Here is my experience as a new player regarding the custom content:
Why don't I have weapons?
*Check chat for any announcements regarding information*
*Watch for any commands*
20 people on, kinda hard to get a word in edgewise as a new player
Guess you just have to kind of grind out some playtime or drops. Maybe it's an anti-minge measure
-Hours later-
Someone just said something about inventory... *b*, *i* OHHHHH. Gotta dig around and figure this out now.
The hell is a crystal? What's a charge? Just going to ignore that for now
We have levels? *!level*. Oh someone said it's on the scoreboard.
Oh F3 opens something on this server
The hell are those gems? Nice custom spin on most of this. Customize model, with what? Item is empty. Accessories maybe? I don't have any of these coins to test that out though...
People keep talking about presents and quests. My quests menu is empty. How do they get them?
Oh a lobby server? I'll check it out. "Must be level 10", Okay I'll rejoin the TTT server. "Server is full"
I still don't know wtf the "event" is.
I see players running around with crowbars looking at the ground all the time. I ask if they spawned with weapons and they say no so I run them through the process.
There's some nice features on this server. I'm rusty on my GLua but the client/shared code I see is well done. So it's not an issue with code quality, moreso documentation, and oh god can I relate to that.
I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of new players leave out of frustration/lack of fun due to not knowing how to use all of the features. A few basic tutorials could go a long way.
Tacked on suggestions:
A few more fine-grained search features would be really nice. Checking the price history of items you find listed. Selecting the base type of weapon in the same way you select rarity. Affix searches perhaps.
Ability to close the end round vote. It currently prevents you from seeing the last round's score.
Maybe entirely disable awarding spectators(or those who have spectated X < minutes.) drops. There's a fair amount of what I would consider to be farming.
Drag and drop in the inventory shifts all items ahead of the target slot up by one rather than swaps items with the target slot. Shouldn't be too difficult code wise but I remember the shit show that is lua tables.
I do agree that it's pretty confusing at the start. Probably the best way to fix this is to have someone write up a small "Beginners Guide" which briefly explains crystals, suffixes, events, etc.
(12-29-2015, 04:31 PM)Dreadark Wrote: I do agree that it's pretty confusing at the start. Probably the best way to fix this is to have someone write up a small "Beginners Guide" which briefly explains crystals, suffixes, events, etc.
12-29-2015, 06:20 PM (This post was last modified: 12-29-2015, 06:22 PM by Brassx.)
The problem with this(and I have learned this through experience), and the main reason I haven't made a super in depth guide, is people(especially newer people) often DO NOT READ. Even if it's plastered all over the screen, people will ignore it, then keep asking questions. So we tend to rely on our members/staff to help guide newbies through the process.
There are some people(like myself) who will read notifications on the screen, and not instantly close out a popup explaining things.
Also, when you first join, it does tell you that you have been given 2 starter weapons, and you can press I to open your Inventory to equip them.
So now we could write up a post explaining other features(also quote Terran's post) and I could make it show the forum post with a !help command, or if it detects they join for the first time it would popup(most likely will be ignored). We should add some screenshots/webms of things to make it more appealing, and not a big wall of text.
(12-29-2015, 06:20 PM)Brassx Wrote: The problem with this(and I have learned this through experience), and the main reason I haven't made a super in depth guide, is people(especially newer people) often DO NOT READ. Even if it's plastered all over the screen, people will ignore it, then keep asking questions. So we tend to rely on our members/staff to help guide newbies through the process.
There are some people(like myself) who will read notifications on the screen, and not instantly close out a popup explaining things.
Also, when you first join, it does tell you that you have been given 2 starter weapons, and you can press I to open your Inventory to equip them.
So now we could write up a post explaining other features(also quote Terran's post) and I could make it show the forum post with a !help command, or if it detects they join for the first time it would popup(most likely will be ignored). We should add some screenshots/webms of things to make it more appealing, and not a big wall of text.
(12-29-2015, 06:20 PM)Brassx Wrote: The problem with this(and I have learned this through experience), and the main reason I haven't made a super in depth guide, is people(especially newer people) often DO NOT READ. Even if it's plastered all over the screen, people will ignore it, then keep asking questions. So we tend to rely on our members/staff to help guide newbies through the process.
There are some people(like myself) who will read notifications on the screen, and not instantly close out a popup explaining things.
Also, when you first join, it does tell you that you have been given 2 starter weapons, and you can press I to open your Inventory to equip them.
