Sometimes You Got To Feed Your Food! (v)oO(V) (in General)

you guys are letting too many walk away from here..Is there a breakdown in the mentoring ? Or is this due to thier own lack of interest? Whats up with all this lately..We need them so we feed them!!! Work a little more maybe? ..Ideas? any at all .. does the NUB prevent some from wanting to help?.hmm Food for thought anyway

I help whenever I can, you know, make a hot cup of tea and sit down with a new player, they wanted the advice, so I shovel it down their throat - :D

Then 2 days later, they've overtaken me in MPR and are beating my behind! Ouch!

And that about sums it up.

well I know you are helpful and always have been and most players are..they have done so much to try and bring along the new players if I could start over with a NUB I would do it :) but I am forever doomed to the dog pile now LOL./me digs for a Rare BoNe

the 3rd Annual Carnage Black Cloud Italian Neck Tie Party has now begun!!

i dont get mentored period. I had to look up stuff mostly myself. I asked few questions and got ignored. I asked few strategy questions, answer:"you are doing fine." No, i dont really think i am doing fine. i lost at least 3 out of 4 battles. I changed strategy 3 times, same results and same answered. Sometime added :"well you got NuB and you will get us soon." ...No need to 'whine' right now, i got myself into a good clan and i read a bunch of stuff. Not that hard anyway.
But so you know if it wasn't for the game being a little more interesting than others i would have left the fist day.
Anyway, Chat is turned off and here I go.

So, the NUB might be responsible for Old Schoolers feeling spite towards the newbies and not helping them on purpose in an attempt at foiling the effects of the NUB in general? Wow, that is quite a claim. I am not saying whether I agree with it or not, but it is an interesting idea nonetheless.

I can say without a doubt that I have never ever seen someone give purposeful bad advice in chat to anyone. True, the advice may be incorrect according to what I feel is right, but almost all the time everyone in chat is quite helpful to new and old players.

they all hate the NW/PR link....seriously, im not kidding.

People, there have been countless posts on this subject as well as the NW/PR link and the NUB. They are here to stay, people leave for a variety of reasons.

Please let's just drop it or we will get another 100 length post on the same rehashed stuff.

Jon obviously thinks it is good for the game and that should be enough for us all. If people leave, they leave and new players join.

So sorry things have happened that way for you TMP and Glory I think that is exactly whats happening ..Monty has a good point also..I have only seen a few even try to use the NUB to their advantage and it seems more would be moving along quite fine if they knew or used their resources..Instead everyday I see a pile get sold off and the door hitting one in the buns on the way out..So there might be some deep feelings about things as they stand now and the new players vs carnage has become a division line here..

TMP, its not people ignoring you, its people not atk (at the keyboard) or their is noone on who could help you. And to your losing 3/4 battles fought, fight people closer to your level obviously...lol...=P If a vet says your strat looks good, it probably is, its just you need to fight who you can beat close to your level, not 150k MPR away. (And no I'm not saying that's what you did or not, i just figured I'd use it as an example.)

I asked maybe a total of 3 questions when i started cb1, but i learned everything else myself, so its not impossible to do. I help as much as i can when I'm on anymore, but when i still played everyday, i would help and answer any newbs questions.

"you can lead a horse to water but you cant make him drink" (v)oo(v)..I think its important for the community to talk or discuss items that are making people unhappy..Thats how change comes about..There is nothing written in stone.I see a lot more unhappiness than I have ever seen at CB in my 2 years here and that should concern everyone who plays

I'm not sure where I was when mentors were handed out but in any event I didnt get one, but I figured the game out .. I still make mistakes and have questions, but the game is what keeps me here .. I have had plenty of experience, however, with non NUB players acting like they were too good to help me out with simple questions .. I'll be fine here for a while tho and I'll be knocking on your door soon :P

there you go chappy! thats how to do it YES!~~! make them pay for it..Happy Chappy!! thats what I want to see Happy people every where!!

Hi TMP, I have chat turned off as well. I'm not sure if you would have had a mentor assigned if you had chat off.

If you have any questions, don't hesitate to post them on the forums or send me a CM.

:)

The only way you cant get a mentor is if you do not complete the tutorial.

