I don't think my experience is unique in seeing new players join an SMP, to either say a few words in Town chat or nothing at all after finishing the Tutorial, and then log off. How many of these Players actually reconnect to play EMC I have no idea. I originally thought that it would be a good idea to open up Town Chat to any players, wherever they were located, whenever a new Player finished the Tutorial. However this raises a couple of issues: 1. Non-supporter Players in the wild ought not to be able to communicate in Town Chat, but more importantly, 2. New Players, once completing the Tutorial, might log off too quickly to make this option effective. Instead, I thought it might be beneficial to add a New Player Chat, which would be available to any new Player, and any existing Player, whenever a new Player joined EMC until they decided to leave the channel. To maximize retention of new Players, this channel should be available across all SMPs, regardless of the location (nether, wild, frontier, town) of individual Players. This would allow new Players to engage in meaningful conversations with multiple existing EMC Players in the same channel, before even having completed the tutorial. This would also enable existing Players to offer a warm welcome to new Players before they had even completed the tutorial, without expecting the new Player to figure out how to manage multiple PMs before they were familiar with in-game commands. Obviously there are a certain number of new additions to the Empire that are actually existing Players' Alts (alternate log-in names/accounts for an existing person/player). However I believe there are a large number of new Players besides these who are trying EMC for the first time, who could have a much more favorable impression of the Server if they had direct interaction with existing Players from the very start of their experience.
This sounds like a great idea, I'd definitely have used it if it were there to utilise. At the same time, I was encouraged to use the forums more which is a good outcome from not having that chat. Although linking the two would perhaps help. I think this would work well.
Sorry, I'd have to go -1 on that. The idea in itself is a nice one but I can come up with so many ways how this could go wrong. First, it's only a matter of time before people will abuse this channel for easy cross-server advertising. This concern has been raised many times before when cross-server chat channels were discussed and plenty of players already made it clear that the first thing they'd probably do is to shut off such a channel or not join it in the first place. Allowing regular players in is bound to turn this into an average chat channel where few will have any concern for the newbies whereas not allowing regular players in is bound to create a pretty silent channel. Also keep in mind that the moment a new player joins they immediately have access to town chat. So there already is a solid way for them to ask for help. Now, I do agree that town chat isn't always active, but I think the same will apply to such a cross server chat channel as well. And is it really that helpful if some new player on smp3 needs help, gets answers from someone on smp6 but they're way too busy to come over (also because of the vault requirements and such)? To be honest I think there's only one huge problem with new players right now: players who run off into the Frontier. They get a totally different impression about the Empire, they cannot chat and ask for help (unless they already know about /tell, which is a vanilla Minecraft command), and they might think the Frontier is all there is to the Empire. And there have already been plenty of suggestions for that, including the idea to allow them to have full town chat access for a short moment of time.
This can be dealt with easily just like people who advertise in Town Chat are dealt with. I rarely see offenders these days now that the Economy channel exists. "Plenty" of players only play in the Frontier and rarely come to Town. That doesn't mean that providing gameplay enhancement opportunities or events in Town is a waste of time. I think there would still be enough players willing to use this feature despite those who would not. Really, if there's even one person out of the 10 servers who's willing to respond, that's better than a new player getting no help at all. The idea is that the channel would only be available when a new player was connected and was actively in the channel. A time constraint could be placed on how long the channel was available to a new player. And they could opt to leave the channel at any time. It would also be subject to staff monitoring. I doubt you'd see much in the way of abuse. Help doesn't always have to be in-person assistance. Sometimes they just need a question answered. Yes, the EMC Wiki is a great resource, but it doesn't necessarily help a new player to feel welcome if no one is willing to answer some simple questions. They can always be pointed to the Wiki if the subject in question warrants a more expansive or complicated answer. Certainly an issue, but as I noted in the OP, I've seen plenty of other cases where new players left rather quickly. An interesting suggestion. But not without certain disadvantages. I won't enumerate them here, as I'm sure they've been discussed before, and in order to keep the thread focused on the idea originally raised.
