Increasing The Playerbase

[ibegyou]

Hello,

I am tired of playing of the same people everyday so let me tell you how to get some new players.

While some will quit because of lack of explanation in the beginning and very harsh first days and graphics that aren't that really 2018. Some might appreciate the depth and fun.

1.
I have been advertising my Discord for free on YouTube by using simple comment bot by Supagrowth. In about 3 weeks it managed to post over 10 000 comments on videos tagged with 'meme', 'politics', 'discord' and 'gwent'. My Discord reached over 200 people and is still growing. One of the options is to get a good comment bot and keep advertiaing under Star Wars themed keywords in a place full of people. It was free for me but now that bot is paid lol

2.
Steal good search results (Reddit etc). You can try to link yourself to a sub-reddit about upcoming 'Solo' movie (all future movies) by using good keywords. I managed to grab the first place for 'Meme Discord 2018' on Google I don't need to do anything anymore, people just keep joining.

3.
You should personally contact popular YouTubers that engage in fight with companies like EA and have them talk about alternatives.

 

[yoinkboink]

Or have a good game worth talking about

 

[GoodOl'Ben]

We had a pretty good boost and a decent amount of attention in December. A lot of this was thanks to many of our amazing community making entertaining videos about the game. Obviously not all stuck around. Our game is very unfriendly towards noobs in terms of mechanics. It's very much the Starcraft 2 of Star Wars games in the sense that you need to push through the initial pain to get to the delicious parts. Once you know the nuances of the hidden mechanics, it's like riding a bike, but before that it is nothing but a string of failures that you need to learn from. This is not for everyone.

I think that's also part of the game's charm. It needs to be a step beyond SWBF2 in terms of depth. Otherwise our game is trash.

There's a tutorial project underway to help with retention, but of course it won't do more than teach players the basics. It will help deal with the instant drop-outs who fail to find how to join the game or turn on jetpack. It obviously won't deal with the casuals who want to get to winning instantly. MB2 has evolved with its battle-hardened community so much that a fair amount of its "self-explanatory" mechanics are actually very daunting for newcomers. I've seen so many newbies unable to extinguish themselves... They never stop, drop and roll

One thing I'd love for people to stop saying in MB2 related discussions on the Youtubes and Reddits is that the community is toxic. MB2's community is tremendous - all things considered. Whenever I play, I see vets helping noobs figure out what buttons to press. This is the thing people need to say. I hardly have experienced any truly awful things in my 13 years with the mod. I might have heated debates about game design in-game, but that's just fun and enlightening to me. Everybody who comes up to me in-game and tells me something isn't right has their heart in the right place. They want what's best for our game. We might not always agree, but I really value people having the guts to come and tell me what they like and what they don't.

People who call MB2 toxic have just forgotten what internet is like. It's supposed to be an open forum where everyone has the platform to speak their mind. AAA games tend to shelter and censor their players. It's a very slippery slope, which might result in a better gameplay experience, but also detracts greatly from the true social aspect of gaming. That's what I value when playing.

MB2 should be advertised as a hardcore game where anyone can still hop on and have a really good time if they have the correct mindset when coming in.

 

[ibegyou]

I suggest you implement the auto-admin {SF} has it's also displaying tips in the chat that helps (on how to use the console and such you might be confused about in the beginning).

You should have all necessary buttons bound by default not left blank like now so you can display a picture of controls summed up I have no idea why that isn't a thing and nobody thought of that already.

Also, let {SF} be the testing ground for BETA. Officials are dead.

 

[MuscBodypillow]

Will the tutorial be a button and a pop-up on the first run of the game, so players will get a handle on how to join alteast, pick their class/setup and basic control.

Most of the time people will rarely go out of their way to check things and think "I'll figure it out as I play" which is nearly impossible with all the hidden mechanics of mb2.

 

[ibegyou]

We need something like this but with standardized Movie Battles 2 controls. One of the loading screens can be replaced with a summary of controls and a quick picture. Would be better than a tutorial.

Get all of the weapons under first 4 numeric buttons. Rocket Launcher and Sniper Rifles to 4 and all other guns like Bowcaster, E11, Clone Rifle to 3, Pistol like to 2, Lightsaber and Fists under 1.
│

/bind 1 "weapon 1"
/bind 2 "weapon 2"
/bind 3 "weapon 3; weapon 5; weapon 6"
/bind 4 "weapon 4; weapon 9"

This should be a standard not something you 'eventually' discover.
​

 

[Langerd]

I think the best way would be giving tutorial mode. Rly simple tutorial even with npc's to shot
I am still a newbie and i must say - i have a lot problems with knowing stuff. I read library a lot to learn but many question are without answer.

I am new to this mod but i am not new to the Jedi Academy games. I think this mod should be very very VERY well known and it should be played by a lot.. sadly people this days are looking more on the AAA games than the modding stuff... even if well known games in the past .. had they roots from mods specially valve games.

