Cliff Notes:

- make fun of Woody

RiskyBack wrote: Praying for the future to fix a problem in the present? That don't sound right.

So is throwing out the solution with the bathwater, but then I just love to mix my confused metaphors.  My point (extra subtle as it may be) is that fixing today's problem might just be the recipe for tomorrow's fallen souffle.  Dang!  I did it again.

What M57 said. The cure will almost certainly be worse than the disease. Sure, we *might* have fewer boots and skips (doubtful - weekends and life happen to veteran players too), but we'll end up curtailing membership growth at a time when we really need WG to grow. Keep in mind that, even now, WF can easily host a 128-team tournament without issue, while we have troubles filling a 32-team one.

I would like to add a radically different view.

Instead of restricting what they can see and do (beyond what is already done), I think there needs to be some warnings on the difficulty of various boards.

I think it would be fine to restrict new players to the standard types of boards; continents, unlimited attacks, a few fortifies, get a card and wait for the next turn. After they have completed one of these games, then we can open them up to further possibilities. I also think it was said earlier, that the free month of premium should be held until such time as well.

In my opinion, all of the advance features we have adding to game-play grew over a period of time (years for me) and it wasn't hard to keep up. For a new player, coming to the site expecting to see a standard world map and finding tons of boards all with unique features / game-play has to be daunting. It still is somewhat for me.

With this said, I would like to see a rating (not sure how to do this) as to how advanced a board is. Examples: WarGear Warfare (Novice/Noob approved), Spy vs. Spy (Advanced), Infection (Intermediate), etc. I think it would also be nice to display the advanced features that are being used on a board (return to placement, return to attack, elimination bonus, fog (already shown), etc...).

I also may be far off and that this will only add to the number of new players that leave, but I think some of the problem is information overload without any idea of how to parse what is presented.

Alpha wrote:
With this said, I would like to see a rating (not sure how to do this) as to how advanced a board is. Examples: WarGear Warfare (Novice/Noob approved), Spy vs. Spy (Advanced), Infection (Intermediate), etc. I think it would also be nice to display the advanced features that are being used on a board (return to placement, return to attack, elimination bonus, fog (already shown), etc...).

I also may be far off and that this will only add to the number of new players that leave, but I think some of the problem is information overload without any idea of how to parse what is presented.

I think the Novice/Advanced/Intermediate is a good idea.

The Board pages already have an Advanced Features section that includes different border types, but going down to Return to Placement/Attack/etc. may get into the "information overload" area, although I would add Capital Cities to the Advanced Features.

The Welcome page and first Help page Welcome to WarGear try to point new players to the Basic maps as well.

Alpha wrote: I think it would be fine to restrict new players to the standard types of boards; continents, unlimited attacks, a few fortifies, get a card and wait for the next turn. After they have completed one of these games, then we can open them up to further possibilities. I also think it was said earlier, that the free month of premium should be held until such time as well.

This is a very good point, though I think it could be accomplished through site design as opposed to hard access limits for newbies. Merely burying the intermediate and advanced boards down a tab would work wonders in discouraging newbies to join games they're not ready for, and would add a sense of do-it-yourself exploration to the site.

Basically, the boards tab would be subdivided into three pages - basic, intermediate, advanced - of which the basic would be the default page viewed. Same thing with the Home tab: there would be three queues of open games - basic, intermediate, advanced - and the default shown would be the basic games. This way, newbies to the site would only be exposed to the basic boards unless they're interested enough to go clicking around looking for more content, which if they take the time/energy to do that then hopefully they're ready for the bigger commitment of playing a more esoteric board.

EDIT: subdividing the game queue would be nice for veteran players, as well, because most of the time when I look at the HOME tab I have to 'x' off about a dozen games of the Global Warfare variety to see if there are actually any interesting games afoot. There could be an option in the settings to set your default tab to intermediate or advanced gameboards as opposed to basic.

Who is going to decide what type of map it is? Red Baron had a calculation based on number of modifiers and other stuff but I don't think that works with the View Only borders as a map like Gauntlet (which isn't really a difficult map) has a ton of borders.
See, I don't think Gauntlet is difficult and is pretty standard but I bet there are people that will disagree with me. How 'bout Risk v Reward? It's a pretty standard map except for the Island penalties...where does that fall.
I don't think there can be a way to quantify the difficulty of a map and therefor I don't think that this is a reasonable idea.
Perhaps a breakdown by features instead. View Only Borders, Modifiers, Capitals, Fog or something like that would be better than trying to classify each board. If we've learned anything, we all have vastly different opinions and experiences and hence barely ever come to a clear overall opinion.

I don't know, I would put Gauntlet in as intermediate, and Risk v. Reward as basic. Something like Gear Wars or any of Nygma's maps would be advanced.

I would put Gauntlet as intermediate. The bonuses and concept are easy to grasp, but a good strategy is not something you come up with without playing a handful of games first.

