Hey all A few months ago I made a thread about New player retention ideasSince the time of posting that thread EMC updated to 1.15 and began advertising EMC again bringing us an increase in new players. since then there is 2 questions i have seen the most 1, many variations of "Whats rule 3?" it seems that new players are not reading guide.emc.gs, even now that its clearly a URL the problem persists. Possible solution: Give the new player guide book on login instead of on completion of tutorial (the older version of the book that was a mini guide) This would give new players an alternative if they don't wish to open the website 2, "What do i do on this server?"At the start of the tutorial there is a message that says"Play your way on EMC!""We are a survival multiplayer server with many areas of interest.We support builders, hunters, Entrepreneurs, survival experts, etcFind your favorite part of EMC and make the experience uniquely yours!"Possible "solution": Add a section in the tutorial giving examples/suggestions of things to do (sort of like we had in the old tutorial) These are far from the only questions that new players ask, but these 2 differ from most in the fact that are very difficult for players to directly answer in a helpful way (1# could be answered but it would honestly just be helping them skip reading the rules) If anyone has alternate suggestions for these please post them!
I like these ideas! The old book is a bit outdated- I have an updated version of it at +new on smp2 for new players though Feel free to refer new players to there
We intentionally want people to open the guide in their browser because there is much more in there than can be expressed in a book. And it encourages them to join the forums.
Understood Would you consider adding a book as a backup? for those people can't or are unwilling to open the link? Younger players who don't know how to open the link and players with weaker computers that can't handle having the game and a browser open at the same time come to mind for people who would benefit from this
If they don't know how to open a link, how did they get Minecraft and find EMC? You make a point with having to open your browser while having Minecraft open, though. Still I think the web version is much more effective. It's long, so I doubt most people will read it right away, but at least it looks attractive, and you can easily scroll to what you want to know. In book form, wouldn't it have at least 50 pages? That alone might turn people away. I'm not sure what you mean by examples/suggestions of things to do (I also don't know what you mean by "the old tutorial" ). Isn't the point about playing your way that you can find out yourself? That's the exciting thing about Minecraft, it's a sandbox. But I guess you could present things like "You could make a frontier outpost, mine resources in the wastelands, or start a shop on your residence in town". That wouldn't hurt I suppose, if there's a good place for it.
For the younger players i think most had their parents help them buy the game I can definitely agree that the web guide is almost certainly more effective in teaching people what they need to know than a book would be, the issue comes when people can't/won't read the web guide. What i would hope for this is the book being a backup to the web guide to help increase the amount of people who read one or the other by the end of the tutorial The old tutorial had a section that showed off some of EMC's features, worlds, etc. pretty much like what you just said
Jewel... we could go Dark Souls tutorial series route.... 2-3 minute tutorial & Good luck.... dodge and roll then you will survive...
Better yet, don't even have a tutorial. Just throw them in the deep end and hope they can swim. (joking obviously)
There is a setting in the launcher Web Links/ Prompt on Links which blocks them. I remember back in the day I turned it off because I played on a server which spammed things or something, not really sure. Took me a while to learn that I needed it to turn it back on. Maybe this is one of the reasons why players are not staying, but I'm sure there are others more substantial. Either way, those are my two cents *dissapears into darkness again* (but that doesn't mean having a backup which strongly encourages the forum/guide is a bad thing) +1
For the second one I feel like we need to specify several things 1) That you can choose to either live on a plot in town or in the frontier 2) that your plot in town is automatically protected against other players 3) that we have an economy Also, I feel like the server shouldn't automatically give a player a plot to live on. I don't know exactly what they see when they finish the tutorial, but a lot of times they're confused about where they are at. I think they should be able to make a more prevalent choice as to whether they live in the wild or in town.
Hm, do players get auto-assigned a residence again, then? It's changed a few times I think, but I thought I recalled someone joining recently that did not have a /home yet. I also think new players should get to claim a residence by themselves. Just make sure they know about /v open. The old tutorial showed off nothing but sandstone and signs. Aren't we on the fifth right now? I'd find a wiki page on the tutorials quite interesting, and I think it'd be possible to do adequate research for it.
At what point is there too much to learn about EMC? EMC has a bunch of systems which can be pretty complicated. Most veterans found everything pretty easy to understand since we joined when there was just a wilderness, town with basic flags, and basic shops. Over time, features were slowly added. Difficulty update, custom mobs, games server, flag updates, shop updates, player settings, etc. We got a chance to get familiar with them before more was thrown on us. Right now, players are thrown into 10 years of development and are expected to learn from walls of text. If you need help, just go to guide.emc.gs. I took a look at the tutorial and guide.emc.gs to get a sense of what they are like and I am honestly pretty disappointed. The tutorial is like eating a nothingburger and the guide.emc.gs is a wall of text that I didn't even want to read. I felt like I was taking an open book test where I just had to CTRL+F to find the answers. A while back I suggested an idea to make the tutorial more than just a pop quiz or a wall of text as soon as somebody joins. https://empireminecraft.com/threads/suggestion-tutorial-something-0.50219/ It got some pretty good reception. Nothing was done except for a staff member saying that the tutorial was great as is. There are also Achievements which can be used for a player to do things at their own pace. Remember Minecraft's original achievements? You would just hover over them and they would tell you what you need to do to get them and they would help you get started for the most part. It's on the to-do list but I assume it is on the backburner. That's just me though.
I also worry about this. EMC is amazingly feature-rich, but it's very much to take in. I haven't been able to think of any solutions, though. Maybe you had some nice ideas in your old thread, I don't recall and I don't want to reread it right now.
I really love this idea. Whenever I go off and play large mod packs, the "Quest Book" is always critical in learning the logical progression of everything in the pack and shows you and teaches you one step at a time all the things that pack has to offer. I feel that that system of small rewards for completing/showcasing all the features of EMC would really help walk the person through the process rather than just reading it in a big block of text. Which to be fair, I don't even understand all the residence flags and such anymore.
Personally, my crazy idea is to add Dystopia. Put all the custom mobs there. Kind of like how you can only get blaze rods from the Netherlands, you can only get custom mob drops from Dystopia. Adds a wall so that you aren't overcrowded custom mobs dropping all these silly items. I don't see my idea being popular because I am personally against having custom mobs in the wilderness and wastelands. Also, simplify the player difficulty. Does there really need to be 10 difficulty levels? Peaceful, Easy, Normal, Hard, Hardcore.
It would also be a good idea to add somewhere in the tutorial that PvP is only on SMP6 Arenas and the Games server in designated areas. Since many players are into that sort of thing, be nice to be upfront about how we have a lack of PvP unlike most other servers.
I find learning as you go the best way, say you start in town and usually don’t go into the wild, they don’t have to go into the waste and wild and learn everything thing about eyenders. And stuff! Same with people who tend to stay in the wild, they don’t need to know everything about plots. can always ask around and tbh most people will just derect them to guide.emc. And yes it is helpful to read the guide then, most people don’t need to read the entire wiki. The entire point of emc is to have fun. And sometimes people don’t want to go read a wiki, they’d much rather just ask the person once they need it! There players who would love to help people. And some people will suggest to read it. Players will ask questions. There is no need to write a book about everything on the wiki. Guide.emc.gs is just a guide. Wiki.emc.gs is a complete guide about everything on the entire server. So what I’m trying to say. Players can do whatever they want. Wether they want to read a book, ask questions, or look over wiki.emc.gs. You see sometimes players will get confused about what the chat is saying.
