Some thoughts.

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[Smokaz]

I think Wind has a point, using precious time to help people play this very hard and unforgiving mod wasn't accredited much, if at all, and it probably should have been. I've stopped doing this completely, I manage the strategy forum and answer threads there and always post in the "Hey guys how do I do this" type of threads, and answer questions but that's something any experienced player could do. If they wanted to write up what they know about the game in the strategy forum or make guides that's not the hardest thing in the world to do. I post discussions about the metagame, etc all around forum entertainer and community worker. It's higher tier than suffering through games with entirely new players, the latter is definitely more of a pain if you don't like to do it.

We used to have something like this:

http://forums.europeinruins.com/index.php?topic=9475.0

Basically either a vet/new player faced another similar team, or the new players duked it out in a live 1v1 with each vet player spectacting and being wheelchair (armchair?) commander. It was quite funny and eirr-educational as well.

Stuff like scenarios etc. Moderators helped out, but even if you've been with the mod for quite some time like I had I still got told to go suck my own dick no ribcage style when I wanted temporary more access to organize the campaign games, etc. I've been involved in balance etc it's like testing is some evil we'd try to avoid. The whole situation with the SQL accounts was so hyped up. 

It boils down to a question of what the ratio of time is between EIRRMOD's crucial coding and the people keeping it alive day to day, week to week. Does the latter have zero worth? 

If anyone think the survival of the playerbase and the forums is just some artificially declining and increasing population solely dictated by patches, I pity them. A week after the last patch there was several days with 7-8 players online each time I logged on. A fluke, perhaps.

Anyways happy hanukah and christmas everyone

[Nevyen]

So its comes down to this, who's going to step up and run it?

[EIRRMod]

Wind, reward units didnt even exist before the Campaign. If they did, they were just toys for BoB to play with. Remember all the contests that fell through? haha

Other than that, there was nothing the devs could give you. Aside from a "Thanks," which no one here gets anyways.

*shrug*  I didnt even know Wind could register people, let alone was a mentor.

Sorry wind, I put this down to too busy, and no real feedback (from both mentors and myself)

Maybe something more solid (including incentives) could be made up?

[EIRRMod]

Oh, Nev already asked this

Id be prepared to tie in a Mentoring program early next year (Late Jan - Early Feb) - in regards to rewards and a system added to the Launcher.
That is if you guys can think up some things/systems that would help the mentoring / teaching of other players, and what kind of 'reward' or incentives youd like (which, tbh you should leave till after you see the warmap final).

[Nevyen]

and then the sound of  crickets arrive

[Lai]

Thought about writing some Lai'ish post but restrained myself; it's Christmas

[BigDick]

How it should work is:

everyone needs to have at least 1 company for each side (means one axis/one allies) with the option to select their preferred company for each side (e.g. wehrmacht-blitz for axis and us-armor for allies)

arranged games should be optional and not to obvious that noobs will not lured into the trap of waiting stacks

the usual way to play should be an automatching that not just selects the battle to take part...it need to select the side (axis/allies) too

that prevents 3 things from happening

1. no games going because noone want to play a specific side
2. a stack waiting in automatch because they know that not much other ppl will looking for a game on their side
3. onesided biased pricks playing axis or allies exclusively to whine in forums how bad the "other" side is


give it some time and people will love the system because going games instantly and almost always balanced matchups

[Mysthalin]

I did the helper/mentor thing for around a year myself - was one of the very first... Sometimes I did get thanks from the newbies, and some of them grew up to be quite good players, and even quite good friends. I even had mod powers on ventrilo, and a special tag - as thanks from the dev team.

But the simple thing is, that even with these incentives that I got - volunteering to help newbies is excruciatingly hard work. The few people that say thanks, that stick around are simply not enough to off-set the dozens upon dozens that refuse to get on ventrilo, act like idiots and speak midget english. And after 2 hour of you getting them to grasp the basic concept of why there should be 2 sources of AT in any balanced core they just fuck off, never to be seen again. This kind of thing - the "Toxic Newbie" is the main plague eating at your will to continue mentoring. People who not only leech off your good will and nature, but then actually just throw it all into a trash-can and shit all over it. At that point - even the deodorant effect you get from somebody who's nice isn't enough to off-set the stink the "Toxic Newbies" left.

