Focus on the New User

New ideas, features you wish were in the game.
Fink
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Focus on the New User

Post by Fink » Wed 22.08.2007, 22:23

We've had two threads that relate to the new user experience, so perhaps we should try to think on this topic more. Post ideas here related to the issue of the problems new users run into that we could conceivably address. The goal is to have people check out the game, have a good time, and *like* MAngband.

What we want here:  common problems or experiences new users run into that suck, and perhaps some simple, specific ideas of how to address it.

What we don't want here: over-broad issues like "man, its really hard up till level 23" or "fix the problem I mentioned by rewriting the whole X system / introduce a whole new system that would take nine years to do" etc.

-----------------------------------------

I'll start it off with the two problems that have come up recently in discussion that brings the whole topic to mind. You'll note I'm being a bit harsh in my wording below. This is my attempt to kind of slap us around out of our habits, as most of the things below we've kind of gotten used to and no longer think about. From the standpoint of a new user giving the game a quick peek, however, they are huge.

Fink
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The game feels slow and laggy to new players

Post by Fink » Wed 22.08.2007, 22:25

Problem: Because new users don't know about the run key, they invariably connect, move a few spaces, and think "damn! this is sooo slowww! It must be all laggy! This sucks!"

The real problem is that they dont know about the run key, whose purpose is to address the slowness of normal movement. Coming up with something to address the "first five minutes connected" experience would help overcome that first impression that the game is slow and laggy.

Fink
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Floating eye endless-paralysis loop sucks

Post by Fink » Wed 22.08.2007, 22:29

Problem: Due to how the Floating Eye monster is implemented, new users often run into the situation where they get stuck being endlessly paralysed by Floating Eyes. If noone is on to help them, they have no real recourse but to leave the game. This sucks. Because they often run into this monster early on (at 50 feet), their early combat experience of MAngband is something that makes us and the game look icky and no fun.

Possible fixes: Perhaps we could push this monster a bit deeper, so players get a few dungeon levels to experience combat in MAngband before they run into the Eye.

Or, perhaps we could retune the effects of the floating eye so that the result is one where a player has a chance to recover and get some swings in now and then. The eye could attack less often, the failure could be higher, or the duration could be shortened so that the average new player would not get stuck perma-loop paralysed.

Fink
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BSV's in town suck, and are fun for noone.

Post by Fink » Wed 22.08.2007, 22:32

Problem: It is almost completely unconsciounable in my book to put monsters in town that spawn all over the place that can completely tool a new player. This is just completely lame, and sucks. Games need a safe breather spot, where the player is able to focus on their equipment, talking to players, buy, sell, etc. The *dungeon* should be the dungeon, *not the town*.

Possible Fixes: Drop battle scarred veterans (and, heck, any other townie that can kill the player) from town. Let them spawn out in the out-of-town levels if we feel it's really important that they still be in the game, but whatever we do with them, we should just straight-up not be spawning them where the new player is hanging out getting sorted.

Fink
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The WindowsXP corrupted display bug sucks.

Post by Fink » Wed 22.08.2007, 22:48

Problem: The common display bug that WindowsXP users run into sucks.  This bug makes the game look like some hokey ghetto pre-alpha release that's barely working and all hacked together.  Even finding out that its not intentional is not easy, as it just looks like mangband is a buggy alpha-state game. Fixing it involves the task of finding out it exists, having someone tell you whats going on, and pointing you to the correct forum post to fix it.

Possible fixes: At the very least, server operaters should make mention of it on the splash screen for connecting new users. Let's face it: XP is pretty much the operating system of the planet, whether we like it or not. So, we need to assume that a fair chunk of our new users checking out the game are using it.

The bug is one that actually isnt our fault: microsoft introduced it by deciding to change some stuff up. So, XP users have to change some values in a particular file to fix the problem, which some find a bit daunting.

