Getting more players

[MishkaL1138]

That's part of the problem. Even players dispute what Planeshift is. Its not strictly a role playing game and not strictly a shooter or grinding game. IMHO it is a somewhat disharmonious blend of the two. Its oil and water, but not mayonnaise. If only there was an egg yolk big enough to emulsify the two.

How poetic! Also, shoot me a PM when you're available to chat, Riggy! Gotta question you.

[Aiwendil]

I don't really want to say anything about PR here...I probably have a very different opinion than most others there. I only want to get into the technical side of problems that keep away new players.

So, I updated my source to the latest SVN revision, created a new account and removed my ~/.PlaneShift folder.

Lets start with the launcher application. The default settings are totally nuts. And almost no new player will even know what to setup correctly there.
- Audio settings on linux: After the first start I had "Sound Renderer: Software" there even though I have openAL installed and can choose it on the launcher. No new player will even bother to change that.
- WTF? Not a single option in "Controls"? Then remove that button..it's only confusing people. (No need to completely delete it...just make it invisible for now if there are really plans to make this one useful at some point. I just wonder...why would anyone want to setup controls in the launcher when it can be done directly in game where one can see the effect at once.)
- General: I still don't get who thought it a good idea to enable fullscreen by default. For most linux users the PS experience will be over at this point. And as PS installs menu items most people won't even see the error message in the shell that could explain them what went wrong. Make the game run windowed by default (at least on linux. The way PS/CS tries to switch to fullscreen mode is very outdated and doesn't work in many cases if the user selects a different resolution that the current desktop resolution). And while at it...give the user some feedback outside of the shell if something went wrong. (I know...PS ends in a crash every time so there is no real way to even see if something went wrong but the current "press Play in the launcher, launcher closes then immediately reopens doesn't leave people with any clue what to do to fix this)
- Graphics: remove the options that do nothing. Very confusing for people if they enable shadows just to see the next time the check the options it's disabled again.
- With this I'm not sure now..this is maybe because I have more than one skin installed. But by default there was no skin for me selected preventing PS to start. I really can't belief it's the same for all others too because that would mean that no new player is able to start PS at all at the moment. But still...the elves skin should be always preselected in the default configuration even if there are other skins installed. Oh, and while at it...the "Preview not Available" of the default skin should be really addressed. Doesn't leave a good impression on new players.

Okay, we made it through the launcher...somehow. Starting the game now with almost all options left to the default settings in the launcher. (exceptions: disabled fullscreen, changed resolution, selected skin)

Login Screen:
Ahm, did anyone even test this one. I mean...have you ever tried scrolling the server info? New players tend to do such things..and immediately are reminded that PS is a pre-alpha demo. I mean, this is the first screen anyone sees of PS...and it is already bugged.

Char creation:
- The guessing what need how many CP is a real pita. People will end up moving back and forth between the screen just to not waste any CPs. Even more annoying is that you don't know how many CPs you will need later on. For example it's not possible to go without a Life event...so if you come to that screen without anymore CPs you have to go back and change everything before that again just to get some CPs you can spend there. (Yes, I know..there are life events with negative CPs but my point is that new players have no clue which events those are or that they even exist. In the end the whole process is a real mess. Maybe it would be a good idea to dis-encourage new players to use the "advanced" char creation at all. Add some note next to the button saying "This should be only used by experienced players")

In Game- Tutorial
- The default positions of the windows are a huge mess. This is what a new players sees for the first time:

