The following suggestion is to bring a new revamped tutorial to the Empire that is fun and interactive. I have noticed after going through the new tutorial myself, it feels as if so much information is being thrown at you so quickly. Personally, I found this bothersome and brought it up on Discord with a few others as well as some staff members. I feel as if the tutorial should be more of an opt-in thing, so you can either go through the tutorial or figure it out yourself. However, if you do choose the tutorial route it should be not just informative but also fun and interactive. Come on, it's 2018! So, let's talk about this new idea! The Empire Guru Tutorial! Let's start at the beginning of how I see this being implemented. Imagine there is a "lobby" world that you spawn into upon joining the Empire for the first time. An NPC, let's name him Guru Hugo(subject to change), spawns nearby and he says something along the lines of "Welcome *player* to the Empire! The Empire is a 'Play Your Way' survival server. Would you like to learn more?" Option 1: No, I would like to figure this out on my own. Upon choosing this option, Guru Hugo runs off and you see multiple paths leading to different portals. One for Town, Frontier, Wastelands, and Games. You may choose either portal and go about learning the Empire way on your own. Option 2: Yes, let me guide you through the tutorial and gift you some of my wisdom. Upon choosing this option, Guru Hugo will take you to a path consisting of a crossroad. This crossroad would have three paths to choose from. Upon choosing which path to take, Guru Hugo would walk beside you as you follow the path and he explains the rules and details of the chosen path. Each main path has optional sub-paths that take you off the main path where you can find more in depth descriptions and examples of things that you might want to learn more about. Some of the sub-paths should also have interactive learning, to learn by example rather than just reading. Upon taking a sub-path and learning the information there, you would loop back to the main path to continue your guide with Guru Hugo. Town Path - This path is meant to teach you what the Town world is and how some of the town commands work. Basic server rules Explain what the town is Explain what a residence is Claiming a residence Visiting a residence(including res tags, possibly on a sub-path) Residence Flags (sub-path) Shop signs (sub-path) Chat(rules, channels, etc, possibly mail) Live Map EmpireAssistant/Compass Stables/Vaults Getting help from staff Website/forums Player Settings(sub-path for more in depth) Friend/group system Frontier Path - This path is meant to teach you about the Frontier. Basic server rules Explain what the frontier is How to get to the frontier/frontier outposts Block protection(including lock signs, sub-path?) Basic information of Established Outposts(in depth sub-path) Chat(rules, channels, etc, possibly mail) Live Map EmpireAssistant/Compass Stables/Vaults Getting help from staff Tokens(sub-path) Custom mobs(could possibly have a sub-path showing some of the custom mobs) Website/forums Player Settings(sub-path for more in depth) Friend/Group system Wastelands Path - This path is meant to teach you about the Wastelands. Basic server rules Explain what the wastelands is How to get to the wastelands/wastelands outposts Block protection(including lock signs, sub-path?) Chat(rules, channels, etc, possibly mail) Live Map EmpireAssistant/Compass Stables/Vaults Getting help from staff Tokens(sub-path) Custom mobs(could possibly have a sub-path showing some of the custom mobs) Website/Forums Player Settings(sub-path for more in depth) Friend/group system After completing the chosen path, Guru Hugo will ask if you would like to continue to the chosen path's world, or take another path in which you have not yet taken. Completing paths, and possibly sub-paths should grant some type of reward related to that path. For example if you are taking the Town path, you could be awarded rupees for completing the path. Taking the Frontier path you could possibly be rewarded tokens. Custom Tab list for the Lobby world. This custom tab list could show how many of your friends are online, how many global players online, which staff are online and possibly how many players on each smp. I think some players see the list of players online in the tab list and leave because it does now show how many players are truly on the Empire at that time. Being a suggested thread, I welcome and constructive insight on how this idea could be improved or implemented. I look forward to hearing everyone's thoughts and opinions!
i think you're right. I only started not too long ago and found that it was very rushed compared to when i initially started about 4 years ago. i am just lucky that i remembered some of the old commands and had a rough idea on what was going on. its too much information too take in at the one time, but having an interaction and actually doing some of the things the tutorial is telling us about will help us as well as coming members have a better understanding of the server.
Oh well, I don't remember much from the original tutorial as I just skipped most of the questions but sure, this version of tutorial sounds more interesting and I think it'd help new players to get to know the loads of commands and custom mechanics (such as enraged mobs and bosses) better. Yay or nay? - Definitely yay.
I appreciate your input! I joined about 6.5 years ago but after going thru the tutorial on an alt, it definitely seemed overwhelming. I appreciate your input! As much as EMC has to offer, why not show it off in a new fun tutorial!?
