Plague
Active member
- Joined
- May 30, 2020
- Messages
- 41
Hey Athios!
Man, this game is really addictive: I have to try really hard to stop myself from spending too much time and I know you guys too (Woaxa spent 24 hours straight on the first day
). That's why this game has so much potential in my eyes, it just hasn't been marketed properly. However, while the game might be that way to us veterans who have command over the ins and outs of the game, I reckon the newbies will have a hard time understanding wth is going on for quite a few games which might turn them away. As an example, I like bed wars, and it took me like a few games to understand the game mode entirely and I wouldn't have gotten into it otherwise. So without further ado, here are my suggestions to make the game more newbie-friendly.
Do away with the redundancies
This will be controversial, but I'm not suggesting too much change. We should be wary of having too much "clutter" in the gameplay. Games with lots of classes and mechanics can be quite fun, but sometimes less is more. I'm not saying that we turn this into SaD; after all the real fun of this game lies in the kits. The best route of simplification is with removing redundancies and things that don't "add" to the fun/objective that we can do without. This is just a tentative list:
Remove Wraith. This kit perhaps contributes the least to the objective out of all kits, and is not as fun to use anyways. It's just pointless and adds another invisible kit to keep track of. You can't see health from afar due to minecraft's limitations yet shooting from a bow is supposed to be done from afar. The kit is being asked to do contradictory things.
Remove Dwarf or Remove Nuke. Dwarf is usually thought of as a tanky kit, and it is. But more so, it's a defensive "endgame" kit for long-duration games; the final protector of the precious bomb at the base that frustrates the opposition and makes the game a war of attrition. Before the nuke was implemented, the dwarf perfectly fulfilled this role but now a war of attrition is impossible thanks to the nuke. Whoever controls the center wins the game, and there's no way a dwarf can help the team maintain control over the center, even if it reaches there, it's too open for dwarfs to be useful. The enemy team can simply choose not to engage with the dwarf and wait for the nuke, rendering him completely useless. Giving the dwarf better mobility to offset this makes it too similar to juggernaut. Personally, I think this is more of an argument against the nuke but that is a debate for another time. What should be clear is that dwarfs and nukes are incompatible, it doesn't make sense to have both. Remove one to simplify things.
Merge Spy and Skinner/ Remove one. These two kits are extremely similar and really fill the same niche. Both have the same armor and weapon. Spy is just slightly better in the beginning and useless at the end and when it is someone's main. Skinner is useful after a kill. They are too similar and there's no point in new players having to be aware of both. I propose a merger: You look like a spy at the start of the game and have the skinning ability. This should satisfy fans of both kits (maybe make the skinning optional?)
Have an "Interactive Tutorial" (More important than the above)
The above changes are only a few things since I don't wish to impact the fun of the gameplay. At the same time, newbies need to quickly get a handle on this game. The best solution is to have a tutorial rather than having to read a how-to play guide on the forums or in the ugly book in game. This is how I imagine it:
When newbies come to the server or join the lobby for the first few times, the chat will ask "New to the game? Type /tutorial to learn the game!"
This will take you to a place where you are the only player (even if multiple players have done /tutorial, you're in your separate world). The chat will say "In Search and Destroy, you win by (i) either arming the other teams bomb and preventing them from defusing it till it explodes or (ii) you finish of the opposite team, since each player has one life." Then it will say "SnD has three aspects you should know: Kits, mechanics, and maps".
Now you have three sections to this tutorial lobby:
The kit section, consisting of NPCs corresponding to each kit wearing their armor. You will quickly know what each kit looks like. Clicking an NPC teleports you to a training ground where you try that kit out (and the chat gives you additional info). So if I want to learn about kit explosive, it'll let me test out grenades and RPGs on a bunch of NPCs. If I want to learn about ghost, it'll put me in ghost mode (here it could also pierce an arrow in you and tell you that this exposes the ghost). This needs to be fleshed out for quite a while, but it will be helpful for new players.
Next section is the mechanics, where you learn how to arm the bomb, summon crates and napalms etc. steaks and enderpearls. There maybe more SnD specifc mechanics that could be put here. But bomb arming, using killstreaks, using pearls and steaks are the main things.
Lastly, we have the maps. Just click a NPC and have a GUI open up for each map. you are then transported to the map to check it out. This is because new players will need more than one minute to explore a map that is new to them.
This is going to take a while to code (mostly the kit part) and one maybe tempted to say "why not just have the newcomer read a tutorial?" My response is that this generation really doesn't like to read. You might be like "Okay boomer", to which I take offense since I'm a proud zoomer. But another reason is that interactive learning is more effective and fun.
