Other > General Game Discussion
fonline is not user friendly i guess:,(
DeputyDope:
--- Quote from: avv on May 17, 2012, 06:28:51 pm ---But that's just pointless. Only people who get killed in safe towns are beginner nuubs or bluesuits. Older players don't get fooled there because they can watch out, have powerful alts able to deal with those trolls or don't even visit safe towns.
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really? older players can't get killed? pre-wipe i gave 4 rocket launchers to 4 different guys and told them to attack the same guy at the same time. so it's not only POSSIBLE, it's quite easy. (with a little help that is)
nubs should start learning already that instead of begging for mausers in NCR, they should go farm some themselves, or at least ASK what a proper combat build is.
Eternauta:
--- Quote from: Malice Song on May 17, 2012, 04:53:21 pm ---As long as we can still post what can be interpreted as "stop whining, go fuck yourself" three posts after one of these people tries to outline why he didn't stay, it apparently doesn't suck nearly enough.
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Hmm, maybe I misunderstood, but this sounds like you think I'm saying newbies should "stop whining and go fuck themselves". This is not the case.
I already explained my opinion in another thread:
I like helping newbies, but mostly because I feel like I'm doing something good for the server, because I think giving a hand to newbies encourages them to stay.
However, it sometimes can be extremely boring/annoying, especially when newbies have no fucking idea at all about how the game works (sometimes they don't know how to tag someone, sometimes they don't understand that as you're leading the party they should run after you if we get an random encounter instead of running away in a random direction, etc). Also sometimes they believe that the fact you're helping means they're your king or something. This is not only annoying for the newbie-helper, it's also bad for the newbie too. You have to be relatively self sufficient in this game (its mechanics don't encourage real teamplay except for gang pvp and for doing some quests anyway).
As a result, I often wonder if I am doing the right thing by helping that one newbie I just met. Why? Because sometimes it's obvious that they didn't and don't want to make any effort to learn shit by themselves reading the wiki or anything. Sometimes they expect you to explain everything. This is extremely negative for the reasons I mentioned above. Of course this does not *always* happen, and sometimes I can have a good time with them because they're cool people, etc.
My personal conclusion is that helping newbies is pretty much a Russian Roulette because that random newbie could be an awesome person willing to make an effort and learn the game, and he/she could even become your "friend", or it could be a completely annoying teenager who clearly refuses to make any effort to learn the game and is convinced you must help him with everything. This means that helping random newbies does not always help the server.
This game is not newbie-friendly, but it's not completely newbie-helper-friendly either. What this game needs imo is a "noob/tutorial zone" where you can learn stuff while playing. I don't want to whine about devs but we must admit that there's an important difference between how the game is supposed to be played (as Primon9 said, that "shovel shit until you can afford a tent" bullshit) and how the game is actually played, so this "noob zone" would probably work a lot better if it was run by good-willed players.
Think it's impossible? I don't think it is. Last year I was in charge of C88's recruit base, some cave in the south were new members, most of them new players, were added. We had to deal with leechers and annoying people but it pretty much worked. We could also ask the woodcutter Wichura about how the Street Queens group works.
Wichura suggested the Ghost farm to be turned into a newbie-zone but there was no answer and such a project can't work with the current game mechanics.
Such a place would be awesome as it'll make it easier for everyone. It'd need people and organization, but I think it'd totally beat any individual act of helping newbies.
So, while things remain the same, it's just "Get used to it, just try to enjoy the game..." - This doesn't mean I won't help any newbie anymore, but I definitely won't be as nice as I've been before, and I definitely won't give them anything for free, I will try to make them work their way out of "noobness" instead of wasting time typing walls of texts with info you can find in the wiki.
maciek83:
one thing i noticed,many noobs want to be the badass of the wastes... from the start. they want to kill people and are supprised by reality that till lvl24 and many support alts your just a cannon fodder ,and even finally you are not more than one of many. but i guess the same is in other mmos? here its just more overhelming for them
MRtrader:
--- Quote from: maciek83 on May 17, 2012, 08:25:47 pm ---one thing i noticed,many noobs want to be the badass of the wastes... from the start. they want to kill people and are supprised by reality that till lvl24 and many support alts your just a cannon fodder ,and even finally you are not more than one of many. but i guess the same is in other mmos? here its just more overhelming for them
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well said.
