*Suggestion* Required "training" for all new players

[Bunneh]

I had an idea while reading through the "Do noob builders BOTHER you?" topic down in S&T. This idea could be implemented alongside default-installation GUIDs.

The idea: Implement a server-controlled setting allowing only trained players to enter, or allow any players to enter (depending on variable value in server QVM) as well as implement a complete, single-player training

Why do this?: This would severely reduce the amount of "Download-Install-Decon" Unnameds in various servers, plus it would eliminate totally clueless builders/new players.

How to do this:

1) All Tremulous installations would contain a GUID with a certain string (such as "NOOB", to be evil) in them.
2) All Tremulous server QVMs would contain a variable allowing only those with non-NOOBed GUIDs to connect to them or not.
3) Upon connection, the server would query the client for the specific string in the client's GUID, like "NOOB" (evil example ) and if that string exists, the connection would be denied as in Step 4 below.
4) Those with NOOBed GUID, upon joining a full-GUID server, would be notified of a message like "Connection denied: This server only allows players who have completed the Tremulous Training Course to connect. Please proceed to the Main Menu and click on 'Tremulous Training' to learn the basics of Tremulous and be able to connect to full-GUID servers."
5) Players with non-NOOBed GUIDs would proceed through the connection phase without any change to the current formula.

Onto how the actual training would work:

A special map would be made specifically for training (which I'd be happy to do if the project got greenlighted). A human and alien base would be set up in this map, and current bot codes would be implemented along with a few area triggers to activate them.

The player enters the game as a spectator. The console then begins to talk the player through various things via chatmode/consoles, walking them through the team selection menu, the spawning class menu, chatmodes, using weapons, the names of various structures, basics of targetting/movement, and finally the basics of base building (no advanced techniques; just the importance of structures and how to build them).

There would be 3 separate training sessions; basic information (chatting, terminology, binding, naming, etc. that isn't team-specific), human technical (covering all human weapons, base building, and general tactics), and alien technical (covering all alien classes, base building, and general tactics.)

As you can see, this would take a generous amount of coding. However, it would SEVERELY diminish Unnamed deconners (since most just download the game, install it, and then raise hell for a few hours until they get banned from every server and/or uninstall Tremulous) and would increase the level of basic intelligence among new players wanting to learn the game.

For an example of the training-required formula, look to America's Army, which really eliminates noob players on game servers.

One source of inspiration is as E-Mxp mentioned below; using the FreeSpace 2 training format would be good for this.

[kozak6]

Hmm.

How long do you think the training should take?

[ODDity]

I like the idea in principle, as beginning the game myself, a short matter of a couple of months ago I did find it hard to work out what was going on.

I was lucky enough to stumble upon some servers with people kind enough to spare a little time to chat to a newbie and now i will do the same as long as they are not too demanding.

About making it compulsory though? I think that would alienate players. Simply making it an option for people to take would be better. At least that way if they get some abuse from players and get kicked from a server for reasons they cant understand they could go through the tutorial and find out what they were doing wrong - rather than - like i said before relying on the kindness of other players.

It would be also be good if the tutorial included some general terminology. Like what staging is and "Feeding" etc. Coming from an Unreal FPS background myself that concept was quite new. (wtf you have to PAY for xyz gun?! Where the powerups be?)

Finally, perhaps trem could be missing out on good players, simply because they cant be arsed to RTFM. I guess theres nothing wrong really with just wanting to get on and play a game that looks cool without having to page through a manual first.

Have the game do the page flipping for you and once you complete a task you can go to the next thing, perhaps with some blurb about why ABC thing is important and its role and being able to skip to certain chapters to just find out certain things you havent quite got.

I wouldn't mind spending some time on this as a contribution.

[Bunneh]

Hmm.

How long do you think the training should take?

Probably in the range of 30-45 minutes, for all 3 phases, depending on the player's pace.

It shouldn't be too shallow, nor should it be too deep; you want to familiarize players with the game enough so they have somewhat of a chance against average players, but not to shove tactical jargon down their throats nor tell them that "click is fire now go out and pwn some noobs". The key is just to get them out of that "noob" field and into the "newbie" one.

I was lucky enough to stumble upon some servers with people kind enough to spare a little time to chat to a newbie and now i will do the same as long as they are not too demanding.

That's the chief problem with Tremulous and part of its community; the game punches players into action with a few button hints and a partial manual, plus a considerable portion of the community is comprised of killwhores or general jackasses that don't want to help new players. As the Tremulous playerbase increases quickly, the average skill level and potential-skill level decreases. Many of Trem's older, more experienced players are not as active as they used to be, so the influx of newbies are kicked out of the nest before they learn to fly, metaphorically.

