I'm looking for ways to make life easier for new players, in the hope that this will prolong this game's life in the long run.

@Deribus said in the Q&A Thread that noobs are often confronted with the following problems:

• Getting kicked from custom lobbies
• Long queue times in matchmaking, and very imbalanced matches for the first 10 or so
• Few similarly ranked players willing to play anything but dual gap and astro
• Very steep learning curve

The #gameplay-and-training discord channel is focused on helping with that last bullet point, and I commend everyone there for their effort and success, but upon talking to the members, I got the feeling that the other issues are not really part of their mandate (which, upon reflection, is reasonable)

So could a similar community effort help make those critical first few games more straightforward to get, and also a pleasant experience? How did #gameplay-and-training get started? How were the trainers recruited and how are trainees finding their way there? How do big clans like ANZ or CpC organize so well to fill lobbies so fast? Does anyone have any thoughts on what such a community might do to help? Are you interested in taking part?

I'm thinking a good starting point would be finding people willing to host around the clock, build enough reputation to fill lobbies reasonably fast, and compete with the endless gap/astro lobbies for noob attention, with a focus on making a good first impression, but I'm kind of lost when it comes to the organizational part.

After having hosted countless all welcome games on randomly generated maps I can attest to the fact full share makes the games more fun to play, for both sides. Without it, games end at around 10 minutes, after the first player death, with no chance of recovery for their teammates, after some 2v1 or unfortunate first engagement. This drastic, game-ending outcome often comes as a result of rock-paper-scissors dynamics in the build orders (much more prevalent on random maps), not some grand masterminded strategy that could potentially be scouted and countered in time.

I am, however, dumbfounded by the amount of people that join only to immediately throw a tantrum because they see full share on, then begin to educate me on its shortcomings. Very few games have ended in victory for the team down a player, so the oft repeated argument that full share makes snipes meaningless just doesn't ring true to me. Being down a com and placing more burden on another player does not make the game easier for the losing team, and, at least around my level, it takes time for the the unified economy to compensate for these disadvantages.

I really hope more people give it a chance, and, as funk said, learn to adapt their decision making to this change in rules. Snipe economy, and press the attack once you get a kill instead of zoning out and going sim city.

I generate random map. Looks like it might be good, but the preview, it's the size of a stamp. A tiny stamp because I made 12.5km and it's got a big black border. There's this black gradient over the bottom that ensures the very interesting map name spanning 2 lines is readable so I squint harder than Clint Eastwood. No use, can't see shit. My old man vision can't even pick out the spawns if the map is of the darker kind. So I click create game. I zoom into the map using the NEW BIG LENS BUTTON and notice something I don't like. Close lobby. Go back to host dialog.

I realize this host dialog was never designed to nitpick generated maps, count mexes per spawn, see the difference between cliff and ramp and all that stuff. We didn't have mapgen back when it was made. But maybe it's possible to add the NEW BIG LENS BUTTON in the game creation dialog thus fixing it?

There's another point to be made regarding player experience.

Since without full share, you are usually punished with an agonizing and inevitable defeat when your teammate dies, sometimes through no fault of your own, player deaths are often followed by toxic interactions between teammates, "moron" tags peppered around the map and stuff like that. Full share helps a lot with this problem.

It also seems to me that people more often stay in the game instead of leaving immediately when full share is on, maybe partly because they want to see their stuff put to use. For one thing, this means defeat feels less bitter since fewer rage quit. But it also increases the chance that dead high rated players instruct lower rated players on their team, and that dead low rated players stick around to learn from their teammates. These are the only times casual players get to see high level play and actually pay attention to it, since very few of them spectate games or watch replays, and actually incentivizes high rated players to teach, since they can salvage their rating if they guide their teammates to victory.

These are not minor concerns. This community is plagued by the unreasonable popularity of maps like astro craters or thermo or gap. If a lobby features some other map, it's almost always rating limited. New players end up joining the only lobbies that will have them, the aforementioned shit map trifecta. Some never leave this comfort zone even after gaining a white rating.

