It's about not turning new players off in their first 10 hours or so of play. If people are noobstomped over the course of 10 hours, they usually won't want to play and that is one of the main reasons why we have big numbers of sales but a massive drop off of players. They go, "am I having fun? No? Okay, next game".
I got lucky when I started playing. There were fewer pro players, and I got the game bought for me with a bunch of mates and we just so happened to not get some epic player roflstomping everyone. For many, many people, they're not so lucky.
Pretty much. Huge influx of new players to dilute the pub stompers when I picked the game up at launch. You could make so many mistakes and still have your fun. Hundreds of hours later and you eventually pick up more than the basics. But I would have definitely stopped playing if I did not find the game fun at the time.
The issue right now is that there are not enough full servers to go around blocking people who played a certain amount of time. That and I do not think there is a great influx of rookies at the moment. Higher player games also tend to pan out different and trying to get people to play under a certain player count and with certain rules will not work because they will play the game the way they want to get the most enjoyability. If comp was that game mode it would be a whole lot popular and instead we get a bunch of 20+ player servers because people prefer those.
Besides last time we had a free weekend there was like 9k players vs the 1.5k at the time that use to play daily. That was more than enough to dilute things out a bit. Most people do not like the game because of performance. I think bringing back some of the 400k people they sold the copies to who do not play anymore would be ideal. I mean they tried bots, tutorials with videos and things still remain the same.
IMO, if rookies only is required it should be a certain amount of time during a sale or a free weekend and then they are open to everyone else after a few days.
The only problem I see with a rookie only server is that there may not be enough rookies to populate such a server. Aside from this, I'd like such an idea. It's true that a rookie who is willing to learn can learn a lot from a vet player, but let them do that after they've been introduced to the simple mechanics of the game. There's a LOT to learn from the start and sometimes hearing stuff from vets will only overwhelm them.
I don't know about ONLY playing Archaea, Godar and Nexzil, but I definitely think even the worst teams can learn something by doing that. I think I'm in the minority on that though, most people just get frustrated.
I totally agree man, we scrimmed All-In the other day and even though we got totally stomped I was still able to learn some things to work on. The only way to improve is by playing against better players
I don't know about ONLY playing Archaea, Godar and Nexzil, but I definitely think even the worst teams can learn something by doing that. I think I'm in the minority on that though, most people just get frustrated.
I totally agree man, we scrimmed All-In the other day and even though we got totally stomped I was still able to learn some things to work on. Once you have mastered the basics of the game, the only way to improve is by playing against better players
Fixed that for you. 9 out of 10 rookies will learn nothing from highly skilled players stomping them. Probably 5 of 10 of those rookies who get stomped by highly skilled players within their first 5 -10 hours of play time will probably quit the game and uninstall.
I think this thread is splitting into two different conversations. Yes, like Joe had edited in Blarney's post, once you get the basics of ns2 down, you can learn a lot by watching/playing against the better players. How does this apply to rookie only servers? It really doesn't.
The idea of rookie-only servers is for FRESH-TO-NS2 players. This means less than like 30 hours. The environment created by this seclusion is to allow the players to learn GENERAL GAMEPLAY. Things like: the skulk can run on walls and bite, the lerk flies, armories give health and ammo, RT's give you money... etc. These are the most basic concepts of the game. Once players understand each classes abilities and the game's overall goal, they are ready to enter the normal game population and start to learn and polish their skill.
Since we have a surplus of unused UWE servers, I think that a few from each region could be converted to a rookie only server. Even if they are not used, what could it hurt. The server wasn't being used anyway.
^ agree with joshhy except i would bump it so people that are sub ~100 hrs can join. It may make the learning process a bit less painful and at the same time people won't get stomped by people going 5:1 or worse.
I think this thread is splitting into two different conversations. Yes, like Joe had edited in Blarney's post, once you get the basics of ns2 down, you can learn a lot by watching/playing against the better players. How does this apply to rookie only servers? It really doesn't.
The idea of rookie-only servers is for FRESH-TO-NS2 players. This means less than like 30 hours. The environment created by this seclusion is to allow the players to learn GENERAL GAMEPLAY. Things like: the skulk can run on walls and bite, the lerk flies, armories give health and ammo, RT's give you money... etc. These are the most basic concepts of the game. Once players understand each classes abilities and the game's overall goal, they are ready to enter the normal game population and start to learn and polish their skill.
