Add "waste chat" or an option to ask for help in the wastelands..

Hi gang,

There is a situation which can cause players to leave us and I wonder if it can (and/or should) be fixed...

Situation: New player joins the server, is all excited and asks his share of questions (and gets answers of course!). Then the dreaded question pops up: "may I mine here?" (or something similar) after which we all tell the player to use /waste. Which he does. Right away.

Problem: The player walks out into the wasteland, starts doing his share of things and then discovers that /home doesn't work anymore. Worse yet: he also has no way to ask for help since all those friendly people in town chat can no longer hear him (and he can't hear them).

So the player leaves.

I know that there are also plenty of players who do pick things up right away and connect the dots ("protected outpost? Hmm, maybe I should go back there and try the command again...") or start reading the wiki, but I also think there are quite a few players who end up getting lost in the waste and give up.

Suggestion: Maybe it would be possible to add a separate waste chat? Which can only be accessed while you're in the wasteland. This way the "town chat privilege" remains in place for supporters, but new players would have an option to ask for help in the wastelands when they need it.

Second (related) suggestion...

I really understand that the previous suggestion could risk going against the idea of only allowing supporters to chat in the wasteland. So I'm also wondering if it would be possible to add some kind of interactive /help command which would allow (new) players to do just that; ask for help.

Of course that could become difficult since you'd have to add some failsafe to prevent abuse...

As long as it's only in the wasteland I see no problem with it. If anything it'll help new players who don't understand that /home, /spawn etc etc, don't work outside of town. +1

I don't really like the idea of a new chat channel, but I see what you are trying to say and I think the new players should have another source of information if they are stuck within the wastelands.

I think a message in the chat feed should pop up when someone 'new' tries to talk in the wastelands to remind them how to get back to town or when they have been within the wastelands for a certain amount of time.

In my opinion, the first suggestion would be a lot harder to implement and wouldn't fix the problem entirely. What if there are no other players in the wastelands with the new one? What if they simply don't want to talk in the waste chat?

The second suggestion would be more plausible.
Even better than adding it to a /help command, add it so whenever a player types /home in the frontier/wastelands, it shows a "Trying to go back to town? You need to go back to a protected outpost. Use /map if you're lost!".

Side note, I'm working on improving the New Players Guide, so information like this can be added or be a bit more clear.

I don't really think I'd like the first suggestion. If it'd be how ItsMeMatheus said it, I'd obviously want it though, of course.
I do think many players do indeed get stuck there. When I went to the wild for the first time, I didn't realise I wouldn't be able to just do /town. I also had trouble getting back up to the protected area, because I hadn't taken blocks with me (back when the wild was even more ravaged than it is now. The live map also isn't always to straight-forward to use. So yeah, I think this would be very useful!

I definitely know, otherwise we wouldn't have any more questions in town chat haha
My plan is to make people want to read the guide, make it sound more interesting than it is right now. The current set up, while very informative, is too -boring- (can't find a better word, not exactly what I mean) for the largest part of our playerbase.

The server already checks to see where we are relative to an Outpost to determine whether it should honor our attempt to teleport Home.

It doesn't seem like it would take much more work to suggest what direction we should travel in to get to the nearest Outpost rather than simply responding with a "request denied" message.

Something like: "Sorry. You must be near an Outpost to teleport Home. The NorthEast Outpost is approximately 600 blocks South of you."

For the record: I fully agree with you guys. A good hint when a player tries to use /home or such would be much better. As long as they don't end up giving up because they consider themselves hopelessly stuck...

This is why whenever I see a new, enthusiastic player that is learning of the wastelands, I also tell them not to leave quite yet.
I tell them that we collect resources in the /waste, but to get back to town you need to be in a protected area and type /town or /home. I also inform them about the /map feature if/when they get 'lost'. Also telling them about the 9 different spawn points helps if they die, so they can try to get back.

I also end up by saying 'do a /msg highlancer54' if they have questions or need something.

Along similar lines, I often see many new players ask how to let others build at their res.
This again, prompts a warning from me that if they give flags, they take responsibility for what someone else does at their res. (how many players read the disclaimers...I know I did, however many glaze over the warnings when giving out certain flags).

I also get asked a lot by the established players to just /msg the player that information, however, I typically like to do this in the town chat, as other new players may read it as well (as much of the time, it is on the 'defualt' smp where many new players are joining in).

**Don't forget about the /assist command either!!!**

Player: 'Reading a book? What do you think this is, school?'
Lance 'How do you think that you and I are communicating right now?'
Funny that people are apt to not reading books.
Even them digital in game books get a bad rap!

i would just ignore it lol, and if they did that, they would also do a wild one, and tbh Local chat or pm would be just as easy

It happend sometimes that people ask for help. most am still on the outpost.
But chat channel in waste can be distracting unless you can turn it off. and then it's useless.
Waste is already dangerous enough that you not have much tim e at day to reply on chat's.

Maby a warning in chat when your in the outpost that /home only works when your in the outpost is a good hint ? and easy to implement.

You could volunteer to be our new intelligent message server!

Good ideas, why don't you have some instructive signs at the waste spawn?

I think a system that when a player types a town command (/home, /visit, etc.) there'll be a message that appears telling them they have to reach an outpost first. Would solve the "waste chat for supporters only" and not everyone will think to use the /help command.

EDIT: I posted this before I read the comments. :l

This is good, but my experience is that it is easier to go out and rescue a lost person than to explain where is north by northwest of the south and that the sun and moon rise in the east and set in the west.

You're suggesting that /Home in the Waste should return this message? http://empireminecraft.com/conversations/add?to=M4nic_M1ner

What percentage of people that need rescuing know how to contact you? Also, the server doesn't sleep. Replacing messages like the one you get when you type /Home in the Waste with a more helpful one makes more sense to me whether it includes information they can use the information provided or not.

What we have now isn't helpful because it just tells people what they cannot do without offering another solution.

I don't know, because i only know how many did manage to contact me

Yes, that's good.
Even if they don't understand how to follow the directions, they will realize that they need to find out how.

Another idea:
/sos <message>
(which would be mentioned in the help message)
Sends a distress message to players in vicinity (if not afk) and to the town chat:
SOS from <Name> in <World> <X, Z, Y>: <message>

SOS from Lost_Player in Wastelands Nether at X=444, Z=-333, Y=23: Help! I'm trapped!

The command might ask for confirmation - "Please repeat to confirm sending of distress message. Do not abuse!"
Abuse can be handled same as chat spam.

I like this idea, but it's not as easy as you suggest. Outposts are just like residences, so you are either on one or not. Doing math to suggest the nearest outpost isn't impossible, but it's new code completely. And also, if they are lost, south most likely means nothing to them.

I agree that a better message would be a start and quicker with less discussion needed. Make the message say "that command won't work here, type '/help lost' for more information" the '/help lost' could have lots of suggestions for how to find your way or how to contact other players for help including a link to livemap etc.

It's good that we are thinking about how to better help new players and throwing around ideas. There will never be a substitute for mentoring new players such as offering for a player to message you if they ever need anything, that is a very welcoming suggestion. (like highlancer54 said)

I will be honest, what is the harm of making a world-wide chat for the wastelands? It's not like the Frontier, your main objective is to gather resources.