1. New Players are welcomed (by the system) in the help channel when they join.
2. A question mark icon is visible with the label "Ask a question to a greeter."
3. When a new player clicks on the question icon it opens up a dialog box for the player to type in their question.
4. When they submit their question a greeter button pops up on all online greeters/moderators/admins.
5. Everyone who clicks will be put into the pool and selected for a random pick.
6. Once a greeter has been selected it opens up a PM between the greeter and the new player, and the new player's question is pasted and submitted.
7. If a greeter becomes unresponsive, the player can simply hit the Question icon again and start the process over.
8. At level 10 the new player will get a pop up “Was your greeter nice and helpful to you?” with a Yes or No.
9. After they submit an answer it will display: Thank you for your feedback, any comments can be made at support.starsonata.com under the Greeter category.

This system will allow for possible rewards based on a certain number of successful greets! It pays to be helpful!

Greeting has a much higher potential for damage than good (see Churchill), and since it's 1-on-1, it's a lot harder to catch poor quality greeting than it is to prune poor behavior in Help Chat. Voom was right that this was an antiquated system and needed to go.

I agree with enkelin, but one thing to know. I'm not a greeter. I'm simply everywhere in the chats and therefore can respond a whole lot quicker than the actual greeters and moderators.

That, and the actual greeters don't actually....greet often. I had fun keeping a newb alt (one that would get access to help chat) on over the course of a day just looking for a few question responses. No response, not even random greeter talk.

So...yeah, that's something that needs to be addressed. Can't have a greeter system if the greeters don't do anything.


Edit: I have an idea, though. Allow greeter to earn 150% or 200% space points for every time a NEW account subscribes to SS. And with only one account per greeter, we should get a greater number of people who want to help.

This dude has no idea what he's talking about.

As someone who was a greeter back in the old days, and generally just enjoys helping people, I am all for bringing it back. Naturally greeter-status isn't something that should just be handed out to everyone, however a team of carefully selected greeters could be a huge asset for the game.

Also, while rewards are nice, I am not sure it would be best for something like greeting. Offering juicy incentives to become a greeter can end up with an influx of people who sign up for the perks, and not out of a genuine interest in seeing new players start the game on the right foot.

The little green star was cool though.

Dude, Preter. If new players use All Chat to ask for help, that means Help Chat isn't very active. If Help Chat isn't very active, A combination of Greeters, Moderators, and Admins are not doing their jobs well.

That is because most people tend to ask in all chat over help chat from the very beginning. I only see maybe 0~5 question asked a day in help chat.

I think just a visual representation of your effectiveness as a greeter would be sufficient, instead of "rewards". Like the greeter star like Xantra said; people are super inspired for aesthetic differences.

Pre help chat greeter system, where you have these end game players with enough knowledge personally greet new players..... Back then, i thought the greeter was like a mentor, sensei who thought you things, and you restecp that person because he is all knowing while you know shit.

There are enough greeters in game atm doing nothing, help chat is like tumble weed every day.

Currently, the greeter system is inefficient.

Help chat works more efficiently when the player base is big, like 10-20x bigger than now(this should be combined with greeters/mods/admins having their own color in help chat, so that newbies know that they are the all knowing ones). Combining this with the old greeter system would be handy if new players won't be able to read trough the chaos.

Also, if a greeter/mod/admin sends you a private message via greeter button, your chat tab will be directed instantly to that tab.

Old greeter system (personal greet by greeters/mods/admins) works better if the playerbase is small, like ours. Your (from the dev point of view) goal is to expand your player base, stabilize $$$ income, and try to increase the player base.
Approaching new players as a veteran will create a some kind of bond like a master and apprentice. The greeter tries to convince the new player to stay, by helping him out, giving him items/credits etc.

I did this myself when the old (G) existed, because of "bored,cba to lvl alt, cba to ...".

This so called star sonata addictism works like epoxy glue....we have to apply that on other people!

I'm pretty sure you guys do some advertising, but the real power of getting the playerbase on a rocketship is if you can convince new players to stay, let them have fun and they will tell their friends about it. If that stuff works, the star sonata playerbase grows like cancer (I couldn't find any suitable words for that).

We are assuming the people who join are passive, PvE-oriented, addicted to leveling, willing to sub multiple accounts, love to play one class, and don't mind slaving away for 6 months to get to UZ ships.

You can be aggressive and pvp orientated and only sub one account and still have fun in this game. Just cause you don't doesn't mean anyone else will.

One problem I find with the help chat is, unless I consciously remember to check it, it's hard to really notice, and that coupled with a lack of chat timestamps means I could get to a question, only to find the person who asked is long gone.

The old greeter popup made it much clearer when there was a new player to help, and I believe that with a few tweaks to the system (such as the proposed Ask-A-Greeter button), it could be an effective system to help new players onto the right track.

Just to reiterate and bump the thread up (since it seems to have died off completely), here is what I believe is needed to make a revamp work well;

1) Be selective with who is chosen for the job. Even with the pre-help chat system, becoming a greeter simply entailed messaging an admin and asking to be a greeter. You're putting people directly in contact with new players and potentially new paying customers. If you're going to do that, you want the right people for it.

One method I've suggested in another topic, is to trial greeters as help chat greeters (in other words, as the system currently works) before allowing them to become full greeters with the ability to answer questions in PM.

2) Don't offer tangible rewards and incentives for becoming a greeter. Choosing to reward greeters down the line for being dedicated and hard-working is another matter. This kind of leads on from point #1: this will only serve to attract people who are not so much interested in actually helping new players as they are in cashing in the benefits of greeter status. Potential greeters should be volunteering because they want to help new players.

3) Make it clear during the selection process what is expected of a greeter, what they need to know, and how they should present themselves to a new player. As mentioned before, these are the people you're putting into direct contact with new players, and as such they need to know what to do and how to act.

Overall, I think the admins will need to have a bit more engagement in this than either of the two previous iterations, but providing that sufficient care is taken in selecting applicants, and making sure those applicants don't abuse their position, I think it could be successful change. The greeter system is due a change, and if done correctly, this could help keep more new players playing.

I find it silly to add this suggestion again without any changes. Just like I said last time this is a really bad suggestion and adding it would be a huge mistake.