About making it compulsory though? I think that would alienate players. Simply making it an option for people to take would be better. At least that way if they get some abuse from players and get kicked from a server for reasons they cant understand they could go through the tutorial and find out what they were doing wrong - rather than - like i said before relying on the kindness of other players.

Well, not all servers would require players to be trained before entering; like I said in the initial post, the "Trained players only" variable would be server-configured. I think that many servers would leave it as-is to keep the game user-friendly, but those that have serious problems with noobs/deconners/feeders could opt to include it in their QVMs, simply as a controlling measure to keep the baddies out of their servers.

It would be also be good if the tutorial included some general terminology. Like what staging is and "Feeding" etc. Coming from an Unreal FPS background myself that concept was quite new. (wtf you have to PAY for xyz gun?! Where the powerups be?)

That could be included in Phase 1 of the Training, as outlined in my first post. In fact, I think I'll add that up there right now.

Finally, perhaps trem could be missing out on good players, simply because they cant be arsed to RTFM. I guess theres nothing wrong really with just wanting to get on and play a game that looks cool without having to page through a manual first.

Have the game do the page flipping for you and once you complete a task you can go to the next thing, perhaps with some blurb about why ABC thing is important and its role and being able to skip to certain chapters to just find out certain things you havent quite got.

One thing that could help with that is an updated and branched manual. As far as I know, the current Tremulous manual has not been updated since the standalone release and is in a completely linear fashion, which is VERY deterring for new players; I know from personal account.

Also, Tremulous could go all XBox Live-ish and have user accounts, achievements, and point systems. Achievements ("Built 30 Overminds", "Killed 45 Enemies in One Game", "Had 50 Assists in One Game", etc.) could apply to the point ranking systems; you could have a stats ladder for kills, a separate one for assists, another for most efficient base construction (figured from kills earned by defenses constructed by one player combined with how many of that player's structures were killed in a particular game), and other almost-totally pointless ladders. Being at the head of a ladder could earn you various perks, such as invitations for tournaments, advertisements for your clan, etc. User accounts could be linked to the forum accounts, or could be entirely separate.

I wouldn't mind spending some time on this as a contribution.

Good; I'm glad to have support.

[Caveman]

Go ahead you two, make it happen.
I am sure that it'll be included in the game as an voluntary option, just as we all agreed the last time this topic copped up.

[Bunneh]

Caveman:

1) This topic is aimed at getting FEEDBACK concerning the idea, not to be told "Fine. Make it and shut the hell up about it," which is synonymous with what you've posted.

2) What's the point of making a system that forces players to go through a training course before joining public servers a VOLUNTARY option? That completely defeats the purpose, unless you modify the entire idea to be just a single-player mode with no actual point to exist.

3) Well, searching for "training" throughout the forums returned very little in regard to this actual subject, with just two posts I saw that had relevance; one concerning training servers from back in June '06, and another concerning a very similar subject as this, but got no real response. Point me in the direction of wherever this topic was suggested before and the outcome of it, and maybe I'll lay off.

4) Troll somebody else's topics; mine are starting to get spammed up, and even my cable connection is breaking a sweat.

[E-Mxp]

A training program would be nice... but making it so that you can only play an online game if you have done this training... no.
**thinking of FreeSpace:**

"Welcom to Tremulous Training, where you will be tought the basics of Tremulous. Don't do any actions unless you are told to do so, or else the training will be termenated.
Tremulous is a DeathMatch kind of gameplay in witch the goal is to destroy the enemy's spawnpoints and to kill all the remaining enemy's.
Lets start by putting you on the human team.
When in spectator-view, you can leftclick to bring up the team-select menu, from this menu you can chose the team you want to join.
Bring up the team-select menu and join the human team now. (UnnamedPlayer joined the Humans)
Good job.
In Tremulous you have the builderclass and the attackerclass, on the Human team this means that you spawn with a Rifle or a ConstructionKit.
Just like selecting a team, you now have to bring up a menu to select a class. In this tutorial will explain the basics of building a base.
Bring up the menu and select ConstuctionKit. (click, click)
Good job.
----ext."

[Bunneh]

A training program would be nice... but making it so that you can only play an online game if you have done this training... no.

Again, this would be controlled by the individual servers; you could join servers, but only ones without trained players-only status. I'll accent this in the original post.

[Haraldx]

i like the idea. this would definatly delete noob deconers.

[epsy]

Why do this?: This would severely reduce the amount of "Download-Install-Decon" Unnameds in various servers, plus it would eliminate totally clueless builders/new players.

