What games/setups are good for new players?

[Psyche]

Potentially portable features of Newbie Games:

- Small playerlists
- Simple, transparent setups (e.g., NewD3) that are easy to reason about without knowing site meta
- An "introduction and tips" post containing helpful links, key concepts and tips
- Readable rule lists that emphasize avoiding toxicity and are clear about what that means
- Volunteer ICs. We have a guide for those: https://wiki.mafiascum.net/index.php?ti ... _a_good_SE And prior standards for being one: https://wiki.mafiascum.net/index.php?ti ... Challenged https://wiki.mafiascum.net/index.php?ti ... xperienced
- An enforced balance between Newbie, IC, and SE player sign-ups

[fferyllt]

I think that in order to have good newbie experiences, MS will need a staff member (and probably a whole volunteer team) to work on the stuff that the newbie queue was meant to facilitate:

• good learning experiences about forum mafia and mafia in general
  
• A strong pipeline to the rest of the queues
  
• players and mods who consistently dedicate some of their time, energy, creative effort to games that are newbie friendly
  
• keeping an eye on statistics about how successful MS is at curating a good newbie player experience
  
• lots of other stuff

I feel like these four listed aspects of the newbie queue had failed or were failing when the queue was shut down. Shutting down the newbie queue and having dedicated spaces in the open and normal queues didn't replace what the newbie queue at its best offered new players. To have that again will take leadership and concerted effort.

[PookyTheMagicalBear]

I think the main goal of the newbie queue was to get newcomers to the site introduced to its quirks etc in a friendly way that would help build the population, some of the key problems with the previous approach were imo:

[1] Too long of a wait between signup -> getting to actually play in a game, attention spans are short and people trying to find a place to play mafia will just try a few places and stick with wherever they get to play sooner usually. if they're playing somewhere else they probably won't play here if they get a role pm two or three weeks after they "signup"
[2] Too Few/ Irregular Game Firing - this problem builds off issue[1] because it's hard to get a game started if you're waiting for newbies to pick up their role pms and sometimes they just don't because they're like gone somewhere else already.
[3] Difficulty with mentorship structure where players giving advice can be opposed to the interests of the players being mentored as alignments are unknown etc.

I think the best way to alleviate all of these issues is to make a dedicated newbie game that is radically different in approach and allows new players to

jump in right away to play

to eliminate the wait time issue and also provide mentorship that is definitely aligned with the player.

I think a good approach for this would be if the newD3 game would fire with 9 experienced players in each player slot and as many newbies as sign up; for example a game could fire with nine veteran players and four newbies and each newbie would be paired in a hydra of sorts with a vet. Newbies signing up while the game is in progress can jump into any unpaired slot and be brought up to speed by whatever vet player is already playing in the slot.

I understand this might take a bit of work from the moderation team and be difficult to implement; another way to implement this on a micro-scale would be to place "new" newbies in "simple" setups that are already running such as mini normals or small open setups where the newbie would be paired with a willing slot already playing in the game and it would become something like a hydra. The key idea here is to shorten the time between a new player finding this site and getting to "play" and get a feel of how playing mafia here will work.

[Ydrasse]

we are drafting up all of the queue stuff currently for newbie 2.0 but mentorship has a seat at the table atm as does an extended list of setups beyond newd3

of the most recent post i think i want to throw the immediacy part more into the mix though to figure out the best solution depending on the amount of new players we get

[usesPython]

of the most recent post i think i want to throw the immediacy part more into the mix though to figure out the best solution depending on the amount of new players we get

Make a centralized newbie queue that /in's you in every game on the site in signups that's judged to be newbie friendly (however this ends up being determined), this would speed up the firing rate from "whenever a newbie game fires" to "whenever any game on the site fires"

[Psyche]

that was my idea too!
i think this can be easily combined with an effort to consistently fire games with a specific newbie-friendly format though
and in fact i think the policies would better together than apart

[Ydrasse]

i’m personally unsure of how well that would work + also not a mod who would be dealing with it as a purble but i’ll throw it into the mix as a potential

[Ydrasse]

(in that it collides with our mentorship idea which i believe should be kept to very specific games and not spread out over queues but again personal)

[Psyche]

suppose is hard to tell if mentorship or quickly firing games is more important for converting new users into regular players. but my intuition is honestly that the latter is more fundamental.

[Ydrasse]

having thought a small amount about it i think i would prefer smaller, shorter games firing in the newbie queue than i would distributing newbies across multiple queues to expedite them playing

[Ydrasse]

alongside scheduled games that are confirmed to fire

[Psyche]

well i kind of expect these games to be reasonably popular so maybe it won't matter. wish you best of luck.

EDIT: at least hope you'll keep the funnel option in mind if the queue starts to flag.

[T-Bone]

of the most recent post i think i want to throw the immediacy part more into the mix though to figure out the best solution depending on the amount of new players we get

Make a centralized newbie queue that /in's you in every game on the site in signups that's judged to be newbie friendly (however this ends up being determined), this would speed up the firing rate from "whenever a newbie game fires" to "whenever any game on the site fires"

That's actually an interesting idea.

[T-Bone]

Actually let's just workshop it. Here's the relevant part of the OP.

Mission Statement
The purpose of this thread is to provide a predictable schedule of newbie friendly games to the community. The Listmod will set the schedule for the next game so that all potential newbies, other players, and moderators can be sure when the next game launches. Playerlists will be filled by all newbie players signed up and Semi-Experienced (SE) players taken from the SE queue at the time of the game.

if you are a long standing member of the community consider joining the queue as an SE. The supply of SEs is important in maintaining a schedule newbies can regularly rely on to join newbie friendly games.

We encourage any new player waiting for the next game to consider joining an Open or Mini Normal game in the meantime. Those games can be found in their respective queues.

The line I bolded is where I was going to add links to the open and mini normal queues. But if we imagine making a funnel to any newbie friendly game on the site, what does that mechanism look like?

[PookyTheMagicalBear]

The line I bolded is where I was going to add links to the open and mini normal queues. But if we imagine making a funnel to any newbie friendly game on the site, what does that mechanism look like?

I think something like a link where if you've never played a game you can talk to a mod and get placed into a game that is either firing soon or is currently in early d1 - where you are slotted with an experienced player who can answer any questions you have and explain any terminology etc.

[Ydrasse]

i think that any sort of mentor/buddy program that allows a person to offer relevant advice and help should be strictly in the newbie queue; people can be funneled to other games but at the cost of forgoing that aspect of it.