But there are probably a lot of players, that would even consider me a skilled player
A major problem of FAF now is, that most players (look it up in the global ladder), play a handful of games and then quit. The global ladder has now listed nearly 1600 people, but probably more than 50% of them have played less than 10 games.
Why is that so?
There probably are lots of different reasons like "they prefer playing vs AI", but I think the main reason is, they lose 8 out of 10 games and stop playing, because they are called noob and are kicked out of all games, because they have a rating smaller than 500 or maybe even negative....do you really think anyone would play a team game with a guy with -1000 points in the global ladder?
FAF needs some mechanisms to help these new players, and if FAF will get "open" and more advertised, those people will make a huge part of the community, but if nothing changes only for a very short period of time.
everyone should think about options what we can do, what FAF can do and what those new players can do.
my ideas:
1. the mentor mentee program might work for a small group, but it doesnt for everyone. You have those who never read forums and it will never reach them. So some kind of mentoring mechanism should be implemented directly in FAF.
The mentoring system could be integrated to the replay vault!
If a player needs help, he could upload his replay with a mark as "training needed" and in a special section of the replay vault higher level players with lets say rating >1500 will see this replay and have the option to give comments and tips directly to the replay. This is really not an option, FAF needs this system. FAF should also be urging the players to use this. New players should get a pop up message after the first loss that asks them to upload it,w ith an option to never ask this question again. And top players could get rewards for being the best trainer, new players could rate the tips, and the top player gets an avatar or there could be a list with the top trainers. People always do something, if they stand at #1 of a list for it
Maybe a replay system would only be a start. Together with teamspeak it could also be possible to do coachings directly via FAF. like a coaching ladder, where ghosting actually would be wanted: A newbie starts searching for a game, a text message in chat says so, and every top player could also click a join button. maybe even with some kind of autoconnect to a teamspeak channel, i dont know what is possible there.
2. there are already some guides, some of them are great, some are less great, some are in text, some are in videos. Someone has to pick the best guides that still apply to FA and all new players (<50 games in FAF) should get a banner above the chat linking to this guides.
3. newbie ladder: As said before global rating -1000 stops nearly everyone to play with someone rated that number. Instead pls change it to "new player" it would be better, if 500 was the minimum rating shown in the global ladder, and all beneath that would have new player status, of course if they have less than a certain number of games. If they have 100 games, and still bad ratin <500, it should show <500, but not the actual rating. this would apply for both ingame lobby and ladders.
the newbie ladder would be a ladder where only new players are listed. New player could be defined by <50 games. everyone new to FAF will be encouraged by being #30 of the new players' ladder instead of being #1500 of the global ladder. After completing 50 games, the player will be disappearing from the ladder, and maybe if he reached top 10 of the new players' ladder be rewarded with an avatar. Only then the player will show up in the global ladder. The rating mechanism could be the same though, as both ladders have to be compatible, eg if a new player plays vs an "old" player, points can be lost or won for both of them.
Feel free to add anything, that might help get those many new players to stay with FAF
