@-OCB-Wildcard said:
Too many new players clearly have shown their inability to put two-and-two together on their own in relation to these matters. We have three straight years of this to back up such a statement. In the end this game needs a massive overhaul on its tutorial and implementation of an offline mode or other system to supplement it; while at the same time vets need to be able to not feel so frustrated with newcomers that they can be willing to help them further improve. This will not fix itself overnight, even if the overhaul occurs, but it can’t occur unless something is done.
@Eox, a lot of developers have picked up on the fact simply having a few tutorials is inadequate. Honestly, not something you need Sherlock to figure out for you. So now, a lot of devs provide ingame resources like glossaries to help players figure out mechanics. But see, who the fuck has time to read? Nobody, that’s who, so those glossaries are now full of short videos visually illustrating the mechanics. Overwatch goes the next step and provides ingame tooltips with recommendations.
Additionally, lack of global chat probably doesn’t help either. I’m fairly certain it’s well established most players never visit any outside resource, especially new players just trying out a game. Therefore, those resources need to be made available in game. If a player has a question during a match, that question, understandably, might get ignored. They might ask again while in a pregame lobby, but given how lobbies tend to vacate, that question might still go unanswered. CMM and ranked are even worse as there isn’t a lobby at all. If a player could just pop a question in chat without having to join a match or exit the game, well, that makes life easier doesn’t it.
Ingame resources. Not difficult.
In a game I used to play, there was a Helper system. New players had access to a special, newbie global chat channel, invisible to all non-new players, where they could request assistance, from gameplay questions to corpse retrievals. This provided new players a place to ask their questions free of embarrassment while not congesting normal channels. Who were helpers? Helpers were volunteers. Nobody was ever required to be a helper and helpers weren’t rewarded for their efforts either; all they received was a special [HELPER] title, yet there were always helpers on in a game that typically only had 450 concurrent players, less than Dirty Bomb. Sure, the help provided was voluntary, so if a helper had a more pressing matter, they were free to ignore requests, but all senior helpers were very proud of their status and would happily waste like a minute and a thousand gold max buffing some newbie.
In fact, since that game, I’ve always found it strange no other game I’ve ever played has had a similar system. I’m a huge proponent of it as that human touch easily surpasses a pile of text describing how to press “e,”, and myself became a helper after hitting lvl.100 ( max level in that game was somewhere around 14,000 iirc ). If you give people the opportunity to contribute, you might be surprised by the results.
Anyway, might be something to consider. Perhaps a newbie server where new players could join and play with volunteer helpers ( min. lvl.60 or so ) who would teach them the ropes. Earlier, when I said helpers weren’t rewarded? Not entirely true. Dedicated helpers were very proud of their [HELPER] titles, so the Dirty Bomb equivalent might be a different coloured name and maybe a special accessory / trinket / skin.