 

[Luna]

I don't think adversiting is the problem, but the fact that there's been hardly any work on classes other than jedi and sith which makes this game incredibly stale

 

[IHaveNoIdeaHow]

I am a new player (playing for 2 weeks now) with no experience with MB2 or Jedi Academy before and it's true, the game is really hard to get into. I used to play EA's Battlefront before this and did that for quite a while (~250 hours) but the depth of this mod kinda hooked me so much many other games feel very shallow now. True, good graphics pull your attention to a game, but good game mechanics are what makes you stay.

There's a tutorial project underway to help with retention, but of course it won't do more than teach players the basics. It will help deal with the instant drop-outs who fail to find how to join the game or turn on jetpack. It obviously won't deal with the casuals who want to get to winning instantly. MB2 has evolved with its battle-hardened community so much that a fair amount of its "self-explanatory" mechanics are actually very daunting for newcomers. I've seen so many newbies unable to extinguish themselves... They never stop, drop and roll

That's good to hear since many things don't explain themself. I read a lot of guides and watched a lot of videos of this game before I started, but I still have much to learn...

One thing I'd love for people to stop saying in MB2 related discussions on the Youtubes and Reddits is that the community is toxic. MB2's community is tremendous - all things considered. Whenever I play, I see vets helping noobs figure out what buttons to press. This is the thing people need to say. I hardly have experienced any truly awful things in my 13 years with the mod. I might have heated debates about game design in-game, but that's just fun and enlightening to me. Everybody who comes up to me in-game and tells me something isn't right has their heart in the right place. They want what's best for our game. We might not always agree, but I really value people having the guts to come and tell me what they like and what they don't.

As I said I am very new here, and that's unfortunately not my experience with the community. Especially in my first week there were tons of lamers... I remember a match in Lunar Base where two members of our team (empire) ran to the generator with grenades and blew themselves up. The generator got hit by that too and the game ended after not even a minute for more than 10 rounds in a row. On dueling servers people who hit you from behind during a duel are not a rare thing to see and I have also seen quite a few matches with multiple people who purposely kill their own team until they get kicked. And that's only a few examples...
I can deal with that. What gives me more trouble as a newbie is this:

Whenever I play, I see vets helping noobs figure out what buttons to press.

Most of the time, If I ask a question regarding a game mechanic in chat, I won't get any answers. Out of 10 times I ask something in chat, I get maybe 2 answers at most. That's my experience so far.
Especially since many game mechanics are very complicated it's important to have someone who explains stuff to you. If experienced members of the community would pay more attention to that I'm sure that would help newbies like myself a lot more and therefore increase the playerbase.

 

[Gumba]

Most of the time, If I ask a question regarding a game mechanic in chat, I won't get any answers. Out of 10 times I ask something in chat, I get maybe 2 answers at most. That's my experience so far.
Especially since many game mechanics are very complicated it's important to have someone who explains stuff to you. If experienced members of the community would pay more attention to that I'm sure that would help newbies like myself a lot more and therefore increase the playerbase.

Hey, here is a pro tip:
If you want to ask stuff do it near the end of the round when most players are dead sitting in spec.
That's the time when people actually have time to chat.

 

[MaceMadunusus]

There's a tutorial project underway to help with retention, but of course it won't do more than teach players the basics.

Ben has kind of spilled the beans here. This is something Sno, Defiant, Mcbober, myself have largely been working on for the past few weeks. The rest of both th dev and beta team have been providing feedback as we go. It is far from a simple task but we want to do it right. I also wanted to wait a bit more to show/tell the community a bit about the project till after the first tutorial was finished but may as well give a run down now.

So about the tutorial:

• We have 17 tutorials currently planned. (Basics, Class Selection, Class Tutorials, Gamemodes/Objectives, Melee, Dueling)
• Tutorials are in-world and interactable.
• Fully voice acted by our beloved batman (McBober)
• May not be fully polished on initial release but still functional.
• Hoping for 6 tutorials to be "completed" before Solo release.
• All tutorials are built in such a way that editing them later in case we change mechanics will be relatively easy compared to most other map changes. For example we can update voice lines, subtitles, timings of events, etc. without ever entering the .map file.
• Tutorials will have a minor narrative/story line associated with them.

Here is the most recent update video on the tutorial. Keep in mind that it isn't finished yet and isn't really quite ready to be shown yet as it is missing a number of features (subtitles being in the proper place, popup UI on the left/right showing binded keybinds for things, some indicators are disabled on it because of a bug, etc.). Simply, it isn't done yet.

Here is one of the features I added after recording this video.
2af5e752e545758378fe3d11421f0278 - Create, Discover and Share GIFs on Gfycat
Specific spots of the tutorial will have little pop up videos or images with various things showing what to do on them. For example in the beginning when it says you can customize controls by hitting escape -> controls it will have a popup graphic in the world of the escape menu popping up, then an arrow that appears pointing to controls, then the controls menu opening.