Jug left a post to a download of the fixed file, so new users don't have to manually change stuff themselves. This is a good thing. I'm not quite sure what we can do with this one, but we need to make sure that, in general, new users are crystal clear on the potential of the problem; that is a bug and that the game shouldnt look like that; and that the fix is easy.

Fink
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Our documentation sucks.

Post by Fink » Wed 22.08.2007, 22:56

Problem: We've got dozens of overlapping files, guides, faqs, docs, manuals, help files, and everything else scatterred all over the place. Half of them reference things that havent been in the game in eons, and the other half are too long, too vague, too general, or too brief.

News flash: most people want to just check out the game to see if they like it, not pore over pages of obscure, out of date text files to try to figure out the common basic elements of the game. We need to give them that.

Possible fixes: This is a big issue of course, but I'm going to focus just on the new user experience. We need to provide a simple, basic, step-by-step of what to do to get killing. This short, 2-page-max guide should tell the player exactly what to do ("start by choosing a half-troll , and try a warrior class character. This is a tough to kill character that is good to use to check out the game.  Enter stats in this order..." etc).

This guide should avoid excessive detail or context, and instead just focus on concrete basics so the player who is just rolling by for a peek can be quickly up and running, and having a good time. We should focus just on the basics of exactly what a player needs to do to generate, gear up some very basic stuff, get to the dungeon, and kill stuff.

We don't need to list all the commands, just a basic set of the common stuff.

We should mention common problems *in brief*, so the new player knows what to expect. For example, we should briefly mentioned the XP text bug,  and the fact that the game is really tough without a numpad (laptops are extremely common as a main computer for people these days).

This short guide should be along the lines of "hit w to wear your armor, weapon and torch. Head over to the X shop to buy a bit of Y." Etc. We should focus this doc not on a player who wants to know everything about the first four thousand feet of play. Instead, it should literally be written for someone who is probably going to spend maybe 30 minutes looking at the game to see what they think.

This guide should be included in the binary download, be labeled crystal clear as a starting reader, etc.

Fink
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Dealing with macros sucks.

Post by Fink » Wed 22.08.2007, 23:02

Problem: MAngband pretty much assumes the use of macros. Macros are arcane and difficult to set up for the casual first-time user. We've tried to streamline it a tad by having a forum post to point to, but it still is a complicated and error-prone experience to deal with them, and not having them present hurts the experience of new users. We effectively have a required aspect of the game that players must use, yet we dont even have it implemented. Its as if we took a chunk of the game, didnt finish it, and just tell the new player "uh, here's a scripting language interface that is really ghetto. You go finish it up so you can actually get the full required control we assume." Ugh. This sucks.

Possible Fixes: Hoo boy, this is a tough one. Macros are plain and simple a complex thing. Its so damned easy to make mistakes, overwrite a game key when you actually get one working, and are hard to understand. The best I can think of here is to bite the bullet, and have documented pre-made macros covering the very minimal basics (ie, to fire a ranged weapon, quaff a cure potion, and read a scroll). While this still requires the new player to inscribe their items that they have which the macros can use, this really isnt that bad of a thing, and is something that is a foundation of the game anyway. We can cover this in documentation and guides.

Fink
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The "first back after reset" connection bug sucks.

Post by Fink » Wed 22.08.2007, 23:26

Problem: A completely kooky element of MAngband is what happens to the first person who connects to a server after it has been reset. They get a god-awful connection until they reconnect.

I don't even want to know how many new users have quietly logged on late at night after a server reset, only to find the most horrific connection seen this side of the first Doom net game somebody tried to play on a hacked-up 1950's sewing machine. Their first thought after staggering around town with uber packet loss is going to be "multiplayer?!? more like a freakin lag simulator! Screw this pre-alpga game, Im out!"

Crimson has mentioned that this is an expected side effect of some other things going on in the code. Whatever the case may be, this bug has probably done more than almost anything to help keep alive the myth that MAngband has horrible net code (a perpetual impression people over in rgra have about us). One way or another, we really need to sort this out.

