Pirate The World - Online Adventure Game

I would like to create a beginner's tutorial for the game, in the hopes that we can retain some of the people who sign up, play a few moves and have no idea what they're doing, and then leave without checking the forums.

If anyone has any suggestions for what it should include, please post them here. Remember back to the good ol' days of when you were a newbie and what would have really helped you.

make friends...

1. keep fame low.
2. Stay away from popcan.
3. upgrade (you just can't make money that easy)
4. End your moves with 0 fame.
5. don't cheat.

Ok theres a few suggestions, i'm tired no sleep in over 24hrs, I might write a guide up later if you want?

Get a big ship.
Smack down other pirates.
Shoot stuff with cannons.
Eat your vegetables.

keep a log of who attacks you during the week

Note when certain pirates play at certain times...everyone has to sleep sometime!

I think fame really needs to be explained to new players. Saying 'keep fame low' isn't enough. In the beginning fame seemed so easy to get that saying keep it low doesn't really hit home. Getting 3 for all those foolish attacks in those first few days, i figured keeping my fame around 50 was safe! I had no clue how fame actually worked until i saw it explained on the forum. The current guide just says 'the higher your fame, the more gold you lose.' Maybe the actual facts are needed.

higher fame is more gold you lose lol.. so that is a fact.. to a certain point..

if i had to give some suggestions...

1) Radar is very important.
2) Ship should be big enough that you dont see the same thing every move...
3) Attack is easier to build than defense, but it seems defense pays off more.. ie level 10 defense is about the same cost as level 12 attack.. so beware when upgrading and deciding what you need..
4) Keep your fame as close to 0 as possible.
5) Don't run off your mouth acting like your hot ****.. nobody will like you...
6) Respect other players.
7) Actually THINK about what upgrades your getting... don't just upgrade because you have the gold to...
Make a map.. it will help you a lot in the long run..
9) Towns give you more gold than islands, (typically) but you gain fame from towns.. so use caution...
10) if you have 10 radar and a level 1 ship (2 moves).. if you hit someone on the outside of the radar, it costs you 5 moves... so always attack in your biggest ship...


im sure i can think of more, but im home eating lunch trying to study for a chemistry test that i have in a half hour.. ill try to think and add some more on later... hope this helps a bit

Understanding fame:

If you attack a player and succeed you gain 1 fame but if you fail you gain 3 fame, this can work out bad if there is other players lurking around you.

What is fame?

Fame is lets say a vunerability, if you have 1 fame and someone attacks you they will take 2% of your gold and removing that fame back to 0.

A player can take upto a maximum of 50% (thats right! 50) so don't go attacking like a mad person, so if you have 51 fame they still take 50%.

Just a quick write up.

Capt. I suggest that you auto email a short "how to play PTW like a pro" much like the following to all new players. This may help them to acclimate to the game quickly and lower the number of abandoned ships out there.
-------------------------------------------------------

The primary objective of the game is to cash out at the end of the month. (something I have never done) Secondary objectives are to accumulate gold, keep as much gold as you can, upgrade your atributes and HAVE FUN.

To accumulate gold you move your ship with the compass thingie till you find a island, ship, or town. You then can attack and you may gain gold.

To upgrade your attributes you purchase them with gold in the towns.

Islands can not attack back, ships can. When you attack ships or towns you gain fame. The more fame you have the more gold another pirate may take from you if they attack your ship and win. To have low fame is good if you are attacked. If your fame is allways zero you will not accumulate gold very fast. Fame level is a risk/reward type of thingie. With very little gold high fame is not that big of a deal. If you have 100 gold and someone takes 50 from you it is no big deal. If you have 1,000 gold and someone takes 500 from you it is a bigger deal.

A plan for the game is the way to go. Decide your long range plans and short range plans (I want my radar to be a 10, I want to find 543 gold, get to a town and purchase a radar upgrade).

Hints for playing:
Move around and locate an island, town, or ship and try the game controls out.
Locate the forum, sign up, read the post, but only when you are not active in the game as some of the evil pirates will know your are online and target you.
Map at least 100 moves a day.
Green ships go down easy, blue harder, and red ones don't bother with.
HAVE FUN
The game pays a cash prize but it will not pay the rent.
Play several short sessions everyday rather than one 14 hour stretch.
Schedule one bathroom break for every 14 hours of play.
Tell your family that you will be busy for the next 6 months.
If you have an online poker problem then this game may help.

