Welcoming new players. My experience.

[towerrounder]

I used be a complete addict when it came to FA. It is by far the best RTS game ever made. My friends and I used to play it relentlessly. Winning a game at FA gave you incredible bragging rights. Then like most games it we ended up playing it only occasionally, and then not at all.

That was 5 years ago. About two weeks I ago I found I had some spare time so I decided to install FA to rekindle those memories of epic battles. Logged on to FAF and away I went.

I was absolute rubbish! Until a few days ago I was always rock bottom in points. However none of that really mattered as I found the community was fantastic. “GL HF” was standard at the start of most games, always followed by “GG”.

If I messed up, simply saying "Arrgh, sorry lads. I messed up my eco. Im Noob. sry." would always get a "No worries. That’s cool, etc."

We have all been noobs and am used to being bashed from time to time, it's part of learning. There comes a point though where it is no longer banter!

Two days ago, I joined a game that was open to players with my rank (around 800). Experienced players anticipated incoming T3 artillery so set up shields accordingly. I on the other hand was still struggling with my economy and before I knew it I was hit, took it right in the gut! It hit my mass extractors and took out just about all my mass storage.

I was up front so quickly jumped onto chat to warn others: "Crap, incoming artillery, I've just been hit!"

To which another player replied (not so surprisingly really, kind of expected): "I told you to build shields"

Ok fair enough. Lesson learnt. That should have been the end of it.

But then it turned bully-like, and I loath rubbish like this. Fair enough a noob makes a mistake, but you dont beat them over the head with it!

I can't remember exactly what followed, but it was a load of insults followed by me telling the player to "F OFF"

"Die so that I can have all your resources!" he said amongst other stupid things.

Now why the harsh attitude to a new player!?

New players like myself are surely worth more to this (dying) game than other games!

Players need to be banned for crap like this. One idiot like this could potentially scare away 10s of new players.

There needs to be a way to control things like these. I would rather have 10 friendly new players in the FAF community than 1 experienced player who is an idiot.

[ColonelSheppard]

Well, without seeing the actual chat: You are right but at the same time you'r not: There will always be heated up discussions, borderline flame, full scale flame or passive agressive attitude in any, even remotely competetive game, especially on the internet. Fighting this is a fight against windmills and to a certain point everybody has to accept it. That beeing said: If somebody is way off the line, you can always PM a Mod or send a PM to the whole mod-group on the forums. It's been a long time since i started as a total newbie, so yes I'm speaking from a totally different perspective here, but i cannot stress often enough that for most part, FA has one of the most friendly communities when it comes to chatting, across all games i have played.

So if somebody behaved like an asshole: Look up the replay ID and send it with a comment to a mod.
I hope you have fun playing in the future.

[Col_Walter_Kurtz]

Fortunately you seem to have had much more positive than negative so far.Just like you I came back after 5 years or so. Nothing beats good old FA.

Just ignore the occasional idiot, being on the internet requires having thick skin no matter what.

[ColonelSheppard]

Also for the most part ~1000 people aren't really experienced, so you are basicly complaining about relatively nooby people flaming more nooby people.

Spoiler: show

OLD: And I would personally hardly call, ~1000 people experienced, what your are complaining about is basicly noobs flaming noobs, if i may put it bluntly.

[IceDreamer]

And I would personally hardly call, ~1000 people experienced, what your are complaining about is basicly noobs flaming noobs, if i may put it bluntly.

Heeeey, I'm experienced. I'm just bad

[Zoram]

Also for the most part ~1000 people aren't really experienced, so you are basicly complaining about relatively nooby people flaming more nooby people.

Spoiler: show

OLD: And I would personally hardly call, ~1000 people experienced, what your are complaining about is basicly noobs flaming noobs, if i may put it bluntly.

it's all relative, to many , above 1000 is experienced. But then so what ? Not being insulted is a privilegde of the high ranked ? ( I know this is not what you're saying, but ranking is irrelevant here )

[ColonelSheppard]

I know this is not what you're saying, but ranking is irrelevant here

Exactly it's not what I'm saying, but when he talks about "experienced players" i feel implicitly adressed so i looked up his replays and found only games with people in the 1k range, so I pointed out that he's hardly talking about the "experienced" but rather about people that are - i totally use this word without judgment - noobs themselves.

[towerrounder]

Well, without seeing the actual chat: You are right but at the same time you'r not: There will always be heated up discussions, borderline flame, full scale flame or passive agressive attitude in any, even remotely competetive game, especially on the internet. Fighting this is a fight against windmills and to a certain point everybody has to accept it. That beeing said: If somebody is way off the line, you can always PM a Mod or send a PM to the whole mod-group on the forums. It's been a long time since i started as a total newbie, so yes I'm speaking from a totally different perspective here, but i cannot stress often enough that for most part, FA has one of the most friendly communities when it comes to chatting, across all games i have played.

So if somebody behaved like an asshole: Look up the replay ID and send it with a comment to a mod.
I hope you have fun playing in the future.

I understand your point. I have been playing online games for roughly ten years so I'm used to getting bashed.

It was just in this case, that it went too far.

This is what I wanted to raise, that point where comments go too far. Argue, insult, that is all fine, as long as you don't scare the player off from ever coming back.

Thanks for the tip on informing the mods.

Happy playing.

[Kalvirox]

I am sorry you feel this way. I don't play team games anymore but my experience with playing them is almost exactly the same as yours is. Then I stuck to playing purely with friends until I got bored with them.

[buletproof_bob]

No, insults dont stop at higher ranks. Maybe they do higher still at about 1700, never been there.