Make it easier to attack

[ComradeRob]

No, I don't mean modifying the ship stats, salvage ratio or roid cap formula.

I believe that attacking should be made easier through the use of an in-game battle calculator, improved manual (ok, I know this is an old chestnut but I have to include it ) and some kind of tutorial system (the quests were a step in the right direction, sadly since removed ).

In-game battle calculator

There really is absolutely no excuse for not having this. No wonder newbies struggle, when the game doesn't make any effort to acquaint them with the tools used by the top planets. It's entirely possible that a newbie will never even hear of battle calculators unless he's lucky enough to get in touch with a benevolent experienced player who explains it to him. Some people will persevere that far, but I suspect that many will simply give up, unable to make sense of the ship stats and unable to understand how attacks work. Let's face it, the only way to learn this stuff is by practice, and a battle calculator is the only way of practicing attacks that doesn't involve risking your fleet (and doesn't take the best part of a day either).

The Manual

With the greatest of respect to the people responsible for the current manual, it's just not clear enough for newbies to understand. It explains what things do, but not how to use them. Newbies are left to figure this stuff out all by themselves, with no margin for error other than the 72 ticks of protection. This is clearly not good enough - any random newbie will be utterly lost without guidance from an experienced player. Extra manual sections detailing common tactics might be useful, as well as links to strategy guides and such.

Tutorial

This ties in with the suggestions on the manual. I think there should be some kind of in-game tutorial, allowing players to practice PA tactics without risk of losing fleets for it. They could be guided through the actions they need to perform by on-screen messages, and would be able to repeat any tutorial section as often as they wanted. There should perhaps be some small reward for completing tutorials (like the old quest system), though it's not really necessary.

Once new players learn how to attack, I believe their enjoyment of the game will increase dramatically. The biggest frustration for new players often seems to be the feeling of helplessness, of always being the victim and never the victor. By teaching new players how to attack, and making it easier for them to do so, I would imagine that many more people would learn to enjoy PA and learn to appreciate the fun sides of the game.

[mist]

i agree 110%

-mist

[Tactitus]

I mostly agree, except the part about making battle calcs in-game. There's no reason the game can't provide links to a variety of external calcs. Moving more and more tools in-game just puts a greater burden on PA's ever-shrinking development resources.

[ComradeRob]

Perhaps, but most battle calculators are somewhat intimidating to use at first, and don't provide any kind of help or tutorial. The advantage of an in-game bcalc is that it can be designed with ease-of-use in mind, can integrate with other features (such as scans), and can be properly documented.

I'm sure most bcalc makers would be more than happy to allow their code to be used as the official PA battle calculator, so it shouldn't be much of a stretch of resources.

[Gerbie]

In-game battle calculator

This might be usefull.

The Manual

I expect the rnd 12 manual to be more elaborate. There already exists a (not official) Mentor Team manual. (http://mentor.the-crazy-frogs.org/manuals_links.html)
It still needs some improvement though.

This is not a game people should play alone though. You need to interact with others to learn what to do, which I think is not a bad thing as such.

Tutorial

This sounds like a lot of work. I think the coders should focus on the game itself and do stuff like this only when the game is 'done' (which will not be for a while I think).

Once new players learn how to attack, I believe their enjoyment of the game will increase dramatically. The biggest frustration for new players often seems to be the feeling of helplessness, of always being the victim and never the victor. By teaching new players how to attack, and making it easier for them to do so, I would imagine that many more people would learn to enjoy PA and learn to appreciate the fun sides of the game.

That's why we have a Mentor Team, but that alone is not enough. And I think the mentor team is not functioning optimally atm: we need to take more initiative to reach the people that can benefit from our support.

[Blixxard]

Originally Posted by mist

i agree 110%

-mist

[wakey]

Originally Posted by ComradeRob

In-game battle calculator

There really is absolutely no excuse for not having this. No wonder newbies struggle, when the game doesn't make any effort to acquaint them with the tools used by the top planets. It's entirely possible that a newbie will never even hear of battle calculators unless he's lucky enough to get in touch with a benevolent experienced player who explains it to him. Some people will persevere that far, but I suspect that many will simply give up, unable to make sense of the ship stats and unable to understand how attacks work. Let's face it, the only way to learn this stuff is by practice, and a battle calculator is the only way of practicing attacks that doesn't involve risking your fleet (and doesn't take the best part of a day either).

I have to say i dont personally agree with this. If you are following the posts over on PD you will know that I actually feel one of the reasons the game started to fail was the move from aspects of this game going official.

Take the portal for example. This was started on in round 2 to cash in on the success of Planet101 and Planetarion-central in round 1. They even got Coffee to be the main person behind it due to his success with planet101. However its never reached the level that the likes of p101 did, with it being official its limited to what can be said ect and as such the content is weak, not to mention it has the age old problem of once you make something official everyone wants involved for the 'position' it gives you rather than doing it cos you want to like an unofficial site has. Anyway almost every round a significant amount of effort is put into recoding this and each time it continues to fail, all this focus and effort would simply be better served elsewhere.