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Re: Our documentation sucks.

Post by Berendol » Thu 23.08.2007, 00:18

I've got a bunch of replies, but I'd like to condense it down to one post.
Problem: We've got dozens of overlapping files, guides, faqs, docs, manuals, help files, and everything else scatterred all over the place. Half of them reference things that havent been in the game in eons, and the other half are too long, to vague, to general, or too brief.
Let's get that guide written. I support it being written and maintained in the Library wiki, which I originally created to solve the unmanageable documentation issue. This addresses your second point, that of the current state of MAngband's documentation. The intent is to eventually (with the community's help) merge everything previously written into the Library, so we can have One Documentation Source to Rule Them All. Anyone can work on it, it is backed up regularly by my hosting provider, and I have no plans to take it down or stop paying my $5/month... so let's see if we can make it a little more useful.
Problem: It is almost completely unconsciounable in my book to put monsters in town that spawn all over the place that can completely tool a new player. This is just completely lame, and sucks. Games need a safe breather spot, where the player is able to focus on their equipment, talking to players, buy, sell, etc. The *dungeon* should be the dungeon, *not the town*.
...

Problem: Due to how the Floating Eye monster is implemented, new users often run into the situation where they get stuck being endlessly paralysed by Floating Eyes. If noone is on to help them, they have no real recourse but to leave the game. This sucks. Because they often run into this monster early on (at 50 feet), their early combat experience of MAngband is something that makes us and the game look icky and no fun.
I agree with you on this one, and the Eye one. Let's make it 100% possible to get started and enjoy the first few minutes every time. Let's get rid of townies that can kill the player at 0 feet, at the risk of being un-Vanilla. Where should we move Floating Eyes? 250' sound about right? Also.. the paralysis effect shouldn't stack at shallow depths. That's almost a necessary change here. Being able to occasionally get a saving throw against paralysis would make these things more manageable. This was a bit of an oversight in the transition to realtime. In single-player turn-based Angband, you could try to move every turn, so you'd never have wasted an attempt, and you'd probably get out of it eventually. In MAngband, you have to basically hold down the button and hope for the best.
Problem: MAngband pretty much assumes the use of macros. Macros are arcane and difficult to set up for the casual first-time user. We've tried to streamline it a tad by having a forum post to point to, but it still is a complicated and error-prone experience to deal with them, and not having them present hurts the experience of new users. We effectively have a required aspect of the game that players must use, yet we dont even have it implemented. Its as if we took a chunk of the game, didnt finish it, and just tell the new player "uh, here's a scripting language interface that is really ghetto. You go finish it up so you can actually get the full required control we assume." Ugh. This sucks.
Could we take a page from other more popular games, and have a nice easy CGI script that generates downloadable, customized macro files which assign the F-keys? I recall the macro bars in WoW and Ragnarok Online, and the macro system in FFXI, and would like to have something simple that can create a new macro file based on "recipes" like Assign F2 to "Quaff Potion inscribed @q1", F4 to "Read Scroll inscribed @r1", F12 to "Wield/Exchange Weapon inscribed @w1"... etc.
Problem: A completely kooky element of MAngband is what happens to the first person who connects to a server after it has been reset. They get a god-awful connection until they reconnect.
Does ANYONE have any leads on this problem? We really, really need to solve it. Maybe there should be a cash reward (in euros or US dollars) or some other tangible reward (movie rentals, restaurant gift card, online store gift card) or special in-game reward (when ghost is "killed", move it to town) or other special reward (email address at mangband.org) for whoever gets it completely fixed first. I have looked around but I don't see anything that should cause it. It's pretty bad. Solutions like kicking the first connecting player out immediately, or having an auto-connecting bot shouldn't be an option. However, the bot idea could work as a stopgap solution... you'd just have to set it up in the runserv script.
Problem: The common display bug that WindowsXP users run into sucks.  This bug makes the game look like some hokey ghetto pre-alpha release that's barely working and all hacked together.
Actually, that's exactly what the Windows client is. It's been hacked together by people who didn't completely understand the whole process, as you can see by the GDI resource bugs and the way the chat window "works" and all the things that are broken "accidentally" or "until we figure out how to implement them"... so that impression would be partially correct. It was never intended for use on NT or its derivatives, like 2000, XP or Vista! It was developed under and for Windows 95 and 98, if all of my sources (ha!) are correct. Its networking code (and this is kind of another grievance here) dates back to the Win95/98 era, does not understand NAT or proxies, and does not use any of the more advanced features available in new OSes like UPnP and registration with the Windows XP SP2 firewall. Let me tell you... UPnP can make a HUGE difference to anyone sharing a consumer-level router purchased in the last few years.

