Why the Dev's should turn away from the Tutorial; and relook the farming system

[DeletedUser54161]

Disclaimer:
Please do not read this if you are not open to new ideas and constructive criticism. This thread is meant to be a topic of discussion and is an expansion of a discussion that occurred regarding Grepolis. It may or may not be poorly worded, so take it wait a grain of salt, and if you hate it, please feel free to bash and comment so, as their is no dislike button.

As a Veteran Player, of this game, and as a beginner of other games, I always turn the tutorial off. Maybe they are just not for me, but I like to find things out by doing them, or by being "rimmed" within the first week so to speak. The first world I ever played I was pretty bad, but I got some advice as a "simmer" from veteran players who were much better, and my game-play improved drastically.

That being said, I was recently talking with a friend who ran into a situation. His alliance mate was under attack, and was asking for DLU. He had asked for confirmation what level the wall was, but the player only responded, "Come on! I need help!! He's attacking me!!" Being the bigger player, my friend sent support, and blocked the attack. However, when he checked the battle report, he had lost 3000 DLU, only to kill 800 slingers. While he was successful in stopping the attack, it got him thinking;

"Do new players lack experience because of the simplification of the game, or their unwillingness to learn."

Prior to the change in the farming system, players were required to send troops out to the villages in order to "harvest, or gather" the resources from the village to bring it back to the main town. It taught players about unit speed, carrying capacity, and other mechanics such as dealing with "Angry Farmers"
However, under the new system, farming is just a click of a button away, and an instant boost to your village, which lacks player involvement or "advanced knowledge" of unit types.
While the new Tutorial system has made steps in the right direction, it does not seem to incentive learning, as I have seen many reports of "new-comers" sending all their units to attack to gather the most amount of resources from each, instead of prioritizing troop specialties.
*^I realize it is the most efficient to send them all for resource gathering, but how does this help new players if veterans suggest they send everything to maximize resource gain.

Heck, there was a player a while back, who was asking which ships are best for offense, and people told him "Fireships", because you know, "fire"!

But given the apparent skill or learning gap between new players and old-timers, how can we make the new players learn better, either by re-working parts of the tutorial and beginner quests, or by altering farming, which would bring back more player involvement and require more frequent log-ins

 

[DeletedUser41523]

The easiest way to give players a chance to improve would be slowing the game back down. We went from 2-3 weeks to our first conq on 2 speed worlds to being able to do it in 3-6 days. Farming, instant buy, etc slowly chipped that down over time.

That's not really a new player friendly system. But inno is going to stick to a turtorial system. Slowing the game back down would annoy a lot of players and cut profits.

 

[Rachel.L]

my guess is that both of these are designed to get gold spent (to grow fast enough to get to those lvls) rather than players to learn
just a thought

 

[Silver Witch]

Ive spent years trying to help new players. Some take forever and some just never do. I think desire and a mentor is probably the best way to learn and the tutorial is just a boost to get you started. I agree the new way to obtain farms teaches less than the old way but personally i prefer it.

 

[DeletedUser41523]

Really if you want to help new players, don't stack out a premade filled with the best players. Get a handful of good players then leave the rest to recruit less known/newer players.

It mostly comes down to leadership and world settings in my opinion.

But if most good leaders devoted a world to helping newer players learn, I'd bet more of them would stick around.

 

[DeletedUser55230]

TBH I don’t think u need to hold their hand throughout the whole game if u explain some basic things and show them some progression such as raiding and building up to timing atks and building nukes and mixed city def players will learn for themselves
Before Sinope I was a bit of a noob building Chariot nukes for off stuff like that
But i progressed a lot bc Erik Wijmeersch taught me a lot and the rest I got from experience realizing some things are just not as efficient as others
That’s how I see it at least walk em through the basics and give them the tools to have rudimentary understanding of more advanced stuff and they’ll learn through experience if they want

 

[DeletedUser55049]

I agree that the game should be available without tutorial.

Even more importantly, I speak out against the fact that you need the ressources from the tutorial in order to start constructing your city.
You are doomed without completing the tutorial. And that is TERRIBLE!

This means that InnoGames has to come up with a better concept for receiving ressources in the beginning.
A simple idea would be to make all buildings cost-free in the beginning. As an explanation, the game would tell the player that Athen pays the costs.

Now, if we accept that idea, we only need to discuss up to which stage the construction would remain free of charge.

The benefit of this way is that new players get accelerated in their construction: take as a counter-example a regular every-hour delivery of goods to the city. Now with construction costing ressources. Here, the player gets slowed down. That is bad.


Conclusion: make construction cost-free in the beginning.

 

[DeletedUser32254]

Really if you want to help new players, don't stack out a premade filled with the best players. Get a handful of good players then leave the rest to recruit less known/newer players.

It mostly comes down to leadership and world settings in my opinion.

But if most good leaders devoted a world to helping newer players learn, I'd bet more of them would stick around.

Was it you who suggested a random spawn only world?
I read that idea someplace and the more I have thought about it, the more I like the idea. (Invites also spawning randomly)

It addresses several issues, new player training among them.
Simple, should be easy to program, and relatively non controversial I should think as "All Star" teams could still form, just with a bit more difficulty.

New player retention, perhaps veteran player retention, and more interesting, less predictable, worlds are likely to result.

What do you think?

 

[DeletedUser32254]

I agree that the game should be available without tutorial.

Even more importantly, I speak out against the fact that you need the ressources from the tutorial in order to start constructing your city.
You are doomed without completing the tutorial. And that is TERRIBLE!

This means that InnoGames has to come up with a better concept for receiving ressources in the beginning.
A simple idea would be to make all buildings cost-free in the beginning. As an explanation, the game would tell the player that Athen pays the costs.

Now, if we accept that idea, we only need to discuss up to which stage the construction would remain free of charge.

The benefit of this way is that new players get accelerated in their construction: take as a counter-example a regular every-hour delivery of goods to the city. Now with construction costing ressources. Here, the player gets slowed down. That is bad.


Conclusion: make construction cost-free in the beginning.

There is certainly a good argument to be made that the slow pace of first city construction repels many who are trying Grepo for the first time.
We have all seen the numbers of players/cities than never make it to 1k.