YOUR experience in learning to play this game, and how you can apply it

Nowadays, empires have a unsteady trickle of new players.
That is bad, really bad: we dont want this mod to die.
I remember when i first got into this mod, i was totally confused, taking me around 10 mins to figure out how to spawn (my spawn point screen was taken down accidentally).
After that, i went scout (deja vu) and got yelled at through the mics by around half the team. Then i asked how to switch back to something else (rage rage rage rage rage from the team) and then, miraculously, a light came to me in the form of SF : Bob_barnicle. He patiently dragged me off to a less populated server in australia, and started to walk me through the finer points of the game, like building refs, vehicle creation, starting as an engineer, upgrades, blah blah blah. On the first week he managed to put a elevator on that cliff that is this mod's training curve.
Thanks to him, i now actually know how to play-but, i may just be one of the privileged few that actually benefieted from a kind community member. I sorely soubt that others (even me) will have the patience to explain things in such minute detal to a impatient newcomer (me).
Now, i try to help newcomers as much as i can. All i can ask is for the community to make the same effort.

*toasts* "to bobby!"

 

I never asked for help or anything I just kind of figured out things for myself.. But I probably didn't completely know about every feature until about a year ago.

My first match was on escort as BE.. It was horribly stacked(like 12 vs 9) with at least 6 BSID members on NF and all noobs on BE.. But I was heavily sedated off pain pills so I was having fun just healing people.. lol we never even got past the gate and ended up just getting raped for an hour.. Every match after that was pretty much the same because they had the only populated server.. I mean they would use noclip to distract our turrets and move noobs to the other team so they could stack.. It was horrible.. Hell this game's atmosphere and player attitude is like 10 times better then it was when I first started playing.

 

I don't really remember.

 

I started while we still had an official server. It was fun most times, Money was the best.

I loved artillery. Grenadier is my favorite class in the game, Always has, always will be. Just something about getting 10-15 kills with a well placed mine field early game that just gives you that warm fuzzy feeling inside.

I think the part that helped me out the most was when I wanted to try comming, I went to an empty server to practice placing buildings. Other than that, just don't ask how to do every single thing. how to get ammo just shows a complete lack of patience and just shows that you want to put no effort into learning the game. Asking for an ammo crate is completely different though.

 

i spawned on escort and immediately started trying to snipe people from like 100 game units away. Then i ran around getting killed. That's all i remember. Also I remember being able to teleport about 50 feet per second.... but i dont think that was intentional. XD (laaaaag.)

 

Every time I see a noob in trouble I give him a hand, sometimes I escort them around during a full blown match.

Scouts who know what they are doing and are still scouts however, I have no patience for.

My first experience was on Urbanchaos, I joined, mucked around with the class menu, looking at guns and stuff, then when i was satisfied I hit accept and spawned. The map ended

 

If I remember correctly my first match was on money back 1.02. I picked engineer (As engineer is usually my first choice in class based games), I basically ran around repairing tanks & buildings, while thinking to myself "Man this is like C&C: Renegade". After 10 minutes pretty much everyone crashed. :p

 

My first match was on 1.0 very first day. I joined a 2 player server and both of them were from =GK= (how i miss them). They showed me the basics. This is how they started off

"See that truck over there? bring it to the other side of the base"
Me: ok

"Ok, that truck is called the command vehicle, notice how there's a lock on signal at the bottom? turrets are shooting at you. if the commander vehicle dies, you lose"
Me: omgwtf

 

Lawl owned.

 

Some guy is like "OMGOMG THIS GAME SUCKS THIS RIFLE BLOWS WTF"

I told him to go play CS.

Tell noobs to ask the commander or other players to build tanks, because its annoying when you lose because half your team drives out with paper tanks and wastes all your resources you were saving for the good players on your team.

Methinks we need a in-game tutorial, with the basics of the game. Maybe it'll make it to 2.3?

Once the scout sniper rifle is removed, it will help a lot, because almost all noobs will go LOLOL THIS IS COOL I'M SNIPING PEOPLES.

The main problem is that noobs think its a deathmatch game, not a strategy game. Also they tend to go LOLOL LOOK I'M DRIVING A TANK, cause face it, few games out there let you drive cool vehicles.

Also tell them how to get ammoz.

 

I've suggested an ingame tutorial. Shot down.

 

I did one of the most amaseing things EVER that u can do to learn how to use the game READ THE MANUAL!!! I just did it while it downloaded, the learning curve wasnt HALF as bad as it could of been.

ALL THE DEVS HAVE TO DO IS ADD THE MANUAL TO THE GAME AS IN ON THE MAIN SCREEN MENU. MAKE SURE IT DOES NOT CLOSE THE GAME OR ANYTHING JUST MAKE IT A WINDOW IN THE MIDDLE OF THE SCREEN AND MABE JUST MABE WE MIGHT HAVE NOOBS WHO CAN HAVE THE HALF DECENT CHANCE OF JOINING A GAME AND KNOWING HOW TO USE IT

 

You read the manual? I don't believe you.

 

erm, yeah, i read the manual. i might not be one of the best, but at least i know what i'm doing :p

 

Apart from the decission to use caps i entirely agree. People want to start a game asap after installation, no time to read a manual that opened up somewhere. But clicking on "field manual" IN the game menu feels entirely different cause it's part of the game, like a tutorial, and not just a desktop window. With the empires music playing in the background people can much easier get to the end of the "field manual".

It's like setting all controls before you start. I really think at least 1 out of 4 or so will read the manual first. Those who don't and get confused after 10 minutes of playing will just press escape, click on "field manual" and start reading. Simply because it's there, and they wouldn't even have to disconnect from the game.

Also i don't know nearly everything there is to know about empires. I think the last time i commed was with version 1.071, so everything new to comming is unknown to me, this means also how those changes affect the infantry. Do camera's spot hidden scouts, does the radar do that, ... i have no idea. I just try to kill people.

 

I had been searching for a game like that for a long time. The best thing I had found until then was tremulous. I was really bored and it took about an hour to download Empires, so I startet reading the wiki and the manual (maybe I was the first person who ever did this ).
When I startet playing I already had an Idea about how the game is going and I chose engineer because this was suggested by the manual.

The first time I commanded was much harder. Nobody wanted so I did it and there were a few guys who constantly complained over the mic. I did a bad job (no clue about what do research) and we lost.

 

The name I use now isn't the one I started Empires with. I got scared when the entire team screamed at me for building a rail/plasma/salvo/PMG heavy on escort...

... I didn't build tanks for days after that.

 

When i first played Empires i started my own server, and tried out everything. I fugred out how to spawn, change class, build, research, and use vehicles in a few hours of time.
Back then, vehicles didn't die after being unused for an amount of time, so i had a small group of vehicles parked outside the VF.

 

when i started playing, i ALWAYS went BE and i was always rifleman. i always built structures with E. I think this was around 1.02.

 

It took you a few hours Solo? What the hell?