Ideas for making a more welcome community for new players

Is there anything specifically that can be done to make this a welcoming place for new players?

Besides just ban-hammering people who don't have great attitudes all the time that is. Is there some method to push a general trend of good-feeling towards new players?

I think my one starting recommendation is a new subforum exclusively for new players to introduce themselves and let us know how they found ZK or what they think about it. And there are at least a few people around here who will give them a welcome. :D It could make new players feel welcomed but also remind everyone else that each new player is a unique individual and not just another name to roll over ingame.

"1. Make singleplayer content so players are not thrust into a strange scary world of competative online play."

This. Probably large amount of raging emanates from people's very first few games they play online. This is a difficult game and first few games are totally faltering.

There is no single player campaign to introduce the basic gameplay to new players in a safe way. The new player has to instantly master very large amount of complex things in order to not get yelled in a game.

We do have a few singleplayer missions. Maybe new players should be pointed to these? Maybe these should be made more visible to new players, so that it is encouraged they play some of these first. Maybe make a linear training course the player has to pass to be able to play online? (Doesn't america's army have that? Many other games have a tutorial or a training mission.)

Successfully complete single player missions "2vs1" and "1vs" and you will be granted the ability to enter online games? Or maybe add a welcome screen for new players that has a huge training course button on it?

I've had a lot of ideas when thinking about more ways to teach players than just the manual some weeks ago. They were are also intended to get players to join public rooms instead of private, passworded ones, so the actual playerbase grows.

All these ideas require newbies to understand that the systems are very helpful and that using them is highly recommended.


1) Mentor system
Experienced players should be able to mentor new players. Give them a little form where they can choose how many nubs they'd like to mentor. When players start ZKL the first five or so times they are asked whether they'd like to have a personal mentor. Tell them that they are free to ask mentors any question and that they can abandon a mentor at any time.

Then pick a mentor based on some simple algorithm: Mentors that speak the same language (country flag) come first, if none exist then mentor with most free capacity (in percent) is picked, if same then higher elo mentor is picked.

2) Dedicated newbie channel
Force newbies into a channel while they are level 1-10, tell them that they are free to ask any question there. Ask the community to help out where possible. Use it to organize newbie-rooms where experienced players spectate or play in a nubs team and guide them.

3) Live streamed tutorials
This is probably more of an event-based idea. I doubt players are willing to stream tutorials 24/7. These can probably organized and announced in the channel mentioned above.

The idea is to provide a video stream of experienced players participating in real battles to give new players a serious game to look at. Newbies should be able to see exactly what the player sees: Mouse movement, camera position, etc. It'd be awesome if there was an overlay that displays which keys are currently pressed. Newbies should be able to ask the player either through a chat or via mumble what exactly (eg how he plopped a marker, etc) he did or why he did it when they see something confusing.


Out of those the dedicated newbie channel is probably the easiest thing to implement. I'm not sure how the live-stream could be solved. The stream would need to have a high resolution so newbies can see the mouse. The game has to run with very high fps. Both at once is hard to achieve and requires a good internet connection from streamers and newbies.


On previous posts: I don't think singleplayer content will be of much use. I've often read that most players who play SP games never play MP.

My tube channel has a couple of first-person-camera games. I could make more :D
I also have a spring stream set up, but my connection doesn't allow me to stream atm :'(

http://www.twitch.tv/florisxiv

im very busy with graduating atm, but ill see if i can sneak in a video or two.
Ill drop by tonight to brainstorm on some tutorial ideas.

I'd like to post these videos in the manual or on the main page. Don't care for the lack of sound, they are very helpful at giving an idea of the game as they are.

Oi btw what speed multipliers did you use for those vids? You look like a korean player. :P

I'm up for helping new people

but singleplayer content is indeed necessary, being able to use the lobby when not connected to the internet and run solo games against CAI/Chicks would be a great boon to a lot of people

And don't we have lots of single player missions already? why can't we string some together into a player campaign of some kind, maybe first mission teaches players to use cloaky and second maybe veh/spids or something and take it that way onto air play then to funky strategies

Perhaps an introduction popup could explain why new players shouldn't jump into MP right away.

+1 FlorisXIV

The problem is that Licho is all alone on the ZK lobby, and that's where the focus needs to be for the new user experience, since the ZK lobby is also the entryway into the singleplayer/tutorial content.