It's why I stopped helping out, why I asked for my moderator powers on vent to be removed and why I just... don't care about newbies anymore. I literally avoid playing with or against them. I will not lie - I don't play against newbies not just because of my noble stance of not wanting to rape them too horribly(even though it plays a large part of it). No, I just can't be arsed explaining how they're supposed to get into the game, or build their company. It just doesn't seem worth the effort any more.

Though, when I do see a prominent newbie who's being nice, I do try to be nice. But that's been getting rarer and rarer. And to be fair - if a person can't be friendly towards anyone when he first join a community - the community is much better off without such scum. I won't feel bad.

[Smokaz]

Actually you lost ventrilo because you went the path of Draken, aka becoming rage mod

Anyways in real life parents PAY junior ski teachers, dance teachers etc. They are all very young sometimes. Hell, elitegren is a soccer trainer for younger players.

While e-sports is still frowned upon by the established in the West, objectively we to admit that spending time helping out new players falls under a similar category of work.

Learning other people stuff is a Art, thats why you have educations dedicated to it. Like pedagogics are required for high school teachers.

Of course it's easier to learn away stuff to people that think its fun to play the game and want to learn it.

I'm guess the point I'm trying to get across is thatspending time helping other people for the mod requires effort, and concentration. It's not some lazy one-hand thing.

[Mysthalin]

After banning you on vent I was only suspended from vent moderation for 3 days, Smokie. Don't flatter yourself too much.

[Groundfire]

Tbh, we've been mulling around some possible solutions to help offset the huge responsibility it takes to mentor someone. Launcher Tooltips, preferably in different languages, so mentors can focus less about getting the noob started, and more about how to play instead.

This of course requires EIRRmod to do some coding, but it would be rather easy to implement im sure.

[Smokaz]

MENTOR accounts would be a good idea and a valid incentive.

No stats on it, completely unlocked, no pp cost account with no progression of wins and losses. An account with a special level 0 "Mentor" visible something like EIRRMOD has level 10 "Lead developer" instead of level 9 General on his account.

Probably shouldn't have veterancy on it eithe.

That way you avoid losses on your account etc, you dont show up as 0 - 10 guy on the leaderboard.

Permanent unlocked so you can switch it between level 9 axis and allies at your will to respond to the need of the different players wanting a teammate on their side.

[RoyalHants]

MENTOR accounts would be a good idea and a valid incentive.

No stats on it, completely unlocked, no pp cost account with no progression of wins and losses. An account with a special level 0 "Mentor" visible something like EIRRMOD has level 10 "Lead developer" instead of level 9 General on his account.

Probably shouldn't have veterancy on it eithe.

That way you avoid losses on your account etc, you dont show up as 0 - 10 guy on the leaderboard.

Permanent unlocked so you can switch it between level 9 axis and allies at your will to respond to the need of the different players wanting a teammate on their side.

*drools*

[Artekas]

Bigdick, I don't see that working at all since there is a Warmap coming, which from my understanding will be the primary mode of play. I don't know the details about the Warmap but I am pretty sure that it would be counterproductive to have a warmap where it forces you to play both sides equally.

Other than that it's actually a great idea, I know I would hate it at first because playing as Allies is simply boring, but in the end I think the benefits the system brings would outweigh that negative.

[tank130]

I find it interesting the two directions this conversations has gone. Mentors want some kind of reward for what they are doing, but at the same time say they have given up because the noobs just fuck off.

You want more noobs to stay? Find a way to stop the spam and gimmicks. Just think about that for a second. If you were playing VCoH all this time and just stepped into the mod right now, you would honestly say WTF. Spam is rampant and fucked up in VCoH, people coming to this mod come here hoping it is something better and more challenging. But guess what, it is deteriorating into some really fucked up bullshit.

