I'm not following the broadcast where fizzer shows warlight development so maybe he already thought about that.
I asked myself many times why warlight has few player (i say few player because i don't know how many players play warlight and even if i knew i think warlight has the potential to attract many more people) and even fewer players play WL at a competitive level, yes someone could play just for fun, but i bet that the most can't figure out how to play. I remember how, around three years ago, i started play WL: how many defeats! Tons of players run away after the first few games lost.

That's why we need a better tutorial. Newbies don't need to understand the difference between no fog and normal fog, they should learn how to pick territories for example. How the cycle works. how to deploy efficiently. Yes there is a wiki but i think it isn't really immediate.

I thought the tutorial could be like the levels of a manual of chess, where you have to checkmate in a set number of moves. Now i make a concrete example to give newbies some info about gameplay: on MME template after picks the newbies will have Queensland. The goal is to complete Australia in 2 turn (This may be trivial, but I think many beginners are not able)

These levels could be created by the community like single player level

I think the new singleplayer levels do a decent job at it atm. Although it could be better ofcourse. But with the new singleplayer we have already made huge improvements over the old 6 levels we used to have.

Not everything is explained properly, but then again, if you have too many single player levels then players might get bored before starting the fun stuff (multiplayer).

I still think there should be a more all-round guide for WL. atm most guides are just for the higher levels.

You're right about getting bored but i thought about it like very short challenge 2-3 turns max, to help the understanding of the gameplay in different situation

why don't you make one and send it to Fizzer then. (you'll get credit and go down in warlight history)

I agree,I'm just recovering now from how bad I was.

Edited 2/14/2017 21:49:43

Maybe there should be auto-generated multi-player games for exclusively lower-level players?

What I mean is that there are enough experienced players (not necessarily "pro"/competitive, but just those who were around for longer) who play random games, and a new player is likely to be in a game with such a player, either 1v1 or FFA - and is very likely to lose. Not to mention that in an FFA (the game type a new low-level player most likely to join - I doubt a lot of new players will go on and create their own games) the chance to win is lower even with all equally skilled players, and one above-newbie player is very likely to win and is more likely to be there randomly. And even more, at least half of random games are auto-distribution, so there is not much learning to pick right.

So, a special area for lower-level players (maybe a few different overlapping areas for levels 1-20, 10-30, 20-40 - I would say for new players level is a reasonable indication of experience and thus skill) with more system-created games with "good" settings on pre-screened maps (not every "map of the week" is a good learning map). A few areas would also add a sense of progress - "hey, I can join stage X now"! - since levels themselves get boring, and ladders and more advanced stuff is probably months away for a new player, enough to get bored and never get there.

(Right now there are only two auto-generated games, a 1v1 MME and a 4-player FFA on a map-of-the-week, and with all players in one box winning any of those is very hard for a new player. Most other games have weird settings, with a lot of lottery-type games or games with weird settings which more advanced ppl like to have fun with - or are very boring 10min/10day diplos)

Edited 2/14/2017 23:00:33

Excellent idea.

There are already "Welcome Noobies" games being autogenerated. Those are for new players only, but maybe we can extend that to the extend Mslasm suggests.

I think the heart of this issue is how do we provide fair and fun competition for all skill levels of players. I don't think a new player really needs to know how to make picks like a top 20 ladder player. Or even how to make efficient picks. That would make them competitive, but people don't keep playing because they are competitive. People play because this game is fun, and its not fun if you always lose. Like wise it is no fun if you always win. This isn't a new idea, people higher up in the thread have established this.

But what people are suggesting is that we some how sort people by skill so people play competitively. However this is already done in the ladder, although many people look at the ladder as a competition, at its core all it does is sort players by skill level, and then provide games to people at a similar skill level. I would hypothesis that new players do not join the ladder for two reason's, A they do not know it exists or B it costs money. But I don't think its a good idea to mess with this. It provides Fizzer a source of revenue (the man needs to eat), and it is easy enough to find when you look. Instead maybe we could just make it easier for new players to find similar opponents on their own.

