Ideas For Repopulation

[StarKitty]

It was also brought up that seeing experienced players help out newer players is one good way of deciding who to hire to staff.

That's how it was done back in 1999-2001 isn't it? I vaguely remember. The whole zone was a lot more helpful back then as a result.

This would remove staff suck up and social politics from the problems the zone suffers from wouldn't it? People would have to be a lot more friendly and helpful.

[MirrorriM]

We did have an idea about telling staffers to idle in ?go tutorial if theyre not busy and help out. It was also brought up that seeing experienced players help out newer players is one good way of deciding who to hire to staff.

Searching through my computer, I still have my huge "To Do" list for ?go tutorial. Perhaps after TWL is finished, we can restart the project.

[StarKitty]

I am willing to join TW Dev to finish developing the tutorial arena and will PM the necessary parties. I think it's a great idea.

If possible, I would like to implement an IP tracker/database so we can measure attrition. How many new people log in once or twice and never again? I would want to see attrition data for before and after the tutorial is built so we can tell if it's having any effect.

A cheaper, short-term alternative, while the tutorial is in the works, is to allow players to designate themselves as noob helpers. When someone logs into SS for the first time, all online noob helpers are PMed by a bot and invited to go to a private arena to tutor the noob. That means teaching the basics of flying, shooting, tactics, basing, commands, etc. One noob helper per noob. Many people talk about the benefit of being guided through the game with a friend, and this would not be hard to do.

Players could PM staff to volunteer to be noob helpers, and then it's just a matter of building the bot (also something I could help with). There could be a 1-question feedback survey at the end ("Did this noob helper help you, noob?") so that people don't abuse the <NH> role for demoralizing the fresh blood.

I also agree with Jeenyuss that other zones should get involved. But TW is the flagship zone in terms of population, so I think we should set a good example first.

I like the newbie helper idea however it could be seriously dangerous if there were abusive players. Obviously any newbie helpers should be vetted by staff and be well known as mature, friendly and professional. Although they would have no staff powers all the new players would see them as staff members, we do NOT want a new players first impression of staff to be some abusive idiot.

[CaptainPoopface]

I am willing to join TW Dev to finish developing the tutorial arena and will PM the necessary parties. I think it's a great idea.

If possible, I would like to implement an IP tracker/database so we can measure attrition. How many new people log in once or twice and never again? I would want to see attrition data for before and after the tutorial is built so we can tell if it's having any effect.

A cheaper, short-term alternative, while the tutorial is in the works, is to allow players to designate themselves as noob helpers. When someone logs into SS for the first time, all online noob helpers are PMed by a bot and invited to go to a private arena to tutor the noob. That means teaching the basics of flying, shooting, tactics, basing, commands, etc. One noob helper per noob. Many people talk about the benefit of being guided through the game with a friend, and this would not be hard to do.

Players could PM staff to volunteer to be noob helpers, and then it's just a matter of building the bot (also something I could help with). There could be a 1-question feedback survey at the end ("Did this noob helper help you, noob?") so that people don't abuse the <NH> role for demoralizing the fresh blood.

I also agree with Jeenyuss that other zones should get involved. But TW is the flagship zone in terms of population, so I think we should set a good example first.

[DankNuggets]

Re: Repopulation

WE build an ark, like really really big.

Then we gather all the animals, two by two (or more if need be)

and wait.



Naw but good ideas, glad to see a lot of work has been put into this, just sucks there's only 2 ppl to do all the work.