This is even more delicate if you read the text of the pop-up window. "If you skip reading this screen, it is possible that you will not be able to complete this tutorial" - Well...but maybe, only maybe a new player wants to see his char and closes the window before even reading one word of it. I mean...in all other games there is a way to re-read tutorial notes.
- Next thing...by default openAL was not selected for me so I have a silent game. Software sound doesn't work at all here.
- It's great that the first message I have in my chat window is "Welcome to the gossip channel!. XX players in this channel". Only problem is of course that in the default configuration with "basic chat" the gossip channel is not displayed anywhere at all. So great, a new player is by default in gossip but can't see any of the chatting there. (Just on a side not...of course I can send text to gossip with "/1"...just can't even see that I typed something there)
- The toolbar: Lets see..what buttons could be really useful for new players. Ah..I know..the petition button to ask for help in case of problems. Guess what...that button is not shown in the default config. Okay, fine, petitions are not used that often (though I really think it should be easy for new players to make petitions if really needed. The help channel will only get them in contact with other players but for some problems a GM is needed) but who had the glorious idea to remove the "shortcuts" button from the default config as well? Seriously...how many people will want to make their own "/cast" shortcut long before learning that a right-click on a small diamond in the corner of the screen will change the style of the toolbar?
- Help window: What should I say...it totally sucks. Needs more information, more explanations, more of everything. For example...the possibility to change the style of the toolbar with a right-click on the diamond is not mentioned there at all ;) (Oh, and it has some major errors as well...I should know that ;))
[Okay, lets restart the client to have at least sound..and disable basic chat. Game is not playable with basic chat in my view]
-Disabling basic chat: Usually one of the first thing people always explain new players. Can't even invite them to a group for some easy OOC explanations with basic chat enabled. With the normal chat system people had a group-tab and could write there by just changing to that tab. But with basic chat you either have to explain to them how to "redirect" the group chat to the main tab and then use "/group" all the time to write there...or explain them how to turn off basic chat (what requires the player to restart PS..very user-friendly). The worst about the whole basic chat issue is that it's not needed at all. It is possible to "emulate" basic chat with the normal chat system. Just provide a default config with all tabs but "main", "NPC", "Whisper" and "help" disabled. If people need another tab then they only have to enable it in options..no restart needed at all. (And that's only the player side of it. From the dev-side basic chat is a nightmare as well. There are two gui definition xml files now that do more or less the same. So you have to adjust two files in case you change something to the chat window. Don't even have me started about the source-code...) So please, pretty please...just kill basic chat. Nobody will cry a tear at it's grave and the whole "functionality" it provided can be emulated with the normal chat window (Though it's a question already if stripping down the chat window like this is really a help for new players. I kind of doubt that...). But I wanted to talk about disabling basic chat. Well, first it's already a pita to have to restart the client for this. So, a new player unchecked the options for it and then restart the client...only to find him/herself with a chat window without any chat tabs at all. Not a big problem for experienced players..they just go to the option again and enable the tabs. But a new player can't now even ask in the help channel because there is no help-channel tab.
-Options windows: The separation between Advanced and basic options makes no sense at all. Can someone please explain me why it's a basic option to change the filename of the chat-log while it is an advanced option to join gossip by default? I know..some PS dev probably thought it is a lot easier for players if the basic option are displayed first so he/she started to make that separation but never finished it (Okay, in fact never put much work into it at all. It are still the same old option tabs..just moved around in the tree-view a bit). No...it does not help to make things even worse that before but point out that at a later time someone probably will rewrite all option dialogs to fit the new structure. We all know this won't happen for years..so in these years player have to deal with an even messier option window than before. The idea is good...the way it was done is very bad. If a change like this is included in the client then make sure the work is finished. Don't put in such half-assed solutions that are even worse than before (There are plenty of other examples for this..like the magic quickbar, the /study window or the current version of the chat window)
-The new chat interface. Another great example of messing up:

(btw, chat window without any chat tabs ;))]
Yes, I am a man. Yes, I enjoy taking a short glance at times...but no, I'm not that interested in starring at the ass of a computer NPC for several minutes..especially not if this is the first contact I have with a NPC in PS. But fine..I can life with that..but what is this...there is another of those help-pop-ups I must read in order to be able to complete the tutorial. Funny just that unlike before nothing happens if I click the icons this time... (Seriously, the new NPC chat interface sucks big time. Half of the screen is unusable while talking to a NPC. I can't change chat tabs to quickly answer a tell, I can't check my sack in the inventory...that huge invisible window just covers too much space. And in this example it covers the area with the pop-up icon as well. I just can't understand why this new interface was forced onto everyone. It's a new feature so it's to be expected there are flaws and bugs. What would have been the problem to just make it optional for a few versions so people can test it out and find the flaws rather than make it the default right from the start? But no...it's better to scare of new players with buggy things like this)


I actually think it's kind of surprising that some new people stay in PS for longer than an hour at all. And a lot of the things I mentioned were a lot better in the past and broke only recently ("recently" is the last two years for me). And I really find it kind of worrying that many of these "bugs/problems" found their way in PS...is there any testing done at all?