And heres the most major problem with an official portal, it stifles the community. A site like p101 cant emerge or establish itself up agaisnt something official, you cant get people to write for it ect as they are all off doing so for the offcial one, when you do they are offical portal rejects whom arent very good. And without such community built and managed tools the community becomes weaker and less involved in the game.

Some of them need scaled back or removed completely to allow the community to help itself and to get that community spirt back

I mean lets just go through some of them

Project: Portal
Effect: Its killed off the ability for unoffical portals to be around. In the early days the unoffcial portals were vital for the community. it got people involved, allowed people to find out the latest news, allowed people to find out about alliances and such like. The official portals always struggled to get the right content, they have to be careful whats posted on it and its just something thats now underused. Admittedly this rounds one has gone back to basics and is probally what an offcial portal should be like, links to manual, signup ect and some offcial news but nothing else. This then leaves a gap to be filled for sites carrying opinions ect

Project: Mentors
Effect: I know alch seemed to think what he did last round was kind of new but mentoring alliances is something thats always been done by a number of people. With it now being official though anyone who isnt on the mentor team simply cant do it as no alliance wants help from a mentor not on the mentor team. It means we are moving further away from the "helping" culture this game had which is bad because without that its hard to get players intergrated into the game. Its not even as if the official mentors have any additional access to allow them to do their job better than any other none mentor could do (ie access to detailed stats on the alliance and its members such as graphs, growth charts ect) so it seems kind of pointless to kill off the 'helping' culture further for something that doesnt have the ability to do a job better than it was being done (although things like their manual are useful)

Project: Target Checker/ Ranking sites
Effect: We had an offcial set of these in the past. The fact it got additional info pretty much drove other sites out of the marketplace. As with portals people contributing these kind of tools is vital for the community as it gets people involved and lets them give something back to the game which helps build up the community spirit

Project: In Game alliances
Effect: These have their benifits and are needed in the game BUT the sites given as part of that try too hard to replace our existing sites. Your internal and external sites simply dont sit well togethere. When players apply on one theres no way of making sure they apply on the other, when players leave the ingame alliance you are never told ect.. Simply its a mess and has led to less development of our own sites. How many sites still have public sections with articles, propaganda, tools ect to give back to the community, very few compared to the past . Everything now is kept to some tools behind a password that only serves as giving members access to some additional tools the game doesnt provide. We need to get the importance of external sites back and we need to get the two things working together better

The game needs less things made official for the sake of the community so an official bcalc isnt needed. Links to external ones would be much better

[mist]

the problem with links to external calcs is that you can't 100% guarentee they're legit. has anyone actually decided if pilkara logs scans yet?

as for the mentor team.. it's a nice idea, however for people to interact with the mentor team they need to be on irc. which i suspect is significantly further than a lot of newbies get. if you're wanting to go that route, send everyone an internal mail when they sign up telling them how ot get to #mentors. a decent manual would still be a bonus howerver. might be tricky with the current 'don't tell people how the game works' mentality though.

-mist

-mist

[wakey]

I'll give you external links can be a problem due to not knowing if they are legit but issues like that seems pretty insignificant when you look at the damage that taking such good community driven ideas and making them official does.

With PA's community we really did have one of the best communities you could ever want and some of that was that anyone in their own way could help improve the game for the community. A simple tool , a website or even a new irc channel could increase everyones enjoyment, keep them hooked and make you feel like youve helped give back.

As soon as that was killed by things moving in house and the alliance/private galaxy situation resulted in the community splitering into lots of closed groups the game was doomed to enter a really bad spell even without p2p as we were losing the main selling point of the game. The key to getting the game fully back on track is to get such an addictive community back and i dont think we can acheive that without giving people a chance to give back in their own way

[Leshy]

What happened to all the early round newbies that didn't need to be taken by the hand? The game hasn't gotten much more complex over the years.

[Tactitus]

Originally Posted by mist

the problem with links to external calcs is that you can't 100% guarentee they're legit. has anyone actually decided if pilkara logs scans yet?

I've always assumed that all external calcs log scans. Frankly, they'd be foolish not to.

That in no way negates their usefulness, however. It's like irc or anything else on the net--you just need to be careful. At a minimum, you need to remove/nerf coordinates on scans that you don't want to get out.

[ComradeRob]

Originally Posted by Leshy

What happened to all the early round newbies that didn't need to be taken by the hand? The game hasn't gotten much more complex over the years.

It hasn't, but the gap between the average player and the newbie has increased dramatically. Normal players start with paid accounts, full knowledge of how to play the game, and access to battle calcs, strategy guides and so on. Newbies don't have any of that.

I don't really care who provides the help for newbies - whether it's independent sites or in-house PA team development. The important things is that the help needs to be made more easily available, and easier to understand. Anything that encourages newbies to interact more with the game is a good thing, and right now I think attacking is the most confusing part of the game for a new player.

I see this as giving newbies a helping hand rather than giving them special priviliges or protection (40% value limit and so on). I think it's better to encourage the newbies to become more active than to try to protect them from the inevitable incoming they will receive. Teach them how to fight back, and they might just start to enjoy it