Here's some big news, a little insider info for you all. I'm working on a completely new ground-up pre-pre-alpha one-window prototype of some client support code that would only run on a modern OS (Windows 2000+) with modern graphics hardware supporting Shaders 1.1 (ATI 8000+ or Geforce 3+) and it looks extremely promising. In fact, "extreme" isn't even a strong enough word to say how good it feels. Graphics and interaction are silky smooth. I'll have to figure out the net code implementation (which is going to take a while since I want to document the whole protocol) and then the rest will be cake. We could have a nice looking, responsive client in a few months... imagine that! Might be possible to make it a full-screen game or even toggle between windowed and full screen. And for anyone willing to download the XNA development tools, its appearance would be customizable. Think skins, or moving things like the stats and messages around.
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Warrior
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Re: Focus on the New User

Post by Warrior » Thu 23.08.2007, 06:41

The game feels slow and laggy to new players
Like suggested in another post,  make running default in town (but possible to turn it off in config). Not default in the dungeon though.
Then, as the player enters the dungeon, a brief message: "This is the dungeon, beware... (Shift+Direction to run)".
Floating eye endless-paralysis loop sucks
Like Berendol suggests, just put them down to 250 or thereabout. No harm done.
BSV's in town suck, and are fun for noone.
As has been suggested previously and actually done from time to time by players themselves (by the use of glyphs), just ban the townspeople from inner town (around shops&stairs) This could obviously be a problem when the stairs are generated far from the shops. I definitely don't think removing townspeople is the way to go, but they should be altered, I think they still should pose some threat to smaller players, but not a lot more than the early levels in the the dungeon. The main problem is the amount of townspeople, a BSV won't kill you but a whole gang will... I'd suggest changing their respawn rate and adding a max number to townpeople. If we were to protect the inter city that'd have to be done either way. Removing townspeople is wrong! There's always gonna be the discussions about what we can do for the new players but, hey... we don't need to change or remove everything that someone somewhere might feel is a problem. There's too much spawning, no doubt, but - make townspeople less alert, fewer in numbers and keep them away from the shops. Or just give them a very small chance to break through into inner town...
The WindowsXP corrupted display bug sucks.
Make Jug's windows client the official windows client. I've never experienced this problem and I'm using XP. At least until Berendol's very very interesting sounding client is up. Or until someone else does something better than Jug's.
Our documentation sucks.
Yes. Agree with your points. Needs to be done. Should be included with the game and displayed IN the game when you hit "?". And "?" should ideally be shown in a different window than the main window, as you're totally helpless whenever you're in any kind of menu.
Dealing with macros sucks.
Some kind of default macros would be good, personally I've always used only the function keys and "-", if you use the Shift and Control combinations you have almost 40 macros there, that should be enough. Generally: Normal function keys (non control/shift combinations) would be essential macros for each class (someone would have to sit down and figure those out) and then shift+function key could be offensive macros and control + function key would be defensive macros. For example. Thats a somewhat default macro setup. People who want to tweak this can of course do so and most experienced players will.

