*Adopt a Newbie* ~ new concept brainstorming and ideas

well, one stupid idea i got during the guiding lately, was that it would be great if you would have some kind of chat, best ingame, you could join anytime and it had some people who can answer you (in our case the guides that is)

without the need to change socs or especially to sign up in forums
more some kind of insta help
as I said, i think people want insta action, but especially for those who stay there may be some kind of "uhm, what next and how" phase
a chat would help there

if you had enough ppl in there you may even manage to have it there 24/7

would be a matter of advertising then

about advertising, that is hard
i know that i barely watch the ingame ads (ok, i admit it, i didnt watch any since 4 months at least) and i doubt too many newbies do it

it is pretty troublesome to give every newbie info which they actually want to hear
most want to "get gunz and start earning moneyzz right away", not some stupid chat about how to sweat or even eco :D

so reaching the newbies may be troublesome, at least reaching them in a way they keep in mind
in swamp camp you had the word of mouth likely, but the actual newbie spawns, thats gonna be hard (the guides arent there 24/7 either way, can't be anyway)

 

Pretty much the heart of the matter right there. The guys have just downloaded a massive client, tweaked an avatar and finally logged in.. the last thing they want to hear is "log out and go to ...... "

Some method to intercept their attention while they are downloading, and get them pre-prepared to meet someone as they step off the AZ, would go a long way to allowing experienced players to help with the immediate first steps as well as getting the new players right into the game within their first session.

 

i had a remark like that from a newbie i asked who said he informed himself while he was downloading
something like that has been in my notes already which i published in the guide forum to read by the guides as well as from Simon

so it may be possible to get something like that going (big may tho, but it will come to my notes), maybe to show some links during the downloads MA/FPC has on their site anyway
if they had a "newcomer welcome help chat" there it could get quite some ppl into that one

 

Oh, right, I get you now.. so they can have a live chat with a guide while downloading and setting up.... it would be superb, I agree.

 

nah, not just guide

from what i know the guide program is temporarily, at least the one with the players involved
although that was the start of the idea, if you would have a couple more ppl into that one it could cover the timezone better

in the end, a society is basically a common planet wide chat you share, not that much more, unless you own land ofc :P

and if you had something pop up like "join the newcomer welcome and help chat here(link)" during the start of the download or the installation would be intersting

you would just need a couple of people who log in there and check it regulary while playing EU
but i think that could speed many things up and improve a lot
if the guy has questions, he can go there
if hes stuck you could have a connection to the calypso rescue team if not a member of them is in the chat already
and so on and so on

several people are reluctant with forums tho, so something with signing up wont work that well i think

 

Sounds as a good plan, and I would log into that chat when I get ingame.

However, who will be able to log in as a help?
Will people be screened or need sertain skills, time ingame?

I already see big problems if just anyone could log into that.


Regards.
Ion

 

I wonder if the messaging system could be tied to a terminal somehow. Players could volunteer to be "active" on the terminal, and when the terminal is used, it displays a list of available volunteers who can be PM'd from the terminal for direct communication.

At the volunteer end, there would be some mechanism to activate your availability on the terminal list so you don't get pinged at inconvenient times. The times that volunteers are available should be recorded, and their interractions audited by MA/FPC to reduce the risk of malicious participation.

Volunteers should also be rewarded to encourage participation, along similar lines to ME gifts, obviously with different performance criteria such as time available, number of interractions and possibly a rating system based on new player feedback.

Short of MA/FPC building such a system our next best option is to build an external analog of that environment. Possibly even look at how Xfire can be used as well, although I'm not keen on that direction.

 

That sounds as a usefull plan except the bold part.
Giving rewards opens the system up for abuse, like we had with the farming mentors, and a rating system is risky too.

I had newcomers before: newb: I wants a free gunz, me: sorry I dont give items, only advice, newb: f*ck you idiotzz.
and badabing badaboem you have a negative rating.

But the idea of a help terminal where players can log in sounds usefull.

Regards.
Ion

 

it does, but that starts to get too far concerning the thread topic :P
my suggestion was basically to have a substitute for a soc

and yes, people should be checked before joining

i dont think MA gonna implement something, and some kind of help booths was in my notes already i think

 

unless the terminal is linked into the chat that the people who are downloading get access to im not that into the idea.

But im all for a chat room for people who are downloading, mentors and people from such services as crt and eta can enter.

I think this should be clearly accessable from the download page and the page you see after signing up, possiblly the welcome email as well. As well as a link to it in their email.

As well as this i beleve it should be incourprated into the part of the website they have thats full of links to services and forums.

I feel if they brought in the chat i would most likely stay in it while i play.

As for moderating the chat, i think the extended guides + simon & emma should have those abilitys so it doesnt get abused.

This would easily go hand in hand with standing around at naz.

Weather or not the guide program continues forever. the oeople that are part of it will no doubt continue their work regardless.

 

I'd like to point out that even though its extremely rare, that sometimes newcomers connect to the IRC channel and we tend to give them help on how to get started unless we see its someone goofing off

 

Sweet ideas, like Alice and Ion mentioned we were working on a mentoring db 'matchmaking' program but it never took flight for several reasons but I think it all came down to security problems. Considering that EU deals with money, many players create second avatars to enter newbie events, scam mentors, etc and I suppose such a program would need to operate under a "At your own Risk" Terms of Use. Another thing is how would a mentor be selected, based on skill, time in Eu, etc? Where do you draw the line between selectivity and discrimination. But it seems you have a similar but different idea (society based matching), it could work quite well unless a newbie wants to freelance and not become involved in a society right off the bat, at that point how would you offer support?

A program like that would either have to be supported by MA or it would be open to abuse unfortunately (not necessarily by its creators but the participants), especially if you introduce some sort of reward system.

 

Something like this maybe ? Put link on website and your set

http://chat.efnet.org/irc.cgi?chan=%23entropia

Just push ENTER .... save simple secure

Oh and for the ppl that don'tknow me . http://www.planetcalypso.com/guides/ Look for Faye :-)

 

ummm.... i do have a question here... this is basically what Lucky Seven had going that everyone got pissed about... (granted he had limited interaction with the noob himself) but the Soc was all new players that had roughly the same skill level and could easily band together and go opalo molisk to death (lucky little bastards for a 3k molisk before and i cant even global solo)


so now what is better... a single noob in a Soc of ubers that would rather go kill dasp or a large group of lower level players that can all band together and tackle "big" mobs (molisk/big exos) but have access to information via Soc chat while were out getting eaten by atrox

 

the more skilled players would take all the noobs out on an allo hunt on friday nights... usually... i have a bad habint of having things come up so i would tell them to keep going without me... and would train anyoen in my group (ill admit very badly) to lead a molisk murder spree

we have 2 socs... academy and gamblers... when you hit 75k skills you graduated form academy to gamblers (and was given vent info) so we had an entire Soc of people that we trained that were willing to help atleast a littel

we had one... we had Vinnie... then below him were me, dee, and a few others... the noobs would also take over leadership a littel as they got more skills

 

Looks good.

Is it a idea to ask for there age too?

I alway's did that with disciples, you have a idea on what thinking level they are.




Regards.
Ion