Are we too helpful?

[znôrt]

I've always attributed the willingness, eagerness even, of so many on these forums to answer questions promptly to the forum's demographics being largely comprised of an aging population trying to prove to themselves they still have some mental capacity yet by displaying their vast knowledge purely off of recollection, and not so much to actually help others, but rather for the sense of relief felt when they actually remembered something.

To be fair, I might just be projecting.

just was in the local kiosk to buy a couple of usb sticks made in china.

there was an old lady before me who wanted a color photocopy of her id card she was just about to renew. she didn't know and was curious about what happens to id cards once they're replaced, do they slit them, she couldn't remember, it had been 5 years the last time she renewed and oh, by the way, the other day i saw your kids, they are twins, right? and that was their mother with them ...

i think you get the idea. it made me think of this forum. but i might be projecting too

As for potential effects, why blame us when we can blame all those whippersnapper youtubers!?

because that's exactly what they want, attention.

 

[Screemonster]

I see this with mining too.
People just say where the best mining sites are, without telling them how to find the best mining sites. Same with sell stations.

Which means that when the devs change something, these players are completely stranded because they never learned how to find out information for themselves, huge screams about nerfs happen because MINING HAS BEEN DESTROYED and so on, and a huge stink is made about how mining is being killed there's NO POSSIBLE WAY TO MAKE CREDITS ANY MORE, IT'S LITERALLY IMPOSSIBLE.

... because they never learned how to make credits without blindly following instructions from someone who figured it out for them.

The best example was the carrier update, people were mad panicking because the borann triple-hotspot went away, as though the only place you could get LTDs in the entire galaxy had been removed.
Four days later someone found a new triple and told everyone about it and they all went there instead. But dear lord, if you suggested they go out and start probing rings themselves to try and find a mining site on their own...

 

[Aidan Brooder]

Upfront, I will admit this is a contentious topic and I know I will receive some abuse, ridicule and belittling for raising it - so be it, I fully accept what is coming to me but I think this topic needs some discussion.

This community is great, it is one of the best I have been associated with in the realms of online gaming. If a new player (or even an old player I guess) asks a question there is a line up of eager Commanders willing to offer advice. And not just advice but offers to help out with transport, with getting goods to unlock Engineers, even offers of easy credits. But at times I think we can be too good, too generous with our advice, too helpful and as a result, creating a group of new players that have a very defined view of how the game is played. Let me explain:

Say a new player creates a thread asking about getting mats for his first engineer. Rarely do I see someone patiently explaining about how to outfit a ship with an SRV, Frameshift Wake Scanner and/or Collector Limpet Controller, do a little research to find out exactly what the player needs, how and where to do that research (and why it is okay to use 3rd party tools) and where to go to find the mats they need. Unfortunately (in my opinion at least), these new players get told to head to the Crystalline Shards to fill up there and then use the Mat Trader. Doesn't matter that the nearest Shards could be 10k lys away, a newbie in an unengineered beginners ship will have no trouble with a journey of that length for their first excursion out of the bubble. Or they get told to go to Dav's Hope and endlessly relog until they get enough to head to the nearest Mat Trader. And if they need Encoded Mats, yep, directions are given to Jameson's crash site.

Or even the basic, a question is asked on making credits. Is the player asked what type of activities they like doing, would they prefer mining over trade, do they enjoy running missions, or is bounty hunting more their flavour. Nope, they get told immediately what the latest gold mine is, which may seem as grindy as hell to someone new.

There is nothing wrong with the information given, just I don't think that sometimes is the right information for the situation. Are we developing a whole group of players than have never driven on the surface of a planet looking for outcrops? Ones that have no idea on how to interpret the scanner on the SRV. Will there be a gaggle of newbies who don't know the difference between an Degraded, Encoded or High Grade USS? What will we do when someone complains that they can't get the Grade 1 or 2 Enc Mats via mission rewards because they don't know they could scan wakes right outside of the station they are in and get them for free? Will some of these players eject the pacifier and throw the toys out the cot the first time they have to do something mundane or basic in the game? Are we forgetting to teach these new players the basics?

So what is the consensus here, should we, as the Community, be trying to educate these new players, or is telling them the quickest solution the right way to go?

