Honestly, seeing new Players in Support roles is good and very healthy, but to people that are CM Regulars and have higher expectations because they see a lot of experienced players as opposed to newbies is very frustrating. You have to differ here, there’s people that are actually trying where you can actually feel that they’ve at least read the Wiki and maybe a related Guide someone wrote, but aren’t too familiar with mechanics yet and there’s people that have not done this and when you inform them of their mistakes as Department Head or higher up they just stay silent and ignore it.
Doing this will teach people the Basics of how a CM round goes, which is good if they’re new but I don’t think it’s going to help the fact that there are people that do not read the Wiki, do not read Guides and generally do not take their Jobs seriously. You should really differ from role to role here, some timelocks need to probably be higher though. Don’t punish potentially good players, punish incompetence if people repeatedly show it. There is absolutely no consquences to people being highly incompetent on important roles as of right now.
All you can do is ensure the tools are present for new people to learn more about how a support role works, that’s the wiki and random fan guides for you.
Otherwise there’s not much that can be done, if someone does not want to learn, they won’t.
Of course you cannot shove the wiki and guides down someone’s throat, that’s no good. But there’s basics you really need with some roles, Doctors that don’t know Meds and Surgery properly can absolutely destroy the round of others, for example. I have seen plenty of cases where Doctors would fluke even simple things such as giving someone Blood and it ends in them not being able to play anymore. And there’s people that are repeat offenders on the List of incompetence, and those do not get punished whatsoever.
Learning by doing is totally fine as long as you don’t just destroy the round for others.
Learning by doing unfortunately will entail people making mistakes and ruining someone’s round. Its the nature of the beast.
The only alternative that I can think is just increasing the timeclocks of all major roles by a significant factor. You only need to be a Nurse for 1 hour before you’re given the big boy shoes, that’s barely a single round of gameplay. Not to mention you can run off to some corner of the ship, screw around for half an hour, and by the end of it all have accomplished nothing, but now you are fully qualified to do surgery and get Marines killed cause you can’t remove the larva. Same goes for Spec, Smartgunner and akin.
5 Hours sounds like a lot, until you realize some rounds can go easily over two hours or longer.
I play mix of low pop and high pop, i assume i notice it more low pop because the affects are more drastic, there is a more extreme effect if you have fuck all medics groundside and one of them is bald, then again a bald medic is still more useful to have than a rifeman
About some players not even knowing basic CM mechanics before diving into other roles, I once seriously was XO with the only other command member being the CE. The CE had a silver medal for CE and whatnot, and a platin one for MT, and seemed competent. So I asked him to help me in CIC, he quickly reads the wiki page and then helps me. So, after some time the queen went off ovipositor and the CE did not know what an ovipositor is, with two MPs and me trying to explain him marine basics.
Purely from an IC perspective that’s kind of cool, ngl. They’re a technician and not frontline personnel, so they might not know a whole lot about xenos or about how operations are conducted outside of their involvement in them.
Honestly yeah i can agree with this. His job isn’t to fight but to manage the engineering of the ship. You put him in a role he wasn’t meant for IC and OOC and then call him bald and dumb for not knowing a role he wasn’t supposed to be.
Its like making fun of a doctor for not being a SO. You are doing two complete different jobs with two completely different mindsets and two completely different experinces.
someone unwilling to take the time to learn game sense isn’t going to do it any better when you shove their nose in the proverbial stain in the carpet.
Embrace the bullshit, and lower your expectations for new players, their fun is just as important as anyone else’s. As long as they aren’t actively griefing their team then let them take their time to learn stuff.
Time locks especially do nothing but put up a barrier that says “people with unlimited time only” nobody wants to grind 10 hours just to unlock the ability to use a defibrillator. Being behind a time lock does not actually teach you how to improve it just delays the amount of time until you can take a role to actually learn it, but you cant learn anything if you arent allowed to play the role you are time gated from. Most rounds there will be people available for help, and if there arent ie it’s lowpop be glad you got anyone at all.
I don’t think you read my post. They can take the time to learn the bare basic gameplay mechanics, and not take a specialist or smartgunner slot with a measly 5 hours of game time and still no idea of some of the most simple elements of the game that can (and should!) be learned as a rifleman. Specialist/SG are powerful roles and incredibly LIMITED roles. I do not have high expectations of new players. I have moderate expectations of SGs and specs. It’s not grinding ten hours, nor is ten hours ‘unlimited’ lmao. Even at one hour a day, that’s just… not that long. At all.
game sense can only do so much for you when it comes to spec/SG, ultimately the only thing that will make people better at those roles is people practicing and others mentoring, same for many other roles. By unlimited time I mean people who have a full time schedule and dont have more than an hour a night to play a game and they want to try out the cool specialist role instead of learning how to PB xenos without dying or shooting a peashooter at even the weakest castes to no kills and no effect and might retain them as a player long term. If you put X amount of hours before you’re even allowed to try to get a role, they will have to grind for it, it might not look like it but you have to grind out time in game to get XYZ role. I am not opposed to timelocks as a concept, but timelocks are not a substitute for teaching people to play a role, and wont actually make people better, playing the game will.
Also I didn’t realize this was a necropost, i thought it was new since the guy above me posted the day before, lmao
butterfingers