Where do I build? I am lost, how do I get back home? How do I make money? How do I make a town? How do I join a town? Someone stole my _________? How do I make a shop? Where do I get items? Where do I buy stuff? How do I craft (may be a bug with new player items)? Where is it safe to build? Where can u build? How do you give permissions? How do I join my friends plot? How do I tp to my friend? Can I tp to you? I need admin. I need staff. I need help. Give me _______ (spamming) How do I make my own group? Where do I get to places? How do I get to you plot? How do do I get to other servers How do I open my vault What is vault for? How do I start my res over again? How do I take permission off my plot? How do I get my plot to a different server? How do I move to a different plot? How do I get to a emc event? How do I get to pvp? Can I pvp? Where can I mine? Where are the custom monsters Where are exp farms How come we dont have the _______ command? The command wont work. What type of server is this? Some othere are: Spamming All Caps Exesive letter use Random letters Begging Rude back when you ask to watch the _____ I will add more in next class bell is about to ring in math on my phone haha ~finchy Edit (12:51pm) How do I set my res spawn? How do I set up the pressure plate teli? How do I pm someone? How do I set chat channels? How do I talk in town? How do I report someone?
Yes, Yes, and yes. I see those questions ALL the time. If they get help, players will say type in /waste, without telling them how to get back. So Lance runs out to the waste they are in, just to tell them how to get back. (ie dont get lost, get to a spawn point, type in /home or /town--and to msg me if they need help) Another thing, we need to stop telling new players to go to the wild... new players believe they can collect there because they don't know any better. We should be pushing the waste more than wild for people first starting out because they wish to collect (Not build). Res permission flag questions are popular too, but I don't think it is enough to tell them the commands. I always warn them too, that they better trust the player they are giving permissions to. Sometimes its good when people are playing together. Sometimes it also goes horribly wrong that players find their stuff missing, and then it starts the funk between players. Often I recommend giving build but not container. Also I tell them how to turn off build, as often they have no clue they can turn it off without worry. One really useful feature, would to be some command to give the coordinates of your last death. Very often I go to the waste to help players retrieve their 'valuables' they lost when they died, only to run about in circles. If there was some command they could type in to give coordinates of their last death, that would be absolute peachy, so that they have a clue where their stuff is at. I mean if they knew better they would be on live map or have coords up when exploring, but many don't know. (Now funny story, its interesting to see what the players 'valuables' are... seeds, wool, some coal, couple stacks of wood, etc... Makes me realize how much our perception of 'value' changes over time) It is understandable they don't know commands. Especially if they are new to MC. Heck when I first started I was told to go to the wild. I went out there, pounded trees, got some wood. Hope it wasn't part of someones build, didn't appear to be. Then tried to get back without having a clue. Ran about for hours. Almost dying multiple times. This was my first experience on EMC. I almost quit too. Yes, also the question about how to make rupees. However this is not so straight forward to answer. I typically tell people to collect the things that other people want. People cannot just try to sell food items and expect to get rich when starting out.
How do I fight custom mobs? How do I find out my plot number? How do I pay someone? How do I join a group? How do I teleport to someone's plot?
Will these be attempts be by System to answer questions sent to Town Chat, or part of the /Help system? If they are responses to Town Chat, will the responses be also sent to Chat, sent as a private message, or to Local/Residence Chat? I can see potential room for annoyance if many questions are being answered in Town Chat in the same exact way by an automated system. If someone does not understand the answer a human will try to change the answer and tailor it in such a way that they think it will help. An automated system sending canned responses to chat isn't going to do that. Also, if we see that someone is already trying to help, most of us will stay on the periphery of the conversation in order to not confuse things. Trying to answer a question and getting two different answers or having an automated system step on you could be confusing. If a question is asked in Town and answered in Local Chat or if the System is answering a question in addition to players responding, that could be confusing also since the people trying to answer would not see the other response. I know some people don't like answering the same questions over and over and yet it helps form bonds in the community. I have heard many people say things like: "I remember when I first joined. People were so friendly. They helped me a lot and answered my questions.". I do not expect anyone has ever said the same of System. Instead people often joke about System being silly. There are many ways to ask the same thing and new people aren't going to know the vocabulary we use here. No one is going to ask how to get to the Wild or Waste. They often will ask, "How do I build here?", or "Where can I get blocks?". Those should be easy for software to figure out I hope. They will also say things like: "Is this a creative server?", "This is stupid. I can't do anything here.", "Why can't I dig here?", or "Can someone give me Rupees so I can buy blocks?". The person really is trying to figure out how to achieve their intermediate goal of getting blocks to build with, but that is not what they ask. Sometimes it may not even be that clear. I have heard people ask things like, "Why can't I do this?". A human would see this and ask for clarification: "What are you trying to do?". There are also questions that are not really asking for help. "How do I craft an Anvil?", or "What is the Anvil recipe?" is not the same as "Can you craft an Anvil for me?", or "Do you know the Anvil Recipe?". I'm assuming System will be smart enough to figure out the difference. It better be, since I look forward to asking it things like "Do you know the way to San Jose?", and "Is this real life?", or "What are you wearing?" for fun. Some questions require a lot of explaining too. Properly answering "How do I make a shop?", is more than just telling someone to place a Sign over a Chest. I'd like to suggest that we allow other players to answer questions first so that those of us who normally try to help people can. Possibly System could wait until someone asks the same question three times with no response before attempting to answer them. Rather than try to automatically answer the question in Chat or using System messages, System could ask the player "Was your question answered?", and if not, direct the player into the (hopefully) appropriate Wiki pages, into the /Help system, or send it to Square. It sounds like Staff might be answering questions out of Square which I think is great. In addition to sending questions to Square, perhaps they could also be accessed by normal players in game to try and answer? If there were some command we could enter where we could voluntarily see and answer questions as they are asked in Chat I am sure there are people who would devote some of their time to trying to help people. Perhaps those questions could also be forwarded to and from a chat room in Mumble or IRC as well for those of us who cannot or do not want to log in to play but are willing to chat.