My rubric:

Basic - Any board that resembles a variation of the classic continents-based geographic risk board. Includes some simple variations like fog, negative bonuses, overlapping bonuses, but not much else. Examples: War, GearStorm, Medieval Europe, Antastic, Lord of the Gears, SimCity.

Intermediate - Any board that plays in about the same way as the class risk board - e.g. secure a bonus, build outward, knock out weak players to take their cards, etc - but which is set up in a novel way (like Gauntlet), has a novel bonus system (like any hordes-based map), or uses extensive border modification, capitols, or other special features (like Titans, Castles, Ancient Isles of Kjeldor). The key concept here is that intermediate boards are novel, but also basically intuitive.

Advanced - boards that aren't intuitive from a knowledge of basic risk. These include maps like Spy v. Spy, Duck Hunt, Plinko, Escalation, or Star Gear.

This classification of the boards idea sounds great to me. When I was getting started I was a little overwhelmed with the boards at first. (And am still scared of some of them.) I played a game of Duck Hunt and one of Star Gear and was totally clueless in both. Both were frustrating experiences. Would've been nice to have been steered away from them at first and steered towards Battle USA or German WarGear.

And to answer Risky's question it sounds like Kjeld should make the decisions on what board goes where. His rubric make perfect sense to me. Our opinions may differ some on what is Intermediate vs Advanced, but I think everyone will know a Basic board when they see it - and that's the important category.

Amidon37 wrote: it sounds like Kjeld should make the decisions

Finally, someone who's got the right idea!

Kjeld has all my ideas (intuitively) and is better at keeping up with the forums. Also, Kjeld defined the categories better then I would have.
Kjeld +2.

Risky - I partially agree with what you said about the classification being difficult (and maybe impossible) and that is why I open this up for discussion. As to how to implement a rating system, here are some ways:
1) When reviewing a board, the review team can come up with a level of difficulty for the board and upon release set the level of difficulty.
2) The board designer can set the level of difficulty upon creation and as part of the review process, the review team can object is they don't agree.
3) My personal favorite - give all of the responsibility to Kjeld as Amidon37 suggested and that way everyone can argue the level of their board to one person (maybe Kjeld takes bribes).

Yertle - I have never read the welcome page or any of the help pages and therefore I am working under the assumption that newbies do not either. I not suggesting that they are not needed or helpful, just that they probably are not being used. Thus, I think some sort of filtering of boards and information is needed to make the interface less daunting and more intuitive for users.

Currently I think we are approaching a point where there needs to be some way to filter types of boards just so that I can decide which board I want to play next. Within each category (or just as it is now), I think there should be a new boards heading (boards created in the last 3 months, maybe less) and then the other boards should be sorted in a meaningful manner (number of games played, average ranking, etc. [maybe all in a drop down menu]) instead of by Alphabetical ordering.

Thanks to everyone for continuing this discussion and I hope that we can come up with some way to turn all the noobs into hard core addicted wargearers.

Re: Kjeld's rubric

While I like the idea of a rating system, I question whether there should be a minimum requirement reached in order to play a higher level game.  Let the player decide what type of game they would like to play and when they are ready to handle its complexity.

This seems pretty obvious to me, but it hasn't been mentioned..  The High Council of Low People should determine and assign the level of each board as it passes review.  Of course, there will be grey (or gray - i don't want to ruffle any feathers) area here, and this seems like the right time and the right group to do it.

M57 wrote: While I like the idea of a rating system, I question whether there should be a minimum requirement reached in order to play a higher level game.  Let the player decide what type of game they would like to play and when they are ready to handle its complexity.

So you agree with what I said in #106?

So you agree with what I said in #106?

+1

A Boards page with sub-tabs where the default is "basic" would be OK,  but I see no problem with a Boards page that includes a tease or two from the higher categories.  IMO, if it's done right, most first time visitors to the site will accurately self-assess their proficiency level and at the same time gain some insight into the potential wonders of WarGear.  (Ooo -- sounds like a name for a board)

If you want an extra layer of restriction, how 'bout requiring a uploaded avatar to join intermediate and advanced games as well as tournaments?

I'm already mad at myself for reviving this issue again (since I think the current system works fine) although as I was perusing WarLight and found this semi-interesting:

WarLight wrote:

Sliding Boot Times

Sliding boot times is an experimental feature that gives more flexibility to players. When sliding boot times is enabled, you only become bootable if your average play speed exceeds the boot timer, rather than the amount of time since you last played. Your average play speed is calculated by averaging your last ten turns for that game, along with the time since you last played.

This helps keep the boot time more fair. For example, if a player plays very quickly during the week, but not at all on weekends, they don't need to worry about becoming bootable on Sunday evening, even if the boot timer is set to 1 day. Conversely, a player who constantly waits a long time take every turn will become bootable much more easily.

Since sliding boot times gives more leeway, it is recommended you use smaller boot times than you would without it.

Oh, and WarLight does a good job with Special Card abilities too.

Jeez, why don't you just play there. I hear there is a world map, another world map, some sort of cube thing, and another world map!

P.S. I still think the RiskyPlan is a good idea for now and into the future.