We should also have another option in the macro menu that would lead to a macro guide: (8) Macro Guide. Speaking of the macro menu... option (2) Dump Macros should be renamed to Save Macros
The "first back after reset" connection bug sucks.
If the new ircgate character counts this problem should be gone now since it automatically reconnects after server reset. Well, problem isn't gone, all right...
-- Mangband Project Team Member

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Flambard
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Re: Focus on the New User

Post by Flambard » Fri 24.08.2007, 19:25

small offtopic1: I do agree, that numpad is extremly usefull for playing mang - I put my macros there. Now, playing on laptops is still painfull for me, not because they don't have num pads, but because they have pgup/pgdn/home/end keys all over the place.. yeah that's offtopic, but just to give fink some perspective on how different we all are :)

offtopic2: http://www.mindloop.ru/tmp/mang_sdl.jpg - now I'm feeling we still have some miscommunication problems hehe :P

anyways on topic now:
Could we take a page from other more popular games, and have a nice easy CGI script that generates downloadable, customized macro files which assign the F-keys?
that sounds pretty damn good
Drop battle scarred veterans (and, heck, any other townie that can kill the player) from town
sorry, but this calls for serious argument :) how about we make newbie-class characters who can't go below level 15 (or XXX feet) but can't die of stupid causes (or at all) either.. I know that may sound weird but that's exactly my point
Like suggested in another post,  make running default in town (but possible to turn it off in config). Not default in the dungeon though.
Then, as the player enters the dungeon, a brief message: "This is the dungeon, beware... (Shift+Direction to run)".
nice! but even better make a "Show Tips" config option (default=on, advanced players turn it off) and put all kind of stupid messages in there, like "You're mage, so press 'm' to cast", or "You can STUDY new spells, press G to do it" or even "If you feel it's laggy here, try running with Shift+Direction" (displayed after a newborn character makes a few steps)..

btw, I remember having a very nice screen in Moria and possibly Angband with the all the keys on one page, but in mang we only have a list of them (not full) in help file and they are not even on the first page..
Like Berendol suggests, just put them down to 250 or thereabout. No harm done.
yeah :) screw the floating eye..
Let's get that guide written. I support it being written and maintained in the Library wiki
Yeah, a wiki would do very nicely! link?

----------------

That's all that came to my mind right away :()

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Re: Focus on the New User

Post by udosdottir » Sat 25.08.2007, 05:00

We've had two threads that relate to the new user experience, so perhaps we should try to think on this topic more.
This is really a very important topic: to get new players and *keep* them.
There are two kinds of new players, though: Those that already know vanilla or some other Roguelike, and those that are completely new. They have slightly different problems at the start, but both groups are worth to please. I'll try to add a bit about the perspective of the first.
Problem: Because new users don't know about the run key, they invariably connect, move a few spaces, and think "damn! this is sooo slowww! It must be all laggy! This sucks!"
The "felt lag" is also a major problem when vanilla-players first enter the game, even if they know the run key. Furthermore, running in town is near impossible, because all the townies are around. I agree, they could be completely deleted. Together with their deletion i like warrior's suggestion.

Macros: I would wish for the 'query marco' function that is available in vanilla angband. - The game simply tells you, what macro sits on a given key.  
Apart from this, i think that it would be a real good idea to have better standard macros. There should be several of them and should be loaded according to how the roguelike-keyset-option is set. Many vanilla angband players use roguelike keyset and the current settings are fatal, because important standard keys are overwritten with macros.

It would also be good if we could program our macros at a save spot. A town without potential killers would help. But more ambitous would be a macro editor, that can be run offline (macros are an issue completely on the client side, right?). This editor could be easier to handle for new players and may have the funtoriality that Berendol mentioned:
would like to have something simple that can create a new macro file based on "recipes" like Assign F2 to "Quaff Potion inscribed @q1", F4 to "Read Scroll inscribed @r1", F12 to "Wield/Exchange Weapon inscribed @w1"... etc.
Floating Eyes: I think they are a valuable lesson in: "do not attack everything that moves in the dungeon" and should be kept in - especially at shallow depth. On the other hand - this is the argument that i would hold against deleting (or lowering) floating eyes in vanilla angband. Maybe this argument is worth less here.