With this we also plan to do a push to update the ingame library and wiki a bit more than they are currently. We also have a few other things planned as well to help out in this area but I am not going to spill the beans for those working on it.

The generator got hit by that too and the game ended after not even a minute for more than 10 rounds in a row.

I am hoping we can get that fixed soon enough. It was noted as a problem before the new lunar was released but there wasn't anything I could do to prevent it map side. Simply waiting for a coder to have the time to fix it here.

 

[W!zard]

Here is one of the features I added after recording this video.
2af5e752e545758378fe3d11421f0278 - Create, Discover and Share GIFs on Gfycat

This is Amazing, just what has been missing all this time

 

[IHaveNoIdeaHow]

Hey, here is a pro tip:
If you want to ask stuff do it near the end of the round when most players are dead sitting in spec.
That's the time when people actually have time to chat.

Thanks for the advice! I usually do this and still often don't get any responses. Asking multiple times sometimes helps, other times it does not and if you do it too often, you just end up annoying people...

Ben has kind of spilled the beans here. This is something Sno, Defiant, Mcbober, myself have largely been working on for the past few weeks. The rest of both th dev and beta team have been providing feedback as we go. It is far from a simple task but we want to do it right. I also wanted to wait a bit more to show/tell the community a bit about the project till after the first tutorial was finished but may as well give a run down now.

Really appreciate your work! That voice-over is very well made. I had to figure out rolling by myself by watching other players, so I'm sure tutorials like that would help new players alot.

 

[noel]

contacting big youtubers is a good idea, especially if they're star wars-based channels.

wait until the tutorial is done first though so we actually keep the players if they join/try out the game

 

[President Bossk]

contacting big youtubers is a good idea, especially if they're star wars-based channels.

wait until the tutorial is done first though so we actually keep the players if they join/try out the game

Get one of the devs to reach out to Hello Greedo. Popular SW channel who does a lot of fan stuff.

 

[MaceMadunusus]

Get one of the devs to reach out to Hello Greedo. Popular SW channel who does a lot of fan stuff.

Might be a good idea once we get that done. He contacted me years ago just to use some of my work as a background in his videos.

 

[MuscBodypillow]

Get one of the devs to reach out to Hello Greedo. Popular SW channel who does a lot of fan stuff.

Star Wars Theory and Star Wars Explained might be good attemps, the first one does stream from time to time, I suggested contacting him some time ago and contacted some youtubers/streamer that had an interested in old games and star wars stuff but they are harder to reach.

It would seem that using twitter might be a good idea since some people with a big following seems to check it out more than PM on twitch or youtube.

 

[Onysfx]

I agree with @noel. Get the game ready to be friendly for newcomers, then advertise and reel them in. If they hate the game and get turned off too quickly, they may never come back. Only reason I stayed around was because my laptop couldn't run much else besides JKA.

 

[Hartassen]

The problem isn't just the lack of tutorial. Plenty of times I see people, usually clans in servers doing nothing but trolling. Fighting eachother in melee (same team), teamkilling eachother, teamkilling allies and not participating. Attempting to interfere with their "fun" by shooting enemies gets you teamkilled, ganged up on by friends/foes alike or other trolling behavior. Even worse these people have private servers to go to but choose to take up public server slots and ruin the fun for those of us who just want to play the game as it was intended. Seems to be a lot of bored veteran players who have nothing to do except pollute regular servers.

A sincere good luck to you in finding new players if you have no admins and tolerate these players because they're "vets". This is just my experience from OPEN servers. On duels servers there's plenty of lamers too, you can get lamed infront of an admin of the server and they won't do anything besides at most kick them once. They come back with a new name (same stats) or even don't change their name and do it again. No temp bans, admins are just busy "dueling" and don't care about upholding their own server rules.

This community just has a lot of cancerous players. And I don't care about namecalling, racist remarks or anything else if people want to be idiots - let them. But trolling via gameplay is a big turnoff for any new players trying to enjoy the game.

 

[Gumba]

The problem isn't just the lack of tutorial. Plenty of times I see people, usually clans in servers doing nothing but trolling. Fighting eachother in melee (same team), teamkilling eachother, teamkilling allies and not participating. Attempting to interfere with their "fun" by shooting enemies gets you teamkilled, ganged up on by friends/foes alike or other trolling behavior. Even worse these people have private servers to go to but choose to take up public server slots and ruin the fun for those of us who just want to play the game as it was intended. Seems to be a lot of bored veteran players who have nothing to do except pollute regular servers.

A sincere good luck to you in finding new players if you have no admins and tolerate these players because they're "vets". This is just my experience from OPEN servers. On duels servers there's plenty of lamers too, you can get lamed infront of an admin of the server and they won't do anything besides at most kick them once. They come back with a new name (same stats) or even don't change their name and do it again. No temp bans, admins are just busy "dueling" and don't care about upholding their own server rules.

Which servers are you joining? These trolling idiots are mostly 14 year olds and by no means veterans.