Since we have a surplus of unused UWE servers, I think that a few from each region could be converted to a rookie only server. Even if they are not used, what could it hurt. The server wasn't being used anyway.
Precisely. You always get those few who no matter what will just completely miss your point. My point (though I'd like it to be more than 30 hours) is that people can't learn basics when you have them get killed as soon as they move.
I think this thread is splitting into two different conversations. Yes, like Joe had edited in Blarney's post, once you get the basics of ns2 down, you can learn a lot by watching/playing against the better players. How does this apply to rookie only servers? It really doesn't.
The idea of rookie-only servers is for FRESH-TO-NS2 players. This means less than like 30 hours. The environment created by this seclusion is to allow the players to learn GENERAL GAMEPLAY. Things like: the skulk can run on walls and bite, the lerk flies, armories give health and ammo, RT's give you money... etc. These are the most basic concepts of the game. Once players understand each classes abilities and the game's overall goal, they are ready to enter the normal game population and start to learn and polish their skill.
Since we have a surplus of unused UWE servers, I think that a few from each region could be converted to a rookie only server. Even if they are not used, what could it hurt. The server wasn't being used anyway.
Precisely. You always get those few who no matter what will just completely miss your point. My point (though I'd like it to be more than 30 hours) is that people can't learn basics when you have them get killed as soon as they move.
Agreed- or more likely, before you even spawn because the tryhard enemy team is spawnblocking you AGAIN because your team is half noobs. You don't learn anything if you just die instantly when you encounter an enemy 100% of the time. I don't see why this concept is so hard for some people to understand..
Also, as Josh said,
Since we have a surplus of unused UWE servers, I think that a few from each region could be converted to a rookie only server. Even if they are not used, what could it hurt. The server wasn't being used anyway.
What is the point of having a bunch of empty servers UWE?? Just make a half dozen of them rookie only and do not allow players with more than 100 hours to join. And if the player is still sub 100 hours, give them a button on the server list that auto-joins them to a rookie-only server with a popup that suggests "Dying too much? Try joining these servers to learn!"
what was being said earlier about spitting the community, I think is bad. good players playing with new players can be good if done right. I have played with new players I which I have seen they don't know the game too well and helped them out and showed them the doo's and don'ts and then played with them again a while later, they are a lot better and at times giving me a harder time facing them. The way I see it is that is I was a bit of an arse and just beat them all the time and laughed it up they wouldn't enjoy playing the game or even stopped playing altogether. 100 hours is too much also. I think that people with the knowledge and experience should just try help the newbies out a bit more.
. The way I see it is that is I was a bit of an arse and just beat them all the time and laughed it up they wouldn't enjoy playing the game or even stopped playing altogether
The other day i joined a rookie server with my friend, and saw this happening, some guy with a clan tag with 30:1 score. When i told him to stop trying hard against rookies, he said he wasnt trying. The server had NS2stats installed ... it was quite easy to see why he was there. My friend thought he was hacking, i said nah, hes just some loser.
65 total hours on steam, still getting raped by skulks at close distance with a shotgun, unless I have a jetpack. I think there should be intermediate servers as well...
problem is, it is too late for matchmaking. New players wont come back as they tried, got stomped and left. I wont play on most pub servers as they are far too one sided and cliquey. The servers I do play on are regularly full (active admins). As a result, I load up, find servers full, sack it off and play another game for a few weeks.
just have admins move people. dear lord, I've played q3, w:et, tf2, there have been, and always will be people who rock you harder than you've ever been rocked before. have gamers really gotten so... I don't know, that getting demolished will make them stop?
just have admins move people. dear lord, I've played q3, w:et, tf2, there have been, and always will be people who rock you harder than you've ever been rocked before. have gamers really gotten so... I don't know, that getting demolished will make them stop?
Dear lord because admins are always present, are they?
It's not merely that gamers get demolished it is that this game has one hell of a learning curve and with thousands of alternatives one must understand why others may just move onto the next game. Have some thought.
You should make servers in which ONLY rookies can join. Increase the rookie time limit to 100 hours. Only admins with over 100 hours can be there, or even better, make them the UWE servers.