Translation: This would severely reduce the number of newcomers, thus killing the game

[Bunneh]

Why do this?: This would severely reduce the amount of "Download-Install-Decon" Unnameds in various servers, plus it would eliminate totally clueless builders/new players.

Translation: This would severely reduce the number of newcomers, thus killing the game

If they don't have enough devotion to go through a 30-minute induction, of sorts, to learn the game, then they shouldn't be playing anyways; besides, NOT ALL SERVERS WOULD ENFORCE THIS. I cannot emphasize this enough; the decision to ban all non-trained players from your server until they go through the training and get a full GUID is COMPLETELY AT YOUR DISCRETION.

In fact, dedicated servers could be hosted that are specifically for new players to get a feel for the game; that way, the new player gets a demo of sorts to determine if they actually like the game or not. Then, they could go through the relatively-quick training and become eligible to play on all servers or be administrators/moderators on servers (NOOBed GUIDs would not be allowed to have admin powers placed on them).

[Survivor]

What about players reinstalling? I know I would be deterred by facing 30 minutes of boring, have done it a 1000 times already, exercises

[Caveman]

Exactly and thus it has to be dependent on a set var in the conf, thus making optional out of mandatory.

[Bunneh]

What about players reinstalling? I know I would be deterred by facing 30 minutes of boring, have done it a 1000 times already, exercises

Option 1: IP-linked GUIDs

The only problem I see with it is for people with dynamic IPs. In that case, maybe a subnet-link? I'm not one for these sorts of technical things.

Option 2: User-editable GUIDs

A specific format would have to be devised for GUIDs, like newer CD keys on installed software, to protect from random GUIDs being put in place to bypass the training course. To prevent duplicate GUIDs, a master server would be set in place to store all registered GUIDs. When a player connects to the Internet via Tremulous, the master server would query their GUID and register it with the server. If duplicate GUIDs are detected (such as two players with the same GUID) then BOTH players are booted from the online lobby or in-game, with an error message explaining what went wrong and how they can fix it.

This is purely something I came up with on the fly, because I actually didn't think about the reinstallation things until now.

[Survivor]

Registered Guids. IP-links. If you've followed any discussion about anti-cheating measures you know you're not going to make that practical. I stand by the fact that the lack of clear guidance is the problem, not the lack of willingness. People who are going to decon, are going to decon regardless of the training without gamewide (impossible) bans. An optional map where willing players can choose to learn the basics seems reasonable, but do not make it mandatory.

[Caveman]

If a player WANTS to be identified then the guid-system already in place is enough.
Doing this across servers will either need a central server (unwanted) or something on the client-side, which in turn is out of the question as this is still OS and thus anyone could circumvent it.

Face it, what you suggest can never be mandatory.

More yet, it is superfluous.
Just administer your server and !denybuild all lvl0 or !allowbuild all above lvl0.
Doing this (even automagically) is just a minor change in the server code and much easier to do then anything you thought up, until now.

[ShadowNinjaDudeMan]

Just make another option in the main screen

"Tutorial"

You cant make pople go through 30-45min of stuff. You cant expect all new players to follow this, so there will always be noobs, part of gaming.

[n.o.s.brain]

also, include some harmless tremulous specific humor, to make the training more fun.

[your face]

ya!  like you get to blow your trainer into oblivion! jk

[Sanity]

Stuff training, let them learn by playing the game. Ya don't need to be good at the game to be smart enough to not decon rc. Its not experience, its common sense. Which ive found really isnt that common nowadays.

Maybe just tell them to read a proper manual before playing.

[zybork]

I agree. You simply cannot forbid stupity, and as far as we know, there is no known way against it.

If you should ever find one, please tell the public, this would be of great benefit to mankind as a whole 

[Bunneh]

I agree. You simply cannot forbid stupity, and as far as we know, there is no known way against it.

If you should ever find one, please tell the public, this would be of great benefit to mankind as a whole 

It's called the Nuclear Warhead. Google it sometime.

Sanity:

The problem with "letting them learn by playing the game" is that they don't have the capacity to learn that way. The same applies to telling them to read a proper manual; the current manual is NOT user-friendly, and virtually no one reads it.

When YOU find a way to get new players to RTMFM (read the motherfucking manual), get back with me. Mankind would benefit from it.

[Sanity]

I agree. You simply cannot forbid stupity, and as far as we know, there is no known way against it.

If you should ever find one, please tell the public, this would be of great benefit to mankind as a whole 

It's called the Nuclear Warhead. Google it sometime.

Sanity:

The problem with "letting them learn by playing the game" is that they don't have the capacity to learn that way. The same applies to telling them to read a proper manual; the current manual is NOT user-friendly, and virtually no one reads it.