Give a man a fish and he'll not go hungry for a day.
Teach a man how to fish and he'll not go hungry.

As a man with terrible luck when fishing, I still believe in the second approach.

 

[Factabulous]

Give a man a fish and he'll complain it isn't a bigger one, and that it's too far away, and takes too long, and everything sux.
Teach a man how to fish and he'll complain that it's all too complicated, and why can't people just answer the damn question, and everything sux.

 

[Deleted member 182079]

Give a man a fish and he'll complain it isn't a bigger one, and that it's too far away, and takes too long, and everything sux.
Teach a man how to fish and he'll complain that it's all too complicated, and why can't people just answer the damn question, and everything sux.

This should be stickied to the top of the forum really.

 

[Rat Catcher]

This should be stickied to the top of the forum really.

It is a bit of a long-winded motto though...

Perhaps it should be a little less verbose... Maybe just "Everything Sux!"?

 

[bootsam]

I'll teach a man to fish AND give him some of my fish. If he complains about the fish, then I'll beat him with the rod.

 

[Ydiss]

Know your audience.

There are lots of ways to skin a cockpit cat in Elite. Quite often the player is new and just needs to know the basics. Yes, often the community bombard them with all the answers when just the simpler answer would do. And yes, all too often that results in someone who is asking how to get 10 arsenic being told to do shards.

It's not always appropriate. So knowing your audience is important.

 

[Deleted member 182079]

It is a bit of a long-winded motto though...

Perhaps it should be a little less verbose... Maybe just "Everything Sux!"?

I'm sure I've seen FC's with names along those lines... I guess if it fits into the FC naming field, you can't go wrong!

 

[VR Jay Le Chardon]

Upfront, I will admit this is a contentious topic and I know I will receive some abuse, ridicule and belittling for raising it - so be it, I fully accept what is coming to me but I think this topic needs some discussion.

This community is great, it is one of the best I have been associated with in the realms of online gaming. If a new player (or even an old player I guess) asks a question there is a line up of eager Commanders willing to offer advice. And not just advice but offers to help out with transport, with getting goods to unlock Engineers, even offers of easy credits. But at times I think we can be too good, too generous with our advice, too helpful and as a result, creating a group of new players that have a very defined view of how the game is played. Let me explain:

Say a new player creates a thread asking about getting mats for his first engineer. Rarely do I see someone patiently explaining about how to outfit a ship with an SRV, Frameshift Wake Scanner and/or Collector Limpet Controller, do a little research to find out exactly what the player needs, how and where to do that research (and why it is okay to use 3rd party tools) and where to go to find the mats they need. Unfortunately (in my opinion at least), these new players get told to head to the Crystalline Shards to fill up there and then use the Mat Trader. Doesn't matter that the nearest Shards could be 10k lys away, a newbie in an unengineered beginners ship will have no trouble with a journey of that length for their first excursion out of the bubble. Or they get told to go to Dav's Hope and endlessly relog until they get enough to head to the nearest Mat Trader. And if they need Encoded Mats, yep, directions are given to Jameson's crash site.

Or even the basic, a question is asked on making credits. Is the player asked what type of activities they like doing, would they prefer mining over trade, do they enjoy running missions, or is bounty hunting more their flavour. Nope, they get told immediately what the latest gold mine is, which may seem as grindy as hell to someone new.

There is nothing wrong with the information given, just I don't think that sometimes is the right information for the situation. Are we developing a whole group of players than have never driven on the surface of a planet looking for outcrops? Ones that have no idea on how to interpret the scanner on the SRV. Will there be a gaggle of newbies who don't know the difference between an Degraded, Encoded or High Grade USS? What will we do when someone complains that they can't get the Grade 1 or 2 Enc Mats via mission rewards because they don't know they could scan wakes right outside of the station they are in and get them for free? Will some of these players eject the pacifier and throw the toys out the cot the first time they have to do something mundane or basic in the game? Are we forgetting to teach these new players the basics?

So what is the consensus here, should we, as the Community, be trying to educate these new players, or is telling them the quickest solution the right way to go?

