Pantheon will look for players that like the social aspects and like to group. Douches and trolls are not the target market and the community and the presumed helpfulness and frendliness of much of it will be selling points. Major selling points. We probably will get a modest influx of new people to start with - a flood of a million people trying the game the first week will quite likely be worse than no one trying it. We won't be able to handle it and if Vanguard was a reminder of nothing else it was a reminder that a smooth rollout is key. Not so much for the people we get the first week but for the reputation we want to establish. Word gets around and new rollouts are widely discussed in other games and the gaming media.
So what are some of the mechanisms to make people trying us for the community and social aspects like the game and stay. Apart from self-evident basics like have the game run smoothy, have it look at least relatively good, have a very polished starter area that looks professionally done not something thrown together in a basement by a few fanbois, etc.
It seems obvious that in addition to trying to minimize weaknesses we play to our strengths. The aforementioned spirit of community and frendliness of many people. Some obvious possibilities and I'm sure others will have, and have had, better ideas.
1. Designate volunteers that want to go out of their way to help new people, at the cost of slowing down the advancement of their own characters. Generally if not exclusively beta players so they have knowledge to share. Give them special name colors or other identification so they stand out both in chat and in the game world. Not extra powers, not assistant game masters necessarily just people that a newcomer will learn to know are willing to be approached. Not exactly an original idea but I'm not sure I've seen it done during a rollout as distinct from years later.
2. Have developers active and visible and approachable to the extent possible. If the senior people have time to appear in chat, take some questions, ask how things are going, help out if they have time, this gives a good impression. We know they have other things to do in this crucial period but this kind of visibility is a plus.
3. A help channel is almost mandatory in additon to other chat channels. You can't keep it 100% on topic or keep trolls and nasties out of it but you can have a channel ban for obvious trolls and douches that ignore requests to be nice. At least partial monitoring by people with some authority is helpful to set a good tone the first week(s) even if not feasible long term.
Apologies if all of this has been said too many times or is too obvious.
Another option for new people to the game is having easy (and obvious) access to lists of guild accepting new-comers to the game or the industry. That way people can get into guilds that can also help them with the game and boost their enjoyment of the game early on.
I know they've said that they plan on having good guild tools for finding guilds. Perhaps when someone achieves 5th level, if they're not guilded they get something to help them find a guild, like an in-game message, tutorial type deal, a quest, or whatever.
We actually have spoken about this several times, I have mentioned on these forums and in streams that I want to have a guide program, which essentially does what you're asking, they would help new players and anyone that needs it with a friendly service in-game, visible GMs and Devs plus having active and bustling areas/cities/towns/dungeons all play a part in this as well as you folks, the community, you will all have a responsibility to help new members out, treat them like family and show them the ropes which will only promote a healthy and strong community bond that will make the game more pleasant for anyone who tries it :)
I'm fairly good at avoiding or correcting typos but I don't know that there is a way to edit the title. Oops.
But maybe a different search engine might find something. People today use "google" as a synonym for "search" but there really are other engines. Some of them even work.
dorotea said:I'm fairly good at avoiding or correcting typos but I don't know that there is a way to edit the title. Oops.
But maybe a different search engine might find something. People today use "google" as a synonym for "search" but there really are other engines. Some of them even work.
Poking fun at you bro. :)
dorotea said:I'm fairly good at avoiding or correcting typos but I don't know that there is a way to edit the title. Oops.
But maybe a different search engine might find something. People today use "google" as a synonym for "search" but there really are other engines. Some of them even work.
I fixed it for you, only admins can edit titles just so we don't get a great conversation going about a topic and then someone changing the title to something completely different and leaving the forums, it would cause all kind of trouble, if you ever need a title change feel free to send me a PM, I am always happy to help where I can :)
I think one can never insist enough about this issue . And yes there were threads about Guides etc in the past already .
It has always been that when a new game is released, the population increases EXTREMELY fast (we are talking 1-2 weeks here), reaches a max plateau (this one is extremely variable in length) and then starts to loose by attrition (at extremely different rates) .
A carricature of this evolution , e.g something that a producer would never want because it spells disaster was SWTOR .
1) Population over 1 million reached in 1 week . Despite 100 + servers, unbearable wait queues at logging in .