I think one possible thing Fizzer could do is make it easier for people to control what skill level of opponent they may face when initially joining an auto game. Examining an auto game, we see there are two types of players. Those who initially join a game while there are no other players in the game lobby, we will call these players 'type a.' And those who join a game with a player already in a lobby, we will call these 'type b.' Fizzer could create a setting that allows 'type a,' players to filter out those players who are either too 'strong' or too 'weak' from being able to join their game (also we could filter by boot rate PLEASE). While he could make a change to the settings so that certain stats of your opponent will be more easily accessible so that 'type b' players can than make a better judgement of rather or not they want to join the auto game. For example he could include a button next to a players username that brings up a small popup that only shows the players boot rate, record, level, and some sort of casual ELO. This way players can make a quick 'split second,' decision about rather or not they would like to join a game with a potential opponent, without having to access their profile page.

Now this suggestion certainly has issues. I would guess it would have an economic 'substitution effect,' that could possibly reduce the marginal value for a player to join the ladder. But it could also have an economic 'scale effect,' in which it causes more people to play Warlight (because they have a better experience). Thus it is unclear at this point rather it would have a positive or negative effect on Fizzer's income, via people paying to join the ladders. However, I would think this would make his game more competitive in the long run,as I think it would lead a superior user experience.

I am sure there could be other issues with this as well. But it is another possible solution.

Edited 2/15/2017 00:00:43

sooooo make the 1v1 autogames a "RT ladder" with rating maybe?

+1

+1 to anything that helps TBest improve and become good enough to play me

A very common misunderstanding for newbies is the question, when the timer on no luck cyclic begins to run.

Giving a notification when you disable the begin button the first time might fix that already

The ladder is a good idea, although, its not open to non members of sub lvl <50 or something. But I think the ladder would be great for new players. the strat games teaches a lot, picking, thinking ahead and just going at it 1vs etc.

+1 to this

+1 MoD

the transition from single player to multi player can be confusing af if one is not hyped enough to stop and read how no-luck cyclic works on the wiki

Greetings, fellow World Dominators.

I have not yet finished either the old or the new tutorials. I am, as it were, a "newbie", but not so much of a newbie-- unlike many board gamers, I love normal tabletop RISK, didn't really see any flaws in the old CLASSIC game, and WARLIGHTs innovations make me feel like I'm playing RISK at HYPERSPEED, and in a huge, vast, new world. It's great!

Couple of thoughts, from experiencing WARLIGHT for going on a couple years:


1) First, any new content created should not replace old content. I hope to find the part where I get to try again at Level 5 and 6 of the Old Tutorial, but I can't find them right now. Maybe they're deep in the New Tutorial.

2) The current "Single Player" Modes are not really a Tutorial-- they're something better: A 1P Quest/Story Mode. If it were possible to nudge them with a bit of reorganization to *really* tell a STORY, that would draw a LOT of people I think.

3) I think that "Multiplayer" is probably doing just fine as one tab, but "Single Player" tab could be split into "Tutorials" Tab and "Story" Tab (or name the Story Tab whatever you want, like "Conquest" or "_____ Empire/s" Tab, maybe basing on the Historical Campaigns of Fizzer's preference.

4) I liked the 1P Single Player six levels just fine, as I said before, and I'd like Map Packs to be organized to easily find favorite Maps for longer time users. Logically, if any changes were to be made to the way Single Player Tutorials/Levels were presented to "Newbies" like me, I'd definitely still want the Maps of this version in a pack, set to the settings that the tutorial was on, but with adjustable settings if they're in a Free Play Map Pack of course.

5) I think what would be a big help, is to include a very expert guide for fast leveling up as a player, up to the point where you get ad-free play for some days. (currently it's 3 days. It'd be nice to turn ads off for 5 days, but that's something I don't know a lot about.) But the guide-- how to gain player points quickly-- listing what levels of Tutorial one should play up to, how to beat them quickly, and when the guide thinks the player is ready to start scoring points other ways, (their first ladder game), and stuff like that.


