[195]harassing/flaming the newbie commanders
Laosh'Ra
Join Date: 2011-12-09 Member: 137232Members
Join Date: 2011-12-09 Member: 137232Members
<div class="IPBDescription">how can this be adressed?</div>well, when somebody is commanding for the first time, you cannot expect an awesome result...
personally, i think it is very helpful for that person to be commander at least once as it allows you to understand the tech-tree and other aspects of commanding you might now have been aware of as "foot soldier". it might be a lost match, but the person might greatly benefit from the gained knowledge when playing as foot soldier again, e.g. it might improve the feel what the commander is expecting from you even though he is too busy to tell you in this situation. e.g. you will know that an advanced armory is very expensive, that it can be a waste of ressources to build an extractor too close to the enemy.
however, the majority of people seems to be heavily annoyed by this: comments like "eject this noob" and "omg its already over" are among the polite ones. but how will they be able to become decent commanders? playing as foot soldier will certainly improve you a bit, but i belive there are limits to this: at one point you have to give it a try. there are several games where nobody is commanding, probably because they are afraid of the negative feedback. even in those games the people get harassed after pushing themselves to do the job as nobody else is willing to. i think those people deserve some more respect. there is no match making so you cannot expect those people to win on their first tries and it's not like a win means anything in a beta without any permanent score.
so, are there any ideas on how to make the commander-experience more noob-friendly in terms of community?
personally, i think it is very helpful for that person to be commander at least once as it allows you to understand the tech-tree and other aspects of commanding you might now have been aware of as "foot soldier". it might be a lost match, but the person might greatly benefit from the gained knowledge when playing as foot soldier again, e.g. it might improve the feel what the commander is expecting from you even though he is too busy to tell you in this situation. e.g. you will know that an advanced armory is very expensive, that it can be a waste of ressources to build an extractor too close to the enemy.
however, the majority of people seems to be heavily annoyed by this: comments like "eject this noob" and "omg its already over" are among the polite ones. but how will they be able to become decent commanders? playing as foot soldier will certainly improve you a bit, but i belive there are limits to this: at one point you have to give it a try. there are several games where nobody is commanding, probably because they are afraid of the negative feedback. even in those games the people get harassed after pushing themselves to do the job as nobody else is willing to. i think those people deserve some more respect. there is no match making so you cannot expect those people to win on their first tries and it's not like a win means anything in a beta without any permanent score.
so, are there any ideas on how to make the commander-experience more noob-friendly in terms of community?
Comments
Another good time to learn the commander interface is in the last few minutes of a lost game.
I agree with you that everyone should play as Comm/Khaam. I didn't understand Khaara vulnerabilities until I was Khaam and had marines harassing my cyst chain.
Also, if you plan to comm more than once, get a mic and use it often!!
But that said I do think extensive guides on tech trees, structures, and commanding strategy should be readily available.. Sadly there arent any really (or if there is they are very hard to find) :/ so that doesnt help.
Also, if you plan to comm more than once, get a mic and use it often!!
But that said I do think extensive guides on tech trees, structures, and commanding strategy should be readily available.. Sadly there arent any really (or if there is they are very hard to find) :/ so that doesnt help.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
You can't try out commander/khamm on a empty server, it doesn't let you. Once the bots are out people will be able to try it out by themselves, which will help a lot.
Ah I did'nt know :( that does suck. Perhaps grab a friend and try it then... Or join a very low-pop server and see if its cool if you ###### around.
I think first time comming on a full server is a bad idea though. :/
Create your own lan server, enter ''Cheats 1" into the console and you will be able to play in the commander positions.
Nobody took the obvious answers
Being polite.
Assuming all commanders are newbs (they are ...this is a new game)
Trying to be helpful.
The truth is ...it is up you player populace...
Commanding a bunch of different egos is akin to being a good manager.
Now how many of you in all your years of working can count more than 10 managers you really thought were excellent...yeah I thought so.
No amount of playing by yourself or reading forums helps much with the fact that:
a) People do not always follow your orders.
b) People do things against whatever plan you devise.
"Okay group together and come around the corner slowly...the element of surprise is...WTF who invited Leroy Jenkins"
c) People are @$$ hats, clowns, etc.