[Jeenyuss]

ok there are a couple things. mirrorrim that tutorial idea sounds brilliant and i really appreciate you guys putting the hard work into it. hopefully you can finish it asap as i could see that really helping us out.

pd, when you started there were also a lot more people playing this game. think about how many people played this for a little while but quit because things weren't always properly explained to them. i would think a fair amount. i know a lot of the people i've tried to share this with maintain that sentiment. now that we're getting even less and less new traffic, the amount of people who actually end up sticking around goes down. i think the smart course of action would be tutorial -> advertising if we want to improve our chances of having success in repopulating this game.

set up a donations thing once the tutorial's done, or before, whatever. the SSCU Beginner's Zone seems like a decent idea but now that i've read the hard work that Mirrorrim's put into the tutorial arena i guess i'd back that more than otherwise.

an extremely important part of this working is that we have to have inter-zone communication. i think in order to have the best chance for success we need to get together on this. try to get every zone to set up a tutorial section, maybe share our module with them, i don't know. get every zone to have a donation button and share the funds to get banner ads wherever or whatever. i'm not sure.

argh.

[Leaf]

Wow.
Seriously many great ideas and It's really joyful to see people that are actually caring about the game enough to promote it and come up with ideas and make them come true.

However, a big issue with this game is the players. It's true. Even though tws population has decreased I seem to witness more and more whining, trolling and flaming every time I log on.
It is truly sad that this game is so freaking full of hatred. Sure there are a lot of good people and all games are populated with these kind of people. I don't really have a good idea that wouldn't sound fascistic or dictatorial.
But I for one think this is one of the main issues of Tw and SS, now more than ever.

The strive and urge to become someone cool, good, skillful, staff or whatever, is so freaking huge that players forget the most important thing about these games in the first place.
I mean. Who will disagree about SS community is one of the reasons you're still playing?
If it weren't for the good people of this zone I wouldn't log on every once in a while. I would've quit so long ago. But people have actually made real friends on this game.

With the insight of this post I'm going to play more SS with the goal of talking to a lot of newbies in public, saying stuff like "Hello, how are you?", "Wow, nice shot." "Try the javelin, it's a fun ship".

We need change
Vote Obama '08, haha.

[Pressure Drop]

I don’t see this tutorial as the be all and end all and think it’s getting too much attention and of prime importance is increasing our outreach and the amount of people coming through the game.

I didn’t have a tutorial or any sort of direction and I stayed, same for the vast majority of other players.

There is already a handy tips for new players that you disable once it becomes annoying and you know them all. Rather than put in so much effort you could use your ip bot to pm the player to respond with !help for further info or indeed !off to stop it spamming them with better tips. The bot could explain Changing arena, ships description, wb javs basing leagues mentioned could easily show new players theres layers of depth in this game if they care to get that involved.

It could be easily augmented with link to the tw.org site with a more helpful screen shot section explaining points in the game – as I’ve mentioned in another post this screenshot section is piss poor currently – no captions or explanation what is going on …. If you want me to do it I will take screenshots of each ship with a brief description , some examples of TWD-D-J-B etc etc …. I mean tw.org site should be as plain to use resource for a new player and linked to for them to click on when entering the zone.


All that should be very easy to do (if you’ve your ip bot in place) and then more focus on getting new players who are bored and looking for a retro game to try this one. that’s the hard bit and important bit at this stage.

[Xp.]

well as far as gettin new ppl into the game its not hard to post on forums and your local craigslist free section...and always incourage ppl to start there own squad the more squads the better...

[StarKitty]

There was a tutorial arena set up and a group working on it. I was in charge of starting it up and with milosh's help we created a tutorial bot that would allow you to create a map with all sorts of ways to teach someone. I believe the map is mostly completed also, but was abandoned before everything was completely set up. Just too many other things to fix and do :/

if anyone knows how to code or make maps, youre welcome to finish it.

here is what we were working on:

New players are identified by ip and are sent to ?go tutorial. The bot tells them how to enter the game as a warbird, and they are put through a mini exercise in learning how to play and move. After completing each "test" the bot would tell the player to PM it with a specific command, which would allow the player to move on and learn some information (ie, shoot the bot by hitting CTRL and moving your arrow keys in order to move on to the next exercise). They would learn basics like shooting, thrusting (dodge the wormholes), talking in public chat and team chat, who was enemy and who was teammate..very basic things like that.

Once they finished, they were warped to an area that allowed a player to go through tests for the other ships or go to an advanced area for more information on the game. Or, if they were happy with learning how to use a wb, they were told how to change arenas and enter a public arena.