6) CHALLENGE Tab-- Tactical Speedruns
I think that, for whichever size of CLASSIC Map the WL community decides should be the "assumed default", there should be Tutorial Walkthroughs for either Continents or Large Regions:

For example, the OP mentioned "Conquer Australia in 2 Turns from Queensland". Now, Australia may seem like too small and easy to qualify for a Tutorial Map, but "Conquer Australia, Indonesia *and* South America in Four turns, starting from Queensland and Argentina", I don't know, practicing looking at slices of a World Map like that? And then, in that series, a Tutorial on "Conquer North and East Africa in 3 Turns", "Conquer South and Central Africa in 3 Turns", and "Conquer Africa in 5 Turns"

"Conquer North America in 4 Turns"

These are not numbers that I think I could do all of them. These are examples of what I'm guessing better players than me might actually be able to do, and being taught how to efficiently choose territory, deploy armies, and quickly take and defend "normal Earth" continent bonuses would be greatly appreciated.

7) DEFEND CONTINENT BONUS Some continents are more self-explanatory to defend than others. In the "CHALLENGES" tab, as you work your way up to eventually being tasked to "Conquer China from Siberia" "Conquer China from Southeast Asia", "Conquer Caucasus from China", or whatever Asian Challenges are deemed appropriate lessons, it might be useful to also work in one or two AI opponents into the Speedruns-- normally, the Speedruns should be for the bottom-tier player skill level to ensure they have mastery of understanding what their first moves and goals should be, but for areas closer to the "Big Middle" of the board, not the easily taken and held "pocket corners", it would be very good for a Map to be composed of, for example, just East and North Africa, the Middle-East, and Europe, and then have three challenges after each other on that Map: one for taking North and East Africa against a Middle-East and European AI, one for taking Europe against an African and Arabic AI, and one for taking Middle-East against an African and a European AIs.

What are the key ways to defend the whole African Continent? Should you go North, East, West, or South when approaching from a particular side?

8) ARMY AND TURN COUNTING A Tutorial level that teaches you how to choose between penetrating an AIs bonus, and expanding your own keep. This level would be pretty deep and high in the Challenges, or Story/Conquest, or Tutorials Tab. This would be for advanced gamers that are used to the idea of resource accounting in other games, but maybe haven't practiced it in WARLIGHT, or, for players like me who feel confident at playing tabletop RISK in the real world, but WARLIGHT is a whole new animal where people are a lot more skilled because you're playing against basically the whole internet.
I've just started getting more practiced at card-counting and turn-counting in Magic: the Gathering, and the whole "Tempo Advantage"/"Card Advantage" thing applies to WARLIGHT really well-- Reinforcements received every turn are like the cards drawn every turn in Magic.

The levels and tutorials that the average player goes through coasting on intuitiveness are usually, I would guess, "up to completing level 3 on the old Tutorials" and "up to completing level 10 on the new Tutorials"-- partly because people are getting pretty good at doing research on Wikis and Forums anyway, but games are still hard, and skill is time-consuming to acquire. I beat Level 4 before the New Tutorials Change, and I'm on Level 8 now.

And I feel like right now I'm not learning enough for how hard things are getting. New Tutorials Level 7 was pretty fun and easy, (took a few tries but I slowed down because there was no stress and the map was PRETTY :D). Level 6 on the New Tutorials was a pain for me, which is frustrating because it looked easier than it was, and I'm pretty sure Level 8 I'm going to need to scroll through the Forums quite a bit for help on.

As an Aside: QUESTION: Is the point of Level 8 to teach players to chase down the AI as soon as possible? The only YouTube I found, the player got very lucky and found all the AI's starting centers on Turn 2, which sort of meant there was no mystery involved in watching it, "gee I could have done that, but in my games, the AI always starts too far away from me, and it's a bigger challenge to guess where I should start on the Map to get good bonuses quickly."

Actually, in a lot of ways, I really, really like Level 8 on the New Tutorials in its structure because it seems like it could teach players a lot, but I feel like it should be accessible to play for "Newbies" a lot sooner than it currently is, in its own separate Tab, with a different set of Tutorials teaching you how to get ready to play on it.

The Tutorials teaching the Cards and other features are good, those are helpful, and I liked how Level 7, the BIG SECRET that "Solved" the level like a puzzle was: Blockade the Bridge!