The benefit is that newcomers have some time to acclimatise to the game.
This is how you improve the learning curve.
One more possible counter is that the rookies will never learn. They will. As someone pointed out, the best way for people to learn is against other children (not 10 yo footballers against 30 year olds), and they grow together with the aid of one adult. There is always going to be someone naturally able on a server who can lead the group. They can ALWAYS join a non-rookie server if they really want anyway.
UWE needs to implement a good tutorial. This video states it pretty well.
You should make servers in which ONLY rookies can join. Increase the rookie time limit to 100 hours. Only admins with over 100 hours can be there, or even better, make them the UWE servers.
The benefit is that newcomers have some time to acclimatise to the game.
This is how you improve the learning curve.
One more possible counter is that the rookies will never learn. They will. As someone pointed out, the best way for people to learn is against other children (not 10 yo footballers against 30 year olds), and they grow together with the aid of one adult. There is always going to be someone naturally able on a server who can lead the group. They can ALWAYS join a non-rookie server if they really want anyway.
UWE needs to implement a good tutorial. This video states it pretty well.
Excellent video. Of course a good tutorial is very beneficial. But people still need to go through the gears against cars of equivalent power, before being thrust in against the hypercars.
DC_DarklingJoin Date: 2003-07-10Member: 18068Members, Constellation, Squad Five Blue, Squad Five Silver
I always imagined the tutorial for ns2 as a SP runthrough. A very small runthrough.
You start either side but can not reach each other.
You would spawn in, see correct building layout, and get small asignments for you to do.
Eventually you get to the alien or marine side, kill everything and then finish by destroying something big like a hive.
Done?
Id have made it myself long ago, but time and suck mapskills are a definate part of why I didnt.
I didn't need no stinking tutorial. still aggravates me when new players jump in the chair without putting in their time on the ground. as far as I'm concerned, grunt time is the comm tutorial, and ground time really doesn't need a tutorial. it's not that complicated a game, just tell new players, bouncing off the walls gives you a speed boost, chew on their stuff, lerks can glide, fades can ssjump and you can find new crosshairs in various mods. beyond that, shooting things kills them.
I didn't need no stinking tutorial. still aggravates me when new players jump in the chair without putting in their time on the ground. as far as I'm concerned, grunt time is the comm tutorial, and ground time really doesn't need a tutorial. it's not that complicated a game, just tell new players, bouncing off the walls gives you a speed boost, chew on their stuff, lerks can glide, fades can ssjump and you can find new crosshairs in various mods. beyond that, shooting things kills them.
sounds like you still need a tutorial to be honest.
I didn't need no stinking tutorial. still aggravates me when new players jump in the chair without putting in their time on the ground. as far as I'm concerned, grunt time is the comm tutorial, and ground time really doesn't need a tutorial. it's not that complicated a game, just tell new players, bouncing off the walls gives you a speed boost, chew on their stuff, lerks can glide, fades can ssjump and you can find new crosshairs in various mods. beyond that, shooting things kills them.
sounds like you still need a tutorial to be honest.
To the topic author, i suggested all this way back when they did the cluster fuck that was the FREE weekend back during the Gorgeous update.
Whilst in principle it sounds great, in practice there are costs involved.
During the last free weekend there was 7000 more rookie players, if you were to put those new players into 'rookie only' servers, at 16 players per server (UWE's ideal number), there would be a need for an additional 438 temporary servers.
With the optimisations of the current build 249, i've done tests and a 16 man game takes up 15-20% of a i5 2500k 4 core cpu @ 4.5ghz.
That means you could most likely host four 16 player servers per server (bandwidth permitting) bringing the actual hardware server count down to 110.
A much more achievable number but still a lot to setup just for a weekend here and there, but i believe it would help retain a much larger number of players as i believe a lot of people stop playing the game in the their day or so because they get raped by the vets and they rage quit.
I think at the very least the UWE Official servers should be recycled into rookie only servers as they are pretty much always empty 24/7.
Another thing that should happen when a rookie joins a non rookie server is that they should not be allowed in the command chair, lol, i've seen so many rookies shouted out by the team because they were doing a bad job and they experience such an awful time they never try the commander seat out again and this game suffers from lack of willing commanders!
