Newbies Difficulties

[pza]

TLDR: What can we do to flatten the learning curve?

From what i experienced so far, there are many people who install FA/faf and then quit really quickly. There may be different reasons why they do so, for example:

• Graphics not as compelling as expected
• Community issues (e.g. getting bullied, or simply the fear of beeing bullied, because they see the word noob all over the place)
• Gameplay learning curve

For the latter i want to elaborate what i mean, feel free to disagree or add points:

• High volume of different build orders that need to be learned (different by map, by spot, by your own mood)
• Steady eco: Usually in a RTS, if you have the ressources to build a unit, you click on it, and it'll be built. Not so in FAF. You'll have to estimate the total cost of a unit to see how long it will take to build. You'll have to estimate if you have the eco for it, like you could have enough mass but nowhere close to enough energy -> power stall.
• Micro: I'm not even talking about the horrible, horrible nightmare that is hoverbombing (it's hilarious, but somewhat unrealistic and a pain to pull off). I'm talking about basic movement issues, like getting stuck with your commander between engies. Or losing half of your army because it decides to not move as one, but instead one by one. And then eventually get stuck in a hill. And firing into the lightest terrain roughness. Or stupid comwalk of shame. Or a bunch of other pathing issues.
• Macro: This one is about pure knowledge. When do i upgrade mexes, when do i cap them, how much energy do i need from which tier, how many factories do i build, wtf is RAS.
• Overall strategies: why do subs suck, what do i counter with what, what's stealth, what's cloak, whats an overcharge (you cant overcharge if you dont have e-storage so unless u dont build it, you dont know it... and against AI you will not find that out, since it wont OC, too) etc. there are many, many examples that are based on experience and knowledge to be listed here.

What do you think, what can we do to make the game easier for beginners to get into it? How do we increase our new players value in a game? I'm not talking about teaching. I'm talking about game changes, like, a more visible overcharge button, available without e-storage or popping up a warning that you need e-storage. Implemented ETA when mouseover over an unifinshed building or unit thumbnail in factory. Or warning messages ("Training! Unit ready. Training! Unit ready. Training! Unit ready" ). You know, stuff like that.

Edit: Zockyzock posed some really helpful questions for you to ask yourselves. Please post your answers here!

Where are you having difficulties when learning the game?
What informations would you like to have that are not there?
What things are not clear, what did you find out only after looking for information outside of the game?
What is just annoying?
What do you miss that would make some things easier?

Rephrased Answers/Thoughts so far (last edited: 17th july 2015):

• "How do I start a game?"
• No tutorial visible on first sight when starting faf as newbie.
• Lobby UI confusing.
• Ladder match sends newbies to play vs virtually anyone.
• Too many maps/Build orders to learn.
• Little encouraging of playing a coop campaign or vs AI.
• Fear of beeing blasted when playing a teamgame for not knowing how to play
• No automatch systems for team games
• Wiki difficult to find
• No automatic FA-profile creation in FAF
• Rules of thumb, like "A land factory takes 2 power generators to run"
• Unlogic highlighting of units in the build menu, might lead to people focussing on the wrong units (e.g. mass mongoose).
• Getting crushed in the very beginning (replays= advanced & expert stuff)
• mass and power stalling is very punishing
• Intel difficult. (No Notifications when scouting)
• Scores dont represent Eco/Military stats
• The existence of UI mods is not well explained
• Overwhelming stuff to keep track of
• No explanations of IRC's concepts
• Needs pointing out the sandbox mode where new players can practise/learn
• How to reclaim efficiently and what stalls/waste look like?

Let me know if there's something missing.

[speed2]

if you press down SHIFT you'll get ETA to all your orders, no need to implement that

[nine2]

someone was saying something the other day about making a newbie mod that removes energy from the game. so it could do a whole bunch of things simplify everything, with the idea of retaining players until they skill up enough to play the real game.

so long as it doesnt fracture the community, sounds like a sweet idea to me.

to avoid fracture perhaps it could only work on certain maps. like gap of rohan.

it could get rid of mass storage and e storage altogether. navy can go. t3 air can go. acu upgrades besides gun and t2 can go.

there is already the mod that came with FA that makes the eco go away entirely ... makes it so units just cost time not mass or energy. I don't like this ... its not transitional enough to the real thing.