TMM is one of the few developments in years that has a chance to change this, and, if I'm not mistaken, it's whole purpose is specifically remedying this situation. We should not overlook player experience when deciding how to structure team play. Even if it turns out full share is not the best option, TMM should arguably use it at launch to be more noob friendly.

@askaholic said in Introducing Mapgen Week on Ladder:

Let’s rename it to "Neroxis and Sheikah Map Generator". And while we’re at it let’s rename the faf client to "Downlords and Axels and Brutus’ and Sheikahs and All those other guys FAF Client"

Praise Neroxis when mapgen is good, blame Sheikah when something is wrong with it. This is the way

Is it possible to add a slight snap when building stuff if there are benefits to be had from adjacency? Same as mexes have but maybe less range.

I think it would be a very intuitive way to teach the benefits of adjacency and could help with sim city generally, like when building an air grid to avoid off-by-one bad placement (don't know if it's possible to add snap-to-unbuilt-blueprint but would be nice).

Another benefit might be that this snapping could nudge blueprints out of overlap with existing or planned units, this making base building less fiddly.

Maybe it could be off when adjusting queued blueprint positions to allow players to override this snap if desired.

What do you think?

I think progress since the mapmaker was publicly released has been huge. I'm hoping experienced mapmakers and high level players get a bit more involved with this project now that it's been brought back into the spotlight by the recent tournament. If I'm not mistaken, Sheikah had put out a call to mapmakers for help with the look and feel months ago, but I'm not sure how much attention it got.

I understand that inclusion in the ladder might pose some technical issues but I think they're worth investigating. Random maps are very noob friendly compared to regular maps: no meta, no specific builds - a level playing field. If the long-term goal is to encourage people to shift to ladder rather than custom games, ignoring the map generator's potential to help in this regard would be foolish; it's common knowledge already that many people stay away from ladder because they feel it's too tryhard.

10 games were launched by it last Sunday, 17 players with less than 500 rating participated. I think AutoHost is off to a great start.

@jip I think help with the learning curve is already well handled by tutorial content creators and the #gameplay-and-training community. Giving those efforts more visibility is one of my goals, although I'm not sufficiently familiar yet with the landscape of existing tutorial content, especially in russian, and would appreciate help in compiling a relevant list.

I'm happy the programmers are doing what they can to increase player retention. I still think a more focused community can help where scripts cannot. For instance, a human host has the opportunity to be nice, gets friended more, then their lobbies fill faster. They have the ability to pick good random maps from all the mediocre ones. They can adapt their lobby size to timezone-related wax and wanes in the player count. They and their friends can direct new players willing to get better to those very useful resources I mentioned earlier, tutorials and the discord channel for training, and doing such would be easier if we were more familiar with these resources. They can moderate lobby chat and do their part to change the culture around kicking noobs from all welcome games. But most importantly, robots suck at making good first impressions and don't make friends. This is crucial to having new players return to our game rather than going and playing whatever the latest steam release is.

But there is one coding-related feature I'd love to see, maybe you know who could help me: lots of people don't mind playing with noobs among them, but there's no equivalent to the !setons rallying cry in #aeolus to summon them. Could a bot be put together for this purpose? Who do I bribe?

Click the ACU select button on the right side of the screen.

This should unfreeze your UI after a disconnect if it's unresponsive for more than a second. It also generally fixes problems with the UI, like no snapping when building mass extractors or hydros.

@yojih I downloaded the mod and will give it a try

i tried using sparkies for their jamming and fast reclaim during t3 / early t4 stage
biggest sadface was realizing they don't get selected with drag select. I think it would be neat to have them slightly changed to work as anti-sniper army escorts, maybe the jamming range made a bit larger and their selection behavior changed to that of regular units? I know it's inconsistent with other build power units but would this change really hurt their other uses? Besides, they have a gun, let me use them as tanks pls

@black_wriggler hey that sounds interesting i'll give it a try
Edit: tried it in 1v1 format, was quite fun, if i get a chance i want to try 2v2 as well. we called it Minions & Masters after the tournament

As I said, there are plenty of people already doing good work training noobs, and more tutorial videos would be nice. What I wanted to focus on was making sure that new players have a higher chance of naturally interacting with a helpful veteran as fast as possible, before they potentially sour on the faf experience, without jumping through any discord or forum hoops. Until the matchmaker becomes the clear default, I think more of a presence of such helpful veterans on the custom lobby list could do this, since, as Deribus said, the noobs themselves are saying that finding games is difficult, in spite of the fact they can host themselves, and in spite of the fact that the matchmaker's available 24/7, but only populated half the time.

