Many people have the feeling that we are still loosing many potential players (and potential devs) because the learning curve of the game is still too steep. To help new players to get started, we have the player guide, the information at the official website, stickies in these forums, the planeshift wiki web, the in-game tutorial, various IRC channels, the in-game help channel and tons of experienced players, GMs and devs willing to offer help to new players (in game, at IRC, or at these forums). Still, many newbies feel hopelessly lost and quit, which of course is rather ironic.
Why is the learning curve of Planeshift so steep? It would be too easy to simply blame the Planeshift interface or the quest system. Sure, it is different, but that is because the philosophy of the devs is that more sophisticated and complex training and crafting systems and ways to communicate with NPCs in the end add to the attractiveness of the game. Planeshift doesn't want to be a clone of other MMORPGs and therefore experiments with new game mechanisms that are unfamiliar to the average gamer. Which is fine. Of course there are still bugs and sometimes the interface and the underlying applications work in non-intuitive ways, but I think that is to some extend inevitable for a game in development. Therefor, I'd like to discuss is how we can organize all the help sources in such a way that players actually get the information they need to enjoy a complex game.
Personally, I think the priority should be more on organizing the website (
www.planeshift.it) than on organizing these forums. All players have visited the website first to check if the game is worth downloading and to download the game. Far less players visit the forums. That's why I think it is extremely important to keep the main website up to date. Furthermore, i think the tutorial is critical. If people get stuck in the tutorial and don't find help, they will quit. If they pass the tutorial, they have a good impression about what to expect and what to do in game and are more likely to stick around. However, many of the info sources that are the easiest to find via the website are outdated and do not even cover that there actually is a tutorial people will have to run through! Let alone they offer any help to people who are stuck in the tutorial. I think the first priority should be to update pages like the
offical FAQ and the
PlaneShift Quick-Start Guide first. Also the
offical player guide doesn't cover the tutorial.
Secondly, there are quite some official looking "getting started-guides" on the forums which don't cover the tutorial and are outdated at some other points, which can also be quite confusing for new people.
Example 1.
Example 2,
Example 3Having said that, there are also several of good, more recent guides. But I think they should be located closer to the "Download here"-button to ensure they are actually read by the people these guides are written for in the first place. In any case I think that if somebody who could both organize and update the info on the website and the forums put more structure in all those help sources, it could have a big impact on the actual number of players. Karyuu updated everything about 1.5 year ago. I think it is time for a new full scale update round.
