Recruting new players - Mission Impossible?

[liga]

Originally posted by BugRoger:

I also compiled the Newby Guide thread into an proper webpage. This is much more readable than the big post in the confused newby thread.

If you want to try to trasform in a web readable I'm keeping a .rtf file including all the interesting informations about the rules that comes up on the threda.

You can download it at

http://arrakis.unimo.it/~ligabue/dom2/docs/

it is the guida.rtf file

I'm used to update the files 1/2 times a week

good luck
Liga

[Tris]

Hmmm...I showed the demo to a few of my friends. To one of them I gave the advice "Try Ulm to start, they are less complicated" The others I just said "download the demo - this game is cool"

At least three of them got the full Version before I did :-p

Don't know what this says about me and my friends.

[november]

Dom is a deep game but for the reasons you’ve mentioned I’m having a hard time getting into it. Part of the reason, I know, is that fantasy only barley fires my imagination. Slowly Dom is moving into the same Category as Warcraft III for me. Both are very good games and I can see why people like them, just maybe not my cup of tea. I’ll keep Dom on my hard drive and visit it occasionally—who knows? Maybe it will grab me at some point.

[HotNifeThruButr]

Yeah, Norfleet, but in your day, people ate rocks and fire was new and exciting.

[Zeikko]

I have introduced Dom II for my real friends and even invited some of them to bring their comp to LANs and test the game. My real-life friends played one game and then they said that they will never play Dom again. Nothing against that, they just don't find the game interesting enough.

Then I introduced Dom II to few of my IRC friends and they played many demo games and said that it's a good game. They were hell confused of everything and asked thousands of questions, i pointed out that they should read FAQs and manuals. Then they went quiet continued playing their counter-strikes etc.

Dom is hard game to catch on, game itself doesn't contain any help information, except turn tips. FAQs and manuals are hard to find and forum is very strange. I remember when i first time came on the forum i read maybe 20 postings and didn't understand anything. I read all threads from up to down and I was very confused.

I would really appreciate that there would be some info that the forum is "upside-down"

[magnate]

Let me ask a question: are you an hour-a-day gamer, or a ten-hour-sesh gamer? See, my theory is that Dom2 suits the former type. Games are loooong and involved (don't get me wrong, this is great). I'm the latter type of gamer and I can't win in a single session (I can lose easily!). Even with no kids and a nice easy job I can only manage about one session every two weeks. So by the time of my next session I can't be bothered to resume an old game, so I start something else. I got really into Dom2 when I first got it, but I didn't come back to it. I think if I was an hour-a-day type, I would do, but that really doesn't suit me.

Of course, YMMV.

CC

[Tricon]

Dominions problem is somewhat like the "wargame problem". On the one hand you have a beautiful board with nice (albeit very limited) pLastic pieces like, for example, Axis and Allies, on the other hand you have an "ugly" 2000 cardboard counter game like .... lets say Third Reich. Both are great games, but if the average gamer came up to a table where both games would be in starting set-up, most would probably choose A&A. This is a rather lame comparison, I know, but it resembles what I've come across with dom2. I showed a friend of mine Dom2 and Medieval :Total War. He definately liked both games, but guess which wanted to play more... .
(On a happy sidenote, now that 5000 miles are between us, he gives dom2 serious consideration because of its good pbem ability.)

[Saxon]

Two parts to my comments.

Smeone named ceremony was writing a brilliant guide to the game. I am delighted to provide this link to what I have seen.

http://www.maladjustite.com/dominion.pdf

I can not praise this document enough. I got the link after posting a question in January regarding dominion.

I do not know what happened to the author, but I do hope that they could finish the guide or release what they have done. Like an unfinished story, it can still be very valuable to others.

On the other side, I feel that Dominions is a niche game with great depth, so it will struggle to bring in new players. Let me put it this way, my girlfriend is very new to computers. As in, only started using them in the Last year for anything other than word processing. She worked as a journalist for three years and is good at Word, but games are new to her, she is a raw beginner. We play Diablo on the network but Counter Strike with all those different guns is too complicated. Put yourself in her shoes and imagine playing Dom II… This game is for those who have played other turn based strategy games before and even they will have to work at it. Think of it as a violin. You have to work at it before it produces beautiful music.

[Tris]

*Unbearable Smugness*

My girlfriend is currently building far too many salamanders for my own good. Damn things are size 3 and my war minotaurs can't trample them.

[Innocence]

As a newbie I can tell you about my own problems with DomII.

A little background info: I discoveded DomII while looking for a substitute for Stars! The game had to be PBEM ready, run simultaneous turns (real WEGO) and support 8+ players - and frankly besides Stars!, VGAPlanets and a few other older games, DomII was the only game offering these features (very odd indeed - WEGO is by far the best turn-based model!)

I downloaded the demo when the game was released Last year, but quickly lost my way in the interface. Like I said I'm a former Stars! player and not really concerned with flashy GUI, but DomII is much harder to get into!

The demo lay dormant on my harddrive for half a year until i "rediscovered" it recently. I found this forum (and yes, the latest postings should be at the end, not at the beginning - it's confusing ), and thus found my way to the "walkthru".

The walkthru did it for me. It's brilliant, and while it doesn't explain everything, it's enough to get you started. I bought the game Last week, as did a friend of mine.

Now the interresting stuff: Why is DomII so hard to get into?

IMO, it's the lack of clear text info on the main screens. This makes you loose overview and makes you think "where do I begin?" The overview would be much better if all the symbols,units and such were labeled. Like:

Hire troops: Write the name and vital stats of the troop underneath the units. That'd make it 50x faster to compare units. A picture tells me very little in itself. Oh yea, and separate the Commanders clearly from the regular troops - the current view is confusing.

Troop status: Write stats, afflictions and such under each unit.

Main map army size: Write a number inside the square.

And while we're at it, improve/expand the main map filters! Filters in Stars! made it easy to get a good overview of all fleet opreations. In DomII these filters would be a great help:
Show/hide:
- Scouts/Spies
- Commanders
- Priests
- Garrisoned troops (troops w/o commander)

The way Build God/Start New Game works is terrible. Let players build a God and save it under whatever filename they want. Make it so I can reload, change and save any God I choose. And put some default Gods in the game as suggested (to help getting started).

All this said I really like DomII. It may not be perfect (yet) but it's the best we got