I see where you are going with this, and I kind of agree, I personally moan about the mindset of "hunnerz ov milyuns an hour" - but if the community is pointing players at gold rushes rather than explaining the economy, maybe we are conditioning new players into that mindset? As a counterpoint, perhaps we should collectively author a set of guides to refer new players to? When I was learning the ropes I liked Chaos Wolf's videos, I'm not even sure he plays any more as he would show you how to do things properly, whereas others like D2EA would show players what the current most busted thing in the gmae was and how to spank the life out of it, which is the current new player mindset.

 

[Navigare Necesse Est]

...

Which means that when the devs change something, these players are completely stranded because they never learned how to find out information for themselves,

...

For YEARS ED has taught players that this is the way it is meant to be played. There was no point in trying to figure out a logic approach - it never delivered concludent results. There was just random outcome. ED was needle in haystack. You know why? They didn't put in the tools for players to play the game.
So don't blame players when the game just taught them to do what they do.

 

[Tikanderoga]

Or even the basic, a question is asked on making credits. Is the player asked what type of activities they like doing, would they prefer mining over trade, do they enjoy running missions, or is bounty hunting more their flavour. Nope, they get told immediately what the latest gold mine is, which may seem as grindy as hell to someone new.

To be fair, if someone asks me what is the best/quickest get rich scheme, I sure won't point them to bounty hunting.
So while I see your point, it also makes sense to point someone who asks to make cash, to get the quickest route.

So what is the consensus here, should we, as the Community, be trying to educate these new players, or is telling them the quickest solution the right way to go?

As you pointed out: The game is grindy enough as it is. Us a community sticking together and educating new players how to reduce the grind as much as possible can be seen as a positive. Let the new players opt out of the fastest way and start on the grinder themselves if they chose to do so.
But us a community have done our best to give them the maximum possible, instead of sending them down into the quagmire of HGE looping (or HGE finding), doing missions for some focus crystals or even blowing up ships in hopes that some isolator might drop.

 

[Navigare Necesse Est]

Here let that sink in: 2 fricken years. It took them 2 years to fix the engineer atrocity to playable. You were expected to run around like headless chicken and hope for the best for TWO bloody years.
And now you wonder why people still want their shortcuts? Tell you why: They can't be bothered to wait 2 years for FD to figure out what a game is and how to design one.

 

[Aidan Brooder]

Give a man a fish and he'll complain it isn't a bigger one, and that it's too far away, and takes too long, and everything sux.
Teach a man how to fish and he'll complain that it's all too complicated, and why can't people just answer the damn question, and everything sux.

Can't fight the whiny Anaconda yesterday, plz crowd... Don't even try...
They bought a game, it must win itself for them... NOW! Even if the game has no winning conditions.

 

[Lightspeed]

I’m guilty of sending noobs to Hutton for the free Anaconda, so I feel that balances the (arguably) good advice I might be giving at other times. At least the forum teaches readers to be selective in what to believe and which path to follow to achieve their goals. If only that were true in real life.

 

[Lightspeed]

Give a man a fish and he'll complain it isn't a bigger one, and that it's too far away, and takes too long, and everything sux.
Teach a man how to fish and he'll complain that it's all too complicated, and why can't people just answer the damn question, and everything sux.

o7

 

[Deleted member 182079]

I’m guilty of sending noobs to Hutton for the free Anaconda, so I feel that balances the (arguably) good advice I might be giving at other times. At least the forum teaches readers to be selective in what to believe and which path to follow to achieve their goals. If only that were true in real life.

Don't feel too bad, many noobs now have their own carrier and can just jump there directly. And who knows, maybe some edge lord has set up shop there and is selling Anacondas from their FC, so it might not even be a lie anymore (well, maybe just the "free" bit... but just blame it on "market price fluctuations" ).

Besides, I don't think an Anaconda is enough of a lure these days - FC or GTFO I reckon.

 

[zimms]

I think we shouldn't neglect the fact that if you teach a man to fish, he will completely drain the oceans of all aquatic life.

 

[bootsam]

Not if FD design the oceans. No matter how much fish you remove, there'll always be the same amount of fish available afterwards.

 

[metatheurgist]

Most players also don't want to spend years on Elite. They play it for a bit and then move on.

Since ED isn't a subscription game and we've already got their money I'm tempted to think we should just say "Thank you for your donation" and move on.