Edit:typos

[LigH]

In addition to the "modal" chat dialog: It prevents you from chosing a reward in a reward selection dialog. You are stuck here unless you relinquish any reward. Reported in the bugtracker.

There is probably only one person who is responsible for the defaults. The only one who decides. Rule #1 of the boss.

[Bonifarzia]

... I only want to get into the technical side of problems that keep away new players.
...

To anyone who tends to ignore a wall of text: These are some good points and I find it important that someone took the time to sum these up here.

[Sen]

Wow! It's worse than I thought  (And I didn't even know about some things.. so I'll stop to recommend petitions).
Ideally, Aiwendil's post will be used as high priority TODO.

[LigH]

But the prerequisite would be that one person will accept them being serious issues.

[Venalan]

I've just started to edit the help file, so far it now starts by telling players how to adjust the tool bar and that there are a total of 9 chat tabs and how to edit them. I'll make my way though the rest of it and adjust/clean as i think it's needed.

I did just test the basic chat and I could toggle it on/off by just clicking save with no restart needed. Is that the same in all OS' or just windows?

Like I said I really think that all chat and tool bar options should show as default and I will bring it up with the devs again and try and persuade Talad its just plain bad that it is how it is atm.

Changing other stuff like default window positions and the options window is beyond what i know how to do.

[Aiwendil]

There is probably only one person who is responsible for the defaults. The only one who decides. Rule #1 of the boss.

I'm well aware who is responsible for the changed option window and the defaults. But you know how it works..if I mention a name all the points I make become magically invalid and are trolling.

I've just started to edit the help file, so far it now starts by telling players how to adjust the tool bar and that there are a total of 9 chat tabs and how to edit them. I'll make my way though the rest of it and adjust/clean as i think it's needed.

Feel free to poke me..if you are lucky I can still find my todo-list for my version of the help.xml..Doesn't really fit to the stripped-down version that is in game now but some of the points there are still valid.

I did just test the basic chat and I could toggle it on/off by just clicking save with no restart needed. Is that the same in all OS' or just windows?

Oh, disabling basic chat works well without a restart...just leaves the problems that the check-boxes in options to enable and disable tabs are still unusable then. So, no...it does not really work.

Changing other stuff like default window positions and the options window is beyond what i know how to do.

One possibility is to add the defaults to <src-dir>/psclient.cfg. By adding

Code: [Select]

PlaneShift.GUI.ChatWindow.PosX = 0
PlaneShift.GUI.ChatWindow.PosY = 0
at the end of that file I was able to have the chat window open by default at the upper-left corner (You can look up the config parameter names of the other windows in <config-dir>/planeshift.cfg of a client where you already moved around all windows). Once you move it around in game the new positions get saved in <config.dir>/planeshift.cfg so the defaults are not used anymore. There is one problem with this though: You can only specify positions relative the the upper-left corner. This means it's impossible at the moment to make defaults independents of the screen resolution. For that some code change are needed...something like allowing negative positions and treat them relative to the lower-right corner then. Actually this is a very simple thing to do so a prefect task for a coding prospect (assuming there are still any).

And sorry, the following is not directed specifically at you Venalan so please don't take is offensive. Why the hell do I have to explain a PS team member how the code/configuration of PS works? There should be documents about this...Can't be that only one or two people in the PS team actually know how something work. Ideally those documents should be public to everyone as there are many non-team members as well that help improving the client and could make good use of such documentation.

Edit: guess what...typos

[Moja Aere]

... I only want to get into the technical side of problems that keep away new players.
...

To anyone who tends to ignore a wall of text: These are some good points and I find it important that someone took the time to sum these up here.

