.

[-Muse- Grimick]

Let's look at this from a different angle.

How much time did we veterans spend in Novice matches?  I'd say I maybe spent 1 or 2 matches there, max.  You don't sharpen steel with steel.  Novice matches can actually be a breeding ground for terrible habits.  What exactly is a noob supposed to learn from a noob?

In my humble opinion, you either have the disposition for this game, or you don't.  You either want to cooperate, or you don't.  For every terrible non listening noob who buffs the aft gun on a pyri or refuses to "just shoot the darn enemy" or "please repair the hull" there are equal amounts of people who genuinely want to learn and be an important part of the team.

Ask yourself, "How did I learn this game?"; "What was it that really got me hooked on this game?"

I'd be willing to bet my jazz music that the answers to either of those questions is not Novice Games.

Woah. You're Jazz music? Herdcore bet.

You are absolutely right. I liked the game as a novice.

But I got hooked when I played on Zincathalon's ship and actually learned the full depth of the game.
It was like turning the corner and BOOM. Lights everywhere. Yummy happy victory lights.