The Rise and Fall

Cruiser Command is becoming much more popular once more, with a few remaining experience players still around and a huge influx of newbies. In fact, we've been on the spotlight for 4 of the last 7 days.
I personally teach most of the newcomers - giving them basic tips and strategies, while pointing out that nothing is absolute; a broadside rush could fail to penta-burst with a few laser upgrades; those early engines might actually save some miners; etc. I've gotten somewhat of a following, and am recognized whenever I play by at least on person with some rep. points. In-game, I am Glarion.

I wanted to speak on this new patch - - it's lovely. The first time I loaded to see 'Version 1.0' I got that giddy excitement I used to get on Christmas morning; I was opening a new present. There are a few things going against it though, from the first several lobbies I've hosted with the new patch. Since most players are still relatively new (I think 20 rep. is the highest I've gotten any of the 'recruits') they don't seem too keen on joining the forums quite yet.

Their responses: too many doodads making the deck a visual maze. I agree to some part; though with time comes familiarity. Others are pushed off by the sheer complexity and lack of instructions within the 'How to Play' section. I do the best I can to help them, and constantly remind that "If anyone has any questions or problems, feel free to ask," but since most are either too proud or too...something...to ask, they get blown away.

My only gripe is the HUGE inconvenience that refining now presents (I also wrote a bug report about refining...but that's not the issue here) due to the lengthy hallway one must sprint back and forth across in order to refine a handful of materials.
Definitely going to be assigning a drone for that.

Anyway, great work so far! I'm excited for the new patch and the larger player base, and I look forward to continuing whatever promotion of the game I can. For now, I'll be suggesting people play V0.999 until BC one is fixed; it'd be an awful shame if I were on team 2, since I'm still winning without a single mineral.

We talked earlier, but I wanted to give you an update on this. The refining bug is already fixed by now, as you know.

As for the rest of the stuff, you bring up a couple of good points on what makes this game hard.

1) Doodads make a visual maze. I agree on this one and fortunately kill two birds with one stone here. I am currently removing a lot of doodads to both reduce lag and make it clearer where you can actually walk. Beyond that, I'm not sure what to do to make it easier to find your way in the BC.

Maybe a dialog with buttons for each location in the ship that you can press and your marine will automatically go there? Then from a beginner's perspective, if someone tells you to mine by going to the hangar, you can just press hangar on your dialog and you'll go there automatically. After a while of using it, you'll figure out how to find your way on your own.

2) There is a huge lack of information on how to play, at least inside the game. There are several ways to solve this, but I haven't found a great solution for it yet. It's also hard to know what to focus on. Should I improve the tutorial mode? Most people say they never tried it anyway so it feels like even though it might help someone, it's a lot of time spent on a limited improvement.

I haven't replayed the tutorial in a LONG time (I did now and then in earlier versions to see what I could tell new players they'd learn there. ) but from what I've heard it is not functioning properly. I'll have to get back in there and get a personal look to verify - that's just what I've heard; 'glitchy.'

One simple way to address the problem would be a slightly more mechanical 'How To Play' section. I like the updated section that's presently posted, but having to repeatedly tell someone 'Hit X to stop' quickly turns into full-rage-capslock-damn-nub-;asldfkj;asklfj!! (I'm sure you know what I mean) Give them the bare bones instructions:
------------------
W to accelerate
S to decelerate
X to stop
D to Dock
------------------

After that, the only question I see is: Do we add information regarding every small ship, and the slight variance on hotkeys that each presents? Maybe just give a warming/instruction to check and read the unit card, and see how long it takes new wraith pilots to figure out how to dock?

Another option, of course, would be an updated tutorial as you said - but the way I envision that, it quickly becomes a huge project; making a single player CC mission with various challenges for the player. I like it, but how the hell is it going to happen?

I can still remember getting repeatedly blasted by roflcopter in the early stages of game; and I still think accepting that he was a better player (I had no idea....) and learning from his tactics and skill is what made a lot of us get to be in the spot we are now. I think the best learning tool is and always will be having experience players around, and a newbie's willingness to fall in line.

Do I come off a bit harsh? Sure.
Huge ego? Oh yea...

But anyone that I've 'trained' now knows a great deal about the game and all the little mechanics within. Unless they'r up against an premade team of pro's, chances are they'll carry a team to victory.

My point: We'll carry on - bugs, glitches and all. Better teaching tools would be great, but we have the human element on our side.


..../endrant

When a new player asks what to do I usually tell them to go mining. Same instructions every time: walk to the orange beacon, no, the orange beacon, the elevator. please get off weapons. okay, follow me. okay, the south is the hangar, pick any beacon. no, not construction. come back, come back through the orange beacon. come-- okay, follow me. okay, launch a miner. a miner. no, there's definitely a miner available. you have to pick one that doesn't have a cloak symbol on it. the cloak symbol is the circle. okay, okay, good. now, find an asteroid and press 'x'. x stops your ---- try not to ram other ships. x stops your ship, then press 'e' on the asteroid to start mining it. if you see an asteroid fly past you try and mine it, it's got green ore. press r to return resources. uh watch out that's an enemy ship, run RUN RUN RUN okay good. d to dock to heal. no, you don't need to dock to return resources. you can unload your ca--- ah don't buy missiles! crap

I'm not very good at teaching newbies :<

The point is, you try. I think having a second experienced player on your team (pick one up in channel!) really helps. Even if they're too busy to chat and help explain at the start, they can be the guy that goes "Yeah, so-and-so knows what they're doing. Listen up..." It goes a long way toward building the trust they need to have.

Of course, some people just REALLY want to buy a fleet of destroyers and missile up from the start. It can be rough, but if you start recruiting the people that work well with you into a party, pretty soon you'll have an elite group ready to take on anything. Personally, I like having one or two noobs in the group. That way, after a few games, they're ready to go out and teach as well...

It's going to remain a work in progress, and I think that's how it should be. Keep at it, mate.

we need to however not overdue the elite team as advanced players will look down on other average players, we cant do this even though CC is quite tempting to, we cant afford to hurt our new player base that we just got from V1.0 that came out, as a bunch of elites looking down on the normal players will kill the player base and ultimately kill the game

Having a balanced game is also important, if everyone on one team doesn't know how to play and its you and your buddy its not even a contest and people probably won't play it again because all they did was mine and die and get yelled at.

I think this maps coming along very nicely, if more players step up to deal with the idiocy being new in such a complicated map can offer, we can have more seasoned experienced players to make it grow even more. Its a lot different from melee, and any other sc2 map :p nobody knows how to handle it and gets overwhelmed haha