Hi all;

Was wondering what you guys would think of tournament being the encouraged starting server for new players; up until this point, new players were strongly encouraged (via a blue arrow! at least if the code is still working!) to play Primary.

However, it seeems that that simply leads to them simply being farmed... assuming they managed to get OOP that is heh


What would your thoughts be as to the viability of newer players being encouraged to start in tourney -- this would put them in the lower level obviously.


I'm especially interested in anybody who has experience playing both low level tourney and primary.


Also, we were to do this and if it were to be successful, we might make tourney expand in levels again.



This is, of course, still somewhat hypothetical, although we've been considering it a bit lately; Primary has not proved to be as insulated an environment as perhaps could be desired for newer players their first reset (or two?)

+1

I, being the moderator of those two servers.... probably agree...BUT I would like to see some add rules for those newer players to follow. Primary feels a bit like express. But from the looks of Tourney game c there is a bit of aggression too. I think KoH might the best to answer on that.

In Tournament guys will declare war on you and attack you 20 times. That does mostly happen in game A but it happens in the other games too. In Primary at least everyone usually just hits once, and the 4x humanitarians is a hard limit.

Tbh Express is a kind of good one, short rounds so you can learn quickly and DR is 1/4 the round so you may only get hit 5x a day.

Hm I suppose; I always assumed Express was kindof intense for new players; that said they might want *more* to do than on the slower servers...

I would agree with Blid.

Tournament is more aggressive than Primary with the land grabbing (especially in A), people will often make you their land farm. In Primary, the grabbing is more spread out from multiple different players. Tournament also has a much smaller player base so there aren't as many options for getting land (hence the farming of other players) - also, the lack of def. allies makes it harder in tourney to defend against a PS.

Then again, in Primary, most of the experienced players won't be able to grab newer players due to the 4x humanitarian rule (assuming newer players won't get that big).

On the plus side, lower level tourney is probably much easier for new players to "finish" with a higher rank, since there are a lot less players.

The thing to think about there ingle, is if a new player can get through to game A then they are ready to hit other servers. That is an achievement in itself to get from C to A.

qzjul here is a question...are you aiming to make it easier to learn the game like in terms of netting? I mean there has to be some grabbing out there in terms to learn how to grab and how to retal.

LOL @ galleri. Getting to game A is not the problem. That aspect is way too easy. Remaining in game A, now that is a challenge. If a new player can remain in game A even for a set then they are ready to venture. I dare say they need to remain in game A at least 2-3 times to account for beginners luck.

Any new player that somehow makes it to game A is almost guaranteed to be someone's farm. Heck, a few veteran players have ended up being someone's farm at some point and it happens every set.

Primary will be easier for new players, they will be farmed there, but at least not by the same player. The farming will be spread out over multiple other players.

Express will be best I think. Once they get into deep DR, they MIGHT and I mean MIGHT be left alone.

"Similarly, the top 25% of players in games B and C move up to game A at the end of the round."

How is the top 20 in Game B/C most sets? Too bad we can't see the full score list of B/C.

Definitely not tourney - its really brutal in Game A. This would easily turn new players off.

Express is the best

Yeah unfortunately I have never played tourney or primary...so I am not sure how hard or easy it is to get to each level in tourney. My bad guys..those were just thoughts I had. Thanks for clarifying!

Police work" for the new bloods, we will destry anyone who unprovoked decides to farm them..

/ducks for cover

Yes making it easier;

The other thing you'd have to remember is that we have about 500-800 new signups per month; so those would get put into tourney; most wouldn't advance obviously; but we might have to make it 25% to a maximum of 25 or something like that, to prevent people who didn't even get OOP from advancing...

Also maybe to let them win somewhat easier heh

That sounds good. If they feel some sort of achievement they will be more likely to stay and explore the game some more.

Would it be hard to code it so you can't farm new people? For xample limit to 2 grabs by same person until the new player reaches...idk, let's say 2k turns played?, hmm, I don't know....

um
hm
maybe i guess? we could do something like that


the biggest thing would be figuring out how to get most people OOP though lol...

Make an increasing DR per country - country that resets instead of 24 hrs, it resets after the set. So as a country farms another they quickly go to 10 acres a hit for the entire set.

I don't think stopping them being grabbed is a good thing.

part of what players wll enjoy for the first little bit playing is getting hit and "getting even" afterwards.

Tourny is a good starting point since games have a decent length to them, anything shorter than a month is likely too short. as it gives them time to start caring about the country a little too.

