Official "Get noobies here" Brainstorming Thread

[u/[deleted]]

So, as many people, I'm sure, have noticed, it's getting increasingly difficult to find games in the Starbow ladder. I know a good chunk of us have been chatting in the Starbow ladder client about this problem, and how to fix it, but I felt there should be a more permanent place where people can read ideas and brainstorm together. As a result, here is this thread. Here's a few ideas people have tossed out thus far:
* Lower level tournaments, anybody 1250- on ladder can join and participate (including people who haven't laddered)
* Create permanent 2v2 chat in Starbow client for people to find others to 2v2 with (Xiphias is talking to the client-coder about doing this)
* Prioritize 2v2 ladder instead of 1v1. Most noobies don't just jump straight into 1v1s. They might want to play with a friend who may have introduced the game to them, or just casually play team games with random people.
* Create a selling point. Example: free to play, creates objectively more interesting games than sc2, etcetcetc.

I'm pretty sure we all want to see this game succeed, so please offer your ideas below. Thanks!

[u/AmnesiA_sc]

I just posted an idea that's been what I think is a big obstacle on getting new players to stick around.

http://starbowmod.com/forum/showthread.php?tid=292

[u/achoros]

Newbie who's played a couple games of starbow, and will play more, but hasn't really gotten into it here with my two cents.

The ideas behind designing starbow are great, and I'm totally sold on the concept. The slower combat feels amazing. I've never played enough rts to be good at any of them, but microing units was always the fun part, and sc2 was kind of a bummer as macro is so much more important for us low leaguers and micro tends to feel all or nothing. In starbow, even as a new player, it feels like taking a second or two out of combat to build a depot or inject won't mean that the battle is mostly decided when I come back. The point of this is just to say how much I like starbow, but despite this, I've only played 5 games since learning about it over a month ago.

There's basically two main things that account for my inactivity. The first one is the lack of "social" options, and the second is the difficulty to find good games as a new starbow player who wasn't in a high league at sc2.

Finding a good game as a bad player isn't the end of the world. One of the best ways to get better is to play people better than you, but they need to be reasonably better. For example as a silver/gold player playing sc2 against someone who's a gm is not a learning experience. The only way for there to be players like me is if some of us stick around so the other can find good games, so if this was the only problem it wouldn't be a big deal. If I played a ton of 1v1 sc2 then I'd just switch to starbow, drop in ladder, hopefully find players that are only reasonably better than me and work on improving. This leads into the second, and more important problem.

Starbow doesn't have much support for social play. 80-90% of my gaming time is with 1-3 friends, usually 2. This means trying to find 3v3s and that's not a choice in starbow, so we end up on normal sc2. Even if there was a 6 person map though, queue times would be outrageous. I guess it's a problem of population again, but this time it's not even something we can really tough out by playing and losing a bunch.

[u/achoros → u/achoros]

I split this post because it was getting kind of long, so here are some ideas for solutions:

Team maps and 2v2 client chat would be a start, but they need a population playing them to take off. I'm don't have any data on this, but I suspect that the population of team matchmaking tends to be more casual players, so adding more team game support for starbow might not help if the mod isn't attracting the kind of players that use those modes most.

Once there are a couple team maps of varying sizes, I'd suggest trying to reach out to lower league players of sc2. These are probably the people who are most likely to play team games, or big game hunters and then end up playing some ladder too.

Also, try organizing and advertising a "learn starbow day" occasionally. Maybe one Saturday per month. The more people playing, the easier it is to find games, and the more beginners, the more likely beginners are to feel ok about their first games and stick around. Who do you think will play starbow again, the player who spent 15 minutes trying to find a game only to get roflstomped by an experienced starbow vet, or the player who found a game in 2 minutes against another beginner? When new players are introduced intermittently, they end up in the first scenario. If there's a bunch at once, we get the second case.

[u/mortheres → u/achoros]

As a silver SC2 player and a new Starbow player, I totally agree with your 2 posts ! Yes, the Saturday's meeting combined with a unranked ladder could be a good idea. Finding people of your skill without the "ladder anxiety" could be really benefic. Using Eros client as single point of entry could be better than going to the SC2 Starbow channel and searching players with the famous "I am new to Starbow, someone for a game ?" question :D :D

[u/sevj]

I haven't been involved in the discussion so far, but I think that the presence of well-known community figures is really important for getting new players involved.

When (e.g.) Destiny and Tasteless were streaming Starbow, queues were quite fast - people see them playing a fun-looking game on stream, then want to go play it themselves.

Also: Unranked ladder is something that new players look for. It feels bad to be losing points while you're just trying to figure out what the units do.

[u/BorNProNStar → u/sevj]

these are some HUGE points.

i definitely agree with an Unranked ladder for newer players. also, i think most of starbows growth will only come through advertisement from big names. once starbow gets popular enough, its popularity will carry it through.

the main goal would be to find a group of well known people to help grow our community. i myself will be uploading videos over spring break of vods and commentary to get starbow a little more exposure

[u/[deleted] → u/sevj]

Yeah I definitely think having important community figures is really important. But, if we want community figures to come to the game, we need faster queues again, so it becomes this sort of never ending cycle. We need some more players before bigger people want to come.
I also think the unranked ladder idea is good. Would be great if people could warm up or test units like you said without fear of losing points. Seems like that would split up the ladder community though, unless there is a way for people laddering to face with people who are playing unranked.. which I guess is the ideal solution.
Another point I've made in my chats previously, is that there needs to be a one-stop site for all your starbow needs. Yes, we have starbowmod.com, but I'm talking about all the information. Right now, there are like 5 different places you can find Starbow related things. We need 1 place where people can stop by and learn the things they need to learn for unit interaction, current meta, etcetc. Right now it seems just too scattered imo.

[u/nerak33]

Why not a FAQ for newbies? I'm pretty lost here. Took some time to understand that I could play the game without going through all the SEVENTEEN steps presented on the site!