You have a FAQ link that explains the basics. As mentioned above, email that, or a beefed up version of it... As the old saying goes, you can lead a horse to water...

In October of 2005, I found another game similar to this one and after a few moves, I logged out... I was used to games with "in your face graphics" and first person shooter scenarios that stimulated my senses... At first, I laughed and thought how lame it was to have a static screen with four direction buttons and very few (or no options)...

A few hours later, I went back to the game... My thought was, I had signed up and had 600 moves, may as well use them... After making a hit for over 25 bucks, I was hooked... I played that game every day and mapped every move until they stopped paying people...

In that game we found that people in general don't search the forums for answers and tend to ask the same questions over and over again... One member even went so far as to create an in depth user guide and the same questions that were answered in the guide, were still asked in the forums...

Right around the same time, I found this game and didn't sign up because my first impression was that you had to pay for everything... I didn't spend a whole lot of time reading the information, just glossed over it and saw you had to pay for things like fame resets, moves, treasure hunts, etc... I didn't realize those were optional and got away as fast as I could... A friend from the other game mentioned PTW to me and I told them what I thought... They explained that you don't have to pay unless you want to and that the main part of the game was free... So here I am... YAY...

The bottom line is, it's hard to figure out what drives people and you will bang your head up against the wall trying to figure it out...

One suggestion besides the "welcome, here is how to play email" would be a screen that when people first sign up, explains the game then and there, or takes them to your basics guide in the forums... The rest is up to them...

There's my two cents... err dubloons...

My idea is to try and make a kind of guided graphical tutorial to get people over the basics...

What do I do?
How do I attack someone?
What is fame?

...and so on. I may do it in Flash, although they haven't come out with Flash Studio for Intel Macs, so I don't like working with it through emulation.

I plan on having it show up BIG for a week or two after you join, and then be accessible from somewhere else afterwards. I expect it to replace the How To Play section of the forum.

I want new players to feel like they understand things, instead of just clicking around and leaving a gold-less carcass of a dinghy floating on the seas.

I like it... no... LOVE it!!

Not sure what the recording program is called... but it seems a lot of people who are making tutorials record their voice and what is happening on their screen... The mouse is highlighted with a large, transparent dot... Seems to be effective... If you want, I can send you a link of an example...

It will probably be much more effective than someone reading it... Of course it will have to be short and sweet as you will be dealing with varying attention spans

CC is right. Some peeps won't sit still or read a faq. They might not even sit still while someone reads it though.

Quick and dirty would be to link a page with screen shots. That would give them info and increase your retention. Then you could work on one of the fancy solutions.

CC would you send me and example of that as well?

As Captain_Chaos says there was a user guide on what some people here like to call "the other site" and it covered lots but still failed. There wasn't much on that site which didn't fail and the only people running parts of the site who seemed to know what they were doing were the mods. But I think the guide failed because it was too long and too detailed. After a bit of thought I have come up with a good idea for here which is rather than making a guide of any sort, part of the game code is changed. All new players would then go through the following steps:
1) They can enter the game but can only do what a script tells them to do. This will teach them all the basics because they can't progress to the next step without completing some set tasks. These would include things such as attacking a ship, moving to a set point on the map, searching an island, and changing ships.
2) This step is like we know the game now but with features such as cashout removed. After about a 2-3 days players can choose to cancel their account or move to the next step.
3) This is the final step and is what we know the game as now.

After steps 1 and 2 the players stats are reset. Also all players would be on the same map but would only be able to attack other players on the same step. Players on other steps can be seen by all but would be yellow which would mean you can't attack them and they can't attack you.
I think doing this would be easier than writing a guide and would allow new players to get to know the game before they lose their gold to the high up players. There are other ways in which this idea would help us all but I won't list them all unless asked. All text for the players to read could be placed in the same area which is already at the top of the game window.

So is my idea better than a guide or would a guide be better? (This is a bump but with more meaning)