Beginner's Idea

[SpiderMage]

I had an idea that was inspired by a graphic someone made of the Jav bomb blast radius, I forget who it was, but I never posted about it. TrenchWars, nor really Continuum as a whole for that matter really has a "tutorial/beginners" area, aside from pub, which can a lot of the time be very unfriendly to new players, especially if they aren't used to the controls. I wonder, would it be a good idea for an arena/pub to be made that had a special bot and/or graphics in it that had guides to the ships. Say for instance we take the Javs, if in this arena there was a graphic that would always have a line of fire guide for the bomb, so people could use it to practice shots on their own or against other beginners, rather than in pub where they can TK. This way they could study, and perhaps even find new angles to fire from. You could possibly implement this with all ships, giving a constant line of sight graphic for Warbird shots and even bursts, to help train people how to aim, and more importantly the physics of not only timing their shots, but factoring in momentum as well.

I mostly keep myself to terr and spider, but I try to play whatever is needed on my team in pub and the Jav line of sight graphic alone would help me flesh out my abilities in that ship.

[Twerp]

I had an idea that was inspired by a graphic someone made of the Jav bomb blast radius, I forget who it was, but I never posted about it. TrenchWars, nor really Continuum as a whole for that matter really has a "tutorial/beginners" area, aside from pub, which can a lot of the time be very unfriendly to new players, especially if they aren't used to the controls. I wonder, would it be a good idea for an arena/pub to be made that had a special bot and/or graphics in it that had guides to the ships. Say for instance we take the Javs, if in this arena there was a graphic that would always have a line of fire guide for the bomb, so people could use it to practice shots on their own or against other beginners, rather than in pub where they can TK. This way they could study, and perhaps even find new angles to fire from. You could possibly implement this with all ships, giving a constant line of sight graphic for Warbird shots and even bursts, to help train people how to aim, and more importantly the physics of not only timing their shots, but factoring in momentum as well.

I mostly keep myself to terr and spider, but I try to play whatever is needed on my team in pub and the Jav line of sight graphic alone would help me flesh out my abilities in that ship.

It was jeansi.
It may be different for others, but I find just practicing with the ships is the best way. The lines that help you as a guide for the bomb will only work if you are staying completely still which is really hard and very unlikely. You said that in a pub where you can TK, there is even more of a risk of TKing if you are in a arena where there are a lot of beginners.


Edit: Whoops, misread the part about the controls

[SpiderMage]

It was jeansi.
It may be different for others, but I find just practicing with the ships is the best way. The lines that help you as a guide for the bomb will only work if you are staying completely still which is really hard and very unlikely. You said that in a pub where you can TK, there is even more of a risk of TKing if you are in a arena where there are a lot of beginners.

I think that giving out the controls is very helpful because when I first started, I had no idea how to fire or do anything besides flying around. I didn't even know how to get to the F1 help menu ^_^

Yeah but just giving out the controls and actually teaching the basics of use are two different things. And actually a lot of the time I see javs in flagroom have more than enough time to pause for a few minutes to get into a certain place, line up their shot, fly forward and fire.

[fLaReD]

i made the graphic blast radius too, jeansi probably did also though :P http://www.trenchwars.org/forum/showthread.php?t=15391 (i think thats what your talking about )

[Stultus]

I wonder, would it be a good idea for an arena/pub to be made that had a special bot and/or graphics in it that had guides to the ships.

I think so.

[SaucyKing]

I think it would be leet, I still need help with my javving (reminds me of the time when I TKed one too many times and Lunar specced me for the next God knows how long to make sure I didn't do it again).

[fLaReD]

saucy for help javing check out that link i posted in my last post. and yeah i'll start up on something to help out beginners, could use a partner though. one person wanna help?

[Ewan]

We never had these guides when we started playing, why implement them now?

Line of sight graphics will never work: it's impossible to make them account for the ship's momentum.

[Troll King]

I think this would only teach people to make lazy shots, especially with javs. It's not so much the angles that cause teamkills so much as it is the timing in which they are shot. This goes for the other ships as well; people put emphasis on aim but what actually takes work is developing timing.

[Vykromond]

Ignoring shot angles for a minute here, we do need to do something to make the game more hospitable to brand-new players. Much more extensive F1 documentation, along with a message to new players that F1 accesses the help menu (this was a standby in games of the '90s so everyone knew about it, but not everyone does now, especially younger players), is a must for the pub arenas.

[SpiderMage]

Ok, so everyone brings up timing, which is indeed a huge factor, why not make like a target practice arena, moving targets, stationary targets, small targets, all with no damage to one another(everyone would be on the same team) so you could practice at your leisure. Could also add in computer controlled bots for actual battle practice, because no brand new player is going to learn anything by stumbling into pub and getting flattened time and time again by really good players. And line of sight guides could work, because it could help with learning how to lead your shots and such like that.

All this could also help with new players learning to base as well.

But as Vyk said and the unfortunate statement Ewan made, none of us as older players('m almost 2 years now I think so it's not like I started a month ago) ever had anything like this, imagine how much better we could be right now, or back when we started by having an actual training area.

I mean look at a lot of the popular MMO games, Halo 2 and Tribes Vengeance have single player to guide you through. Whereas look at our very own Continuum and CounterStrike, no training or very minimal training, and newbies are hated for no other reason but for being new and not knowing what to do thus making mistakes like team killing or having little aiming/basing skill.

Small EDIT:
This could even, if a target practice was done, help train levis to be what they were meant to be and not what they have become. If you put in a training thing for levis where you had to fire on base, but you also had to make sure you didn't destroy very many, if any at all, friendly targets.

[Galleleo]

Isn't half-life the practice for counterstrike?

[SpiderMage]

Isn't half-life the practice for counterstrike?

technically yes but you can do CounterStrike without ever buying Half-Life

[Stabwound]

There was a simple tutorial in Subspace... check it out.

[Jason]

Speaking of a more extensive F1 guide, I actually wrote one awhile back. It was Moot's idea to begin with, and then I did the leg work. I used CypherJF's F1 editor and made a pretty damn fancy guide with loads of shit in it. I don't think it ever reached DoCk> though, got lost because of poor communication. (Fancy that happening!)