I've been hanging out a lot in the pre-load (Earthforce Outpost) recently to try to figure out what is confusing new players and what changes I can make to help them. The main improvement has been repeatedly nerfing the AI's in there. The other thing I did was change the Diseased Larvae and Diseased Flylets to all be names "Diseased Larvae" and "Diseased Flylet" instead of getting random names like most AI's, since some people couldn't figure out what they were supposed to kill.

Tonight (not patched in yet) I added a simple message for when a new player creates a character that says "Steer your ship with W, A, and D or the arrow keys. Fly to the nearest base and dock with 'R' and get your first mission there." The other thing I just added was that whenever you finish the last thing in a kill, gathering, or explore mission, the mission text that usually says "Mission whatever: 2/2 kills" also adds on a message like "-- Return to Earth Central Base to turn it in" so that people know that they're supposed to actually turn in the mission and where to go.

We are also looking to revamp the beginning tutorial so that it holds your hand at first each step of the way rather than merely react to what the player does.

Does anyone have any other suggestions for things we can do to make the new player experience more intuitive and less confusing?

People may need to know that missions come from the first tab in a station too. That may seem confusing to some new players, a crazy green letters that say virtually nothing important to them.

Also the billboard text should be smaller so that you can read more. Takes forever to read them and if you miss something you have to read it again.

Thats what I think

You may want to add that in order to dock you have to be going slower then 10 speed, or even better tell them that they can autopilot by right clicking.

I changed the message that you get when trying to dock and going to fast to be a little bit more explicit about what's going on.

Cool beans, that should help some newbies

Perhaps change the quest message so that it says "Return to earth central in the Sol system", could help a lot of people even other then just new players... Everyone whos forgotten where they started those merchant gear missions for example...

All the existing changes sound fantastic, as well as Blue's. --->

You should do something about ppl inviting in prelaod . Confusing as hell when you dont get any exp cos some lvl 8 just stands there and invites all new ppl . And put wing4+ graphic inside tha shoudl help a lot ... J7K

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Fix or disable the tutorial on the web site.

For MONTHS now it's been telling noobies to go out and kill a "lowly space rat", when the space rats have been REMOVED from Preload.



Ask any of the active Greeters how frustrating it is trying to help a noobie who can't find the Space Rats like the tutorial TELLS them to do.

Then ask (rhetorically) how many noobies just quit in disgust because they can't find the Space Rats without knowing how to ask for help.

Is there any way to have a message pop up if the newbies go a certian distance from the center of a galaxy? The most common question I answer in Help chat by far is "I am lost in space, how do I get back?". If you could have something to tell them to press ctrl then V to get back, or something similar once they are out far enough to make it tough to get back without doing so, that would be great.

A new tutorial for the web site is currently under development. I didn't notice until only recently how out of date it was.

I think the idea for a special message about finding the center of the galaxy is a good one. I also wanted to add a pop-up confirmation box for when you try to log out in space and are less than level 20 suggesting that the person log out in a station instead.

People don't generally log off then exit out... they exit out. Maybe a confirmation window for both would work.

Well, two new screenshots and a few text edits and at least this one specific problem that's playing havoc with new player retention would be put away.

Seems like 15 minutes work for whoever maintains the web site, wouldn't you think?

Oh yeah... also comes with the side benefit that I'd shut up about it finally.




EDIT- Hang on, I'll do it for you- here, copy these images into the tutorial page then search and replace "Diseased Larvae" for "Space Rat".

There's also a couple of lines that describe the space rat that should probably be changed too, but we don't want to overwork the site admin.

Pressing F1 comes up with a horrible popup error. If this feature is being removed, you should also remove the AI called "F1 helps you" (or named something similar).

I just compiled a basic little STAR SONATA.HLP file, but apparently the game is trying to go to a topic link and without knowing how it's calling the .HLP file I can't make my basic text come up.

Oh well.