Many players have all said the same. Frankly, this skip tutorial thing is just dumb, I am getting pretty annoyed on how every new player that joins asks the same thing. They will just quit due to confusion, they are not going to just go back to the tutorial(or 10% will go back). This tutorial skip isnt hurting us from loosing members at all, infact, it makes people STAY because they know what they are doing on the server. I really think this is a bad feature. No offence to the EMC staff though, because they do a great job on this server. But I do believe this feature can be improved.
Back on topic! (the real topic, not the 'change the recommended server' suggestion ) Aside from American/British spelling and changing the recommended server, I agree with the main issue that is being discussed in this thread: some players that have skipped the tutorial can annoy the other 'more experienced' players. Normally, I'm not easy to anger (or so I'd like to think ) and I can deal with a slightly begging, spamming or pushy player just fine. Now, when more and more of these types of players join the server and most of my time on smp5 is spent avoiding people that demand that I help them in town chat, start following me around, or asking me to be their minecraft girlfriend in pm, playing minecraft just becomes less enjoyable for me. Since the tutorial skip option has been added, I have tried to help new players when I had time and felt like it. ("Do /v open, type /claim [address]. Now this is your residence, nobody can build here but you. There are also no mobs in town and you don't get hungry. Do /waste. Here is where you mine for resources. Do /home inside the protected area to get back home." etc. etc.) This is also encouraged here (good job, South ^_^) and I have noticed that it makes players more likely to stay. When they had a lot of questions, I tried to convince them to read the wiki, or I've told them that if they plan on staying on the server, they should do the tutorial (also for the goodies ). Now lately, after having helped them in the beginning, more players started demanding I come over to their res and help them with every little thing (when I could and was willing to help them through chat sometimes). Say, if I help one new player a day, I have three players on the third day pming me/asking me/almost begging me to help with their mall, questions about EMC specific things, how to give flags, to go mining with them. If I tell them I'm busy, they ask if they can help, if I say I'd rather work alone, they ask why, if I say they can't help because they don't have perms, they ask for perms. Like I said, the first couple or so players like this I can deal with. After a week it gets too much for me. There was one case where a new player had been having trouble selling stuff in a shop. For two days, a bunch of other players and I had been helping this person figure out what wrong. Telling him to right click sign, with some of the item he was trying to sell in his inventory. Some of us had tested out the sign, buying and selling stuff and it was working fine for us. We told the person to use the same button that he uses when placing a block, to click on the sign. We told him it doesn't matter where he clicked on the sign (because he kept asking where to click), as long as he was right clicking. We asked the person whether his controls had been changed and told him to reset his controls. At the end of the second day the person was excited that it was finally working for him. We asked him what had been wrong. He said he hadn't been right clicking. I was like -.- if someone can't even read something that has been said to him in town and res chat at least ten times, how can we expect that he's going to have the patience and attention span to go through something like the wiki and the EMC rules. If he bothers going to the EMC website at all. I'm not saying that all of the people who have skipped the tutorial are 'bad'. In fact, some of the new members that I've helped when they just started out and had skipped tutorial, are really cool and fun and have become friends. It just seems that lately there has been more of the 'other type' of new tutorial skipping players. It seems that the increased advertising for EMC and the overall changes to EMC are helping to bring in more players, but we have no control over *what kind* of players we are attracting in larger numbers. I remember Aikar saying some time ago, that he'd gladly have a couple of extra banned players for spam and griefing if it means improving the amount of active players on EMC to 'healthy numbers'. Of course, I also like seeing a lot of new and fun members on EMC, but I've also found that some of the new players (even though what they have done is not bannable) have really made me want to play on EMC less. I have considered several things to keep playing, even if it may happen that more of those types of players join as a trend: - I thought about not helping any new players anymore, just avoiding them in general, and just spending my time with the people that I know. To me, this seems elitist and it goes against my nature. - People have recommended to turn chat off, and I've tried, but for me not being able to talk to my friends is something I really miss, and also not the reason I started playing multiplayer. - Spending more time out in the waste/wild to avoid town chat, while still being able to pm friends. I can do this for a bit, but there is so much I still want to build on my res - Or taking a break, to calm down and not lash out at every new player asking how to give a build flag or something like that, because they can't help it either For now, with the holidays and all, I'm taking a break from being in-game and I'll see what it's like when I get back. Hopefully, I've just had to deal with a couple of bad ones in the last couple of days, and it was all a coincidence. I hope to come back to a strong server with a lot of fun players, and seeing more nights of smp5 town chat filled with silly, random playful chat.
The skip tutorial option was implemented because we were losing lots of new players when they were forced to complete the tutorial. It doesn't matter how long the tutorial would be as these players left before they collected their first reward. As it is now more players are seeing the Empire, liking it and returning. The rewards for completing the tutorial should be sufficient to encourage those new player who decide to stay to complete it later.
And there is not many that come back and stay... so why is the tutorial the problem? I think most of them just don't know what to do, and aside what you all say, they WON'T come back and they will be just that one member that you /p and they haven't logged in in 100+ days.
Most people today expect instant results. They are looking for a server to play on, log in to see what we are like, get told that before the can they must complete a tutorial and decide to try the next server instead.
I don't remember the thread, but I think Aikar came up with numbers showing the retention rates were actually better after the tutorial skip
An idea from some players on one was to take away the signs telling people to /skip. Like maybe after looking at some basic stuff like rules they can see a sign with /skip with a message that tells them that if you continue you get rewards.