Malice Song:
--- Quote from: Eternauta on May 17, 2012, 07:34:35 pm ---[snip]
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Then maybe there is a misunderstanding, because I'd agree on most points. Although there's a few things to add/elaborate on.
I get both noobvariants you described, too, however I'm not quite as willing to characterize it as Russian Roulette, because I have absolutely nothing to loose here besides time. Maybe you think that's time you could spend more productively elsewhere, maybe you're right, not my place to judge. I agree, it can be annoying, if people are not willing to put in effort, but at least in my experience that goes something like this:
"I can has x?"
"Sure, wait here, I'll get it."
"I can has y, too?"
"Nah, I think we're done."
Compare that to:
"I can has x?"
"Sure, wait here, I'll get it."
"Okay, now I has x, but I have no idea what to do now. Can you help me out?"
First example takes ten minutes tops, it's the second one that requires some time. And more effort, too, because these guys are often going to ask a ton of questions, while I'm taking them around, to the point where it actually can get hard to keep up with them. Now I consider that a good thing, but to me personally that serves as an indicator of people who are willing to learn requiring a lot more investment than people who want to get everything handed to them and if I think about my time spent trying to help people, those where it's pointless to do so make up for the minority of actual time invested. So I don't really get your point about annoyance. I'd concede it happens, but at least in my experience the positives far outweigh the negatives.
I give you the point about "doing the right thing", though. In fact I think it is way more beneficial to make them work for their progress. I'm absolutely guilty of often not acting on that belief, but again, the ones willing to learn will often ask out of their own volition about all that stuff, so it kind of evens out.
And I will bag on the part about information for a long time to come, because I am convinced that's a big issue for newbies. Take for example the stuff that frustrates you, when new players have no fucking idea about it, like tagging and how to propperly follow the leader out of an encounter. When I started out, all of that was new to me, too, and I had absolutely no clue about that. And it's been a while, but I am not entirely sure how I even was supposed to know about it. I guess it's mentioned somewhere, but that has its own set of problems, more on that in a bit. So if I meet a new player, I am basically fully expecting those issues to pop up. And that's for people who actually have played the older Fallout titles. From my understanding, there are some new players who didn't, so they have a much bigger set of lacking knowledge to go through, but to be fair, how would they know?
And to get back to getting a baseline of information from the wiki/forum, to be frank, I'm very close to actively advising new players not to read them. I've already been through the process of talking with new players, who actually were willing to put in the effort, whose ideas about gameplay mechanics I more than once had to readjust, because they were reading wiki/forum. The wiki can be a great tool - if you have someone who can actually confirm whether something is still correct or not or even point you to the page you need to read. Since you seem to consider yourself as someone who tries to help new players, yes, that would basically be our job. I'd prefer if it wasn't, too, but realistically how would a new player know, which wiki articles are outdated or which forum posts are utter nonsense?
All that said, the main point about my remark was actually a different one and since you care about the server, you may just agree, if I can manage to get rid of the misunderstanding:
Helping out new players, so they are more likely to stay in the game is all fine and well. Well, it's great actually. But as far as I'm concerned it may just be equally important to listen to people, who don't play. This game is not for everyone and that will account for most of the drop outs (or maybe not, just a guess), however there may be a good reason they stopped playing and I don't think it's a good idea to broadly dismiss their feedback.
--- Quote from: maciek83 on May 17, 2012, 08:25:47 pm ---one thing i noticed,many noobs want to be the badass of the wastes... from the start. they want to kill people and are supprised by reality that till lvl24 and many support alts your just a cannon fodder ,and even finally you are not more than one of many. but i guess the same is in other mmos? here its just more overhelming for them
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See, I think there's a substantial difference to other MMOs in that fonline is a mod for a game they usually know and that has highly fed into the mindset you describe. I mean, you're playing "The Chosen One" in Fallout 2 and while it's not necessarily a walk in the park the game plays into that notion fairly consistently. Even if you would jump into fonline not expecting that extreme, I'd assume that it's safe to expect doing somewhat decently for yourself. That's what I mean when I talk about mindset readjustment, because as far as I can tell, the more stuck in that power fantasy new players were, the more likely they'd quit after a few hours. Those that expected nothing or even expected to get their ass kicked usually stayed around. But then again, I can understand comming from Fallout 2 and expecting something at least similar. Sure, you can read about that harsh nonsense all over the place, but that's not much to replace the understanding of a game that had years to settle into their brains. Can't really fault them for being unprepared to deal with that shift in tone to the necessary extent right away.
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