lamefun wrote:Another thing that would be nice is a cooperative server where players of all skill levels can have fun together, like the old training server.
This is an opinion that regularly surfaces and is generally shared by everyone (I never seen someone disagreeing with that idea, ever). The problem is that doing invocations is not enough to make things happen.
Basically it's known since maybe 10 years or more that (among other things) :
1. It is precious to have some kind of mission maps to bootstrap a game when a player is a alone, this is why some contributors did the training server. This is to retain the player for at least one game and also retain him long enough for other players to come.
2. It is precious to have a mechanism to migrate from the training mod to the regular game when there are enough players on the server in a transparent manner (when we had training servers, we had to switch servers and usually half of the players did not followed… killing the momentum).
One important thing is that this project is a fully volunteer project, so implementation of this is only dependent on the free will of people you cannot even name: you as lamefun can't yourself expect someone you would name to implement something you would like to see implemented, also because of that fact you can't assume that if something is not implemented it would be because it is not known yet. Having ideas is the floor level of contributions, you can safely assume unimplemented ideas are already known, because what's missing is not the ability to have ideas, but the ability to implement.
The solution in 1. was already implemented in the past in the form of the training server, but it died because of lack of manpower (not because of lack of ideas), at some point people move on to other topics and we can't blame them for that, some other people would have to take the initiative to revive it, but then if no one does, the effort dies (and having ideas cannot prevent that sad fact).
The solution in 2. can be a game type vote screen. We had a contributor who also was a contributor of Xonotic and who was, if I'm right, the one who implemented the game type vote screen in Xonotic, after having contributed to Unvanquished many things unrelated to map vote screen, he wanted to implement a map vote screen at the end of the game for Unvanquished, something he or someone would have been able to extend to make a game type vote screen. Unfortunately at some point he moved on, which is something that is perfectly normal in a free volunteer project based on good will and personal availability : no one can owe someone else (including you) anything.
Everything you repeat may have been said not only by you but also by others than you and maybe also before you. What is needed to see the ideas implemented is someone implementing the things. So basically you need someone to implement the things. You either need yourself to implement the things, or you need someone else to implement the things, but others can't owe you anything.
lamefun wrote:illwieckz wrote:We have to reward players by any mean in the first 2 minutes.
Finally it's dawning on you, after all these years!
As I have said, what is missing is not someone having an idea, what is missing is someone having the workforce. So, you are maybe yet another time misjudging what's happening by assuming that if something is not done it's because what's missing is the knowledge or the ability to have ideas. Anyway you may know by yourself that having the ideas is not enough to turn them into implementation (otherwise your forum posts and other's forum posts, including mines, would have been enough to fix things)…
And please, PLEASE consider getting rid of the floor head-bite mechanic CHEAT, I mean, having to know a mechanic CHEAT so counter-intuitive that new players won't even know it exists until told about it, and that is also required to use the starting class of the very team that makes Unvanquished stand out is probably costing you players as well...
Outside of the opinion on that particular game mechanism and the specific talk about it, you're pointing out one other accessibility problem that is well known : it is needed to help new people know how the game works and what to do. It's common to have uncommon behavior in games (it's also part of gameplay identity), what is important is for people to be able to discover them and enjoy them if that's the purpose.
For this we have something very basic, the in-game tutorial instructions displayed on screen. This may not be enough as more complex interaction and feedback may be better, but someone has to do it (we always lack manpower, we rarely lack ideas). I improved the tutorial instructions a lot for the 0.52 release (I had to take on my own time for that which may have cost me money because that's the way the world works), I also helped to improve a bit the in game manual (which is still really perfectible). If there are things missing please contribute.
Also, one big problem is that those instructions, when they exist, are not translated, which is a very strong barrier for many people. It looks like native English players are a minority, even contributors are rarely native English people, we are currently working on making translation of the game doable again, we now even have work-in-progress (not merged yet) implementation that makes the game entirely translatable again, and after that we would need translation contributors.
About this kind of “cheats” as you call them, video games are full of them, this is part of the concept of video games, even the fact the life loss is linear and that you don't get disabled until your life account is empty is a cheat, the fact you can respawn after having died is another cheat, hitscan weapons are cheats, crosshair being always at the same place on screen is a cheat, the way the first person weapon is drawn on screen is a cheat. We may even think about adding yet another first-person cheat to make the headbite obvious. The talk about the pertinence of this or that game mechanism and the pertinence of this or that cheat is welcome, but at some point the big problem there is to help people discover the game mechanisms, whatever the game mechanism is (and cheats themselves may be used to make the game easier and more easy to discover).
At some point we may want to do more than just on screen instructions, but also a real tutorial mission, that idea is really not uncommon and is very old, but there is no one having enough manpower to do this right now. To give a comparison, Xonotic is 11 years old and their tutorial level is still work-in-progress and unreleased, If I'm right the tutorial map for Warsow came in 2016 while the project had seen first release in 2005, so it took 11 years to this other volunteer project to get a tutorial map. I'm sure it did not took them 11 years to have that idea anyway.