@ qweqqweq & [Noob-Friendliness]

[Dr.McNinja]

This is my post in a thread from General Discussion but halfway through, it occurred to me how much of a 'suggestions' topic it had become (and what i was saying)

Link to original topic:
http://forum.btanks.net/viewtopic.php?f=...679#p25679

@qweqqweqs_big_purple_and_green_post

I agree with some of the anti-noob ideas, what youre basically saying is, make btanks more noob friendly. That might take some work but I think it will only be 'easy' work that takes a long time.
The 'freeze time' is a good idea for many reasons. It can allow a uniform 'starting time' to the game in the case of people deciding what to do, people buying the same things + delay meaning, extra time to get what you want. Another thing that would help a lot, is the ability to change game modes/settings. Its not often, but sometimes the wrong mode is chosen or host is afk just at the start. The preparation time would allow for the correct mode to be chosen instead of restarting the game.

Noob-friendliness
My suggestions for this (if Exo decides to make it more noob friendly) is to allow help menus in the form of text on screen. Since we dont want everyone to suffer the same noob-treatment as per qweq's idea of 2a - 2h, i think it should be activated in some way or other. Perhaps typing a simple command. Putting info into 'map info' in F9 wouldnt really work because people dont go there (i dont even remember whats in there). Commands might even be too much for some, but this people who are new in general to the whole wc3 game, shouldnt be in btanks...

-help : brings up general info on how to get started, with commands for more specific topics. Some general help tips that could be displayed (when prompted):
Ask for help if you are unsure about anything.
Press F9 and read read the help section.
Buy a tank from the tank factory in the very corner.
Buy weapons from the three side shops.
Weapons fire by themselves when in range.
Gold is recieved every 5 minutes.
Dont die often, your enemy gets gold for killing you.

Well making it noob friendly WILL take a lot of work.. It shouldnt patronize the noob and it should be enough for the noob to start learning the game.
The first line, "Ask for help", imo, is THE most important. It would come hand in hand with a preparation time at the start of a game. Qweq doesnt like talking during the game, but i tend to talk a lot depending on the game and whos in it.

Adding the 2nd message, to "press F9" may work. Its the noob's loss if they dont but the whole point of making the game noob friendly is so somewhat experienced players and above dont have to suffer a feeder or teaching a noob ingame. Noobs DO ruin games. And a lot of people would give the rebuttal, "everyone was a noob once", i think that one is lame depending on the situation. When i started btanks many years ago i wasnt really a noob, i bought a tank and a weapon, and followed suit of other players.. If you want to know, it was 10k hosted by hmong.orc who is now bloodlust.orc. I used light tank with death magic. It wasnt long before i was versing orc in 1v1's.

Anecdote aside, point is, people who arent stupid will learn much faster with simple tips. I want to help those people who are new but able to learn. I guess i was a noob back then, just not stupid.

I have a pretty simple system of categorizing people, goes as follows... (lol)
Noob - new at the game, in this case BT OR not experienced enough to play better or know better.
Stupid - dont understand things and cant seem to learn. This is the case when someone doesnt understand the WC3 system in general. Also includes people who dont understand english and cant speak it. Its a shame, but ive seen terrible english speaking people try to learn, through whatever broken english they type (in other maps as well). Doesnt listen.

Stupid noob - the worst kind.. people who are new to the game BT and warcraft 3 in general, who dont type because they dont know how or because theyre stupid. Either way, they are the worst kind.
Stupid *pro* - this sounds weird but stupid is more about the character than the skill level. Some people play maps without ever touching wc3 normal's (or ladder). They then play well because they understand BT or the map but dont understand the game any deeper than on the surface... i have encountered this many times not just in BT or even WC3. Perhaps the guy got lucky with an exploit or strategy. Also they may not speak any english at atll and appear stupid. haha.

None of it really matters unless it ruins my fun.

JUST READ THE SUGGESTIONS PART or not. I beat qweq_duck's post in size. I win!
GLHF

EDIT: actually no i dont. His is still bigger. fail.

[Althend]

Most annoying are some well-know "pro" players in pro team who are really bad and can't help it

[Dr.McNinja]

Most annoying for me are.... lucky noobs.one game i just not long ago, we were sieging 20mins in but all but one got death magics. One of them got 4 and ended with a score of 43-(less than 10).. Game took over twice as long.