So the problem is not the tech tree...it's not that deep....it's the people.
Be polite try to help.
Think how your requests sound before you voice them.
Encourage more people to play commander.
Waypoint please.
This is to complicated for a noob. The simplest solution is:
<ol type='1'><li>Make the game playable with only one player. Start it, when one joins and reset as soon, as a second one joins. So everyone can try out commanding alone for the first steps. They can build their own buildings and won't be harrased by aliens.</li><li>Don't flame a bad commander. Its stupid. Help him to see his errors, but <b>on a polite way</b>. How can you be so stupid, that you try to destroy the little growing playerbase of your loved game. Its even in beta. Sure are there noobs. Get over it and be constructive.</li></ol>
Oh, @Kingmob: +1
Its just a match, and hey, help them out if they are messing up that bad.
The average novice doesn't know what console commands are.
This being a beta, they don't have friends who can join an empty server so they can practice their commanding.
This is like, Greek to them.
Its important to have a competitive yet friendly community, especially when something is new. So try to avoid acting like the old DOTA or Tribes Community.
Being polite."
<u>EXACTLY</u>.
i relate to this thread. disclaimer: i know how to comm in every respect for marines, i am good enough with comming marines <u>to get by</u>, but do not consider myself better than most, and am always verbal about it -<i> yet people get so upset!</i>
last night no one would take the comm chair. in fact they all stood around for a good 15 seconds, like chirping birds begging to get fed. i warned that i could do the basics but that not to expect anything great. so what happens? everything is going fine, but for some reason i dont hear the world's <b>most impatient man:</b> "Gorgeous Gorge" needs medpacks. (i swear, either its broken sometimes, or i just dont hear "need medpack" over everything else going on) then he gets into a pissing match with me over the mic. I tell him he can have the chair and comm, i've been verbal about this since the get go, and all he says is "<i>Yea okay i'll go comm and not give you medpacks</i>".... of course he doesn't go comm.
people don't want that responsibility in pugs.. they are averse to it.. but they are MORE than happy to shout obscenities and stammer like a 4 year old, calling you names etc.
too bad, too.. i make it a point to always guide and give advice to a new comm, and even if he isn't new you'll hear me shouting , "beacon! beacon!" but i never get so <b>MAD </b>or rude like so many people do. really hope the community stays mature and learns how to deal with this situation in games.. read: Be patient, helpful, respectful. ..its a game...i dont believe i have to say this.
UWE really need to have a tutorial ready for the launch. And a sticky thread on here that can work like a manual.
There's no way to solve the problem of new players not knowing things. All you can do is be mature about the fact that there will be noobs in the comm chair, and also be mature about the fact that people will be rude to said noobs and there's nothing you can do to change it. All the well-intentioned forum posts in the world won't change this fact.
basically i want to use every available tutorial made so far as a reference, <i><b>but really i want to create a simple, no longer than one minute video that would be OPTIONAL to play when you joined a server</b></i>, like a message would pop up in when you spawn in the RR, "Do you want to see a quick video explaining the basics of the game?" etc..
think TF2 during the screen where you pick Red or Blue, it gives you an option to watch a quick video to explain the basics so you are not completely lost if it is your first time. i love this idea. it also provides a way for those vets to say "watch the video, man." instead of being rude or wasting time explaining to the masses.
some of the finer details in the game, like gorge being able to speed up build times etc can be left out as there may not be time to go into detail, and it provides some fun surprises and depth to those that play longer.
we could even have the entire thing scripted out, line for line, and then submit it to Flayra to voice over for us if he approves :)
i am willing to start this.
if anyone is in, drop me a line.
Ha, exactly my experience. Nobody wants it, so I figure I'd give it a shot and see how well I can do. But with my luck a "pro" will magically join the game the moment I take it and yell at me to get out.
I've yet to command for more than a minute or two! Good times.
That's when I tell people, "then you go get in the chair" and you get crickets..
The 156 servers encourage new people to try it, hell, it is beta and we are all learning and it is changing weekly. Not everyone will command the same either. Some may like Mines right away, or rush early shotties, it is all trial and error.
