New player's impressions

1/ It's terrific;
2/ Install was a breeze;
3/ It's deeply confusing - even for someone who played TA. This doesn't seem to me to have any easy fix due to the inherent complexity;
4/ A printable master key list somewhere prominent would have been useful;
5/ I've waited quite a while for a 1v1 game. I suspect many new players might not have this patience. Jump in and play us noobs!
6/ I watched a couple of youtube replays. These were a good intro to the strategic aspect;
7/ Matchmaking could really do with a sort-out. In particular given the depth of the modability it seems bizarre that you can't sort out passworded / full games or sort by game version by a checkbox;


Thanks to those who have spent time answering my daft questions over the past few days.

James

3.) What complexity are you exactly talking about? Didn't tutorials help understanding the complex features like overdrive and energy grid?
4.) Printing out /LuaUI/Configs/zk_keys.lua might be the next best thing.
5.) Is there anything that made you not want to spectate/play team games?
7.) You CAN sort out full games (though why would you want to, spectating can be as fun and instructive as playing) or non-Zero-K games.

Duels can be scary as you don't have a team behind you that can soften your mistakes if you fuck up. Plus, due to the low player count, a newbie is more likely to end up in an uneven match against an experienced player. (What if in "1vs1 newbie rooms", the server could automatically add AI's to one of the teams to compensate for the less strong player?)

Orfelius Terrific means great, not terrible...

We don't have a lot of 1v1-minded players yet, would be nice to get some more.
The Achron community is all 1v1, save for some 2v2 and Star games.

quote: 1. Thats rather undescriptive point.

It was inevitable.

The relative difficulty or ease of finding a 1v1 opponent depends a lot on the time of day. 1v1 games are quite common during evening hours in Europe, but may be uncommon during some other hours.

I thought I'd start with the non-descriptive "it's terrific" so that that my others points wouldn't be taken to be too negative. If you'd like me to be more specific: the most important thing is that I've had alot of fun playing over the past week. If people don't have fun immediately then a large number will bounce off a game like this. Now don't give new people being nice about your game a hard time :)

Install was Windows 7 64.

The unit guide is excellent by the way, it's just alot to take in in one go.

Personally I'd rather risk wasting one persons time in a 1v1 that ruin a perfectly good larger team game. The counters are so complex when you start that 1v1 will expose you to a more restrictive roster of units that you might just get a handle on.

Am I still going to play it? I think so. People have generally been patient. I'm rather bored with Starcraft after sinking an embarrassingly large amount of time into it over the past couple of years. This scratches my TA itch rather nicely too. I'd also mention that the pace of the (smaller) games that I've played is excellent: straight into some early skirmishing with a minute and I'm usually wrecked by my oppos superior strategy and tactics within 10.

Thanks for the -password tip!

In team games, you're going to be assigned to teams according to your elo, so being bad is not that much of a problem (especially if you mention it at the start of the game so that your teammates are aware that they probably will have to help you), and since you have more time and less pressure than in a 1vs1 you can usually ask questions even during the game.

Of course that only applies when you have at least learned the basics, and for that there are also single player missions, AI and chicken skirmishes, and spectating games.
If you didn't knew, you can join any non-passworded game, even full ones, and start spectating it even if it has started for an hour - your computer will just have to catch up to the simulation.
Spectating is an excellent time to ask questions, just use "s:" and labeled notifications when the discussion might reveal any information that could be considered as speccheating.

I'm pushing teams because I don't see the current 1vs1 as a fun way to learn the game (from the point when you already know the basics to the point where you know most of the features) unless you get lucky to have the much stronger player in front of you to want to teach you the game instead of playing competitively.

Is getting a helpful 1v1 partner really that lucky? I got the impression that angry duelizts are much better at people skills than the teams masses.