Man, this game is really addictive: I have to try really hard to stop myself from spending too much time and I know you guys too (Woaxa spent 24 hours straight on the first day
). That's why this game has so much potential in my eyes, it just hasn't been marketed properly. However, while the game might be that way to us veterans who have command over the ins and outs of the game, I reckon the newbies will have a hard time understanding wth is going on for quite a few games which might turn them away. As an example, I like bed wars, and it took me like a few games to understand the game mode entirely and I wouldn't have gotten into it otherwise. So without further ado, here are my suggestions to make the game more newbie-friendly.Do away with the redundancies
This will be controversial, but I'm not suggesting too much change. We should be wary of having too much "clutter" in the gameplay. Games with lots of classes and mechanics can be quite fun, but sometimes less is more. I'm not saying that we turn this into SaD; after all the real fun of this game lies in the kits. The best route of simplification is with removing redundancies and things that don't "add" to the fun/objective that we can do without. This is just a tentative list:
Remove Wraith. This kit perhaps contributes the least to the objective out of all kits, and is not as fun to use anyways. It's just pointless and adds another invisible kit to keep track of. You can't see health from afar due to minecraft's limitations yet shooting from a bow is supposed to be done from afar. The kit is being asked to do contradictory things.
Remove Dwarf or Remove Nuke. Dwarf is usually thought of as a tanky kit, and it is. But more so, it's a defensive "endgame" kit for long-duration games; the final protector of the precious bomb at the base that frustrates the opposition and makes the game a war of attrition. Before the nuke was implemented, the dwarf perfectly fulfilled this role but now a war of attrition is impossible thanks to the nuke. Whoever controls the center wins the game, and there's no way a dwarf can help the team maintain control over the center, even if it reaches there, it's too open for dwarfs to be useful. The enemy team can simply choose not to engage with the dwarf and wait for the nuke, rendering him completely useless. Giving the dwarf better mobility to offset this makes it too similar to juggernaut. Personally, I think this is more of an argument against the nuke but that is a debate for another time. What should be clear is that dwarfs and nukes are incompatible, it doesn't make sense to have both. Remove one to simplify things.
Merge Spy and Skinner/ Remove one. These two kits are extremely similar and really fill the same niche. Both have the same armor and weapon. Spy is just slightly better in the beginning and useless at the end and when it is someone's main. Skinner is useful after a kill. They are too similar and there's no point in new players having to be aware of both. I propose a merger: You look like a spy at the start of the game and have the skinning ability. This should satisfy fans of both kits (maybe make the skinning optional?)
Have an "Interactive Tutorial" (More important than the above)
The above changes are only a few things since I don't wish to impact the fun of the gameplay. At the same time, newbies need to quickly get a handle on this game. The best solution is to have a tutorial rather than having to read a how-to play guide on the forums or in the ugly book in game. This is how I imagine it:
When newbies come to the server or join the lobby for the first few times, the chat will ask "New to the game? Type /tutorial to learn the game!"
This will take you to a place where you are the only player (even if multiple players have done /tutorial, you're in your separate world). The chat will say "In Search and Destroy, you win by (i) either arming the other teams bomb and preventing them from defusing it till it explodes or (ii) you finish of the opposite team, since each player has one life." Then it will say "SnD has three aspects you should know: Kits, mechanics, and maps".
Now you have three sections to this tutorial lobby:
The kit section, consisting of NPCs corresponding to each kit wearing their armor. You will quickly know what each kit looks like. Clicking an NPC teleports you to a training ground where you try that kit out (and the chat gives you additional info). So if I want to learn about kit explosive, it'll let me test out grenades and RPGs on a bunch of NPCs. If I want to learn about ghost, it'll put me in ghost mode (here it could also pierce an arrow in you and tell you that this exposes the ghost). This needs to be fleshed out for quite a while, but it will be helpful for new players.
Next section is the mechanics, where you learn how to arm the bomb, summon crates and napalms etc. steaks and enderpearls. There maybe more SnD specifc mechanics that could be put here. But bomb arming, using killstreaks, using pearls and steaks are the main things.
Lastly, we have the maps. Just click a NPC and have a GUI open up for each map. you are then transported to the map to check it out. This is because new players will need more than one minute to explore a map that is new to them.
This is going to take a while to code (mostly the kit part) and one maybe tempted to say "why not just have the newcomer read a tutorial?" My response is that this generation really doesn't like to read. You might be like "Okay boomer", to which I take offense since I'm a proud zoomer. But another reason is that interactive learning is more effective and fun.