Us 156 members try hard to educate people and make it a fun game rather than a ###### session, thats no fun. The more people that like it the more players we will have and the more that try commanding then when no one wants in the chair there will be someone to take the reigns.
Yes, a new commander usually means a lot of dying, same can be said for both sides, but give people a chance, help them, we are trying to build this game up not have it become a game of elitists.
Playa_2b
Perhaps put a 15-30 second delay before the game starts to give others a chance to join.
Yes it definately is worth it to make a tutorial for a game that is as complex as this is. Some people might skip them at first but will get back to them once they get confused and need answers.
You have propably played this a lot and over the time its easy to forget how confusing it actually can be for a new player who just has bought the game.
I bought this couple weeks ago and I can tell you I was so lost until I slowly started to figure things out by try and error. And I used to play NS1 back in the day so at least I had some idea about the game. I can only imagine how confusing this must be for a player who is completely new to NS.
So yeah tutorial would have helped a lot. Worst part was that I was unable to find answers even tho I tryed to google stuff a lot. Propably in the first 10 hours at the game I spended 3 hours on google just to get some answers and someone with less patience would have already quit the game.
I really hope some good tutorial will be there with the realease even tho I realize it takes lots of resources which a small team like this doesnt have.
i would hate to see this game turn into having just a bunch of L337 up themselves ######
yea that dude's kind of an ass.
Then you can set up a game offline and simply practice with them, almost like a normal RTS. And no one will complain about your mistakes then.
i would hate to see this game turn into having just a bunch of L337 up themselves ######<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
ye its kind of what happened to the australia. ns scene eventually, where the 'elitists' would just stack a side and new players asking questions would essentially be told to get $#^$ed and not given a chance to learn properly.
now that i think about it, its no wonder our custom server (which was often to looked down upon by the 'core' ns community) was much more popular with beginners, everyone on those servers was so much friendlier and more willing to help.
Forget any details about the players involved (whether they're good or bad, experienced or inexperienced etc) - 90% of the time what you can observe in a pub is that people are blaming the commander for their own failings, and most of what they say is just plain wrong. The most obvious example is when someone is saying "geez why don't we have _____ yet?" and your team has 1 res tower, and has been on the losing end of the game for the last 15 minutes. Stuff like that is really cute.
I've seen a lot of people so far in NS2 say "I'm new so if somebody else wants to comm, let me know" and the best part is that usually a few people say "nah, go ahead and learn...after all, it's an early beta. let us know if you have any questions!" That makes me feel warm and fuzzy. Then two rounds later someone tells me I should never comm again because my team couldn't kill 1 hive when we had the entire rest of the map under control with a full tech tree. <i><b>Hahahahha video games on the internet.</b></i>
Another fun thing to observe (at least right now) is people get mad at marine comms a lot more than alien comms. One possible reason is they can identify with how frustrating/ineffective the alien comm is. Another is that combat is easier for people who can't aim as the aliens (so they don't spend all day typing about how they need jetpants and shirtgun). I dunno what it is really, but it's certainly funny.
At the end of the day, every game community is going to develop elitists who dump on new players. The best thing to do is corral them into competitive play (with gathers/clanwars) - they will either realize they're not actually good and go away, or find the higher-skill environment they desire and enjoy themselves.
To be honest, the "create a server and learn the game" comeback is really getting old. No one wants to waste 10 minutes learning the tech tree so they won't get yelled at. A "hands on" tutorial is much more effective, as long as the "vets" are willing to help.
Remember the big influx updates of NS1? Where on a few occassions there were masses of new players descending on a release. The people had to be coached and taught the game. When NS2 gets released this is going to magnified immensely. You could be looking at ridiculous ratios of new people to experienced, and it really is going to be through politeness and perseverance that these people learn to play the game.
I am not sure the depth of the responsibility of being a NS2 beta tester has fully sunk in with some people. This is a difficult game and on release, will most likely be filled by players who haven't played ns1. That is going to take a lot of teaching and patience :)
I also believe it is every beta testers duty to learn to comm, so on release, there can be at least 1 comm per server who knows what he is doing :)