2) Extremely short plateau - population started to decrease already after 3 weeks
3) Incredible attrition rate setting in after already 1 month . Today SWTOR has only 16 servers (PVE and PVP cumulated) what means that the population has been divided by 10 to 20 (estimate) compared to the plateau reached after only 1 week .
Pantheon will not escape this fate . But Pantheon has 2 very specific features compared to other MMOs released in the last years . It will be "hard" and it will be strongly group oriented .
Now to be able to sustainably group, you need a network of friends . But to create a network of friends you need time, much more time than to only learn some basic mechanics of the game .
So the necessary and sufficient condition for financial success is to shorten this time for new players as much as possible .
In order to avoid a too early and too high attrition rate, one has to catch the typical players who'd think : "Ah well I can't do much alone and I know nobody to group with. I'd better leave ." espcially if there is a sub free period (say between levels 1 and 5 f.ex) which will probably attract a curious and large crowd of people who'd think "Let's try this new thing out ." .
And the ways to shorten this time are Guilds (that's why their advertizements will be important especially in the first 1-2 weeks) and volunteering players (Guides) available to provide information, help and entrance in the social/grouping game faster than what the newbie would have been able to achieve alone . Of course the ingame presence of Devs and GM is the cherry on the cake .
While this kind of trivial insights are important for all games, it will be twice as important for Pantheon .
Remember that the player you loose in the first month is very likely to be lost forever .
Helping people learn/play the game with a good "mmo/social etiquette" is definetly thee most defining thing for our gamestyle; that's if we want people to stay/play. We definetly need the whole community to get onboard with this.
Why is "mmo/social etiquette" important too?..
.. I've been around a few mmo forums and when you speak to people about group centric gamestyles the #1 thing that almost comes up everytime as to why they don't like group centric games is: *drum roll* They've repeatedly had bad experiences (socially or time wasted) with players to the point where they actively avoid such group centric games. "MMO/social etiquette" is therefore really important in that regard; you just need to have respect, patience and be non-patronising. If everyone followed that I think the community and the game would be such an amazing experience. (I know not every will but.. one can hope.)
In EQ the higher levels were always coming back to the starter towns to help out people. I have had many great experiences with people showing up looking all bad*** in there gear then giving away trash gear from all these from flug places. Was great.
Of course this was pre PoP and the only real gathering spot of the EC Tunnel so alot more people went back "home" etc more often.
I plan on doing this even if it is runby buff or something.
There may, perhaps, be some mileage in stealing a few ideas from some other games....
1. Auto-inclusion in a 'newbie' channel
I think EVE does this. It allows more excperineced players to give some advice to starting newbies. It seems to be helpful to a lot of new starters who are completely unfamiliar with the genre of MMO or even the basics of MMOs. In any case, EVE has an almost vertical learning curve and, while Pantheon has a 'familiar' look to it, this will be deceptive as it is actually a true social MMO rather than a Massively-Single-Player-Online-Game! Thus the comparison may be valid.
2. Auto-inclusion in a temporary 'starter Guild'
A few games do this. To stop one megalithic 'starter guild' being created, this would only work by having a number of these 'starter guilds' created - at least one per starter zone/hub. That way, players will have access to other newbies in the near area to talk to and/or group with until they level up towards level10, say. It should be a temporary thing to encourage players to go find their way in the world after they have a few levels under their belt. Some Guides etc could be given 'officer' status in these 'starter guild' (in addition to their own formal guilds).
The number of these starter guilds needed would rather depend on population etc. It might also help to have 2-3 of these starter Guilds in any given area rather than just one - partly to ensure they are not as large, but also to ensure that not all players in a certain area will be included. This might allow players to get the idea of findiing other players not of their guild to join with if there are none of their own guildies nearby. They could then, possibly, transit from one starter guild to another (perhaps limited to 1 change per month).
Just thought I would throw these ideas in and see is they hold any merit.
It seems a trifle 'hand-holdy' but might be of use to transition people towards transition playing the game from free->subscription..
My only objection to a "newbie channel" is that unless it is highly region restricted, it's basically just going to be general chat from the start, which is a cesspool. I've come to the conclusion that global chat channels are a cancer and that MMO players can't be trusted with them, even in the most niche scenarios. It's an unreasonable burden on the CS staff to police it.
As far as newbie guilds, DAoC did that. Each realm had one. I can't however speak to how well they worked.
