Something has got to be done... (in General)

About the tutorial. I know there are half a dozen threads about this. I know this topic has been beaten to death.

But when I'm getting someone new to try out CB for the first time, and I find myself saying this:

"there's a tutorial, also. But it's kind of stupid. You get money for completing the steps, but the steps are often counter-productive. Like, you don't need a damned whip xD But you should do the steps for the money and then just fix your char later"

I know there's a problem. Please. We need to fix it.


Also, his first statement once he'd registered was, "Presentation could be a little better :p"

When I repeated that in chat, many people said they'd thought the same thing.


We want new users. It's been a focus for some time. Let's actually do something to encourage them to stay.

YES!!!!!

Just because you know of a problem that means nothing, you need to propose idea's to solve the problem. Otherwise its just another thread that'll go unnoticed. :)

See the thread I made. I'm trying to get it setup.

Plagues, instead of saying "this is pointless," we could actually help hacky pie brainstorm ideas about how to help the tutorial.

I personally liked the thread that was created recently, about the tutorial asking what the person likes better, tanks or mages. Of course, descriptions should be involved and all.

I did not say it was pointless, I just do not want it to go unnoticed. Which it probally will unless some good ideas get posted :).

Have the tutorial outline several different strategies to help new players get started, and end the tutorial with something that will encourage them to expand a strategy and make it their own. I vote SFBM gets put into the tutorial instead of training dex and buying a whip.

Really good idea Badfish.

you don't understand the point of the tutorial.

the tutorial is not supposed to show people the "right" strat (if there were such a thing), it is supposed to provide a gentler curve to learning the CB UI and explaining the basics of how battles work. That's _all_.

BTW, SFBM is something of an embarassment to CB. Is a more boring "strat" even conceivable? Not what I want newbies thinking CB is about.

(Is this a clue for next changemonth? :)

Junction familiar + AS

Just as boring as SFBM.

Sounds interesting!

I resent that D:

Making use of exp concentration is something me and Nem knew wasn't repeatable easily. It's very difficult to adapt to sheer brute strength.

Is it simple? Yes? Is it boring? Not so much. There is still a great amount of thinking considering what you can or can't do with such limited options. BoF or DBs? HoC or Corn? An extra round of firing? or an extra round of surviving? With a gigantic familiar we've reached a level were AGs might actually give us more than NSC.

Dont show people the right way to play the game, just give them a tutorial that is somewhat interesting...I recently refered someone to the game, then got on the phone with the dude and tried walking him thru the tutorial...we got a bit of the way thru it and it was just ridiculous...I can say for certain that the person i refered never logged in again...

To 3/4ths:


I came up with the Halidon longgggg before you :P and what I mean by that is that I wasn't talking about any specific player.... Except perhaps myself.


To Jon:


As you designed it, I won't sit here and disagree. But I would point out that what it was designed for and what people are expecting are two very different things. You designed it to show them the basic UI. THEY are looking for it to teach them the game.

While it may be teaching them the UI, they still leave it woefully unprepared for the game. What's worse, it leaves them a bit in the hole that either they have to smarten up and fix with the Help! (and if they can do this, the UI tutorial would hardly be necessary) or to get help from veteran players who's first step is -always- to undo everything they just did.

The tutorial needs to be expanded, or changed or just clarified. There are a multitude of ideas out there (and if not, minds with which we can get ideas from).

Or, of course, we can cling to the current tutorial and watch as new player retention refuses to improve. *shrug* Out of my hands.

"Is a more boring "strat" even conceivable?"

The single minion RBF/Evasion that once plagued us.

I know for a fact that many new players don't even finish the tutorial as it is, and so everyone would benefit from a new and improved tutorial that gives new players little "prizes" for getting to certain benchmarks, otherwise people just seem to not care and stop at a certain park in the tutorial and never finish.

The tutorial needs more meat in it, so players don't feel so blindsided when they get into the world of expensive equipment, training only a couple skills (most OTHER games accustom players to accumulate as many skills as possible, and so many new players here train as many skills as possible as a result), and the nuances of what you see on the equip screen stats vs what is actually true in battle. The effects that spells/skills/equipment have on your character don't always show up on the equip page stats and this is confusing to new players.

And I would really like a basic HTML GUI thingy in the forum message compose screen. I don't think that should have to be a Greasemonkey script. ;)

I say let new players suffer by removing katana and exec sword from the game. :P

seriously, I think letting Mr Chairman buy more katana and exec sword and give them out as prizes are worth more than the 200 they get. Something quest like that new players can work towards. I have to say that the tutorial messes up my NUB.

> a basic HTML GUI thingy in the forum message compose screen

I started integrating one a while back but what stumped me was, how do you integrate nospellcheck?

I'd rather have server-side spellcheck as an idiot filter than a gui composer.