So now we could write up a post explaining other features(also quote Terran's post) and I could make it show the forum post with a !help command, or if it detects they join for the first time it would popup(most likely will be ignored). We should add some screenshots/webms of things to make it more appealing, and not a big wall of text.
I think it would also make it easier if Terran or your post were stickied to show it at the top and make it easier to find.
Another thing I thought of is giving everyone a small guide book in their inventory when they join, then they can easily go into it and look at it (of course they need to know how to open the inventory first though) although the problem with this is that it probably wouldn't be as easy to edit and change around as a forum post would be and then people can't post ideas or input on it.
12-29-2015, 08:16 PM (This post was last modified: 12-29-2015, 08:25 PM by Dgc2002.)
Brassx Wrote:...
I hear you loud and clear. When I developed DarkRP and TTT for a community I spent the time to make some easy to digest guides. Nice pictures, videos etc. Tons of people ignored them of course. I can't blame them for not wanting to read a user's manual one very server they join. The closest to a solution I came to is the same I used for RDM, try to remove the elements that lead to these situations. So in this case would you consider auto-equipping starter weapons? Or a round-by-round non-intrusive notification saying "You haven't equipped your weapons yet. Open your inventory by pressing I to equip them!"?
Brassx Wrote:Also, when you first join, it does tell you that you have been given 2 starter weapons, and you can press I to open your Inventory to equip them.
Is that a one time thing? As someone coming to a server for the first time there can be a LOT to take in. New interface, rules flashed up, MOTD, new guns you've never seen, mid-round yelling by players etc. It's really easy to miss a notification that you don't even know the relevance of. "I have weapons? Well... yea don't we all in TTT?", "Welcome to FRG! Press... Shit round start don't want to die" if you get what I mean. I'm mostly mentioning this stuff because I come from the viewpoint of a developer. Being in the seat of a new player I can finally see how, understandably, tunnel-visioned I was. Things become second nature to you, it's just how the game works after a while. But to a new player it's completely foreign and likely overwhelming.
I'm not necessarily suggesting this for the people who would ignore it. More for the people like myself looking for information without drudging through forum posts that all blend together from my perspective. For example the crystal guide was on page 3 and the patch notes all look the same from the sub-forum's index. I have no idea if this inventory system was added last week or last year. To learn about the crystals I ended up just running searches on the client side lua cache until I found some relevant strings.
New players are also jaded as hell from all of the copy+paste servers out there with broken/dead forums. Once you waste enough time trying to search an outdated and inactive PHPBB with 60 second search timers you start to lose motivation. This isn't your fault obviously, and I like to think it wasn't mine when I was active. But the GMod community is what it is for better or worse.
I think this is, for the most part, a good example of what is helpful for someone like myself:
Quote:"You can use this menu to charge Crystals.\nCrystals are items that have special properties, and can be used to give the user various buffs, or properties.\nTo charge a Crystal, you must have a weapon that has the Crystal's Required stat. That stat is added to the needed charge value of the Crytsal. Once the crystal has a certain charge level, it can then be equipped and used in game."
But I had no idea how to find that until I dug through the lua cache.
Dreadark Wrote:although the problem with this is that it probably wouldn't be as easy to edit and change around as a forum post would be and then people can't post ideas or input on it.
Not necessarily. GMod's Derma has some handy elements for displaying HTML. You could just show the forum post itself to take advantage of the BBCode formatting or something as simple as showing a text file. I always found the most difficult part to be making it fit with the HUD and not just look like a big tacky browser.
But I think a problem that Brassx kind of touched on shows up here too. A lot of this comes down to the information being easily digestible. People are more likely to read a tooltip than a paragraph. It's like Diablo III Vs. Path of Exile. One is shallow and easy to jump into while the other can be insanely in depth and complex. Guess which has a larger player base?
But remember, these are just suggestions from one person. I could just be a weirdo noticing things that aren't there. Just hoping to offer some feedback from the viewpoint of an ignorant player.
Looks great so far! Thanks. I had no idea about viewing a weapons' stats with J, ordering sections of your inventory, refreshing your inventory, re-equipping your inventory, and was clear about the meaning behind how full a stat's bar was filled. Going to read Terran's guide now.
12-29-2015, 08:33 PM (This post was last modified: 12-29-2015, 08:34 PM by Brassx.)
I have created quite the hefty post detailing some of the features of FRG, though I may end up splitting up into parts(separate threads?) to make it easier to 'digest'. (which I see you read now)
And yes, if I were to make a popup in game, it would likely just be a VGUI element displaying the forum post directly.
People are free to add to the guide, just post what they wish to add!
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