...and exploders.

[IlPalazzo]

Most noobs don’t want/ have the patience to read an instruction book to figure out how to become instant-pros (nor does their team have the patience for a person who hasn’t moved for 5-10 minutes) nor are they too concerned with a spam of mathematical formulas (they aren’t even familiar with the abilities their tank has never mind the weapon/range ratio). Most of them are looking to play a game to have fun and just trying out the game to see if it’s any good. You can't expect them to learn everything they need to know in a single game for what other people/pros had to learn over months, some even years, of playing.

Keep in mind that it's a thin balance. Spam the tips and they become annoying for everyone. Say too much and the player will feel too overwhelmed. If anything, Battle Tanks should only give a few tips that will show up once or twice as a player become familiar with the game to help them get their feet off the ground and so they understand what they need to focus on to become good. Just some generalized ideas on:

1. What to buy
2. Factories/Healing/Teleporting
3. Creep/Wave Hugging
4. Gold Mechanics
5. Staying Alive
6. Junkyard

Some examples:

What to buy

1. Trigger: Player buys a Tank
Say: You should buy a weapon that has a range between 900-1300 before leaving the base.
Ping: Weapons Shops

2. Trigger: Player buys a Tinker
Say: A tinker only has 200 health, you may want to buy an Iron Hull or buy a different tank before leaving the base.
Ping: Base and Paladin Shop

3. Trigger: Player Buys a Weapon
Say: You have bought a weapon, when you are close enough to the enemy, it will fire off automatically.

4.Trigger: Player leaves the base without a weapon.
Say: You should go back to the base and buy a weapon with a range between 900-1300.
Ping: Weapons Shops

5. Trigger: Player has 3,500 Gold and a Tank
Say: You have 3,500 Gold, you may want to consider buying another weapon at one of these shops.
Ping: Weapon Shops

6. Trigger: Player has 2,000 Gold, a tank and at least two weapons.
Say: You have 2,500 Gold, you may want to consider buying a hull (Red), or saving for a new tank (Green) at your base.
Ping: Paladin Shop (Red), Tank Shops (Green)

7. Trigger: Player has 7,000 Gold
Say: You have 7,000 Gold, you may want to consider buying another weapon or saving for a late-game tank.
Ping: Base


Factories Healing

8. Trigger: Player’s Tank is at 50% Health
Say: Your health is less than 50%, you should go to a factory you control to heal. Stay behind your team’s troops so they can take some of your hits.
Ping: Factories

9. Trigger: Player passes his team’s base towers before 5 minutes of game time passes.
Say: Did you know if you are in your base or at an allied factory, you can teleport to them instantly using the “Control Point Teleport” ability?
Ping: Factories and Base

Gold Mechanics

10. Trigger: Player receives Force Gold [Wait 5 Seconds]
Say: You have received Force Gold, Every kill the [Light/Dark] Force steals from you will give you [%] of the gold after 5 minutes. Kill the enemies yourself if you want to maximize your gold income.

11. Trigger: An opponent has a 5 kill lead on the Player
Say: [Color] has 5 more kills you, you may want to stay close to the factory so you can heal more often when facing him.
Ping: Factories (Green), Opponent (Red)

12. Trigger: An opponent has a 10 kill lead on the Player
Say: [Color] has 10 more kills than you, work together with your team to take him down.
Ping: Factories (Green) and Allies (Green), Opponent (Red)



Staying Alive/Death

13. Trigger: Player’s Tank Dies and has a negative kill-death ratio.
Say[1]: If you are dying too quickly, you may want to buy a hull (Red) or a new tank (Green) with more health.
Ping: Base (Green) and Paladin Shop (Red)

Say[2]: Return to the factory often to heal.
Ping: Factories

Say[3]: Every death gives your opponent gold, if you die too much your team may not be too happy.

Say[4]: If you’re facing an opponent stronger than you, stay close to the factory so you can heal more often.
Ping: Factories

Say[5]: If you are having trouble facing an opponent alone, work together with your team to take him down.