[Vee]

Most of these, like making the eco like other RTS, flatten the learning curve at the expense of the game, or they are not even possible to change. The learning curve should be flattened when it does not destroy the game, but such big changes do destroy the game. Improving the UI is fine of course.

Rather focus on the first experience new players have.

- FAF client UI can be made less confusing, the same questions are asked all the time: how do I start a game, how do I start a game vs AI, how do I play the campaign, what is my rating, why is my rating stuck on 0, why do people kick me from games (because of rating restrictions and the new player does not even know what rating is), etc.
- If a new player plays ladder he first gets matched with a totally random player because his deviation is big. New players should only be matched to low rated opponents to give them some degree of success early on rather than being utterly stomped in 3 minutes.
- Encourage new players to play an easy version of COOP or vs AI to make sure they have some success.
- Better tutorials.

[KD7BCH]

Been attempted TML TK twice this week by an ally. I think the learning curve is fine. I think the community is where the work is needed. Bringing new players in here and having them stick with the community isn't going to be sustainable with behavior like this.

The lack of tolerance for new ideas on the forums and fanboi ism is also an issue too.

What I think would help new players, is the first 50 games progression. A thread explaining that losing is normal. That performing poorly in the beginning is normal. It would also be helpful for new players to ensure the economic mechanics are well explained. Convey specifics like how mass and energy income are very important and that you need a balanced economy to produce most efficiently. A brief flow chart of the progression of the mass economy from T1 though SACUs with RAS. I think at the most basic level there are a 10-20% of existing players who don't get the difference for an economy between upgrading mexes before mass storage. Same thing with power. See all sorts of T1 pgen farms which are not as efficient as T2 and not anywhere near efficient as T3.

It would be helpful is some other tactical concepts like ACU gun upgrade and overcharge are explored. There are plenty of 1K players who don't know about overcharge and would live if they'd engaged with OC against a rushed EXP that is almost dead.

[Scales]

I'm a newbie and have watched countless casts and replays but have yet to play in a team game (I have about 100 ladder match games ). Why you ask? Well most games contain some rating requirements and the "All Welcome" games that don't have restrictions are usually the Setons, Gap, or Thermo, which my old CPU ( now upgraded ) couldn't handle.

Another factor in me not playing team games is usually not knowing the meta of the map. For example, I just found out that Rock and beach spots in Sentons are supposed to build T1 air to intercept bombers from the enemy. I don't want to be blasted for lack of experience with a certain map and replays can only go so far as to show you what to do.

I don't know how much coding it would take, but an auto-match system like ladder for team games might go a long way to helping newbies stick around. Even if the auto-match only took people with similar global ratings and sent them into the game lobby to choose a map manually (someone would be arbitrarily host ). This would get us into games quick with people similar in skill and allow us to play longer without getting totally crushed. Although on second thought this can already be accomplished by hosting newbie games anyways. Just my $0.02.

TL;DR - Not enough experience, don't want to get blasted for playing map wrong.

[justmakenewgame]

Been attempted TML TK twice this week by an ally. I think the learning curve is fine.

yeah when you see it. But 90% of new player fail to understand how to create a good build.

The lack of tolerance for new ideas on the forums and fanboi ism is also an issue too.

and no moderators rotation

[belatedcube]

We should make tutorials and guides easier to find. There are so many of them yet I doubt new players even know of them.

[BRNKoINSANITY]

There is quite an extensive compilation of tutorials in the Supcom wiki.



But..... no one looks at the wiki.......

[nine2]

- Homepage - Big bright button on home page - new player guide - links to wiki
- FAF Client - should create a user profile in game.prefs if there is none
- FAF Client - More obvious how to create a normal game. Double clicking 'forged alliance forever' featured mod is not obvious. Players dont realise that is the place to click. Also it doesnt look like something that needs to be double clicked. A single click is fine. It's also easy to think the ranked options are part of the custom game options. Newbs don't know what these things are... the whole UI here is geared for people who know what they are looking at.