I didn't need no stinking tutorial. still aggravates me when new players jump in the chair without putting in their time on the ground. as far as I'm concerned, grunt time is the comm tutorial, and ground time really doesn't need a tutorial. it's not that complicated a game, just tell new players, bouncing off the walls gives you a speed boost, chew on their stuff, lerks can glide, fades can ssjump and you can find new crosshairs in various mods. beyond that, shooting things kills them.
sounds like you still need a tutorial to be honest.
well played sir, well played. but seriously, I usually jump in feet first in a game... occasionally I'll check keybinds before doing so. when did gaming become so hand holdy? sure, advanced movement has to be learned, but everything else is pretty intuitive.
Tutorials are the wrong way. That's just doesn't work in reality. The game itself must accommodate new players so they do not get frustrated and can improve in a fun way.
With half of games these days being a one sided stomp, do you think all the people on the losing team don't know how to "play the game"? WTF would a tutorial of any kind help? These people know what an Armory does and how much it costs, that's not the kind of level where the problem lies.
Actual rookies (greens) will tolerate nearly ANYTHING, because everything is new and exciting and they're curious (and don't know how to spot a bad game anyways). Only after 10 or 20 or whatever hours of play, when they understand how the game works, but they see no realistic chance in succeeding and improving against the typical players, THIS is when they give up on the game (as seen when the free weekend player spike ends).
It's been more then 10 years when I first started NS and I remember how rookie unfriendly most players were back then, only very few took the time to show you some tips and tricks.
I have had NS2 for a long time (pre-ordered) but only started playing it recently and I was totally amazed how very indulgent some players are with newcomers on those rookies servers.
I admit that some people seem to get a great feeling about themselve showing off their skills on rookie servers and it can be annoying, but compared to what NS1 newcomers had to indulge from those "pro-gamers" this is heaven on earth for any NS2 newcomer.
Hardcoding something to keep good players of rookie servers would be a bad idea since this would most probably also keep away those that do want to share their knowledge.
The only hardcoded system I could come up with is to allow some unbalance in numbers for a team that has lots of rookies. However this might even make it more interesting for some show-off.
Unfortunately the best way is having active admins with common sense!
Comments
Pretty much. Huge influx of new players to dilute the pub stompers when I picked the game up at launch. You could make so many mistakes and still have your fun. Hundreds of hours later and you eventually pick up more than the basics. But I would have definitely stopped playing if I did not find the game fun at the time.
The issue right now is that there are not enough full servers to go around blocking people who played a certain amount of time. That and I do not think there is a great influx of rookies at the moment. Higher player games also tend to pan out different and trying to get people to play under a certain player count and with certain rules will not work because they will play the game the way they want to get the most enjoyability. If comp was that game mode it would be a whole lot popular and instead we get a bunch of 20+ player servers because people prefer those.
Besides last time we had a free weekend there was like 9k players vs the 1.5k at the time that use to play daily. That was more than enough to dilute things out a bit. Most people do not like the game because of performance. I think bringing back some of the 400k people they sold the copies to who do not play anymore would be ideal. I mean they tried bots, tutorials with videos and things still remain the same.
IMO, if rookies only is required it should be a certain amount of time during a sale or a free weekend and then they are open to everyone else after a few days.
I totally agree man, we scrimmed All-In the other day and even though we got totally stomped I was still able to learn some things to work on. The only way to improve is by playing against better players
Fixed that for you. 9 out of 10 rookies will learn nothing from highly skilled players stomping them. Probably 5 of 10 of those rookies who get stomped by highly skilled players within their first 5 -10 hours of play time will probably quit the game and uninstall.
The idea of rookie-only servers is for FRESH-TO-NS2 players. This means less than like 30 hours. The environment created by this seclusion is to allow the players to learn GENERAL GAMEPLAY. Things like: the skulk can run on walls and bite, the lerk flies, armories give health and ammo, RT's give you money... etc. These are the most basic concepts of the game. Once players understand each classes abilities and the game's overall goal, they are ready to enter the normal game population and start to learn and polish their skill.
Since we have a surplus of unused UWE servers, I think that a few from each region could be converted to a rookie only server. Even if they are not used, what could it hurt. The server wasn't being used anyway.
Precisely. You always get those few who no matter what will just completely miss your point. My point (though I'd like it to be more than 30 hours) is that people can't learn basics when you have them get killed as soon as they move.
