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Prevent Farming by Newbies


Dr Rush
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6 hours ago, Dr Rush said:

By far the most common mistake new players make is building farms. And while I usually think allowing players to do dumb is a good thing, a slightly gentler approach should be used for new players. And in particular the games tutorial should not be actively directing new players into doing dumb things. So two things need to happen.

1. The objective to build a farm should instead be made into an objective to buy food and have explanation of why farms are bad.
2. Attempting to build a farm below 1.5k land should require confirmation that they understand it is a terrible idea.

I would actually just not allow -1500 land nations to build farms.
"Your city doesn't have enough land to house farms" seems like an adquate thing.

I do also agree about changing the goal and explaining why its bad.

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I think the tutorial needs to be overhauled overall, this is a step in the right direction. I truly believe if the tutorial was more informative, the game would have a much better retention.

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Coal Duke (Imperator Emeritus) of The Coal Mines
Diety Emeritus of The Immortals, Patres Conscripti (President Emeritus) of the Independent Republic of Orange Nations, Lieutenant Emeritus of Black Skies, Imperator Emeritus of the Valyrian Freehold, Imperator Emeritus of the Divine Phoenix, Prefect Emeritus of Carthago, Regent Emeritus of the New Polar Order

 

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3 hours ago, BelgiumFury said:

I would actually just not allow -1500 land nations to build farms.
"Your city doesn't have enough land to house farms" seems like an adquate thing.

I do also agree about changing the goal and explaining why its bad.

I really dislike removing player agency. I think even new players should be allowed to build however they want. Just some handholding being offered. 

2 hours ago, Suyash Adhikari said:

I think the tutorial needs to be overhauled overall, this is a step in the right direction. I truly believe if the tutorial was more informative, the game would have a much better retention.

Even Alex understands this, but he doesn't understand the game well enough to do it and every focus group has just died. So for the moment I'd like to focus on bullying dev time into fixing the location where the tutorial is just straight up wrong.

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23:38 Skable that's why we don't want Rose involved, so we can take the m all for ourselves

23:39 [] but Mensa is the cute girl at the school dance and she's only dancing with us right now to get our friend jealous

23:39 [] If Rose comes in and gives Mensa what she wants, she'll just toss us aside and forget we ever existed

23:39 zombie_lanae yeah I do hope we can keep having them all to ourselves

23:40 zombie_lanae I know it's selfish but I want all their love

 

 

6:55 PM <+Isolatar> Praise Dio

Pubstomper|BNC [20:01:55] Rose wouldn't plan a hit on Mensa because it would be &#33;@#&#036;ing stupid

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3 hours ago, Dr Rush said:

I really dislike removing player agency. I think even new players should be allowed to build however they want. Just some handholding being offered. 

Yeah that's fair too. Just explaining it would be a good help.

3 hours ago, Dr Rush said:

Even Alex understands this, but he doesn't understand the game well enough to do it and every focus group has just died. So for the moment I'd like to focus on bullying dev time into fixing the location where the tutorial is just straight up wrong.

If I understand it correctly we had a group for re-doing the whole in game guide, but it just never actually got done and they quit?
If that is the case we should make work of it.

Edited by BelgiumFury
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4 hours ago, Dr Rush said:

Even Alex understands this, but he doesn't understand the game well enough to do it and every focus group has just died. 

Avengers assemble a new focus group then.

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Coal Duke (Imperator Emeritus) of The Coal Mines
Diety Emeritus of The Immortals, Patres Conscripti (President Emeritus) of the Independent Republic of Orange Nations, Lieutenant Emeritus of Black Skies, Imperator Emeritus of the Valyrian Freehold, Imperator Emeritus of the Divine Phoenix, Prefect Emeritus of Carthago, Regent Emeritus of the New Polar Order

 

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17 hours ago, WarriorSoul said:

Protect noobs from themselves Sheepy. Great suggestion.

Can't blame noobs for doing exactly what the tutorials says and the first step in 99% of simulation games.