Some people don't mind having noobs in their lobbies or they wouldn't join my games. Some of them host themselves, but maybe the noobs that know me don't know them so they are less likely to join. But then there might be other people I haven't even met or barely interacted with, playing in a different timezone or not fluent in English. I was hoping we could organize into a community and maybe sway other people to give "noobs welcome" a try with this goal in mind.

Maybe there's something I could do to get more noobs to join my lobbies I haven't even thought of and one of you suggests it. Many noobs are under the false impression that joining a game with any veterans in it will be a bad experience, when in fact, it can be quite fun. What could I do to change that perception?

@spikeynoob I'm willing to share my secret die-fast techniques if you're willing to consider hosting all welcome every now and then haha

@arma473 easy: host mixed rating game, coach the noob on your team taking time to type, die early due to typing all the time, then coach full time

@jip I think help with the learning curve is already well handled by tutorial content creators and the #gameplay-and-training community. Giving those efforts more visibility is one of my goals, although I'm not sufficiently familiar yet with the landscape of existing tutorial content, especially in russian, and would appreciate help in compiling a relevant list.

I'm happy the programmers are doing what they can to increase player retention. I still think a more focused community can help where scripts cannot. For instance, a human host has the opportunity to be nice, gets friended more, then their lobbies fill faster. They have the ability to pick good random maps from all the mediocre ones. They can adapt their lobby size to timezone-related wax and wanes in the player count. They and their friends can direct new players willing to get better to those very useful resources I mentioned earlier, tutorials and the discord channel for training, and doing such would be easier if we were more familiar with these resources. They can moderate lobby chat and do their part to change the culture around kicking noobs from all welcome games. But most importantly, robots suck at making good first impressions and don't make friends. This is crucial to having new players return to our game rather than going and playing whatever the latest steam release is.

But there is one coding-related feature I'd love to see, maybe you know who could help me: lots of people don't mind playing with noobs among them, but there's no equivalent to the !setons rallying cry in #aeolus to summon them. Could a bot be put together for this purpose? Who do I bribe?

@archsimkat Might also serve as a place for hosts to discuss appropriate maps, call players to fill a lobby, general thoughts on how to balance, how to increase visibility, etc

I'm looking for ways to make life easier for new players, in the hope that this will prolong this game's life in the long run.

@Deribus said in the Q&A Thread that noobs are often confronted with the following problems:

• Getting kicked from custom lobbies
• Long queue times in matchmaking, and very imbalanced matches for the first 10 or so
• Few similarly ranked players willing to play anything but dual gap and astro
• Very steep learning curve

The #gameplay-and-training discord channel is focused on helping with that last bullet point, and I commend everyone there for their effort and success, but upon talking to the members, I got the feeling that the other issues are not really part of their mandate (which, upon reflection, is reasonable)

So could a similar community effort help make those critical first few games more straightforward to get, and also a pleasant experience? How did #gameplay-and-training get started? How were the trainers recruited and how are trainees finding their way there? How do big clans like ANZ or CpC organize so well to fill lobbies so fast? Does anyone have any thoughts on what such a community might do to help? Are you interested in taking part?

I'm thinking a good starting point would be finding people willing to host around the clock, build enough reputation to fill lobbies reasonably fast, and compete with the endless gap/astro lobbies for noob attention, with a focus on making a good first impression, but I'm kind of lost when it comes to the organizational part.

I'd like to hear each candidate's opinions and suggestions, if they have any, on new player experience, retention and training. Is FaF doing better now than it was before on this front? Is there something that you think could be improved further? If there are issues, who is in a position to address them?