I think you are mostly right. I don’t think it should be an opt in thing. I think it should be mandatory. I only say this because almost everyday while I am playing I see people join and finish the tutorial, then like 5 minutes later that same person is asking a question the I know you learn in the tutorial, I have done it like 5 times for fun. Now I am not saying that asking questions is a bad thing. I enjoy answering questions. But when I have to answer the question”oh where do I go to mine and get materials?” I mean come on that is like the first thing you learn. So yes making it more fun and interesting so people know what they are doing ya.
I appreciate your input! I suppose a better way to handle it then, is to just send players to the Wastelands if they don't want to do the tutorial? Perhaps if that route is chosen, and they run into a custom mob, then it asks the player again if they would like to go back and go through the tutorial. To me it just does not seem "fair" to force players into a tutorial.
I understand what you are saying and ya it suck when you have an alt and have to do the tutorial before you can do anything. However I can not think of any game that I have ever played that didn’t have a tutorial, well maybe some old school Nintendo games.
Hmm, come to think of it, I can't think of any either. But that being said if you are going to go through a tutorial, it should totally be fun and interactive as suggested!
Yes this I totally agree with. I didn’t see it in your first post but the guru also needs to tell you to do the /promo starter command and get your starter stuff.
Or perhaps as you are following the path, some of the rewards you get are the starter stuff? Guru Hugo could say, upon getting the first piece of starter gear, that you can earn the rest of the collection by completing the path. We may be on to something here, everyone loves prizes!
no, just no. that stupid tutorial has been revamped almost yearly (which is more than almost anything on emc gets redone) the problem isnt the tutorial being intuitive and engaging the problem is new players want to come in the game and start building and then flood the town chat with questions easily answered in the tutorial. we dont need a new tutorial and its had TONS of work on it and testing to see how engaging it is. edit: i will die on this hill
I like the effort you put into this suggestion. But as snazzy and engaging as that all sounds to us, it's missing one key consideration which is, unfortunately, this: prospective new players don't care about those 43 topics you listed, so why would they invest the extensive time commitment required to learn (even just superficially) about them? To veteran players, this may sound great because you know how cool those features are and how essential they can be. But new players (usually looking to dive right in) don't, and when confronted with a tutorial even bigger than our last interactive one (which faced the same problems this would: of immensity, people getting lost, too much padding, coding and content maintenance required, etc.) they simply get overwhelmed. The tutorial's job shouldn't be to mundanely explain every last thing but to condense the essential details into as less of a time commitment as possible so people can actually get to see for themselves how good EMC is and not read about it. When the extra, interactive aspects were opt-in, and the core stuff was mandatory, people would still end up confused and lost (and ultimately frustrated and disconnect) because there's simply so much information to learn (probably about 500 Wiki pages worth of substantive content!). I can practically guarantee that if we have 43 different subpaths, and they were all linked together, people would get bored/give up/think it's not worth the time/go find another server which doesn't do this (while researching I didn't see any that do), etc.. The tutorial is currently opt-in (in the sense that we removed the quiz requirements) I don't know exact stats, but there was a greater retention rate when we introduced the new version. It's streamlined, snappy and concise. That's not to say perfect, because we know from the many versions we've been through that our tutorial is always going to evolve - we have seen what happened with previous variants though.
I appreciate your input! That is why I later posted that perhaps if they choose not to follow the tutorial and they go to say the Wastelands and encounter a custom mob they could be asked if they would like to go to the tutorial to learn more. The same could go for town, if they opted out and went to town and were struggling with claiming a residence for example, they could be suggested to go through the tutorial. I appreciate your input! Considering your input in the community, it is greatly appreciated that you posted a response. I understand that some new players may not care about the majority of what I suggested, which is why I suggested that it be optional to take the tutorial route. But for those that do choose the tutorial path, this is why I suggested the sub-paths. The main path teaches you quickly the basics of the chosen path, but you can optionally take a sub-path along the main path to learn more if you want to. Some players may want a quick run through, while some may want to know everything they can about the Empire before deciding to join. I don't feel as if the tutorial would be that long, unless you decide to take every sub-path, and using barrier blocks to keep you on the path it would be kinda hard to get too lost. Especially with Guru Hugo walking you through it all. As for the coding, speaking with some developers and having some background in it myself, it's not too difficult at all with the current code base. Seeing what EMC has to offer through the tutorial rather than reading about it was one of my main points. Custom mobs for example, the sub-path for this could show you some of the custom mobs and possibly some of the abilities they have. Shops for example, the sub-path for this could walk you through setting up these signs and how to find residences you can buy/sell items to. The sub-paths wouldn't be linked together, it would be more like the following(excuse my paint skills for this example): Black being the main path, green being a sub-path for shops, and orange being a sub-path for residence flags. Granted yes the newest tutorial does not have a quiz, I would still not consider it opt-in. Even if you spawn into the tutorial and run through it to the end, you still were a part of the tutorial. I don't know how interactive any of the previous tutorials were. I remember the original maze tutorial and the current tutorial, but I think that if this suggested interactive tutorial is implemented in some way, players would be more willing to follow Guru Hugo to learn at least the basics. Thank you again for your input Alex.
