I know there's been discussion about getting something together for the noobs that join. Can't remember if anything has been decided in particular, but there were some ideas tossed about recently about a wizard or tutorial. something that could:

- walk them thru some basic settings (email notifications and the like)
- indicate that you get a 1 month premium account
- basics of site (home page, create game, forums, etc)
- basics of starting game, join game, playing a game
- point out visual differences between premium/standard (thinking screenshots with areas highlit)
- something else....brain stopped working

basically this would be a mandatory wizard/tutorial that you'd HAVE to click thru to access the site. i'll try to find an example and post it a bit later.

Grrrrrr just lot a bunch that I wrote...

Take 2:

I've tried (and failed and tried and failed) to come up with some sort of condensed Help page or "Introductory Page", but I keep coming back to a lot of the information is already in the Help.

Signing up, joining, waiting, taking a turn, cards, rules, rankings (still gotta add Create) all present and relatively quick reads IMO.

These are the discussions I've been having in my head the past 1-2 weeks around this:

-Settings - They seem quite intuitive aren't they?

-Premium-Standard - First month free should be present in Help, I'll add that.  Differences are kind of already shown (although without screenshots)

-Basics of the Site - All seem relatively intuitive to me, My Games (shows my games), Forums (shows Forums, etc.

-Taking a Turn - Flash IS intuitive, and Help page is present.

A big thing that could help is just distinguishing between the different types of boards, Global Warfare is a Risk board, Duck Hunt is a WarGear board, but it's hard to attempt to distinguish them because you can't distinguish all from each other.

Perhaps a Wizard would be different though, maybe even more helpful and could quickly show your list and expand.

I haven't actually played with the video idea since, but I think that could be a possible option (one that wouldn't take coding a Wizard).  Big thing with that is I don't want it to look like the WF How-To videos :P

agreed that most is in the help section, but most don't visit them before they do much (or even often after that). and yes things are mostly intuitive, but if you're not looking for some of it, whill you know its there (i.e. settings)? one could incorporate them into this as it'd be that much easier since all the stuff is already there...

Yes I'm really keen to get this up as soon as... I'd prefer it to a one page quick summary with the option to go through a more detailed walkthrough / wizard if you like.

The one page quick summary would also be sent as an intro email.

weathertop and I were talking about this in person earlier and I think most of the things I had to say are covered here. I like the idea of a quick summary and an optional more detailed walkthrough wizard. However, I noticed that in the Help section it pretty much assumes that you know what the point of the game is. It tells you how to use the interface but theres nothing that describes the basic dynamics of the game and what the ultimate goal is.

Sounds good, I'll really throw something together tonight/morning and look for feedback and go from there in regards to a summarized Help page :D

weathertop and I were talking about this in person earlier and I think most of the things I had to say are covered here. I like the idea of a quick summary and an optional more detailed walkthrough wizard. However, I noticed that in the Help section it pretty much assumes that you know what the point of the game is. It tells you how to use the interface but theres nothing that describes the basic dynamics of the game and what the ultimate goal is.

weathertop and I were talking about this in person earlier and I think most of the things I had to say are covered here. I like the idea of a quick summary and an optional more detailed walkthrough wizard. However, I noticed that in the Help section it pretty much assumes that you know what the point of the game is. It tells you how to use the interface but theres nothing that describes the basic dynamics of the game and what the ultimate goal is.

whoops... apparently if you hit refresh it posts again :)

Another thing that needs to be covered is the basics of Risk itself. Many of us got here because we've played real life Risk but I feel that anyone younger than us (and by us I mean me, and by me I mean 25yo) has probably never actually played a board game--everything's online. If they've never played the original Risk then they might not know the basics: up to three units attack at a time, up to two units defend at a time, six sided dices are rolled, ties in dice rolls go to the defender, etc etc. These things aren't intuitive and unless you know that this is happening behind the scenes every time you press '3' they are not going to realize it.

Previous threads on the topic:
http://www.wargear.net/forum/showthread/567/Welcome_to_the_Site

Yertle wrote:

I haven't actually played with the video idea since, but I think that could be a possible option (one that wouldn't take coding a Wizard).  Big thing with that is I don't want it to look like the WF How-To videos :P

I really like the latest "artsy" WF video, but yeah, those old instructional videos were...painful to watch.

What I think would be amazing would be to have several videos - some super basic instructional "this is how Risk goes", "this is how the site works", and then a bunch of intermediate ones on the "basics of capital cities" or "some border modifier information" or "team games".  And then, what would be super-awesome for even the experienced player is a video per board highlighting the various features of the board - very quick for, say, the crossword board, but the Stargear video might last a while.  Of course, that would be ambitious, but also...great.

This has been on my mental back-burner for quite some time and would like to put together an interactive tutorial video that could give a good rundown of the site and what's going on. My problem is the proper motivation to counter-act my over-active sense of procrastination.

If giving specific parameters and a deadline, I think I could make something cool that would work well.

Anyone want to take up the charge of holding me accountable?

Hugh wrote:

I really like the latest "artsy" WF video, but yeah, those old instructional videos were...painful to watch.

You talking about the most recent one, "There's a War"?  I'm guessing you're talking about Toaster's, which is very great.

Toaster, I'll hit you up about the video, I do think it could work quite well and be quick/simple, but other than using basic Camtasia, I don't have any experience here. 

Yertle wrote:

Hugh wrote:

I really like the latest "artsy" WF video, but yeah, those old instructional videos were...painful to watch.

You talking about the most recent one, "There's a War"?  I'm guessing you're talking about Toaster's, which is very great.

I was referring to "There's a War" - I do like that one, though it is really goofy.  I had forgotten about Toaster's when I posted, but now I remember - that one is fantastic.

i was thinking more of a flash based thing that comes up after you enter your username/pswd. i can't find one that i was thinking of but these two have pretty good ones:

http://onemorelevel.com/game/shift

http://onemorelevel.com/game/wooden_path

weathertop wrote:

i was thinking more of a flash based thing that comes up after you enter your username/pswd. i can't find one that i was thinking of but these two have pretty good ones:

http://onemorelevel.com/game/shift

http://onemorelevel.com/game/wooden_path

Yup, that's pretty much what I had in mind too, but more options and possibly less annoying to watch once you think you've got it down.

Yertle wrote:

Toaster, I'll hit you up about the video, I do think it could work quite well and be quick/simple, but other than using basic Camtasia, I don't have any experience here. 

Yert, if you're my boss on this one, I need a deadline to have a rough draft complete.

i needed it done yesterday, but i think i can convince TPTB that end of next week wouldn't hurt too much.

Take 1:
http://www.wargear.net/help/display/Welcome%20to%20WarGear

My Notes:

• Lots of words (no screenshots, but screenshots may make it look longer), but tried to incorporate Join/Create and how to play a turn.
• Could probably make it more clear the play by mail thing
• Should probably clean up the Create a Game section (big paragraph which could probably condensed and just add a help page with some more of the information, such as board preview)
• Tried to point players to basic maps for starters.
• Didn't really hit Settings or Site Layout
• Didn't promote the forums.
• Didn't talk about Premium/Standard