First: Hello Forum it's my first post.
Second: I like the idea with the Tutorial very much. When someone installs the game for the first time (e.g. no config found) the user must make the tutorial. It should be escapable but the user must go through everything before it's possible to play online.
This would be very handy and I don't see any drawbacks there.
I started playing this week so I'm a newb too but I'm used to read through manuals and such. Anyhow I had to realize that Tremulous is not a game to just quickly get in and play. You have to learn before you play, or should have done it at least. To get this you have to realize yourself, nobody will tell you and then you have to search for the manual for yourself. These are major hurdles for many players I can imagine.
Third: I assume the tutorial idea is realized for now. Then the user needs experience for sure as we all need. As a beginner he needs "beginner" experiences and though he will also make "beginner" mistakes
Therefore I would find it good if new users have to play the first 10 games on specialised newb servers. There could be a counter or such in the config which is changed every time when a game is made.
The player must play 5 games with each race and will get experiences from both.
Those newb servers shouldn't be closed for more experienced users because if newbs play with newbs the learning curve is not so steep as if they play with better players and the "professionals"
know that these are newb servers and can easily decide if they want to play with newbs or not.
End statement: I know that all these flags which have to be set in some kind of config can be easily overcome by everybody but thats the good point on it. First time players will hardly never want to overcome those obstacles as easy and fast as possible because they are interested in the new stuff. (well, Tutorial shouldn't be too boring)
Players who deleted Tremulous or want to play it on another computer can crawl through the Forum, the page or Google to find how to disable this beginner stuff.
I also like the idea that the disabling shouldn't be too easy (e.g. in the menu settings of the game) because if someone already get the idea that it must be possible to change that and start to crawl, the person is somebody who is used to learn by the way like it's now.
The other thing is that users need to have a little pressure to go through the beginners course because when it is too easy everybody will escape it as quickly as possible and thinks that this is not necassary because learning by doing is more fun and almost as fast as the tutorial which is true for many games but not for tremulous.
thx