Say[6]: If you are behind in equipment, use the Junkyard to buy your teammates old weapons and equipment at a reduced cost.
Ping: Junkyard

Say[7]: Your team spawns troops every 20 seconds, stay close to them so they can take some the of hits for you.
Ping: Factories

Junkyard
14. Trigger: Ally sells an item.
Say: An ally has sold an item to a shop. You may buy this item from the junkyard at ¾ the cost.
Ping: Junkyard


The triggers are set up so that a player that is doing well will only see 5-6 of these message (aside from the start), while a person who is new to the game will see more tips as they make common beginner's mistakes.

[qweqqweq]

you got a point, if exodus adopted this idea then he could put "type -notips to dissable messages like this one" at the end of each message.

**edit** and oh ya, it didn't have to take us years and years to learn all this information. if the info was in the map then we could have all learned it a lot faster. and while it's true that most new players learn quickly there are many i see who still struggle with the same basic mistakes over and over again and then once they finally correct them they pick up a new bad habbit and repeat the process. These are the type of players usually who are stubborn and try to explore every possibility of tactic or strategy before giving up on it and finally abondoning it for a new one. (I think this becasue I am like this aslo).

Example: For over a year i thought that magic type damage was certain spells and waepons that had a magic theme. When I learned the truth about normal and magic damage type damage I quickly changed a lot of my strategies. I'm sure that some very bad new players would also change their tactics and strategies if they knew some certain facts about the map like that.

The fact that some of us spent years learning a lot of info about the map and read a lot of forums discussion gives us too much advantage against new players in my opinion. I think the info should be in the map and in a prominent way. that's just my advice though. Exodus can take it or leave it. Like i say: i could be wrong.

[Dr.McNinja]

To sum up what ive said: "...with simple tips."
Not an "instruction booklet" and i dont think 'mathematical formulas' has even been mentioned.

The help command system wouldnt be spam because the person would have to voluntarily type it.

Sorry IlPalazzo but having triggers is just what im suggesting against, because it would affect everyone. ALTHOUGH there could be some way to "activate" the tip-triggers so that only when elected, do the triggers occur. For example, noob starts playing and there is an option to turn on 'noob mode' (rename it to something better) and that would activate triggers. Otherwise, no change for other players.

In combination with some of your triggers.. there could be one that shoots a 'tracer' leading to shops instead of pings. The tracer would be very noticeable but only to the play, and lead from their tank to 'magic shop' or 'weapon shops' for example. I think this would be pretty damn helpful..

[IlPalazzo]

To sum up what ive said: "...with simple tips." ... i dont think 'mathematical formulas' has even been mentioned.

That wasn't a response to your suggestions, but qweqqweq's... Some of them (ie 2a, 2b, and 2c) involved listing off some of the bounty numbers for towers/CPs and the damage formulas for weapons every time you clicked a shop or ruins, which aren't important unless you first understand the fundamentals of the game.

The help command system wouldnt be spam because the person would have to voluntarily type it.

Sorry IlPalazzo but having triggers is just what im suggesting against, because it would affect everyone. ALTHOUGH there could be some way to "activate" the tip-triggers so that only when elected, do the triggers occur. For example, noob starts playing and there is an option to turn on 'noob mode' (rename it to something better) and that would activate triggers. Otherwise, no change for other players.

In combination with some of your triggers.. there could be one that shoots a 'tracer' leading to shops instead of pings. The tracer would be very noticeable but only to the play, and lead from their tank to 'magic shop' or 'weapon shops' for example. I think this would be pretty damn helpful..

The one problem I see is that not all beginners ask for help and prefer to just jump into the game to experience it first hand. Generally, it's easier to get a pro to type "-notips" than it is to convince a beginner to say "-help" or to press F9. You're right though, the amount of messages so should be minimal for the people who know how to play, which is why I tried to suggest setting "triggers" that most players regard as a "beginner's mistake."

The thing is, the game already spews out tips randomly throughout the game. Since that's the case, the way to make it more effective for teaching noobs is to arrange them in a more consistent order. It wouldn't require too much work to implement, merely a few changes in the triggers that set off tips at more relevant times.

[bobbob247]

The problem is, there are quite a few builds that don't buy weapons. Shredder is one, 3x update tinker, hulled tinker, noobexploder, trader, tinker/scout with troop command... etc...

I can see several of these messages flying up the screen at the same time (buy tinker, try to go for shredder is 3 messages) and blocking my view a bit. This would NOT be ideal. maybe -notips could cut the tips out.

If you die, you will have a huge incoming wall of text...