[snip]
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.
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
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.