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23:38 Skable that's why we don't want Rose involved, so we can take the m all for ourselves

23:39 [] but Mensa is the cute girl at the school dance and she's only dancing with us right now to get our friend jealous

23:39 [] If Rose comes in and gives Mensa what she wants, she'll just toss us aside and forget we ever existed

23:39 zombie_lanae yeah I do hope we can keep having them all to ourselves

23:40 zombie_lanae I know it's selfish but I want all their love

 

 

6:55 PM <+Isolatar> Praise Dio

Pubstomper|BNC [20:01:55] Rose wouldn't plan a hit on Mensa because it would be &#33;@#&#036;ing stupid

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Yeah, that is definitely the most severe disconnect i've seen with newbies.  I think it'd also be good, if tangential, to give a general economic roadmap to said newbies on effective city builds / the best way to gain money (raiding and/or selling raw resources)

EDIT:

Additionally, it may be good to explain the general progress of a nation's economy - from mainly raws, to mainly manufacturing, to farming; based on the nation's general infrastructure/land levels

Edited by Alexandra B
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On 5/27/2021 at 2:21 AM, Dr Rush said:

By far the most common mistake new players make is building farms. And while I usually think allowing players to do dumb is a good thing, a slightly gentler approach should be used for new players. And in particular the games tutorial should not be actively directing new players into doing dumb things. So two things need to happen.

1. The objective to build a farm should instead be made into an objective to buy food and have explanation of why farms are bad.
2. Attempting to build a farm below 1.5k land should require confirmation that they understand it is a terrible idea.

I like suggestion 1. I'm firmly of the opinion that admin/mod intervention should be minimized as much as possible, so a soft redirection like that is really cool and I think it would be effective.

I don't like suggestion 2 because I don't think there's a strong enough precedent for using confirmations like that. I think confirmations like that only exist for deleting projects/cities, VM'ing, or deleting one's nation. Those things are in a whole other ballpark from building farms inefficiently. 

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On 5/27/2021 at 8:00 AM, BelgiumFury said:

I would actually just not allow -1500 land nations to build farms.
"Your city doesn't have enough land to house farms" seems like an adquate thing.

I do also agree about changing the goal and explaining why its bad.

while this seems like a good idea, all I see coming of this is they will now buy more land than they need before someone explains why this is bad, using money they could have invested into projects and more cities. whereas the prompt would (hopefully) make atleast some of those look into it a bit more. 

though one major issue with the prompt is, a farm economy requires 20 farms per city to get the max production bonus, will it prompt them every time they buy a farm, even if they choose to ignore it for whatever reason, or just the first in each city?


P.S.: There Definitely needs to be an explanation on the production bonus, which isn't really explained well in the tutorial at all. 

The biggest issues I run into when guiding new players are:
Farms without land & project,
Uranium Mines without the project,
Raw Resource improvements (as well as MFGs) being haphazardly spread around their cities instead of centralizing and/or maxing one type per city. 

like if you have 2 cities that have 5iron and 5coal in both, they produce less than 1 city with 10 iron and 1 city with 10 coal, despite having the same total amount of each improvement. this completely flies over the heads of many I try to explain it to. 

There also doesn't seem to be much explanation on Crime & Disease in the tutorial either, which can be pretty important for newer cities when it comes to military population at low infra.

Edited by Deborah Kobayashi
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3 hours ago, Deborah Kobayashi said:

The biggest issues I run into when guiding new players are:
Raw Resource improvements (as well as MFGs) being haphazardly spread around their cities instead of centralizing and/or maxing one type per city. 

I remember my first days where before joining an alliance I'd try to create a self-sustaining economy, where I wouldn't need to use the market. 

I think that's a common way of thinking of newbies: Market is bad because resources cost a lot of money, be self-sufficient. 
I think a nice way to address the problem is to make more emphasis on both production bonus(as you suggested) and the use of the market, focusing on which resources will be vital at the beginning(mainly food), and that you can sell the extra resources you produce. 
 

Another thing I noticed is that at the beginning you want to build everything almost immediately, when in reality it requires time to get money and your nation up and running. It may be a good idea to give newbies more money/resources at the beginning, or increase the daily log-in bonus base rate.

The newcomers need to understand that the game is slow-paced, but at the same time since they are not really invested in the game at the beginning, it doesn't make sense for them to come back, unless they join an alliance and the alliance is good at keeping them engaged

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On 5/27/2021 at 9:00 AM, BelgiumFury said:

I would actually just not allow -1500 land nations to build farms.
"Your city doesn't have enough land to house farms" seems like an adquate thing.

I do also agree about changing the goal and explaining why its bad.

I would honestly give them a choice, but explain why it's stupid. If they go through with it, it's on them, but I don't see why stop them if they're hell-bent on doing it.

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