Colony Control is a very fun game as proven by the ton of requests to bring it back but it has a big flaw. A lot of people have no clue what they are doing which makes it awful to play with random people on your team and makes the game less playable overall.
First the problems: 1. New players are too intimidated by all the options and freeze up or leave. I've seen it happen multiple times where people mine the tree and boulders then start running around aimlessly or just do nothing and end up leaving. Prove is this comment, where someone thinks the game looks fun but is overwhelmed by the options. 2. People do play but play it so poorly that it negatively impacts the team. An example of this is my last match where I was playing with a random, let's call them Steve for now. Steve bought the armoury and blacksmith and place them in a diagonal lime from the town hall, leaving no place for almost any building. I asked Steve to move them but he didn't know how so I had to teach him the remove building menu and where to properly place, which cost is about 10% of the prepare time. In other matches I have had teammates place duplicate buildings because they didn't know we had one already or place a portable townhall right next to the townhall.
But I know these new players want to actually play the game, since there have been many instances where they played great after I taught them how to play. But that takes too long, there's not always someone to teach and it shouldn't be the players responsibility.
Therefor I suggest: Tutorial!
Colony control is one of the most complicated games on CubeCraft and with a lot of younger players that is an issue. I know there is a tutorial book, but a lot of players are too lazy, bored or bad at reading too make proper use of it, which I think is doubly so for the younger players who need it most. My solution would be an interactive tutorial, which teaches without long paragraphs and in a more engaging way.
Things that would need to be focused on especially are these points: 1. How to gain resources, especially food. Players instinctively start cutting trees and mining rocks but its less clear wheat can be gathered, as it looks correlational and doesn't have a health bar. It should be made clear that you need to gather wheat and place farms for food, that you need to mine rocks, cut trees, mine gold and place mines for gold and that mining guilds can exhaust the mines, because people often place more mines than there are gold veins on Bastion. 2. What each building does, make them quickly interact with each and show them the different levels, this prevents players from getting overwhelmed by the menu. 3. Explain how gear and pets work, I don't think everyone is aware of the armor downgrading upon death or that you can make your pets stronger in the pet shop. 4. This one is very important, teach ideal ways of placing buildings. Knowing how to place buildings as close to each other as possible is vital, as it prevents other buildings from being placed and can mess up your entire team. I suggest its shown how the red and green outline works and that you can easily see it with f5 and maybe a sort of challenge where people are challenged to place as many buildings on the map as possible. 5. How do you win. This is not a huge one but some people don't know the actual objective of destroying other team's buildings.
That was my suggestion on how to make colony control more fun for new and experienced players which might also give it a more active player base. Please let me know if you have any suggestions or feedback.
Edit: added the fifth point to the tutorial focuses.
First the problems: 1. New players are too intimidated by all the options and freeze up or leave. I've seen it happen multiple times where people mine the tree and boulders then start running around aimlessly or just do nothing and end up leaving. Prove is this comment, where someone thinks the game looks fun but is overwhelmed by the options. 2. People do play but play it so poorly that it negatively impacts the team. An example of this is my last match where I was playing with a random, let's call them Steve for now. Steve bought the armoury and blacksmith and place them in a diagonal lime from the town hall, leaving no place for almost any building. I asked Steve to move them but he didn't know how so I had to teach him the remove building menu and where to properly place, which cost is about 10% of the prepare time. In other matches I have had teammates place duplicate buildings because they didn't know we had one already or place a portable townhall right next to the townhall.
But I know these new players want to actually play the game, since there have been many instances where they played great after I taught them how to play. But that takes too long, there's not always someone to teach and it shouldn't be the players responsibility.
Therefor I suggest: Tutorial!
Colony control is one of the most complicated games on CubeCraft and with a lot of younger players that is an issue. I know there is a tutorial book, but a lot of players are too lazy, bored or bad at reading too make proper use of it, which I think is doubly so for the younger players who need it most. My solution would be an interactive tutorial, which teaches without long paragraphs and in a more engaging way.
Things that would need to be focused on especially are these points: 1. How to gain resources, especially food. Players instinctively start cutting trees and mining rocks but its less clear wheat can be gathered, as it looks correlational and doesn't have a health bar. It should be made clear that you need to gather wheat and place farms for food, that you need to mine rocks, cut trees, mine gold and place mines for gold and that mining guilds can exhaust the mines, because people often place more mines than there are gold veins on Bastion. 2. What each building does, make them quickly interact with each and show them the different levels, this prevents players from getting overwhelmed by the menu. 3. Explain how gear and pets work, I don't think everyone is aware of the armor downgrading upon death or that you can make your pets stronger in the pet shop. 4. This one is very important, teach ideal ways of placing buildings. Knowing how to place buildings as close to each other as possible is vital, as it prevents other buildings from being placed and can mess up your entire team. I suggest its shown how the red and green outline works and that you can easily see it with f5 and maybe a sort of challenge where people are challenged to place as many buildings on the map as possible. 5. How do you win. This is not a huge one but some people don't know the actual objective of destroying other team's buildings.
That was my suggestion on how to make colony control more fun for new and experienced players which might also give it a more active player base. Please let me know if you have any suggestions or feedback.
Edit: added the fifth point to the tutorial focuses.
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