How do I craft a sign? How do I craft a Pressure Plate? (sounds silly, but i see those quite often :U ) What staff are on? How do i change servers? Where are the rules? How do i get to my friend's plot? How do i get resources? How do i start a shop?
Most of the questions implemented would be EMC related, so in this case it can link to the Wiki page. These are some great ideas, I hope Aikar takes note of them Although I'm sure a large portion of the community would be happy to help with entering answers, this sounds like it has too much capability of being abused by trolls.
How do I get a plot? Where can I get materials? Is there PVP? How do i give permision to people for my plot?
Us players do give links to the wiki... the easier the wiki is to navigate, the easier it is for us to pull up links to help out! Most of the time however, its only one question, such as 'res flag' 'teleport signs' 'shop signs help'... '/vote' A load of players help when people have questions. I help too, and see others help all the time. As for 'Trolls' this is why the "elder" members watch out for this. People now can troll other members currently...however (at least on SMP7) we do watch out for new members. If we see something that isn't right, we do speak up. The number of new players I interact with simply due to helping out, is great. Sure, some it seems that one cannot really cant help regardless of how much you try, but I think some has to do with... 'mental capacity'. What I have noticed is that players seem to appreciate the interaction with other players on EMC. Many like the fact that there are actually other players around they can interact with. Simply saying hello to new players a couple different times when you see them around makes a difference too. It would be really nice to have some more 'features' such as /vote where if a player wishes more information, we could give them some command to type it in. Maybe /signs, /shop, /teleport, /res /mining (or /play .. which explains waste vs wild, and /home in one easy wiki page)... which would bring up something similar to the /vote command, to give them a link to the wiki in case they fear clicking on another players link. **edit, or /help emc <-- which would bring up a clickable 'help' feature similar to the /ps where they could click on any of the above suggestions...** Much of this seems they can do with the /assist feature. Unfortunately, I have not seen assist utilized very much these days. Wonder how many older players have gone thru this feature (ya we 'know it all') but unless we know what it contains, its hard to direct newer players to this information. Hope this triggers some creative juices.
More automated help is a great idea! I see people asking if they can join someone's team or faction, asking how to set up a tp sign, or make a shop box. I also see lots of who sells ______. Which is fine if a store owner is on to answer, but if they get no answer, it would be nice to have an auto message direct them to /v +shop or /v +mall. The easier you make it for us to direct them to help wikis, the better. I like the idea of simple commands like highlancer54 suggested: /sign /shop etc. I enjoy helping people but there is a certain fatigue that sets in some days when 3 or 4 new players are asking questions non stop and you can't work on your projects because you are helping. I always try to remember how kind people were when I was new and asked questions. I would like to see the /help flags command show all available flags or maybe have /list flags. I see lots of people saying they don't vote because it doesn't work for them. I know I had difficulties before I switched from internet explorer to firefox. The vote screen would freeze up for a minute before I could click. Some people don't know to click on confident box to complete captcha, they think the confident box is an advertisement. Maybe a detailed walk thru on how to vote and a voting trouble shoot guide would be helpful. The new people need the rupees from voting the most, but it seems few take the time to figure out how. It would also be nice to be able to turn town chat off while having residence or local or group chat on. Sometimes it is hard to follow conversations with all the chats going at once.
I expect it would be similar to the Forums here. You get occasional misbehavior, but it is usually drowned out or corrected by the members who want to help. Being naughty under the mod's noses seems a little cray-cray to me actually unless your intent is to commit the EMC equivalent of Hara Kiri.
