If it's backed by the GMs and Devs themselves - as well as the rest of the community. I'd definitely don't see a reason why we couldn't bring them back. The community definitely needs fresh blood in it, and helping newer players or players whose primary language isn't english, would be a good start.
I agree with it and ready to become an Angel. New players still exist, also there are a lot of Russian-speak people I could help to resolve their problems
The reason why the Angles existed was not only to let people easily find the person to ask something ingame without resorting to PMing random players on the chat, but also to help the helper by giving them access to pseduo-admin-like commands that allowed teleportation.
The problem that arose from this was the following:
1. Players were given the impression and trained that helping new players is the job of a specific group, rather than the community. Instead of helping, it was easier to just send them to an angel, a person who was ''approved'' to give guidence rather than the average joe.
2. Players wishing to help new players were suddenly screened and approved/disapproved from joining based not on their capabilities or drive to help players but rather if the current leaders of the angels thought they were trustworthy enough be given access to the ID's unique features. It became a status symbol as much as with its original purpose.
3. Though to a lesser extent, players who were motivated to help newbies got over their moment of helpfulness rather quickly, causing the faction to very quickly lose steam and become dead, which had the obvious side effect of people complaining how nobody was helping new players.
I do not think the Angels need to return and as far as I know, not in the way that they were at least. I think it was a huge mistake to imply that the ability to help newbies is restricted to some sort of admin-approved group or title. This should, in a perfect world, be done by anyone who has the time.
Apart from the Helper faction, there was an attempt to revive the angels already as far as I know and it, this time without an admin vote to disband them, died out on their own after being handed off to someone to be used as a generic forum tutorial account. Helping new players is hard. You need a lot of drive and dedication to do that and this sort of help is impossible to do for the average community member, regardless of what they think about the topic.
This is something most players discussing the subject seem to miss. I may had my issues back in the day with how Jonnywalker handled his approach on new players (or rather, the seemingly heavily biased information they were given, especially in regards to unlawful IDs), but that was a good example of a non-angel contributing hours of daily online time, just to talk and help new players.
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(02-25-2020, 07:41 AM)sindroms Wrote: Apart from the Helper faction, there was an attempt to revive the angels already as far as I know and it, this time without an admin vote to disband them, died out on their own after being handed off to someone to be used as a generic forum tutorial account. Helping new players is hard. You need a lot of drive and dedication to do that and this sort of help is impossible to do for the average community member, regardless of what they think about the topic.
It died out mainly because the vast majority of us left Disco for other pastures. If I recall correctly (discord server has been gone a long while), there was about 8 of us who left within the space of about 2 months, including all the leaders (myself, @Dino, @Ash).
Overall the Angels were the right tool for the right time. When there was 200 players online every evening, an ingame helpdesk was an absolute necessity to prevent things from going out of control with so many clueless newbies joining the community.
Now? They don't really have a reason to exist anymore. The community is much smaller and the influx can be easily handled by the players themselves, as it should be. Discord is also pretty widespread as mean of communication in gaming and a mere "Need help? Join us on the official Discord" would probably solve most cases these days.
All around, anyone is capable of mentoring a newbie or at least point them into the right direction, provided they are willing to do it.
The main problem with newbies is, that they always get the wrong
impression about Discovery. The tutorials and help messages tell
them to grind, so everyone thinks this is a grinding game. And it needs
some weeks for them to find out, that this is not the case. Then they usually
just leave.
Back in the days when I started, I only had a starflyer, could not mine, trade,
shoot and anything except role play. It only took me an hour to find out
what this game is really about.
But back then NY was crowded with people role playing, so you simply
had to watch what they were doing.
If I want to help some newbies I just give them some simple role play
that gets them some credits and maybe a transport. I think this is the
best way. Of course I do that inRP as an Ageira manager.
The Angels never could provide anything like that, because they were
always out of role play. So I don't think it's a good idea to revive them.
I don't think there's anything thus far said that I would disagree with, but I do think it would be worthwhile to have a server message directing new players to look for specific tags in game for help. We might not have a 200+ server pop to justify a dedicated faction sitting in Pennsylvania, but with a more distributed player base, I'd claim the need for help for new players is greater. Yes, they have more tools than ever, but they need to be shown how to use them.