Likely most players will start as semi-terrorists, wanting to blow stuff up and hurt other players, gradually some will get interest in getting big scores and progressing.

linking them to the strategy guides will be great for those wanting to progress beyond the usual newbie terrorist state.


I still think on the server that introduces them, getting rid of or lowering expenses. since the stocking is likely what most of them won't understand, plus people love big numbers :) as such they'll like they're country more.. netgaining at 30,000,000 instead of netgaining at 7mil and jumping end game.

just a thought :)

"Newbie terrorist state" LMFAO!!!!!! +10 hahahaha, yup that was me back in 96' *coughSTILLcoughDOcoughITcoughWHENcoughOPPOSINGcoughCOUNTRYcoughTOOcoughBIG* :p

It sounds fantastic.

Mostly, it could add another 1 or 2 levels to tourney fast. Playing in game J to start is going to be easy, and likely put you 2 months from even getting to game A. There was tons of protection back when you started in X, Y, and Z games.

I would likely also recommend making Humanitarians kick in at 1/6th instead of the 1/8th they are now.

But this is a brilliant move ASSUMING it expands the tourney by 2 more rounds. It would be rough without that expansion, and people are commenting without considering the expansion of the levels.

With that 500-800 new sign ups a month, the levels would expand quickly, and new players would have incentive to play up the tourney ladder.

They would stay in the game to try and advance, advancement would be easy as the lower levels would be all new players, it would be great for the game as a little success in a couple of short tourney rounds would lead them to explore other games.

I started back in the 90s in tourney game Y, had some success, moved to game A in a couple of months, got my ass handed to me there, and when down to game B, fighting my way up and down for a while. It got me addicted, and into other servers.

5-6 levels of tourney might just "save" all of Earth Empires.

Brink: Yea, more levels would be likely; the only problem with those 500-800/month that we're seeing is that i'd say half don't make it OOP, and most of the rest don't make it past 100k nw


but yes, putting them into a month long set rather than 2 month long (less time to wait for them to not be hugely behind); putting them in smaller games at lower levels (somewhat more protection); letting them do well in their smaller games



We could, I suppose, adjust rules like humanitarians based on the game level as well... hmmm


I think there's opportunity to make it more viable than primary for new players anyway

q:

Can you make it so the lower levels start with enough turns to play OOP on the first day/set of turns? If the country is alive and doing things they might be more interested in logging in again. if it takes till your 3rd or 4th login to actually start playing, it might be boring compared to shoot em ups and Guitar rock God.

I play to turn 99 and often sit in protection if I don't plan to use the early public market, but surely many want to start playing right away.

could do something like that; faster start; wouldn't be hard to do anyway

Keep 'em coming Brink. These are some really good ideas.

I dunno I think primary might be the best place for a number of reasons:

1) The wow factor of the awesome top 10 countries being some of the best players in the game. I recall messaging a top 10 country or two way back in the day and getting helpful pointers

2) The current humanitarian/GDI system in primary has led to very little farming of new players. I mean right now, anybody below say 1.5M NW isn't getting hit all that much in primary b/c most attackers are over 6M NW so can't hit them. I really disagree with the idea that new players are getting farmed badly in primary.

Otoh, I will agree with Mr. Silver that tournament might offer the optimal length. Resetting every month players don't have to wait around for a while to play a set from the beginning.

Thanks for asking for opinions qz...

I still think Express.

I figure a new player might log in to Primary or Tournament, inefficiently run their 40 turns or however many, and then just be like, "Huh." And move on and not log in again, that's what qz is talking about when he says most new people never even get out of protection.

Now if it's Express, they might have 200 turns or something, or even when they run out, they see the next one is coming in 3 minutes, so they keep playing, become one of those semi-terrorists, have an actual country to manage, etc.

I was a semi-terrorist when I started too, lol.

Top of the day to ya!

ya maybe new players should be put on the server where semi-terrorism is the most encouraged, and acceptable to more experienced players as well. That wouldn't be primary b/c 2 months of work ruined by a semi-terrorist would be bogus. Perhaps that would be express with some different GDI rules that allow for some minor terrorism=) (Say if you attack a guy, he can do 1 of any special attack?)

Bobby I always thought a GDI rule like that would be interesting. It would keep people from running 0 tanks anyway.

