How to make the community more inviting to new players

[SensualEthiopianPolice]

So while the devs are hard at work trying to fix the issues with griefers, I was hoping to somehow prevent griefers from joining the community. This is really a post for the more veteran players to spitball ideas but also from new players to voice their complaints.

One problem I noticed is that it's very difficult for new players to find good servers to play on. Right now, the bulk of our servers are: Registration Only, which is fine but I've seen lots of potential new players be dissuaded from trying multiplayer because let's face it, most of the servers right now are registration only and it seems kinda futile to try and find a server. Also Free4All servers are popular which tend to a bad first impression because they are just utter chaos where often, what you make can and will be destroyed suddenly. Basically what I'm getting at is we need more of the regular hosting population to host more. Host who know how to maintain control of a server so people can really get off to a good start.

But we also need as many ideas as possible so there's that.

[Valkyrie]

I want to host more but no one ever seems to be interested when I am. And I will say this now I really don't like the idea of closed/registration Only servers but thats just me.

The chaos of the free4all servers also help keep the people that want to cause trouble busy and disrupting people on serious servers.

[YoloSweggLord]

The problem is that the existing community of free for all builders makes it hard for us hosters to want to host serious realism when most of the people who join just wanna build unrealistic clusterfucks. Even if you specifically name your server as "serious realism" or something like that, you can have all the warnings you want but the majority of people are just gonna build low effort content anyway.

[Nubbie]

I want to start off with the DEVs not really working that much on the griefing issue right now to my knowledge,  probably because off the lack of solutions that can effectively and correctly stop/minimize it in a efficient way that doesn't get too complicated/being too much hard work for now. Another problem is also that the solutions could have a opposite reaction and/or be worked around.

                   

The players playing the game could almost get categorized into 5 groups as I see it;

Greifers, good builders, 'bad builders'', 'all for fun' and 'co-op with friends/restrictive'

Players who 'co-op with friends/being restrictive' often just play on their own server with each other and won't be covered. 

Most new people, as I see it, likes the 'all for fun' stuff like offensive attractions and greif etc as it's a new experience for them and it's more fun to experience the game in more of small bursts at the time instead of spending hours into building a single coasters on a server. This could also be the state of players who have played longer but still enjoy the game more out of its simplicity and freedom, not everyone wants to spend hours perfecting a coaster but instead interact and play with others in a more fun and laughing matter. That's why I've seen some servers being fully un-serious but still filled all the way up to 20 people with more wanting to join.

Many who start the game is also not that good with building coasters as it's something you learn more off later on, so realistic server hindering and stopping people with them deleting their creations, can lead into them instead greifing others as they feel a bit unwelcome. 

It's a bit of a hard shell issue as the games mechanics doesn't have any set rules like in other games, OpenRCT2s servers doesn't have objectives and set points, it's more open and free with less restraints on what you "can and can not" do in a game mechanics sense. It's more off a "exploring game" like minecraft where some can build a castle for hours, while other wants to destroy and some just wants to mine for gold. Not restricting the player from game mechanics like time, deaths, walls and boundaries.

The only solutions I could come up with for the game would be;

• More hosts with them being more acceptable (Good for people who are 'bad builders')
• More open servers where everyone can build without any set 'realistic rules' and more free for all (Good for 'all for fun' players)
• More closed off servers that are for more experienced builders (which we have with registrations, good for 'Good builders' but could be better if letting average players participate and/or people who want to improve from 'being average')
• More PR for the game
• Better anti-greif measures 
• (Some official OpenRCT2 server?)

       Note; The word 'More' is used in the 'demand vs supply' sense with at least '1' being the smallest state of each category (aka. 1 server for each category)

If the players from 'all for fun', 'good builders' and 'bad/avarage builders' all hosted their "own" server, people get what they are looking for. 

Edited December 4, 2016 by Nubbie

[SensualEthiopianPolice]

In response to the more PR thing, I've been lowkey trying to get certain youtubers and reviews and such to play the game. The furthest I got was LGR tweeting me back saying he's never played it but he prefers the original game anyway

[Valkyrie]

3 hours ago, YoloSweggLord said:

The problem is that the existing community of free for all builders makes it hard for us hosters to want to host serious realism when most of the people who join just wanna build unrealistic clusterfucks. Even if you specifically name your server as "serious realism" or something like that, you can have all the warnings you want but the majority of people are just gonna build low effort content anyway.

Well put.

 

2 hours ago, Nubbie said:

I want to start off with the DEVs not really working that much on the griefing issue right now to my knowledge,  probably because off the lack of solutions that can effectively and correctly stop/minimize it in a efficient way that doesn't get too complicated/being too much hard work for now. Another problem is also that the solutions could have a opposite reaction and/or be worked around.

A computer can't really judge if a coaster is a serious coaster or just a joke. But I feel like it some better form of server authorization would be better then the current public key thing they are using now.

 

2 hours ago, Nubbie said:

Many who start the game

I honestly feel like most people who do play this game have already played RCT for years and most of the people who are actually new to RCT are just greifers from Joel's videos (funny enough thats how I found out about OpenRCT).

 

2 hours ago, Nubbie said:

More PR for the game

 

15 minutes ago, SensualEthiopianPolice said:

In response to the more PR thing, I've been lowkey trying to get certain youtubers and reviews and such to play the game. The furthest I got was LGR tweeting me back saying he's never played it but he prefers the original game anyway

Get someone like Nerd3 to play this.

 

2 hours ago, Nubbie said:

More hosts with them being more acceptable (Good for people who are 'bad builders')

2 hours ago, Nubbie said:

(Some official OpenRCT2 server?)

Really some official servers dedicated to learning how to build coasters sounds like a good idea. Less restricting then most realism servers but not filled of swastikas and memes like the free for all servers.

[imlegos]

The problem with getting people of internet fame could be summed up simply: Minecraft.

In the beggining, there was several good Tubers, such as Paulsoaresjr, Ethoslab, and few of the annoying script, with the one majorly good one being Yogscast.

But as time went on, despite the above continuing to make the same (or similar) content, they've been overwhelmed by the likes of unoriginal, bland content, by those like DanTDM, Stampy, and Yogscast...

[SensualEthiopianPolice]

13 minutes ago, imlegos said:

The problem with getting people of internet fame could be summed up simply: Minecraft.

In the beggining, there was several good Tubers, such as Paulsoaresjr, Ethoslab, and few of the annoying script, with the one majorly good one being Yogscast.

But as time went on, despite the above continuing to make the same (or similar) content, they've been overwhelmed by the likes of unoriginal, bland content, by those like DanTDM, Stampy, and Yogscast...

But i feel like since we're still in such early stages, we really need the support and if we get the right community of youtubers, it will mean a lot better

[newton27]

6 hours ago, Nubbie said:

More PR for the game

That's what I've been doing.