Agreed- or more likely, before you even spawn because the tryhard enemy team is spawnblocking you AGAIN because your team is half noobs. You don't learn anything if you just die instantly when you encounter an enemy 100% of the time. I don't see why this concept is so hard for some people to understand..
Also, as Josh said,
What is the point of having a bunch of empty servers UWE?? Just make a half dozen of them rookie only and do not allow players with more than 100 hours to join. And if the player is still sub 100 hours, give them a button on the server list that auto-joins them to a rookie-only server with a popup that suggests "Dying too much? Try joining these servers to learn!"
its not being done right, hence this thread. An alternative to having rookie only would be a handicap system on rookie servers, or match making.
The other day i joined a rookie server with my friend, and saw this happening, some guy with a clan tag with 30:1 score. When i told him to stop trying hard against rookies, he said he wasnt trying. The server had NS2stats installed ... it was quite easy to see why he was there. My friend thought he was hacking, i said nah, hes just some loser.
depends on the rate that new players come into the game, the idea isnt without its issues.
Dear lord because admins are always present, are they?
It's not merely that gamers get demolished it is that this game has one hell of a learning curve and with thousands of alternatives one must understand why others may just move onto the next game. Have some thought.
UWE needs to implement a good tutorial. This video states it pretty well.
http://penny-arcade.com/patv/episode/easy-games
You start either side but can not reach each other.
You would spawn in, see correct building layout, and get small asignments for you to do.
Eventually you get to the alien or marine side, kill everything and then finish by destroying something big like a hive.
Done?
Id have made it myself long ago, but time and suck mapskills are a definate part of why I didnt.
sounds like you still need a tutorial to be honest.
gg re?
Whilst in principle it sounds great, in practice there are costs involved.
During the last free weekend there was 7000 more rookie players, if you were to put those new players into 'rookie only' servers, at 16 players per server (UWE's ideal number), there would be a need for an additional 438 temporary servers.
With the optimisations of the current build 249, i've done tests and a 16 man game takes up 15-20% of a i5 2500k 4 core cpu @ 4.5ghz.
That means you could most likely host four 16 player servers per server (bandwidth permitting) bringing the actual hardware server count down to 110.
A much more achievable number but still a lot to setup just for a weekend here and there, but i believe it would help retain a much larger number of players as i believe a lot of people stop playing the game in the their day or so because they get raped by the vets and they rage quit.
I think at the very least the UWE Official servers should be recycled into rookie only servers as they are pretty much always empty 24/7.
Another thing that should happen when a rookie joins a non rookie server is that they should not be allowed in the command chair, lol, i've seen so many rookies shouted out by the team because they were doing a bad job and they experience such an awful time they never try the commander seat out again and this game suffers from lack of willing commanders!
well played sir, well played. but seriously, I usually jump in feet first in a game... occasionally I'll check keybinds before doing so. when did gaming become so hand holdy? sure, advanced movement has to be learned, but everything else is pretty intuitive.
With half of games these days being a one sided stomp, do you think all the people on the losing team don't know how to "play the game"? WTF would a tutorial of any kind help? These people know what an Armory does and how much it costs, that's not the kind of level where the problem lies.
Actual rookies (greens) will tolerate nearly ANYTHING, because everything is new and exciting and they're curious (and don't know how to spot a bad game anyways). Only after 10 or 20 or whatever hours of play, when they understand how the game works, but they see no realistic chance in succeeding and improving against the typical players, THIS is when they give up on the game (as seen when the free weekend player spike ends).
Tutorials do nothing against that.
I have had NS2 for a long time (pre-ordered) but only started playing it recently and I was totally amazed how very indulgent some players are with newcomers on those rookies servers.
I admit that some people seem to get a great feeling about themselve showing off their skills on rookie servers and it can be annoying, but compared to what NS1 newcomers had to indulge from those "pro-gamers" this is heaven on earth for any NS2 newcomer.
Hardcoding something to keep good players of rookie servers would be a bad idea since this would most probably also keep away those that do want to share their knowledge.
The only hardcoded system I could come up with is to allow some unbalance in numbers for a team that has lots of rookies. However this might even make it more interesting for some show-off.
Unfortunately the best way is having active admins with common sense!