Forums / Questions and Answers / Keeping the new people

Admins responding to suggestions and improvement forum and stop ignoring the players

VU has all - human interaction, encouragement, guidance, and forums. What it doesn't have is something shiny that attracts people. A good content must catch an eye first and only then people realise how deep and interesting it is. The very first steps of the game has to be attractive.

My idea of a giving a good first impression / good first steps:

Have a good, comprehensive tutorial with good explanations and some interactive "activities" that will let a new player learn the game quickly and appreciate its attractive points. That way, the player won't step out into the world like some lost child waiting to get run over by a truck (sorry for the sucky metaphor, but I think it is the most accurate description).

Such an endeavor (the tutorial) would require effort, patience and determination, but the payoff would be great. Bigger playerbase = bigger number of BT buyers = bigger income for Zeta.

But *shrug*... he hardly does anything nowadays (nowamonths?). So nothing ventured, nothing gained.

This game is dated and only appeals to a select crowd, which is diminishing as technology progresses. Similar to how you don't see swarms of people rushing to play text RPGs / 'roguelike' games, as they only appeal to a select crowd now (which is diminishing).

Give a kid the choice between DOOM and Call of Duty - which do you think he will choose to play?

Shogun total war, medieval total war 1 & 2, Rome total war, etc. 

I honestly think the name needs to be changed, I dont mind it but some of the looks when i tell people what its called really makes me think a change wouldnt be so bad

yes that might be true, but when the name of your online strategy game sounds like it belongs to a porn website we might be having a small issue lol. but ultimately  I agree with Chade: the name of the game doesnt/shouldnt really effect the retention rate of VU. 

Maybe Zeta should sell VU to a gaming company and let them develop it? Uggh, please... you'd be paying for everything    

rather have your friends know your a perv then a geek :P

04:48:27 Dec 18th 12 - Endless (Ms. Archangel):

the 5 new player worlds is the dumbest idea ever, its just a cesspit of new players who havnt got a clue, they need to be immersed into the vu experiance not thrown into a shallow pool with other retards.

the player base is spread far too thin, too many people are killing off the new guys, bring back the old system of just fant, the bred some of the best players, why change a system that worked?

Honestly I like the lower worlds where I can actually survive alone.

as a new player I say:

Take out the chat. 

Nobody responds on the chat ever, so new players feel alone

I know because when I first started playing I was asking for help on there (several times over the course of the day) and no responses :-(

But i found info I needed in the forums. 

So take out the chat, direct people to forums, GG

The biggest issue is new players don't have a proper funnel into the game.  There used to be a homepage and a tutorial you could play before entering.  My tutorial videos (I'm working on new ones shut up!) are in the forums but new players have no idea to look there to find them.

Because the issue isn't the chat necessarily most people straight out of the gate will try it for maybe a day and forget about it.  If there was a way that mentors/guides were informed in the same sense that leaders/vices are informed about kingdom apps they would be able to message a player right away.  Hell you could even have a list of race mentors when a player joins.

So can someone help me? I'm on latha and am sort of a new player. The controlling kd say there are a learning kd and they will take anyone up to 10 players. They have 9. The leader says they are voting on my app but keep on prepping on my cities. I have been teleporting him off since it seems to me he wouldn't be doing this if they were planning on taking me. He has a corp coming down here and am not quite ready. Is there anything that I can do? Not the best way to keep players on a training world. 

They are obviously staling to make time to send more armies to take your cities.  I demand you publicly announce this kingdom you speak of! :P

PBJ helps new players, granted can only have 10 players in a kd there. We generally accept the first to apply.. ofc we check to see who you are.

Since I'm in PBJ, I can shed some light on this situation.

We are definitely NOT a noob-stomping kingdom (in fact, the only town I've taken belonged to an ex-kd member that went inactive).

The reason we did not accept Mr. Puesdopazuzu is because of his behaviour against our leader before he requested to join us. However, we still offered him help in this game.

Thirdly: the player that ook his town (Haru) is actually a new player.

Just to get the foul stench out of the air. Playing on the lower worlds leads to accusations of noob-stomping way too easily.

Everyone in our kingdom is ordered not to touch you, so don't worry about that. Contact with him went through Shyers, so I don't know exactly what else was discussed, but I know he offered to help him out too.

Problem is that we need to teach our new players how warfare in this game works too, so we can't just accept everyone into the kingdom as it would leave them with no targets.