Or if there are no mentors in chat at the time you finish it... I wonder if you won't get a mentor assigned if you're not in chat when tutorial finishes..

my mentor (verifex iirc) was helpful. i cm'ed him a question and he promptly responded with a clear answer. i think the player turnover is normal and would be the same with or without mentors, or mentors getting miffed about the nub, or whatever. oh, and please don't touch the nub until at least the night of november 8th... =P

I did not go through the tutorial. The day I signed up I did not have time to play, so I had to wait a day or so. At that point there was no tutorial option ... I mean am I really missing anything by not having a mentor?? I know QB is a good mentor cause I know people she mentors ... but I haven't heard anyone praising mentors anyway ...

Whenever there is a large change, you can count on some players complaining that it was better The Way It Used To Be. That's life when you try to improve things.

The most accurate of the "easy" measures of the CB community IMO is the "active users in past 7 days." This has been holding pretty steady; once the people who hate the NW link etc finish shaking themselves out, it should start going up again. :)

No mentor I have heard of or seen has given intentional bad advise. Blame your lack of noobs on something else, Bub.

imo alot of vets including myself are still helping as much as possible. i am a bit miffed tho with the current NUB setup but that is for September posts.

sitting at the top you can't be happy..curse the NUB ..I think thats just too funny (v)oo(V)..sitting at the bottom you cant be happy as you want to do better,curse the old timers and the NW/PR caps, Sitting in the middle you got to be happy because you know everyone else is there getting their eyes scratched out right along with you..Thats just perfect :)..

I remember, back in the day....

Ah, those were golden times....

Before all this there were only....

;)

home-from-pub time for GL? ;)

Not today! Been spending the bank holiday with Claire.

Just some phrases inspired by Jon's "The Way It Used To Be." (tm)

;)

I would like to add that I hope all our freinds in the southern gulf coast are all doing well,,Katrina blew thru and we got some rain but thats about it..You should all be very happy that you have been so blessed to sit here and enjoy your game CB,as for many other poeple in the world they know only pain misery and suffering..(v)oo(V) says " you never know when a complete stranger might just become your best freind"

I still think my idea, of sending a follow up mail when someone has been gone about 2 weeks or so, would really help.

CB is really easy to put down and forget about, especially that early.

Give mentors an incentive to help New Players, that'll get us motivated. Sure the "good feeling" of helping others isn't bad, but I wouldn't mind a little reward for getting a New Player to stick around :)

got to have a little fire in ya" to play thats for sure :)

seems we are getting more new players without "the fire in em" lately, not to say we aren't getting good players anymore :-)

Maybe we got all the good ones already? ;-)

It could also be that with school just starting there are less people out there with enough time to commit towards the internet.

Ways to get people to stick around?

Improve the tutorial? Don't know how exactly, never paid attention to it.

Instead of having just one tutorial, how about several different tutorials for different aspects of the game.

Encourage users to use chat/mail, maybe give them a reward for doing so.

Make low-end equipment more usable. I mean, newbs will buy something and then realise that there is little to no point upgrading it, because it won't last them too long, and go straight for mid to high end gear.

Maybe even limit the areas a newb can access, limits the confusion and creates curiosity, sure to bring them back :)

Make the game more "scissor, papper, rock" the ability to adapt to a certain style of play and know you can actually beat someone. Having dominate strategies doesn't help the game, gameplay wise.

People "walking away" is a fact of internet life. I did some analysis of referrals from a Fark ad a year or so ago, which I'll repeat here:

The ad generated 1310 click throughs...

... which in turn generated about 260 registrations (so about 20% of people who see the login page create an account)...

... of these 175 finished the tutorial (so about two thirds of new players get this far)...

... and about 80 fought 300 battles (so a little under half of those who finish the tutorial, and 30% of new registrants go on to fight their initial BA)...

... and about 12 became supporters

Isn't 1% a very good rate for click-through attention span? Sounds pretty decent to me, especially considering CB's formhidable word-of-mouth growth capability.

1% is an outstanding click-through rate for untargeted ads.

I don't know if it follows that 20% is a great sign-up rate, though... "Pretty decent" seems more like it.

hmmm I never realised you had so many come thru here ..I'm not seeing that ,just the ones that don't stay....My view is skewed somewhat :)

Well all games (esp text based games) will have a lot of people that are just not interested in the game. From what I saw as a mentor on cb1 some people just are not able to deal with a game were they can not "see" the action going on. However, there are a lot who can and they are generally a better class of gamers anyway :)

Now of course there are people that do not like certain changes to the game. There are certain changes that I don't like. The NW/PR link is one that i really don't like but it is here to stay and so i dealt with it and moved on.

