FF School of Hard Knocks

[onE]

Originally Posted by StoneFrog

Those hundreds of players lost "in a matter of days" probably were whiny kids who died from a primed grenade 4 times and then decided the game was "gay", leaving it forever.

I started to reply in the thread with the quote, but this became longer and longer, and eventually I figured it needs its own thread. Sorry for the long read.

Thats why when i play in a public server, if I see a new player, I go out of my way to try to teach parts of the game to them. Quite a few times ive had new players in servers for hours, wanting to learn, and enjoying the game more overall. Sadly, there isnt much players out there that will do this.

I remember playing one of the Jedi Outkast games when it came out. They actually had a Jedi Academy. Which was just servers with more experience (the masters), teaching the game to the newer players (the padawans). I thought I was pretty damn good at the game, until I tried this. It made me want to learn the game even more, making it so I cant want to go back for some more.

If there was ever some sort of promotion to get new players, and to teach them the game, like some sort of FF classes, I would definitely signup to help in the classroom. Have a few experienced players, each one take something from FF, and show and try to teach these things to the newer players.

Off the top of my head real quick, there could be someone teaching...

- Bhopping...When I try to teach this to players, I begin by showing them how to run in a circle using only strafe keys and mouse movement. I have then practice that doing circles left and right, so they use each strafe key. Then have them jump in circles using the same method. Then when they get the jist of it, then tell them how thats pretty much what bhopping is, you just alternate back and forth, left to right with strafe keys, only using W if they have to, and thats only to straighten themselves out. The hardest part for them is usually the first strafe jump, and getting speed off that. I have them turn the speedometer for this so they can see the results.

- Rocket Jumping...Self Explanatory. Maybe just show them they can go straight up, but if included with some bunnyhopping and you shoot and the correct, that they can go just as high, but also with forward momentum.

-Concing...Show them handhelds, drop concs, and drop concs with a handheld. Teach them how to move through the air off an hh. Handhelds are most effective when you can conc in without giving away your position to early. Shooting around corners off an hh might be easy for most of us, but to beginner it would be very difficult. Rampsliding could be included in this.

-Priming & Tossing...I remember when I started TFC back in 1999, and grenades were just being tossed in my face, and exploding, and I couldnt figure out how to do it.

-Conc Aim...Show them that it is still possible to hit and even kill an enemy when conced. Show them not to go by their crosshair when conced. For me I just shoot and adjust where I see the bullets hit, and watching the player model that I am shooting at, to see if any blood comes out.

-General CTF and AD...How classes are used in different situations. Tossing the flag out of lasers....

Now I know there are tutorials for most of these things, but they wont learn from watching, they need to practice it themselves, and im sure most of 12 year olds wont have the patience to do this on there own. If they could do it with someone who knows what they are doing, and have them help them, we might get some new players to stick around, and maybe even share the game with others.

The hard part is going to get this out to the public. Start with a signup sheet and try to have scheduled class time.

[Iggy]

With both TFC and FF, I have offered to help teach anyone the ropes. With FF, I wear a tag "ff_beta" so that other players will know I am a tester and would probably be someone who would be able to answer questions they may have.

That said, having a server(or a couple) where newer players can congregate and learn is a good idea. I would be happy to offer my services in this endeaver. I'll grant you, I'm not the most skilled player there is, but I know some stuff and I'm always willing to help newer people learn and enjoy the game.

[squeek.]

An ingame training mode is being worked on. I'll try to write some dev journals and stuff about it soonish.