The main thing I was thinking of though for player retention was a server where they could get out of protection and try out making an attack on their first log-in.

yup I agree with you on that...hell even experienced players would appreciate if (in primary for example) the first two days weren't spent in protection

I do like the express idea as well; the biggest problem for getting new players started with express, to me, is that it's not running literally like half the time -- which means they sign up, log in, it says "come back in a few days" basically....

We could run a separate "Express 3 day" server that fits between the Express 4 day servers or something... not sure how that would work logisitically heh



Or yea, make primary simply start with 200 turns; and you're maximum turns is 320 - turns played until it gets back down to 120....



Or do something like that with tourney.


I like the direction of these thoughts anyway.



To my mind the biggest problems are:
-------------------------------------

- Players not making it OOP
---> this may be related to how blid said, not getting to engage during their first session; longer engagement at the start is defeinitely required
---> this is also related to not having a nice guiding tutorial, but that's a totally different issue

- Once players actually start getting half decent, the begin to be farmed to death
---> from primary players i've talked to, they do some major farming of smaller countries


- No clear... achievements/wins, especially if they start late;
---> it's hard to get a sense of doing well if you start like 3/4 through a primary reset, and you're ranked like... really low, and what do you do with this country anyway... we have no feedback; my plan is for achievements eventually, but that's not something I can do quickly at this point really

Interesting comments overall, I just wanted to point out one thing:
Not sure about that... I don't like to multitap much in Primary because I don't want to risk my 2-month set. If you check the histories of the top countries, you will see very little farming, and, as Bobby said, if you're bad, you'll be out of humanitarian range of top countries, instead just in the range of all the other terrorists and people screwing around or new. It's Tournament where everyone finds a weak country, declares war, and farms the crap out of them. That's probably partly because of how few targets there are, partly because of how easy it is for people to make a retal grab, and partly I guess because with no GDI, you're gonna be carrying tanks and so on regardless.

200-250 turns with an attack restriction may be good way to keep new peeps engaged ;)

*coughSTILLcoughAREcough*

/points to Team Server

LOL :p

Could we create a page for new joiners which has a few links describing strats for example:

1) Casher Tutorial
2) Indy Tutorial
3) Farmer Tutorial
4) Techer Tutorial

Just one strat explanation for each.

And explain the pros and cons and how to get a decent but simple one started and played. At least they get off on the right foot.

Today, I dont know where a newbie could get that info.

Not too complicated but the basics of each

Also, make the page very obvious - perhaps once they make the country direct them there, with an option to skip

Fixed :p

Then it is settled, a new Express Tourney. Each round lasts a week, new turn every 5 minutes, 5-6 levels to work up.

Or however the best of both worlds needs to work?

If I were to do more tourney levels they would look like this I think; the number of players, assuming min ~75 people per game is totalled beside:

Level      Games         Players Required
1            A                75
2           B C              225
3          D E F             450
4        G H I J K           825
5      L M N O P Q R        1350
6     S T U V W X Y Z       1950

or

Level      Games         Players Required
1            A                75
2           B C              225
3          D E F             450
4         G H I J            750
5         K L M N           1050
6         O P Q R           1350
7         S T U V           1650
8         W X Y Z           1950

So even if we were to put all new players in, we'd still probably only add one level...



But yea.... I dunno, primary/express/tourney each have a few good things going for them for sure...


But yea...

Tourney seems to have the most "right circumstances" of the lot.

I like option 2 better, qzjul :)

whoops dbl post

express tourney!

make the lower levels smaller:) no need yet....to go above 350 in a round...


I remember there used to be a U and V, ut maybe only had 100 players, but it was from people who finished really low, in s, or t etc....

so basically noobs advnaced, had a harder time, regressed and ended up in the easiest of levels...

so in theory, if a new player starts at level 6,
moves up to level 4, then regresses a level, they go back to 5.....

5 should only have sucky players:) and should be the smallest of levels in size/# of games.

Don't think so linearly:)

ps!

No more than 300 players per game! Till you fill out 5-6 levels:)


And make it possible by winning a level 6 game to jump straight to a level 2 game,
maybe 2-25make it to level 3
and 26-100 make it to level 5,

hence 101-200 go to level 5,
and level 6 remains the 100 inactives:)

I think a winner of a level 4 game should jump to level 1,
tp 3 of a level 3,

and top 15 or so of level 2. This would make getting to level A harder also.

Yea my numbers were based on 75 people per game; we could put new players to tourney in a bottom round that they have to get out of and can never drop to again....?

Some people (me) stay in lower lvl just cuz its more fun than "Netting", you will have peeps like that too, I know SuperFly does that every now and then also ;)