New players however may see the "limited" options on startup as a downfall. Some people come into this game wanting to play tanks and everyone tells them "you can't" so they leave and find a game that does have the options they want.
Personally i think there are 2 fixes to this
1) Waive the NW/PR link for 2 weeks from sign up so that people get used to the game before having to deal with it
2) (and the one that i like better) Mentors and veteran players need to stop telling new players that their only option is to go mage...there is a way to go tank from the very beginning of this game and make it work and it is very simple..start with base equipment; armor should have no + on it and weapons should be x1+0, at least until some progress is made in MPR so there is room for added pr without it putting players at a level that they simply can not compete at. If mentors and vets get out of the mindset that there is only one way to start off then players that might be interested in playing cb but don't want to be forced into there choices are much more likely to stay

Wow that seems to have turned into a ramble. N-E-Way the point is "You can please all of the people some of the time and some of the people all the time but you can't please all the people all the time" Yes there are some things that we can do to help some people stay longer (and we should start addressing those few things) but the ones that do leave are not a big deal IMHO. This is a good game and there will always be new players coming in that realize that.

On a side note I was one of the 12 that became supporters :)

Warchild, a new player can do anything they want. They can play a single tank, or a 4 enchanter psuedo tank team for thier whole CB2 life. But to be competitive, the *most* competitive strat to start with, the one that will see you rise the quickest and easiest and get the most out of your NUB is a single mage. Telling a new player otherwise isn't doing them justice.

It was the same for me when I started CB1. Everyone, absolutely everybody said "Go single Tank until.... Don't even bother training an enchantment or getting another minion till....."

As I've said a few times before, if you're not here to fight competitively, what are you here for?

A new player isn't going to be staying for a community they don't know yet.

Isn't some of the walk in walk out rate seasonal? I started this time last year and there were quite a lot of people starting who didn't stay once they went back to school for instance. And although there are a lot of people who have whined ( more cheese anyone?) about NUB/NW-pPR etc we have at least two or three newish players in the top 50 (including one who's an admin now). So people are sticking at it.

BTW Warchild has a good point about NW-PR link. Start with low level base weapons, armour, tattoos and you can still start a tank from scratch. You just have to let the NW grow with the character. It doesn't have to be all about mage teams....

IMO the amount of whining that I've seen in the past six months probably has more to do with players walking than anything else. Too many people talking about how things used to be before doesn't help at all...

and GL the community in my eyes does not accept many that rapidly ..everyone wants to have their little group and then they become fragmented and isolated..out of touch like me in other words,,thats why Im asking questions about this because I do not understand and everyone has done a good job of enlightening me this fine day :)

GL, Warchild isn't saying that people are advising that single mage is the best way to go.

I have seen people give the advice that it's the ONLY way to go.

Well maybe not single mage, but mage.

But it is, isn't it? A new player, coupled with the NUB and a RoE benefits far more from DD damage through exagerated XP gains than any weapon based damage.

So if you want to be competitive, mages are the only way to go.

Sure, you can play a physical based charcater, if you want to for fun, but it's not as competitively viable as a mage.

Well, unless you have a massive weapon. But no new player would be expected to have one of those! ;)

Getting back on track - Sorry GL mate! - I also think some of the reason people don't stick around is the attitude of the community. Yes for the most part the community is brilliant, helpful, funny, welcoming just when you don't expect it. But other times the overwhelming attitude of long term players is arrogant and condescending towards new players. This isn't necessarily exclusive to CB, a lot of on-line communities suffer from this. New players are treated like idiots until they know their way around.

(If you want to see this from a new player's point of view go and look back at Vestax's second ever post - the one he made when about to quit!!!)

But feeling scared to open your mouth and voice your opinion isn't a good way to feel. People are a little too quick to flame around here......

How about a new forum? Maybe a "Welcome" one or something. Like the New Players chat room, but a place where people who don't use chat or don't feel confident enough in chat can post to meet and learn more about the community?

I know we could use the off topic forum for that, but without sticky threads, any new player specific threads would get lost under wealth of posts older players make.

personally.... i wait for the new player to ask me questions.... if they don't have any i don't send them a cm. If they ask a question in chat and i am there i almost always answer.

~EBS~