I agree!

(and, by the way, this:

Oh, disabling basic chat works well without a restart...just leaves the problems that the check-boxes in options to enable and disable tabs are still unusable then. So, no...it does not really work.

is the same on OS X).

[Aiwendil]

Part 2 - Playing the tutorial

(All options default expect fullscreen, resolution, skin. Basic chat is enable though)

I assume people read all the text. I know this is very unlikely and ideally PS should be playable even if you missed some parts (Best would be if you could lookup all tutorial-popups later again...maybe included them all also in the help.xml)

First help pop-up:
- "The second icon is the skills and stats window.....Please open the skill window, review your skills then close it by clicking on the small red x on the top right of the skill window:

So, I opened the window as I was told. As you can see it opened under the tool-bar and I see no red x. (30 seconds in game)
- "The money (Tria) you own is displayed in the same window on the right, where you have the coins icons. There are different type of coins, you have already some money to get you started" - No I don't have any tria.

Second tutorial pop-up (Movement)
- Just on a side note, not relevant to new players: People creating a second account have to redo the tutorial as well..but those maybe don't have the default keys anymore. So maybe add an explanation that A, S, D, W are the default keys that can be changed.

NPC targeting pop-up
- "A set of icons will appear, such as Attack, Trade/Give, Examine and Talk" - True in general, not true in this situation. No attack for quest NPCs
- "TO PROCEED: click on the next gold man icon." - Ahm...no gold man icon for me there yet. Had to close the window first to get it.

Talking to NPCs
- The text is too slow...even as a non-native speaker I am forced to wait for the NPC to continue all the time
- NPC voice-overs are still very buggy. At times I only hear the start of a line...but then nothing more. And at Xaargon I had Micky mouse talking with me.
- The new NPC chat interface really suck..I can only repeat this. If the chat window is at the wrong position behind the invisible window it's not possible to even scroll back in the NPC chat. (And the default position of the chat window is behind that window...though I really doubt any player will leave it at that position as it's in the middle of the screen )
- In general...it's a bit irritating that every dialog with a NPC ends with a "This NPC has no quests for you. Use free text to speak with him"
- As usually some new players offered me random trades...can't reject those while talking to NPCs.
- Managed to immediately attract the attention of a GM again...they must have an alarm bot telling them I logged in (nah, actually is was a pretty funny conversation so just kidding). Except...I couldn't answer the tells while in NPC chat mode.

Abelia
- "The game keeps track of your open and completed quests, you can click on the toolbar icon "Quest" to see which ones are open or completed" - Well..bad idea with the new chat interface. I actually can open that window while talking to the NPC...but can't manipulate it or even close it again.

First trade

Well, the instructions of Abelia are very clean on how to trade. Only problem is of course that with the default window positions you don't see the "accept trade" button. Not really that bad as the trade window will come to the foreground as soon as you move the book in it.
- Kind of inconsistent that the following dialog is not done with the new chat interface now...you have to start talking with the NPC manually.
- "Neave Besetun says: Your're <playername> right?" - "Neave Besetun says: Yes, I remember you." - "Neave Besetun says: Aren't you the one who brought my books back?" - Seriously? I did that 5 seconds ago...Sorry, but making a quest step that actually requires and answer from the player out of this is just stupid. Feels a bit like "Here is your book and no I'm not the one who gives this to you right this very moment"
- "Neave Besetun says: I wonder...do you have some skill in mining or blacksmithing under your Skills panel?" - I wonder that too. First it's already a problem to open the skill and stat window with <p> as she told me...the <p> goes to the input box of the new chat interface. But if you manage to un-focus that one and actually open your stats and skill it's the same old problem..can't change the tabs of that window so can't look up if I have those skills.
- Neave wants me to look in the furnace. To do that I had to end the NPC dialog with bye even though the next option to go on with her quest is already displayed. I don't think any player will really do this step.
- "Neave Besetun says: If your character has skills in mining and a rock pick, you can type things like /dig iron, or /dig ruby, and if you are in the right place, you may find some!" - Outdated...parameters is not required anymore. Also it should be maybe mentioned that the rock pick must be equipped and not only in your inventory.  ("Neave Besetun says: That can be kind of exciting" - Making fun of players in the tutorial is rude! )
- Same as above...Neave wants me to melt iron ores but as that would need me to end the chat with "bye" while the option to go on with the quest is already displayed I never did it.