Another Problem: perception in the community. Some of the players with midgame or endgame characters maybe should simply write about their experiences in the angband newsgroup. Simply so that people see that mangband is still alive. Most of the player to player communication is dealt with in the chat in Mang, but this makes mangband lose touch with the rest of the angband community. This is bad and makes us miss a lot of potential players. Maybe some equipment discussions could be brought to the newsgroup like: Am i ready to face Morgoth? - or whatever discussion.

In general, fink is doing important work in spotting and adressing new players. I remember when i was the second time around that i met him, and he explained the most important issues. Basically, this was what made me stick. *And* this is nothing that a good documentation can fix. Simply the fact that i felt welcome did the trick. This part of player recruitment is  another key point - there should be more people around who give newbies a warm welcome.

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Re: Focus on the New User

Post by Kusma » Sat 25.08.2007, 05:17

[quote author=Warrior link=board=thinktank;num=1187839387;start=0#9 date=08/23/07 at 06:41:27]
Make Jug's windows client the official windows client. I've never experienced this problem and I'm using XP. At least until Berendol's very very interesting sounding client is up. Or until someone else does something better than Jug's.

[/quote]
Er... there is a different windows client? Is it possible to download it? Anything remotely useful should be linked from http://www.mangband.org/download/ so people can find it without searching the forum or doing anything else that isn't completely obvious.

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Re: Focus on the New User

Post by Kusma » Sat 25.08.2007, 05:26

[quote author=udosdottir link=board=thinktank;num=1187839387;start=0#11 date=08/25/07 at 05:00:49]
Macros: I would wish for the 'query marco' function that is available in vanilla angband. - The game simply tells you, what macro sits on a given key.  
Apart from this, i think that it would be a real good idea to have better standard macros. There should be several of them and should be loaded according to how the roguelike-keyset-option is set. Many vanilla angband players use roguelike keyset and the current settings are fatal, because important standard keys are overwritten with macros.

[/quote]

This is a general problem when people who have played Vanilla before come and start playing MAngband - the UI is very much like Angband's UI was 10 years ago. Not having a character screen that tells me what resistances I have, not being able to examine items and not being able to query macros are all things that were fixed in Vanilla several years ago, and it should be basically trivial to port the changes to Mangband. It is quite annoying to not have the comfort that you are used to in what is basically the same game, and in my experience this adds to the frustration inherent in moving to realtime when vanilla players test Mangband for the first time.

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Re: Focus on the New User

Post by Berendol » Sat 25.08.2007, 17:04

Yeah, a wiki would do very nicely! link?
All the way at the top of every Forum page, next to Who's Playing link, there's a Library link. That's the Wiki I set up in December. I think I set it up to require registration, but that's rather painless and you get credited for your work.
offtopic2: http://www.mindloop.ru/tmp/mang_sdl.jpg - now I'm feeling we still have some miscommunication problems hehe
Eh? Is this the other client mentioned in this thread? I haven't actually tried that one yet. Looks kinda like what I've been working on.
Furthermore, running in town is near impossible, because all the townies are around.
I hate that. Ugh! Free money's nice, though, so I guess having a few weak ones might be OK... just cap it at maybe 10 or 15 total, and don't have them run away to the corners. The gaggles of urchins and all those drooling idiots just don't float my boat.
Anything remotely useful should be linked from http://www.mangband.org/download/ so people can find it without searching the forum or doing anything else that isn't completely obvious.
I'd love to be able to edit that page, but Crimson's the guy to talk to there. Hey, if he wants to grant me the ability to do that... I'll accept :)
Macros: I would wish for the 'query marco' function that is available in vanilla angband. - The game simply tells you, what macro sits on a given key.
That's a fantastic idea! How about we make it real user friendly and bind a key to that, so you can scroll through your lists... or even make it printable?
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