the one he is talking about addressed the most common questions noobs had like "how do i claim a residence" or "where do i mine" you had to like type the command to claim a residence inside the tutorial in order to advance. but i think you kind of missed his point tbh. the problem isnt the tutorial or how informative it is, the problem is that like 80 percent of new players dont care about that and want to get to town/a place to mine and then ask every question that was already answered in the tutorial. THUS working further on something that is less than a year old that 80 percent of people skip anyways isnt really a good use of our developers/build teams time maybe down the line after empires/survivalupdate tweaks/1.13.1 is all wrapped up sure we can re-examine that thing. but since the maze from old old EMC the tutorial has been drastically overhauled atleast 3 times that i remember. theres no reason to update something that isnt really used anyways. it would be like overhauling the games server instead of implementing 1.13 its just going to piss off the veterans that play here (which are the ones you want to keep engaged alot more than noobies)
I agree the tutorial needs a redo as I liked the old tutorial. But wouldn't implementing everything you listed throw even more information at a starter? If you try to give a starter too much information at once (which is not a lot), they'll probably skip a lot of it and ask town. Also I don't think the tutorial should be skippable.
I love some of the key aspects mentioned, it's not to say that some of the ideas couldn't later be used. --- Tab suggestion People usually join and re-leave because of one thing I noticed: Lack of community interaction. The way it is right now, if someone joins and presses [Tab] and sees only 3 people are online 'or' if noone responds to them, they just leave 80% of the time. If we had a joining area, where you get to see or talk to others 'and/or' in TabList see the actual count of players on the "Network" instead of the "Smp" he/she might feel like it's a more active community, and not just a dead server. (Then going to the individual smp, you can see that particular player-count and list) --- Lobby Suggestion This has been suggested quite a bit, but there's a few pros and cons to this. On one hand, the way it currently is, is players are auto-selected to join a certain SMP which may help fill up empty residences on that server... and this helps keep the focus towards Town/Wild Empire and not Games On the other hand, some people may not want to just be thrown into a tutorial 'just yet' and talk to a few people, before he/she decides which direction to go - and also goes hand in hand with the Tab Suggestion, of making it feel like more players are on the network, than feeling abandoned. --- Guru Suggestion I like the feeling of separating things a bit, but we'd still need to keep things short and simple. The current tutorial issue is "everything" is thrown at you at once: You have to learn the rules, commands for individual worlds, and examples for each - This can be overwhelming If you, atleast, had it separated to say Town and Wild, then that could give people a feeling of choice, instead of pressured at the very end to make a decision. The beginning could have a brief description of each, and as you start walking on a path, the guide walks with you telling you about the Town or Wild, much like a normal player would. At the end, you could either teleport to that world, or be teleported back to the optional path selection (either way) it would keep up with your progress, so if you logged out, or wanted to go back to the tutorial, it would say what you have/haven't done.
We had an interactive like 3 or 4 iterations go ,and it had major drop off. The biggest issue is that new players don't want to give that much commitment to a server they don't even know if they are going to like... that's why we shortened the tutorials length and made it simpler. If a player is open to reading information, they will, otherwise they can run through. What we are aiming to do is less dependence on the tutorial... The goal is, to improve the new player experience, using tour guide systems (combination of boss bars, scoreboards, holograms, etc, achievements, chat) that can step the player through learning EMC. So this lets players get into the game faster and start trying things, and we then focus on ensuring all newbie pain points are covered. The issue isn't the tutorial. The issue is that once they leave the tutorial, they don't have much guidance. We also need to make it clear that they can return to the tutorial so they can see 'ok, so this server is looking nice, maybe i'll take the time to read that information now' Activity can be a concern on some SMP's, which it was recently reported to me the system was sending people to low pop servers, which it wasn't supposed to so I made adjustments to fix that. This is all a high priority item after the 1.13 update.
The tutorial used to consist of 2 parts... There was /tutorial but also another command (which I forgot) where you'd be taken to "part 2" which contained tons of information and was more set up as a reference than a tutorial. If that still exists then that might be able to help as well. An "easy" tutorial like the one we have now and then the optional "library" which players can visit later. Either directly after the tutorial or at a later time so they can read up and maybe learn new things.
