Teaching new players when kind words dont help

Most of the things you complained about the new players building don't cost more than 1000, so that policy doesn't make much sense.

I find it very hard to believe that any possible policy will cause bad players to not be bad players.

I was not around for the time many years ago when these kinds of unit unlocks existed but I have not been told that anything about dealing with new players was any more pleasant then.

Furthermore, in an RTS seeing somebody else make something cool and then being told "nah piss off you're not a member of the cool kids so you can't make this yet" sounds like an incalculably shitty experience. Especially if you can't work out how to counter it.

IMO just toss them in to a boot camp vs a Brutal AI, realistically beating brutal AI take like 5 minutes so if they can learn to do it good on them, otherwise they are kind of usless in teams...

quote: IMO just toss them in to a boot camp vs a Brutal AI, realistically beating brutal AI take like 5 minutes so if they can learn to do it good on them, otherwise they are kind of usless in teams...

Do you really think that most of lobstar pot players (including Firepluk) could do it? :D When i start to play ZK i was bad as well. However before i started playing teams i played many games with CAI because i didn't wanted to be got blamed for stupidity starting playing game like white papper list.

Im so low level forum user I dont even know how to make quotes, but to Aquanim: people making things under 1000 will start making the more expensive stuff also, and waste much team metal for nothing. They dont fight, they dont get better. Bad experienced players can be bad, its just that people with few battles under their belt dont get much better if they dont play front, just keep going for striders etc.

Some people just cant do strategy clicking so well, its cool to be bad at the front(up to certain point), but the above mentioned strider people dont really fight. Also if I would have dante of cyclops or such locked, I would be more than happy to play single player to get them, and learn on the side. Now you can be level 0 and get access to level 100 stuff.

Or maybe Im just approaching this wrong, I play to win the battle, not just make big robots and see flashing colors and hear boom noises with no care in the world, like too many new and newish people seem to do. Im starting to understand Firepluk.

Some pop-up info screens for low ranks? Excessing metal would give a small pop-up screen(general or near factory?) saying "build ONE caretaker to help spend metal". Units standing too long in a ball in your base, get a pop-up near them saying to move them closer to the enemy and paying attention to the map, you need to help your team? Start making strider hub, get a pop-up saying the units are really expensive and advanced and need to be properly used, have you played single player tutorials? Make a storage and get a pop up saying ONE is usually enough.

Would new guys really make too many storages if they are clearly told that they dont need to do that by the game itself, not by players? Get that pop-up the first 30 games, you really should understand. If not, hopeless cause, case closed.

The game needs to clearly explain that having 20 cons wont make building finish faster if you dont have metal income to match.

[Spoiler]

For only edited forum posts, you can check out revision history on the left, which will give the whole 'code' as it was written.

Let's go over some frequent things.
Invisible text is possible too, with hexdecimal numbers #RRGGBB
You can change the size of text.

You can change the color of text

You can sternly make your presence known with bold, underline, and italics
Don't confuse the order your [] blocks are in otherwise it can break

quote: this starts a quote block and it contain everything inside it as such

reference someone with an Steel_Blue

For more options, check out:

• Wikipedia
• bbcode.org

Me think there are three abilities players have (or do not have):
1. Knowledge (e.g., how the eco works: sharing, overdrive, grid functions etc.)
2. Skills (e.g., units microing, map control strategy)
3. Style (e.g., porcing, cheeze, etc.)

Seems to me #2 and #3 come with experience, and it's ok, but there are players who don't have enough #1, that is a basic knowledge about game mechanics and that's bad, especially in teams (frustrating their teammates).

For example:
- Cornea "hiding" the structures
- Caretakers and storage spam
- Building luci/cerb with no grid
and so on

So I'd like to see a simple quiz about basic game mechanics (especially resources management), that a player have to pass to be able to play teams.

Back to the original topic: how can I help a new player "git gud" when they waste time and resources in a lobsterpot?

Invite the player to play side-by-side with you against some AIs, and mentor them. After lobster games, if there's someone who wasn't doing so well, I'll invite them to join me. I may not be a godlike player, but I CAN help build the community positively. I figure, the more players we get playing the game regularly, the more likely we'll get the next SoftwareBug, 4hundred, or Godde.

I've recently started inviting new players to play with me, and leaving my co-op lobbies open to anyone so that new players can join me. I take the time to give them some of the basics, and point out things they can do to improve and get on a decent level. I'll explain how to know how much build power to have; when to expand, when to build intel, when to facswitch, etc. As a game ends, I try to point out the end-game graphs to pay attention to so they know where they're going wrong and how to improve.

Kind words do help, but in the confusion of a lobster game, it can be hard to catch what you're trying to say sometimes (even if it appears to be obvious to you with a clear map marker on their fac). We can be positive. It does help.

I like that new players can just jump straight in and really hate the idea of new players being blocked from multiplayer or having units restricted.

Your average 12-a-side lobsterpot might have one or two players who won't contribute anything useful unless given some guidance, but that's not too high a number.

I have more of a problem with the majority of players with 30-300 games who just aren't responsive and don't cooperate than with the guy with only 5 games under his belt making storages.


Don't the splash screens already display the important points like storage and build power? (I learnt quite a bit from those)

TinySpider : You can and should teach players the game in-game. Getting a new person enjoying and playing zero k is far more important than any individual game. I'll happily lose ten pots in a row if it means a new player is instructed and made to feel welcome.