Since personal experience doesn't matter, I'll share the following. When I first came back in December, I immediately obtained a ship with my favorite frog tag. Once it got to 90, I consistently received messages from new players who thought rank was somehow tied to progression, and I did everything I could to help them along. It was enjoyable, and I told them to look out for my tag any time they needed something. Many did, and others would pm me because someone told them about it.
I think if we had a group of reliable players who volunteered for that kind of "duty" if you will it would direct new folks to players in game they could get in touch with immediately instead of simply being overwhelmed with the massive amount of information on this game they can find in many places. It could simply be a rotating message on the server saying something along the lines of "Need help? Please message players tagged ***, ***, ***."
There are many more things one could do to make the game more attractive and easier to get into than just having people with at tag that says "look at me I'm an angel". But the latter could be made more viable by allowing [Angel] or [Helper] tagged ships to multibox so they can sit ready to assist and trade irp while waiting for "customers".
I've mentioned those other things many times, tried doing them, but they are made impossible by... well... lets call it social issues... that the community has. Might as well elaborate on those.
1. Official factions should be made more open to new people, by dropping the weird and honestly rather silly "we are the elite and all our members must be excellent" attitude and expectation of official factions. It should be easy to make a lower rank that anyone can join (no forum or discord requirement), that you don't get kicked from when you mess up, so noobs can get to know people more easily, have people who are motivated to teach them for their own self interest for their faction, and so they are motivated to actually integrate into a command structure instead of just being god emperor of their indy dreadnought. Some factions already did this and it does work to create activity, but often only until the "l33t" of the server starts playing holy inquisition of "excellence" in feedback threads or starts forcing faction leaders to kick people, forbid them to fly caps, or demotivate them from logging in other ways.
2. Develop and agree on a pvp "honor code" that doesn't make siding with noobs the choice between no chance in hell to win and being the target of nerdraeg/revengeganks/mobbing by the superl33t because higher numbers or caps were involved. When you look at the oorp conflicts (some of them masked as "irp"), the very often between people who stick with their l33t friends and ideas on one side, and people who are also willing to play with noobs or casuals and who are getting flamed because of the results on the other.
3. Creating activity hotspots, where more player interactions also with noobs will happen, through a combination of system/route layout, trade/mining location revamp, and POBs that are more oriented towards collaboration, openness, and healthy piracy/profit balance than personal profit for one player or faction. An example would be a junker POB in new york, well visible, not too far and not too close from the scrap field, buying/selling gear and scrap openly to everyone. I tried doing that, I tried getting the junker congress to help, I tried getting other POB owners to open theirs, but many liberty factions are in a state where trying to work things out seems rather hopeless because of oorp grudges and "reasons".
4. Make the game simpler. Make mining less complicated by reducing iff/id compatibility requirements. Explain the technerf properly in the green powercore message, and create more 100% cells. Write the pvp-death rules under the "you are dead, better luck next time" message.
5. In addition to the above, update the "welcome" cargo items to mention and not be redundant to the Help System, which contains updated information with more detail, and remove obsolete mentions of the non existing beginner restart.
6. Rewrite the rules in a way suited for first time readers, and dont leave them the cluttered mess they are. Then, add them to the ingame Help System so they are directly accessible ingame.
All these things are simple and have 0 drawbacks. But the community and its leaders are simply unable to overcome their own... social issues... and get them done.
(02-25-2020, 02:42 PM)Squad Wrote: [..]
I think if we had a group of reliable players who volunteered for that kind of "duty" if you will it would direct new folks to players in game they could get in touch with immediately instead of simply being overwhelmed with the massive amount of information on this game they can find in many places. It could simply be a rotating message on the server saying something along the lines of "Need help? Please message players tagged ***, ***, ***."
I also could be very wrong, but my two cents.
I don't know you and I don't know if you are really helpful.
But I can give you an example:
Some times ago there was a player named Johny mining always
helium with newbies. All they were doing was mining and chatting
together OORP. He sometimes contacted me - always OORP.
He had no role play at all. I don't think he ever thought about
role playing something. So in fact he told the newbies to mine and to
grind and simply chat with another. Many people thought that this
is good. But I think he did more harm to the server then anyone around.
And always when I see someone with such a tag, I really wonder what he
is doing. The server rules are very clear: Names must be in role play.
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