Attitude to new players, rating probs and first FAF experien

[Apofenas]

Hello.

Not so long ago i tried to attract some of my friends to FAF using the smurf account. I found out that our small community is not nice and sometimes even abusive to new players. A week ago i created another one to fix my 2d nickname after me and confirm what i saw. Currently if there is a choice between new and known players, new player will be kicked from game every time even if he was first and waited for rather long time.

Because 1)he is unknown player with unexplored skill level 2)he counts in balance close to 1500 rated or so. It means even if he's allowed to play, the game will be stacked against him and end with loss. Even when i took controls from my friends, it ended with loss a couple times. Losing 2/3 of first games is terrible experience we give to new commers.

In game if anything somehow connected with new player goes wrong, everybody blame him. For example today i was in game when 1400 player lost connection to new 400 player and ejected him straight. Guess who was asked and than shouted to leave game? Host of that game added me to his ban list just because i protected new guy.

Spoiler: show

Avid6eek is shit person. Don't join his games.

Another problem new-s face is rating. They get kicked from games for having too little games and unstable rating. How the f*ck they are supposed to play games and gain rating if they are not allowed into games? Some could say "you join an all welcome game or host a game yourself". I'll tell you the secret - sometimes they get kicked even from all welcome games. Even if they somehow find out how to host a game WITH attractive map AND ranked settings, they will only find out how hard to get a game going in FAF. Some say to play ladder and poke everybody into their ladder rating... this does not work in FAF no matter how fancy it looks.

Suggestions:

First is to make a proper tutorial for new players. I'm not speaking about some YouTube video, but about FAF programm showing itself what features it has and how they work. Main of them are:
1)How to join and host games, which ones are ranked, difference between ladder and global rating, what are featured mods and Co-op;
2)#Aeolus, its rules, how to send private messages, who are moderators/personal trainers and how they can help you;
3)Top left corner: mumble, database, wiki, forums, tech support, ect;
4) Replay, map and mod vaults;
Currently tutorial tab is useless because it's outdated, Live streams is obselite by QAI and Leaderboards is not really usefull tab.

Second is to change their rating. Right now they are counted close to 1500 rated. Change it to 700-900. If i'm not mistaken it was suggested by Vee when ZePiLoT experimented with rating system.

Make ladder affect their global rating. When i only joined FAF i got ~900 points from first 3 ladder games and nobody told i could be smurf because it was normal to face low rated player or another new player and win all games.

[Ithilis_Quo]

make first 10-20? ladder game game is imho great suggestion, that will help a lot to get corect (and some) rating.

but there is also problem with players that are jast weak, too noobiesh, for them is also pretty hard to get some game.

Most of this will fix team matchmaker. Its in develop for 2 year. and i dont understand why it is still not working...

[Blodir]

Greatest solution to this is a teamgame matchmaker

[Nyx]

Suggestions:

First is to make a proper tutorial for new players. I'm not speaking about some YouTube video, but about FAF programm showing itself what features it has and how they work. Main of them are:
1)How to join and host games, which ones are ranked, difference between ladder and global rating, what are featured mods and Co-op;
2)#Aeolus, its rules, how to send private messages, who are moderators/personal trainers and how they can help you;
3)Top left corner: mumble, database, wiki, forums, tech support, ect;
4) Replay, map and mod vaults;
Currently tutorial tab is useless because it's outdated, Live streams is obselite by QAI and Leaderboards is not really usefull tab.

I would happily, in my spare time, make a series of videos explaining how each bit of faf works/how to host but I am not going to make them for them to sit there and not be used, I would do this in my little bit of spare time over next few weeks or so and maybe finish after xmas.

They would need to be integrated into something within faf Like a how to use faf icon/clickable on the top bar of faf or something that links to a forum page with list of videos etc, so that the users that are new can access them and know they are there easily, I made a similar thing before but because nobody knew of their existence, I removed my videos of how to use faf.

[ZLO_RD]

i did a video like that on russian, not sure if it ended being good, it turned into 2 videos lenght more than a hour together

[Nyx]

i did a video like that on russian, not sure if it ended being good, it turned into 2 videos lenght more than a hour together

I would propose "shorts" of like less than 6 minutes concerning precise things like: how to host a game (2 mins explaning hostin), how to set option (5 mins explaining game settings) etc.

[Shai--Hulud]

One way to welcome new gamers: players who like to help others put their name on a list. Once new players have created an account they get a message like:

"Welcome to FAF. Great that you have joined our community. FAF can be pretty frustrating at the beginning as it is rather complex. However, there are many (experienced) players around who would be happy to help you getting started. Just have a look at the list and send them a message whenever you have a question. In addition: it might be rather difficult to join a game as a new players as your rating is yet 0. Just host your own game with a proper title and people will join."

Just as an idea. It might also be a good idea to give new players a specific avatar (e.g. displaying a very weak unit like an engie or a scout for 2 weeks or so), group them in aeolus or use a specific colour for their names - whatever makes them stand out a bit so people can see right away that those players might need some help.

BTW Does anyone know how many new players there are per day/week?

EDIT: I also think that it might be a good idea to add images that guide them through basic stuff such as hosting (see attached file). Videos are great but if you can put all the relevant information in one images it's so much easier to understand right away.

[D4E_Omit]

One way to welcome new gamers: players who like to help others put their name on a list. Once new players have created an account they get a message like:

"Welcome to FAF. Great that you have joined our community. FAF can be pretty frustrating at the beginning as it is rather complex. However, there are many (experienced) players around who would be happy to help you getting started. Just have a look at the list and send them a message whenever you have a question. In addition: it might be rather difficult to join a game as a new players as your rating is yet 0. Just host your own game with a proper title and people will join."

You mean exactly like this: viewtopic.php?f=40&t=1614 ?

[Shai--Hulud]

Yes, that looks great. It's vital though that new players get some kind of "welcome" message that explains what is going on on faf. Otherwise they will have no idea such a list with players who are willing to give some lessons exists.

[Rudolph'sRedNose]

Just as an idea. It might also be a good idea to give new players a specific avatar (e.g. displaying a very weak unit like an engie or a scout for 2 weeks or so), group them in aeolus or use a specific colour for their names - whatever makes them stand out a bit so people can see right away that those players might need some help.

Yes. I love this. Lets separate and highlight the noobs. Just in case anyone was in any doubt, or any noobs tried to hide that they are big noobs, everyone will know that they are indeed complete and utter noobs. Publicly parade them in their inflatable armbands so they cannot hide their noobishness from even their family.

In all seriousness though. The message idea is quite cute, i like it.

I don't know how much of a thing this slack chat lextoc set up is (viewtopic.php?f=40&t=10899&p=111470&hilit=trainers#p111470) but if there was a beginner chat parallel to aeolus (like clan chat) where beginners could spam questions and anybody could join, at any time, if they so felt like helping out that would be quite cool. (Maybe there is something, i'm not aware of it though)

I'm curious as to whether there are any stats to how many new players frequent the forums, because if they don't the trainers list might be quite hidden to many of them.

A couple of videos explaining the process of being a noob before you get stuck into improving your game would be really nice too. I've noticed a couple of newbs distressed at losing their first 10+ games and then just disappearing. Don't know how prevalent it is but every one is a loss to community.