Turning the Tutorials Levels into Puzzles like that is how to make the Tutorials the best they can be, and currently I feel like Level 8 is a lot of useful Puzzles, but I'm not sure the average player is quite prepared for it without extra help and resource, an extra level or two, and I also think that while Level 7 is fun, it is different, and there just seems to be a disconnection overall between the early New Tutorials.


******xxxxxBREAKxxxx*****


Perhaps........Perhaps Level 8 could stay where it is, Level 7 could be put in a different track of "Fantasy" Tab, with Middle-Earth and Westeros Maps?

Lastly, this might not entirely be what most of the CURRENT community of players come here for, but I think that WARLIGHT would expand its player base extremely quickly if there was a tab which mainly existed to play the most popular table maps of RISK and RISK like games on:

Classic RISK, Lord of the Rings RISK, Star Wars RISK, Castle RISK or RISK Europe, the Axis and Allies Map (basically, Issander's HUGE WORLD MAP is exactly what I most love to come here for!), Conquest of the Empire.

Now, some of those games, in particular, have special pieces that go beyond counting just the number of units in an army-- the games with horses and catapults and the like-- I think it might be possible to add them, but between how much effort it would be, and how much returns, how few people might be interested in them-- I'm not expecting that the games be recreated entirely, but the idea of *the Maps* being made, to play WARLIGHT RISK on, now that would be really, really cool. :D

http://brilliantmaps.com/risk/

Basically if you took a random 10 Maps out of this list of 27 Maps, and called it a day in, that would probably make people super happy.

****xxxxBREAKxxxx****

Actually, I just had another line of thought:

You all commenting seem to be "Above Level 50+"

Now, this is fine, and it's also fine that I'm "Below Level 10". Now here's what I think would be super super constructive for perspective!

Do any of you high level guys know some "Level 20-30" guys you could ask to contribute to this discussion? To get some accurate angles of view!

I think we need to figure out "What keeps someone playing from Level 1-10", "What keeps someone playing from Level 12-18", and "What keeps someone playing from Level 20-30".

I'm pretty sure that if the community works to make Level 30 accessible for those interested in shooting for it, after that, player participation drop-off is just a matter of people being themselves that managing wouldn't help anyway. But getting to level 30 and involved in all game types, is something some players need help guides and tutorials to achieve.

Edited 2/21/2017 17:24:25

I am a "newbie", but I'm also a "long time newbie" :D

Basically, I love games, but suck at them. XD

So, actually, I think that this is a common phenomenon-- and figuring how to help "long time newbies" level up quickly, is one of the keys to getting them to be more helpful to "other newbies"--

figuring out how to level people up faster, will create more high-level players, who can then help more new players, stick around longer, increasing community population and participation, increasing publicity, and increasing feedback into the mod system for further innovations and additions.

With more such Forum activity, the whole thing gets more support and gets better and lasts longer.

:D :D :D :D

“You must begin by gaining power over yourself; then another; then a group, an order, a world, a species, a group of species… finally, the galaxy itself.” ... –Darth Plagueis

Also, and this is excessive to the extreme, but if there's any way to have a bracket of multiplayer games that allows for border-line absurdity of the role-playing variety......:D

I'm just saying that if you borrowed the "Command Zone" from Magic the Gathering, and distributed to each player, a General card, that granted some kind of Bonus, or Mission-based Bonus, and modeled the cards after "Famous Megalomaniacs In Alternate Facts History"......like Doctor Doom, Darth Plagueis, Napoleon, Catherine the Great, Ivan the Terrible, Lex Luthor, Sauron.....you know, that kind of thing. Everyone playing as Some Evil Badass Or Other....

And as far as "but we're only playing on one map, what's the explanation for how other characters get to the "wrong" world?