Ibhaar
- A "tutorial-pop-up" appears in the middle of the conversation...can't see it because of stupid chat interface
- "Ibhaar Senad says: If you enable the information icon on the top, you will see a window with a small sword shield icon" - What top? Should mention the toolbar.
- "Ibhaar Senad says: In full defensive you will not hit, or be hit." - If that were true I would use it to troll those "random-challenge" people. Accept the challenge, go to fully defense and never get hit.
- Okay, this time I forced myself to kill the rat. Same problem again...have to select "bye" while the option to skip the battle is already visible.
- First reward (Luckily I had two rats skins so had to give them manually..other wise I couldn't take the reward as the chat interface blocks the window again) - I get a weapon but equipping of weapons was not explained yet.

Fighting pop-up
- "Be sure to attack bigger monsters with your friends" - Only works with group...can't attack the target of anyone else otherwise.

Orphia
- Same problem as above..wants me to buy a glyph but has the option to go on without it already displayed. Even worse, says "To buy something from me, right-click me and choose the Buy/sell icon" - That doesn't work with the new crap..ahm..chat interface.
- Goes on just the same. Wants me to open my spell-book and go to the research magic window. Doesn't work with new chat interface. This time the text just indicates I really should do it at the same time as talking to the NPC - "Ok, I opened the spell book, and see the glyph"
- Same for dragging the glyph to the purify icon. Not with the new chat interface.


Xargon
- Okay...now I can understand why nobody completes the tutorial anymore. The whole time you just click on answers to the NPC and without a warning you actually have to type the answers now? Not a single chat option shows up for me...I had to type the answers. After answering "no and "lisp" manually I got fed up with it and ended the conversation with "bye". After restarting it I had the click-options...for one answer...then next question I had to answer manually again.
- Can't really do the /me step...again stupid chat interface.
- Only my opinion...as a RP guide Xaargon sucks . He hardly explains anything but at least he mentions [brackets]
- "Xargoon Guurn says: There are a number of players who have volunteered to answer out of character questions, and they listen there for them." - "Xargoon Guurn says: This means they may not tell you how to solve a quest, or where something is, but they will help you if you get stuck, and you can't move, or if you can't remember how to use the furnace" - Sounds a bit like advisors don't help with these things because they are "just" player...while the truth is that spoilers are not allowed in the help channel.
- Reward problem again...can't easily get the reward with the NPC chat interface.

One the bright side...Ynnwn finally can start with pants \o/.


Missing (amoung a lot other stuff I probably forgot):
- Anyone telling me I can quit the tutorial at any time at the first guard
- basic chat commands like /tell or /group
- ranged combat
- How to train
- Quick-travel with Pterosaur
- Shortcuts
- change style of toolbar
- change style of chat window
- crafting with recipe-books
- Chat channel (gossip) explanation
- Experience/Progress Point explanation
- Mentioning of the death realm
- Sacks/boxes
- Overload
- in-game clock
- event calendar
- myplane
- books/sketches/sheets
- guilds

[Talad]

The majority of the items you mention are already fixed, just need a new client release as the NPC dialogue window is now always on bottom, so you can interact with all other windows without problems.

For the others we will look into those.

[Aiwendil]

So, I updated my source to the latest SVN revision, created a new account and removed my ~/.PlaneShift folder.

If you fixed it already you hid it very well.

[Talad]

if you still have the NPC Dialogue in foreground then your install is wrong, and your report invalid.

[Talad]

Aiwendil, I had to remove your latest post as it was a mix of insults and other information. As mentioned in my previous post the other points you raised will be looked at, and we will re-test the NPC Dialogue as soon as we have a new internal client release. Patches are welcome in case someone has the time/will/skill to do some.