The advanced area included descriptions about squads, private chats, gameplay (elim, belim, javduel/wbduel/go base, tourny, and TWD). and also included an area for players to duel each other before heading out to a public arena.

There was much more to this, but now milosh and I are too busy (him with fixing elim and me with TWL) to finish it all, which is sad because so much work was put into it.

Get it finished

[MirrorriM]

There was a tutorial arena set up and a group working on it. I was in charge of starting it up and with milosh's help we created a tutorial bot that would allow you to create a map with all sorts of ways to teach someone. I believe the map is mostly completed also, but was abandoned before everything was completely set up. Just too many other things to fix and do :/

if anyone knows how to code or make maps, youre welcome to finish it.

here is what we were working on:

New players are identified by ip and are sent to ?go tutorial. The bot tells them how to enter the game as a warbird, and they are put through a mini exercise in learning how to play and move. After completing each "test" the bot would tell the player to PM it with a specific command, which would allow the player to move on and learn some information (ie, shoot the bot by hitting CTRL and moving your arrow keys in order to move on to the next exercise). They would learn basics like shooting, thrusting (dodge the wormholes), talking in public chat and team chat, who was enemy and who was teammate..very basic things like that.

Once they finished, they were warped to an area that allowed a player to go through tests for the other ships or go to an advanced area for more information on the game. Or, if they were happy with learning how to use a wb, they were told how to change arenas and enter a public arena.

The advanced area included descriptions about squads, private chats, gameplay (elim, belim, javduel/wbduel/go base, tourny, and TWD). and also included an area for players to duel each other before heading out to a public arena.

There was much more to this, but now milosh and I are too busy (him with fixing elim and me with TWL) to finish it all, which is sad because so much work was put into it.

[StarKitty]

We've got to pull players from pubs into startup squads. Make squads more immediate. I played pub in all zones til someone picked me up from pub and invited me to their squad.

Hmm...

In that case.. Alongside advertising, how about we find a way to make being a member of a squad benificial to public gaming? Thus making people seek out their first squad and learning the rest of the zone as a result.


Edit: Why don't we simply have a tutorial arena? - Instead of logging in and being sent straight to the public arena it would send people to .?go tutorial :wub:

[paradise!]

We've got to pull players from pubs into startup squads. Make squads more immediate. I played pub in all zones til someone picked me up from pub and invited me to their squad.

[Heroin Bob]

Personally I think it's not about just US at all.. I dunno about you guys but over the early days I jumped from zone to zone and settled here eventually.

They will settle in the zone they prefer. We should simply be targetting bringing people to the game - we already have the best zone. The people that like it will stay.

i started here from a friend IRL in like 7thish grade. CrackerJackMan was his alias i think, i dunno, he got me in a squad and they made me want to keep playing!


WarAngels 4lyfe

[StarKitty]

This could be a good idea, there could be something updated on a new Continuum client that alerts new players who have installed the game that there is a recommended zone for them to start out in. This would be a tutorial zone for the whole game? But I mean I think without that kind of hard work, we could get the help of other zones to build a new tutorial zone.

We could do that or build a tutorial just for our zone. That would probably benefit us more, but there's a choice here. Would we want to solely benefit our zone with new players? Or do we want to help the whole game? Choice is there.

Personally I think it's not about just US at all.. I dunno about you guys but over the early days I jumped from zone to zone and settled here eventually.

They will settle in the zone they prefer. We should simply be targetting bringing people to the game - we already have the best zone. The people that like it will stay.

If we really want to make sure that these people stay with us after they've connected we need to teach them everything the zone offers (and fast). Most people play for weeks and months before they even leave the pubs. What we need to do is show them the size of the zone and everything it has to offer, from the various leagues to all the events.


EDIT: If we were to work in tandem with the other zones towards the goal of advertising tw - couldn't they all use banners and such on their sites? - Going into a global "advertise SS" pot?