Hey all,

I've been thinking a lot about how to help new users overcome the initial challenge of going from being overwhelmed and wanting to walk away to an active user. Setherick's comments in the general forum about how he almost didn't have the patience to stick it out made me wonder if the problem is even worse than I think it is. So I wanted to start a brainstorming thread about some ideas of what to do in search of some low hanging fruit that won't take me away from development too much.

Here are a few thoughts I've had, feel free to comment on these ideas as well as add your own.

* Getting started videos instead of text. This would be me walking you through all the things need to do to get started, from choosing your team to offering contracts to game planning, etc. These would be a series of short 3-5 minute videos focusing on each topic, so they would be easy to find, and possibly even in a 'curriculum' style that shows which ones you have watched and which ones you haven't watched. (Ideas of what these videos should focus on would also be a good topic of discussion)

* Follow-up emails with tutorials - basically this idea would be a daily email for a week or so after you sign up (which you could opt out of, of course) that talk about various aspects of the game. Again, what these emails should talk about would be a good topic of discussion.

* Online documentation. I have started building online documentation, but just plain haven't had the time to write it. I'm wondering if users would be interested in contributing to the docs, though, so it's not just me.

* Getting Started Forums - my thoughts here are to have the ability to move threads into a getting started forum category, probably making it so that you can't create a new thread here so it doesn't get cluttered.

Any other ideas or thoughts on these ideas?

Lellow had a great response for new players he posted under this thread. I felt this was the most realistic review I had seen given to a new player to help acclimate to MFN quicker. While it was his opinion, it was pretty spot on... https://mfn1.myfootballnow.com/community/thread/3/2728?page=1

I do like the new user quick tutorials for getting started and the one week of start-up email tips & tools.

For forums, I personally don't find them useful because so many people post. That being said, if it was a locked or controlled forum so the basic information for a new user doesn't get buried, might be a good tool.

Not feeling the online docs personally. I think the other 3 together would suffice.

Video tutorials would be great! I came here from a long history of playing football management sims, but I can definitely imagine how intimidating it must feel stepping in as someone without that background.

I think all of the below would also be very helpful to new owners.

- Allow stickies in the forums. There are a lot of good, helpful posts that are quickly lost and hard to find again, which leads to...

- A better "search" tool for the forums (I can't even find the post I'm looking for when I know exactly what I'm looking for!).

- Accurate default / recommended player weights that are updated with each new version release. A major detriment to new owners is relying on these values to make decisions when anyone who has been here for more than one season knows to disregard them completely because they are so out of date.

- Improve Ai drafting. I'm sure there are probably times when a new owner takes over a team only to find out the Ai just drafted a P/K in the 1st/2nd/3rd round (or a 79 WLB instead of a 95 SLB) and then walks away.

Or someone with that background. I've played many different football simulation (text based and online) and arcade style games in the past (Techmo SB, Madden, EA's NCAA Football, FBPro98, Football Mogul, and Deep Route are a few that I played regularly -- I've also previewed many others). The problem I had as an experienced sim player was that what I was seeing on the field didn't really match up with the game documentation that I was reading. And digging through the forums only got me so far. So I found that I was asking a lot of questions about how the sim engine worked that I assumed veteran players just understood.

That said, I'm also not your typical user either. I work in the industry, so my days, and most of my nights, revolve around managing a quality assurance team, so I tend to look at software differently than some. When I see the game not behaving in ways that I would expect, I'm thinking simultaneously of my experience as the end user and trying to figure out what in the code is causing a problem. It's probably the reason I get so frustrated at game documentation...

Heh. I can relate. I work as a QA Tester for a sizable Midwest software company, so I was happy to get into this league. My testing tends towards running something towards a completion of plan (i.e. one full season), so it's a bit hard for me to not have documentation... But I more look for JDB's posts (Dev notes / comments) as to the change and what should be happening now, so I can see how my test plan works to it.

To address the forum at large, I'm not sure how well videos will go off, due to a possible time investment. I find it easier to skim something with a topic I'm interested, find what I need, then go on with my day. So maybe an 'instruction manual' built like the forums. Main Forum sections are chapters, topics are the main ideas, posts are the details.

I like when the description for the fatigue slider was added. Or a recommendation / setting to pick for the gameplay slider. I have tried 99 and know it's tough to work with but the option is still there with a warning. Generally this is how I see the whole game. For example discipline does this _______and the recommended level is ________. I see defaults this way, but see that setting not super valuable for informational purposes to build a proper set of Weights. I like the AI but not it's default weights for each coaches scheme. I am all in for making AI defaults better across the board, and it starts with modifying the desired weights set by he coaches recommendations.

How about building a GM library?
Each book has a series of videos, text info, FAQ and forum links in it to choose from.

If it's possible make it look like you walked into a library. You see the different sections to choose from(say game planning). After you choose your section it takes you to a row of books and you pick one(say offense). Each book has a category to choose from(say scouting). You open the book and there's the tutorial videos, text info, FAQ's, and forum links pertaining to game planning on offense.

It doesnt need to have motion like your actually walking around in a library, just visually looks like your standing in front of something looking at it. Then you choose it and then your standing in front of another section. We live in a visual world and a visual aspect could go a long way to grabbing and retaining a new GM's attention.


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I think there's a wealth of high quality GM's with a wealth of info on both the basics and also different ways to play this game. This is a great way for peeps to contribute their ideas. Prolly should have a duplicate for each page though. One for the final draft which is locked to everybody except the admins and one for a think tank on the subject.