When YOU find a way to get new players to RTMFM (read the motherfucking manual), get back with me. Mankind would benefit from it.

I learned that way, with only a few minor misshapps (Mainly Blocking)

[DjSonik]

I remember }MG{ was trying to make tutorial demos like a year & 1/2 ago. But those didn't turn out so well. :p Any }MG{ members still have those demos? 

[jr2]

A training program would be nice... but making it so that you can only play an online game if you have done this training... no.
**thinking of FreeSpace:**

Go take a look at the "Walkthrough" section in my HLP sig. 

[4RT1LL3RY]

This makes me think of the "training" for the first level of Single Player Unreal Tournament.

I could see how it would work too.  First there is basic movement skills, then chat etc, you create a human and alien training course.  For the "how to play" course it is in a box room with a cage in it where it will show all the different aliens, the sounds they make, and there strength.  Then it would give you a chance to try out each weapon on different novice dretch bots.  Then explain structures.  I can think of the psuedo code for it already.  But, I don't do game engine scripting I do embedded programming so I don't know if what I'm thinking is possible on the IOQ3 engine.

[UniqPhoeniX]

This would help a lot. Players dont have to go through this, but those who want to learn WILL go. The tutorial just has to be easier to complete then hax past it. If you have already completed it before you should be able to complete it in less then 10 min.
An option to block players who haven't completed the tutorial from your server should be added; if they want to join why not complete a short tutorial?

This tutorial shouldn't take over 30 minutes, and should teach about using all classes/weapons a bit. And DEFINITELY, how to open console, for all keyboards. No voice is needed, just text on screen (shouldn't disappear too fast) and to console, it can later be re-read. Starting with basic info about gameplay, then joining, and choosing class. You can choose which team/class to learn first.

Humans: ckit: building, repairing, simple building strategy like turrets covering each other, building behind corner, (dis)advantages of teslas; using armoury, inventory, (dis)advanges and recommended use of weapons & upgrades.

Aliens: granger, dretch, headbiting, wallwalking, poison, abilities of all classes and how to use them.
Info about all keyboard shortcuts, especially chat/team chat (add to tutorial mode?), changing options like name should be covered too. At the end info about sudden death and what feeding/camping/glitch building/deconning are and cause.

Demos about examples of building and access to those from main menu could help a lot. New demos could come with new version, or downloaded from forums when some1 makes them.

A master server would be great, giving more important server admins/mods the chance to rate good players skills, warn about deconners, optionally linking your GUID with forum account etc. I dont think this server would need a lot of bandwidth, servers only need to update once in a while or if the master server gets many decon reports about 1 GUID.

Only problem is that Tremulous needs more frequent updates, no need for a completely new game each time. Even the biggest MMORPGs get frequent but small updates. Everyone should have a chance to help a bit, either making a demo of how to play, making some graphics, helping write this tutorial or manual or anything they can. There is little to no info about what the developers are currently doing, some info/change log would help. Updating the homepage and manual are very important and the development could be sped up a lot. It's no use talking about 1.2 that will come out SOON/eventually, if you can't help in almost any way. Making new topics in forum for people to post whatever they can make well would help, especially in graphics. We only have maps and general mod forums atm. I know that the devs are doing it from their free time, but why not let others help? Not every1 has to be able to program for this.

Currently a new version with GUID, faster DL speeds, auto update(or just a check and notification for new version) and a better menu would help every1. Servers may advertise it themselves for current trem versions when you join, like some have/currently do for GUID. Getting all the important guides/wikis together and linked to from tremulous.net will definitely cut down in the amount of useless posts in forum.

[techhead]

Random idea:
GUID's first symbol can be used to find what training has been completed


Possible missions:
1. Game intro (req. for 2 and 3)
Spawning, bases, objectives (This is a team game!!!), stages, chat & console

2. Human basic training (req. for 4 and 6)
Team strengths/weaknesses, Buying and selling, heal & ammo

3. Alien training course (req. for 5 and 7)
Team strengths/weaknesses, evolving & class system, regen, wallwalk (!!!)

4. Human advanced training (req. for
Different weapon and upgrade types and roles, strategies, teamwork

5. Alien advanced training (req. for
Different class types and roles, poison, strategies, teamwork

6. Human building (req. for
C-kit, power, different structures and roles, repairing

7. Alien building (req. for
Granger, creep, different structures and roles, (NOT AN ATTACK CLASS)

8. Practice game (all missions must be completed)
Takes place on ATCS, you & 3 bots vs 4 bots, easy-level bots, pick either side

[UniqPhoeniX]

Not all should be in atcs. This makes it repetitive and boring

[techhead]

Thought they should happen in designated training maps.