Recruting new players - Mission Impossible?

BugRoger · #1 May 8th, 2004, 10:07 AM

Hey Folks,

I recently tried to recruit some new players. Once I get them to download and play the demo they soon come back - totally lost. I give tips and point them to this message board since it's even more useful than the manual. I hint at the stickied threads for easy information gathering.

Well, that doesn't quite work out.

The first question I get from every single on of them is that the message board is broken. I explain that you have to start reading on the Last page of a thread and then from bottom to top. I understand that this is being worked on but probably 50% of newbies is already confused enough to go away. Maybe make a sticky topic about that?

Especially the confused Newbie thread is a confusion for my confused friends. Try it for yourself. Imagine you are here for the first time. Your are a newbie and are confused. You read the stickied newbie thread. You click on page 1 and find some Posts that seem to be out of context. You scroll down since you have to read from bottom to top. Still doesn't make sense. Ah, go to Last page of the thread. Scroll down. Hmm, the content moved to newest post? Huh? To be honest I couldn't find the content of that thread myself.

As of now I couldn't convert a single friend to buy the game. They are the perfect audience though. We played and loved MoM, MoO(2) and a really long time ago even similar PbM snail mail games. They are just lacking the endurance to get over the steep initial learning curve. For now I reverted to try it again once I meet them in person and can actually show and explain the game.

I guess what I'm saying is that we probably should clean up the newbie thread. Maybe Gandalf or Zen can edit that. Also please, Shrapnel Games Staff, keep on working on the forum upgrade....

I also would appreciate your tips on recruiting new players. Is this really Mission Impossible?

[ May 08, 2004, 09:09: Message edited by: BugRoger ]

PrinzMegaherz · #2 May 8th, 2004, 10:50 AM

Hm, I have advertised dominions 2 to some of my friends, and two of them have bought it. Indeed, this game needs to be played by some open minded people who don't care whether the messaging board goes the one way or the other. Maybe this is to much of a challenge for the common Counter-Strike player, but honestly, is this so bad?

--Edit--

Please don't misunderstand me. I do not generally dislike counter strike players

. However, if you look at this fine community we have here, without flaming wars but with honest discussion, I dont mind Dominion 2 being a game for excentrics.

As long as Illwinter prospers of course

[ May 08, 2004, 10:16: Message edited by: PrinzMegaherz ]

Gandalf Parker · #3 May 8th, 2004, 02:44 PM

This board has grown beyond its original use. We are working on loading a new software for the board so that Users can choose the sequence. The only holdup at the moment is concern for the Messages that have already been posted. Importing them into a new software.

As for newbie help; the Jotunheim walkthru made a big spash when it was first done. Its linked now on Illwinter, Shrapnel, just about every Dom2 board. There is a Dom2 quick reference, FAQ files, all kinds of things that are excellently done by players. (because its hard for Devs and expert players to think like a newbie to write such things)

I tried to get some people interested in a newbie package to be downloaded. Suggested files such as the Quick Ref, spells list, items list. And the Jotun WalkThru of course. A started game so that if they skip the first two steps they can still poke their nose into things. A set of pre-made gods for each nation. Something like this....
http://web.archive.org/web/200306031...com/stuff.html
which dont even have to be good gods. In fact they can be obviously flawed. It just allows the people who tend to rush to "make a new game" to be able to do that without being confused. If they find the god that was made for them to be something "gee I could have done better than that" it would be great. The whole package could install all of these into the proper directorys. Things that would work with the demo, even better.

The problems are that (A) experts cant stop being experts long enough to do it. The discussions fell into "best" gods instead of just starter gods. and (B) people wanted the devs to do it but the devs do docs just like the devs do docs. We have examples of that in the docs directory already. Waiting for that is not a good idea.

The best bet for newbie docs is for a newbie who still knows the newbie questions, and can write, to do us some. To ask for the answers and write down the ones that make sense (throw out the ones that are probably more correct but too confusing). If they wait until they are an expert then it wont work.

