new players

[Lanliss]

I am aware that a lot of people hate new players. Many people want some solution to keep new players away from old players until new players are considered as good or better than "vets". This essentially means everyone wants the newbies to learn the meta and/or learn how to play in a way that fits someone's niche play style. There will be none of that here.

I am looking for truly applicable and useful ways to make sure new players learn important things. I do not want any suggestions involving level requirements or matches played. Levels mean nothing in my opinion, and someone could easily go through a hundred matches refusing to listen to anyone. So, none of that.

My idea is to have a specific set of achievements implemented. It could be made to not affect old players, and only apply to people who start the game "post achievements" so as to prevent someone who is all 45s from being forced into novice matches, simply because s/he never used the rangefinder. I was thinking there could be something like fifty of the achievements, all basic things like "extinguish 200 fires with extinguisher" or "block 100 stacks of fire with chem spray". Of these fifty it could be required to have at least 25, or 30 to be able to play advanced matches. Since these are important things I would hardly call collecting these achievement whoring.

If you have any additional ideas, or an idea all your own, please respond. After maybe a week, or I have seen enough ideas that I think could be applied easily and be effective, I plan to email a link to the devs, in the hopes that we can simultaneously help the new players, while ending the complaints of the old players.

[Crafeksterty]

No, its a wall that doesnt let you play with the rest and it encourages doing achievements.
Players at that stage may not even play anymore because the players they are forced with are boring or not allowing them to play the rest of the game.

I think an encouragement to make friends or communicate should be better emphasised. We cant directly control newbies or how a player learns the game.
Rather, emphasise having microphone or listening or forming a group with other people or making friends.

Hopefully, make players want to figure the game out togheter, instead of going gunner because pew pew.

[Imagine]

The problem is, that after playing some amount, some will get it, and other won't. Helpful advice to newbies has always been a topic in here as long as I can remember, but something like it will only go so far. It really does boil down to an individual basis at some point, there's no game which doesn't have it's fair share of newbies, and then those who continue to be ones even after playing for a while.

My advice is to deal with it. You're not going to get your perfect crew with perfect play ever time.

[Lanliss]

My goal, with my idea at least, was to prevent the new players from getting dropped into a game where they will A) be yelled at or ridiculed for not knowing very detail of the game or B) be put in a room with the very real possibility of getting destroyed, possibly leading them to believe the game is un-approachable for new players. And as far as encouraging getting achievements, that is not such a bad thing, as long as they have had the proper teaching. After my proposed plan, I would think that they will know enough not to bring buff, spanner, and extinguisher. They should by that point be able to figure out that they should mediate their hunting(sure bring a buff, as long as you know how to compensate and still be useful.)


In response to Imagine(responded while I was in the middle of writing this) I do not expect a perfect crew every time. I just want to help ensure that you do not get a terrible crew most of the time. I have no problem sucking it up and playing with the newbies, but I want to help those who either do not want or cannot handle playing with new players.

Also, I recognize that this might seem like a bull headed refusal of anyone else's ideas, but I am really just defending my idea for the purpose of full coverage. I want any possible information to be available when reading this thread, that way the devs can tell what people agree with and what they don't want at all.

[Crafeksterty]

Preventing newbies quite hard is not gonna go anywhere.
No one prevents level 1s in an mmo game to get to the highest level zone.

My suggestions is simply just more encouragement to Voice coms, listening or making clans/making groups or make friends.
Lure newbies into teamwork.

[Lanliss]

If only we had something, other than victory, to bait the trap with. Most seem to care less, right now anyway, about victory than whether or not they do thing their way.

[Kamoba]

The biggest issue is less about how well new players learn or how fast, but how vocal the anti-new players are, which is why in many cases forums should be taken with a pinch of salt.

As for helping players get over the learning curve, there are plans being made by CA's to arrange a regular tournament for novices (or just newer olayers) with the main focus in teaching them gameplay basics, once the ball gets rolling, it should help a lot.

But I will say, lately all the newer players I have met have been top notch people all eager to learn, one ally pilot apologising for his poor skills... Shortly before his ship won a 1v1 engagement against a higher level ship!

[Schwalbe]

I would rather rethink the tutorial. Recently some my friends from unversity bought the game and started playing (they are members of my clan, created for them). I teach them and what I need to say - the tutorial is almost always looked over even if I ask them to be careful. Even if they are - it foesn't cover anything important...

[Lanliss]

So Kamoba. Would this tourney be all novice, or would there be something like one CA per ship? Just curious because having an experienced player on a ship would help with learning quite a lot. But not more than one, as that would probably shift the focus off learning and more towards obeying the vets. Another thing would be to make sure you do not have CA pilots, as the novices need to learn both piloting and communicating with their fellow captain. This is all moot if you plan on only novices playing, but I thought I would offer my opinion. In the past I have found it is safer to assume someone did not think of something than to assume they did and be wrong.

[Kamoba]

One CA per ship (not necessarily pilot because people want to learn how to pilot too, but most likely pilot )
If needed have other CA's about too if we get enough people available at the same time.

I'm actually about to update the plan with an idea on the "tournaments"


Oh and yes likely novice only due to non-novice having no access to novice games

[Lanliss]

By novice only I meant no CA either. I was saying that my ideas to prevent a CA from carrying a ship were pointless if you did not plan on any playing in the first place. Also I think the best position for CA on the ship would be engineer. That would leave a slot for each class open for the new players, and the CA can take on the harder engie jobs, like keeping a chem spray cycle going.

[Kamoba]

That would also make it harder for the CA to watch what the crew members are upto and thus lower the learning pace...
Obviously not impossible.

Also I imagine with all the CAs being on the same page, we'd not "carry" the match but do more "evasive actions" to prolong engagements.

[Lanliss]

Fair enough. Forgot we were talking about CAs here, and not standard players. Much smaller risk of putting victory over teaching.

[Indreams]

I'm guilty of putting victory over teaching. Whenever I captain, I usually stop talking about ten minutes in, get completely focused on piloting, and gets angry when Engis fail me. Then this happens: 




But all jokes aside, its really patient work coaching a new player, and there isn't a great solution for it, maybe except for Muse to spend resources to make better tutorials, but I don't think better tutorials are on Muse agenda right now.

[Lanliss]

Teaching new players is one of the jobs for Community Ambassadors. That was the solution. CAs can join novice games no matter their level, allowing them to teach the novices. Which reminds me, I do not only want ways to separate players from each other in this thread. If you have a solution to help new players learn better, without banishing them to novice land, feel free to put those up too.