Minor Update went out last week. We are trying to maximize the number of new members who join the Empire, so we have made the tutorial optional. Why the change? We understand many players do not want to put in a lot of 'investment' and time into a server that they may not like. They simply want to join, see what its like, then start playing on the server. This gives those players that option. Yes, this does bring in a lot more spam, but the chat system has also been improved to try to curb down spam. Our lovely moderators will help ensure the spammers are promptly removed, do not forget to /report!
Even though this could bring a lot more players, this now allows on target griefers and raiders to raid even quicker. This may or may not put other players wilderness outposts on risk. Maybe if you skip the tutorial, it still does a command to show you all the rules so hopefully that will stop some trouble makers.
The tutorial has never stopped any targetted griefing... Anyone determined would simply do the 5-10 minute tutorial. but, considering the effort required to travel 30+ minutes in the wild, it still doesn't make sense to do such a thing. Griefers log in, see town is protected, hack around a bit, get banned or give up. We will be working on ways to give new players a book too that gives rules and information.
I feel like this is another step to dumbing down EMC. The first thing that drew me to EMC was the structured and detailed Tutorial - the best I'd ever seen. I think it draws in the kind of player EMC wants - someone that's willing to put in a few minutes of effort to understand what's happening. There are many reasons why the EMC playerbase has dropped, the tutorial isn't one of those reasons.
1+ The tutorial already shows what most players can expect on the server. If they just skip it, they will just be lost not knowing most of the rules. Maybe we should improve the tutorial, making it shorter? If I was a new player, I would be lost and just probably leave the server because I do not have a clear idea on what is going on.
But all the new players who /skip the tutorial dont know any of the rules, and frequently asking how to do stuff; claiming a res, rupees ect, which is starting to drive me crazy
We understand these concerns, and I want to add that this is not permanent. Right now the Empire's player count is so low that many do not want to stay due to it looking so empty. Once we return to healthy player counts, where we can essentially 'afford' to not maximize new players, then it will go back to being forced. Things are going on behind the scenes to try to rebuild the Empire, but every bit you the players can do to help will speed it up
Can we atleast change the recommended server? smp9 is a pretty popular smp and the chat is getting spammed with new player alerts every 5 minutes and us having to explaining to all the new players that skip the tutorial how to do stuff.
Can you please try and reduce the lag and ping issues? I keep getting booted off due to the lag, and because I get terrible ping too...
Next time you are experiencing this, type the command /tps. If this is anything less that 20.0, it means that this could be server-side. However, if it reads 20.0, that means the lag is coming from your end. If it persists, you could consider posting a thread in the Empire Help and Support sub-forum, as this isn't really the right place. However, I have been wondering why I never saw a thread about this, so I'm glad it got bumped. I see where you are coming from on this Aikar, but it seems to me like it would have been better to tolerate the low member count until we could get the "super secret stuff that will fix things" stuff rolled out. This band-aid is causing more harm than good in my opinion, because it is sending most people out into the fairly complex world of Empire Minecraft with completely no idea what is going on. I would guess that since the majority of people are likely to skip the tutorial, they'll be so lost and confused that they might just quit immediately. I don't know if you're tracking this somehow, but it would be interesting to compare that number of people to those quitting because they're too lazy for the 5 minute tutorial. This is exactly why we need spectator mode, which I would guess is the secret thingy being referenced. TL;DR, I think we should just wait because untutorialized EMCers are scary.
Well, once they skip they do get the potential for players to help them... While it annoying to answer such mundane questions, I tell them to just go back to the tutorial But getting dialog started is where you can help seal the deal in keeping them. -- edit: removed data here, found i had an error in my report script
I see the headlines now: "Aikar is a Thief 2.0" will be the new title of the Mini-Updates thread. Nice update, I agree that it should be optional. Besides, skip the tutorial, you gain time, lose rewards. Your choice!
i don't know if this is the best idea. Players will not know about anything and then everything will be a hodgepodge of madness.
This seems like a good idea, especially for people with alts who have already done the tutorial on another account
please back this up with reasoning? Our main goal is to ensure the Empire lives in the long term. Right now we are losing many old players due to the low population, so its not healthy for the long term. I think everyone would prefer to deal with a little bit of spam in chat and newbie questions if it means the Empire is still here a year from now. Here is a report on retaining members. Retain = has played on EMC in the last 7 days. As you see, as we've made changes to our join process, that number has been greatly rising. The 15 day number is still too close so its inflated a bit, but when I look at only the first week of the 17 days, We are at 14%. This was roughly right when we enabled tutorial skipping, so it looks like its working as intended.
Well, I can't argue with data, I guess I'll just look forward to what's coming next as the permanent solution.
Will respond to each: I've already responded to this above. Even before the tutorial was skippable, players still did this. There are a large number of people who are just going to guess and put the minimal effort into getting through the tutorial. Essentially nothing really changed here... Plus, the tutorial doesn't even cover EVERY aspect of EMC. So even if it wasn't skippable, there will still be newbie questions. Sadly, not every player is the same. Many do not care about the tutorial at all. They just want to get in and see what our server is like. What if this player is a great active player, well behaved, but simply doesn't want to put in effort into a server they might not like? Why should we throw them away? That's EXACTLY what we were doing with the old process, and that is why its all changed. We want to give everyone a shot. What good does it do to FORCE someone to do something they do not want to do? That's not a good start on any server, being forced to do something you don't want to do...