[ May 08, 2004, 13:47: Message edited by: Gandalf Parker ]

Ice_Sickle · #4 May 8th, 2004, 04:29 PM

All the information I've found (and I've found a ton) falls into three catagories.

1) Bone basic, bog standard newbie stuff (How do I start a game? How does stealth work?)

2) Experts talking to experts using abreviations I don't understand VQ? PD? references to spells I'm not familiar with or discussions where it is assumed one knows the armor, damage, attack, moral of every unit, the details of every magic item and every spell.

3) Tables upon tables of data (I'm pouring over it but haven't internalized it yet).

With those as tools it's tough to get someone excited. However, without knowing the game all that well myself I've managed to recruit 9 new players. Here's how.

Two times/year my 8+ friends and I get together to play games. We started doing this in about '87. It started off mostly board games but the Last 13 years has been mostly computers. Everyone brings up there computer.

The Last time we got together was in March. There were 14 of us. I burned the demo onto a CD and set aside 2 hours for a walk through. All of us had tried it for 30 minutes or more but all but 2 found it too opaque.

We had everyone start a single player game, select Ulm and walked through diety creation and then basic play. By turn 3 or 4 people started moving ahead on their own and when they had questions the two of who'd played it a bit more tried to answer them. Of the 10 who participated in the walk-through tutorail 8 bought the game.

If you can't get a bunch of people together to play like that you can do the same thing over the Internet using a voice program like Roger Wilco, Battlefield Communicator, Team Speak, Sidewider Game Voice. Get your friends in the demo and walk them through a few turns explaining research, the economy, units.

It's a great game, truly. But I think it does take some hand-holding to get people into it.

Ice

Slygar · #5 May 8th, 2004, 06:11 PM

hopefully one of the features of Dom 3 will be a built in tutorial al'a Age of Wonders: Shadow Magic.

liga · #6 May 9th, 2004, 01:04 AM

I got exactly your same problem so I start this thread

http://www.shrapnelgames.com/cgi-bin...;f=74;t=002620

hoping expert player could help to just make a step by step newbie introduction to the game. But my idea seems to fall in the void ... ayway try to give your friends the suggest in my thread ... seems to work!

good luck
Liga

BugRoger · #7 May 9th, 2004, 06:23 PM

Thanks for the tips. I will continue my mission and show the game to my friends in person. This seems to be the most promising strategy. I already tried to show off the game on a LAN party Last year. This ended in a disaster because I hardly played the game before and we didn't get much further than setting up a game.

But I'm member of a board gaming club and we're holding a bianual board gaming con in a few days. I propably take my laptops with me and try to convert some fellows.

I also compiled the Newby Guide thread into an proper webpage. This is much more readable than the big post in the confused newby thread.

Gandalf Parker · #8 May 9th, 2004, 06:29 PM

The game can go slow at first. If you want to get them interested then have a major game-save available. Preferably something with all the nations and far enough into the game to start seeing minor summonings in the armies.

That way you can let them open the game with any nation they are interested in and scroll around a big game, watch some major battles, get a taste for trying to decide what to use gold and gems on whan you have many items, spells, and provinces you can build troops in.

In fact, I think such a game, downloadable, would be very useful for us all to have access to.

HotNifeThruButr · #9 May 9th, 2004, 07:35 PM

To me, the problem isn't about complexity, it's about the lack on action. Your average gaming dolt needs an action packed game to keep them interested, but Dominions doesn't give them that. The computer controls your battles, and all the orders you give happen next turn. Most people aren't made of a tough enough stuff to endure this, and quickly get bored and go play some corny game like Diablo.

Norfleet · #10 May 9th, 2004, 07:55 PM

Your average gaming dolt also has an incredibly short attention span. Hell, even the people who have managed to become interested in Dominions II have short attention spans. In *MY* day, the ability to concentrate on something for more than 20 hours at a time was NORMAL. If you couldn't, you'd be beaten until you could.

Nowadays, people have problems concentrating for more than half an hour. That's the real obstacle to interest in Dominions II: It requires an attention span better than that of an epileptic lemming. I place the blame firmly on the fact that children aren't beaten enough nowadays.