Not all noobs are going to stay  because there is no spam or gimmicks; some are going to leave because it is too much of a challenge, or it's just not their thing; But a lot more will stick around if there's a lot less bullshit.

The Dev's ( the top dev in fact ) have recognized there is a spam problem and they are looking for constructive input on how to reduce it. The Dev's and the majority of the community recognize this and want it stopped. There are about 6 very vocal individuals that cry fowl anytime this  is brought up. Excuses like: freedom of play-style, don't want everybody to have the same company, it's fun, it takes more skill..... are all the lame excuses brought up by these people to try to defend their spam and gimmicks. Hopefully they will recognize it is destroying the community and lessening the amount of new players that stay.

I think it would be rewarding to mentor a large amount of players that stuck around to become regulars. Unfortunately, even guys who have been around a long time and have given a lot to this mod, have given up playing due to the abuse of broken stuff, spam, and gimmicks. Do you really expect new players to stick through this? A few will, there are always exceptions, but the mentors have just said how many they train only to have them disappear.

I am sorry I got off topic here, but I guess I am just really sick of where this mod has gone. I invested in something that was important to me, but I may have invested unwisely. If you want someone to blame for the low numbers of noobs sticking around, we all have to look to ourselves. We are to blame for allowing the game to deteriorate to the bullshit that is going on right now.

I owe it to EIRRMood to beta test the warmap; I will, but I may not continue after that unless the bullshit is cleaned up.

Regards

[Smokaz]

Well what EIRRMOD posted about oversupply becoming impossible will basically Judo-sweep the legs from under the feet of all "spammers." It's a hardcap system.

People will be forced to have both good infantry - and tank micro again, instead of choosing one for their company.

[ErwinNH]

Words

Good stuff old man, good stuff.

[TheWindCriesMary]

 I'm with Tank on this one. The spam situation has gotten out of control. Especially from the allies. The amount of ATG's flying around from the average allied company right now is like 7000. Complete bananas.

 But I do trust EiRmod's solution will yield some dividends to fix that.

 -Wind

[Artekas]

From what I've heard it doesn't sound like ATGs will be affected at all by what's incoming, but we'll see. I think a big reason that the allies have more ATG spam is that they don't have any handheld AT by default... just as an example a Wehr may spend his AT munitions for three shrecks and three ATGs or something, while his US counterpart would have bought three ATGs and then a ton of munitions left over... and Brits do have handheld AT but they have ATGs and PE does not. I'm not sure that this can be changed easily by any sort of harder anti-spam system, without potentially raping the allies.

I think a reason for ATG spam in general is that it's the only reliable anti-tank. Handheld anti-tank is inaccurate and slow firing, and can be kited because of short range, not to mention it's kind of squishy. Vehicle-based anti-tank is shut down by their anti-tank AND takes up more pop. There are not many hard counters to armour in each faction, and out of these the ATGs are the most reliable and not to mention they insure the safety of your own vehicles from other anti-tank solutions.

[Groundfire]

From what I've heard it doesn't sound like ATGs will be affected at all by what's incoming, but we'll see. I think a big reason that the allies have more ATG spam is that they don't have any handheld AT by default... just as an example a Wehr may spend his AT munitions for three shrecks and three ATGs or something, while his US counterpart would have bought three ATGs and then a ton of munitions left over... and Brits do have handheld AT but they have ATGs and PE does not. I'm not sure that this can be changed easily by any sort of harder anti-spam system, without potentially raping the allies.

This is apart of it. Cant give the allies decent non doctrinal Hand held AT because people cry foul, but we dont want them to use their ATGs to the fullest.

Now that's what they call "conundrum"

This could quite mean that ATGs are too cost effective. We might all see ATG pop go up soon if there is enough demand for it. Until then, lets just see what the new availability system does. But right now, everyone is pissed about spam because large chunks of the current availability system are missing.

As such, its understandable that people are getting pissed. Tbh, I want the name and shame policy to come back, those bad spammers should get dodged until their attitude improves.

I think i might just tag "Balanced Company" in vent so people know what I got and that I wont flip shit on it's head by running 9 FOOtennants or 30000 M8s.