Well the answer to that is "BECAUSE AWESOME, DUH, SHUT UP! :D "

....I'm sorry, I just saw LEGO Batman last night. ^_^

And hey, Heroscape, or Doctor Strange, could offer some kind of excuse to make a wacky "Multiverse" style map, with a couple hundred territories like that old "Big Europe" Map, connected by, like, Portals and Crapola? :D

The Super Super Super Super great thing about Warlight, when you first start playing as an Uber-Nuber, is:

A) The Custom Maps appear damn near endless in possibility-- it looks to me like "if you can draw it on paper, we can code it and play on it, plus we have really good drawing programs. we've even got 3-D Maps going on now!"

B) The Cards and features like Fog seem able to do almost anything a coder can imagine; it's like the Magic Set Editor thing, but for board games for dudes-on-a-map, which is also pretty nuts. :D

C) The Combat System seems to be remarkably, remarkably, efficient and adaptable and at least "the controls" are easy to learn, even if the strategy could take as long as chess to get good at I'm thinking. Making it one of the best games in the "tabletop dudes on a map" games like freaking totally ever.

So if there are ways to just play up those Key Three Strengths, that's what draws people to Warlight *over other games*, so that needs to be preserved and cleanly presented in any thing done to help teach people how to play it good so they can have fun. :)

I highly recommend that people who are super good at Warlight themselves, study the writings of Mark Rosewater, at wizards.com/Magic, "Making Magic", to establish the basics of how to balance a game for Competitiveness and Accessibility and Fun-ness. "Game Theory" is a big wide open field of writing that anyone can point at some book about, but Magic: the Gathering is really super popular, and is likely to be the source and example of the concepts that the most random net-izens are familiar with. :) I mean it's all findable in older literature I'm sure.....but Magic puts a whole lot of work into "Getting New Players" and "Keeping Old Players", and getting inspired by some of what they do would be smart in my opinion.

Some kind of easily searchable Library system to classify the Maps, so that it's easier to find the Map you want to play on, would also be a big giant helpful thing. There's tons and tons of maps, and last I checked it's just "whichever Map was created newest shows up at the top of the list"....that could be improved upon. :)

I'm hyper enthusiastic about WARLIGHT, just have way, way not enough time to do it, and not sure which threads are best to comment on about what.

1) First, any new content created should not replace old content. I hope to find the part where I get to try again at Level 5 and 6 of the Old Tutorial, but I can't find them right now. Maybe they're deep in the New Tutorial.

You can find them here.

https://www.warlight.net/SinglePlayer/AllBuiltIn

For beginners, the best thing is to set game where opponent is overhelming, but keep that gradually.

1vs2(2 AI team), than 1vs3, maybe 2vs5 (team with AI), and then 1vs4, will do competitive games against AI for single player use. 1vs5 is probably too hard, but not impossible to win.

Such games should not have "advanced" settings like Local Deployment, Multi Attack, Army Cap or increased fog settings.

Very soon newbies will be able to understand why sometimes you need first move and why you need delayed move, and why some bonuses are better than others.

"For beginners, the best thing is to set game where opponent is overhelming, but keep that gradually.

1vs2(2 AI team), than 1vs3, maybe 2vs5 (team with AI), and then 1vs4, will do competitive games against AI for single player use. 1vs5 is probably too hard, but not impossible to win.

Such games should not have "advanced" settings like Local Deployment, Multi Attack, Army Cap or increased fog settings.

Very soon newbies will be able to understand why sometimes you need first move and why you need delayed move, and why some bonuses are better than others."

Nothing personal at all, but I have no idea what any of this really means, so it's definitely all above "true newbie" level. like, some terms I get, but which tab, what kind of games do you mean, ladders, or something else, or what? you're in the middle of what you're trying to say. what's the set-up?

at what point should I explore the Multi-player Tab? before or after Tutorial level 10? 15?

Like, OK, I think I remember how fog works.

Army Cap- if that's how much your whole Army on the Map is allowed to be, that's actually good to have that cap on, but if it restricts how many armies in a territory, that's not a good cap to limit newbies on. they'll figure out how to limit themselves and be efficient with some kind of cap, but not a really tight one that just stops them from being able to make sure they take territory with overpowering force.

I'm still stuck on Lv. 8. any advice for that?

And thanks for the old Maps link! :)

Edited 2/23/2017 00:50:15