More Emphasis on RTFM

[JustMe]

DR.NOobFragger;499077']lol i started this game at .5 and when .6 came out i still read the manual... but i think alot has to do with people no wanting to help the newbs... like i was on battlearena and some guy was asking what thr shovel did...and someone told him to press alt+f4 to use it.. and he actually did... but he said it still didnt work... then he told him to press Ctrl+Alt+F4... and then i told him not to press anything and i told him that they are used to help build commander assests such as sandbags or bunkers and next time to read the manual... and i even gave a happy face

i rarely ask for help because of those peep, i usually will help everbody that ask's unless their bein a dikk or someting. i mean like i said before sometimes you can read the manual & just forget some of it.

I like the quick guide in teh wiki, doest quite cover whole thing but tells you essentials like how to enter & exit a vehicle.

but you have those who will read , those who wont, those who help, those who will be arses about it. i can understand someobyd playin this for years & same ole questions,but if its annoying why not just ignore the questions rather than bite their heads off , or some other tactic like mentioned above (alt F4) & maybe discourage someonewho would be a great player to keep the mod.

[BlakeJr]

DR.NOobFragger;499077']lol i started this game at .5 and when .6 came out i still read the manual... but i think alot has to do with people no wanting to help the newbs... like i was on battlearena and some guy was asking what thr shovel did...and someone told him to press alt+f4 to use it.. and he actually did... but he said it still didnt work... then he told him to press Ctrl+Alt+F4... and then i told him not to press anything and i told him that they are used to help build commander assests such as sandbags or bunkers and next time to read the manual... and i even gave a happy face

I think you hit it head on there. Peoples attitudes towards new guys in game. It's so very easy to make fun of the new guy and in the end, guess what? The new guy thinks the mod is **** and full of elitist ******** who refuse to help.

What you did DR.NOobFragger(???), in spite of your alias , was a good deed. That's the spirit we should all try to share and cut back on the noobbashing to a bare minimum and only do it when really called for.

[Masaq]

Could we include a system used by some old PC games? (Actually, some newer ones use it, too, like Uplink).

Basically, you used to either get a code card inside the box or the system would use the manual, and to verify that you'd purchased the game and hadn't just downloaded it or copied the floppy disks from a mate (I'm going back 10-15 years here), at install the game would ask you for something like:

"The two-letter code in Row A, Line 56 from the code card: [ ]"

or

"First word on the fifth paragraph of the tenth page of the manual: [ ]"


Each time you installed, the question would be different - to a point (I think there were usually something like 5-10 different questions, and it'd randomly select one each time).


Basically, if the new edition of the manual was finalised prior to the mod being packaged into the installer, if a similiar system could be used (I don't know what software or system the team use to package the install file up in), then you could at least force people to look at a certain paragraph or two of the manual .PDF.

At least then there's the comeback "well you should have read the manual", and at best, it means that people with no idea at all of how to play the Mod or how it differs from vBF2 might read the specified paragraph for the needed code-word, and decide that hey, reading the rest of it might be an idea too...

[Wasteland]

Wouldn't they just count the words down and across and only really end up "reading" one word of the manual?

[Deadfast]

You could use questions like "You can request officer kit at: A,B,C"

[Masaq]

Wouldn't they just count the words down and across and only really end up "reading" one word of the manual?

Quite possibly, but anyone who *doesn't* read the thing once it's open in front of them and they're being forced to count for specific words is *never* going to read it prior to playing.

The idea would be to encourage people who look at the manual and think "Ooh, I'll look at that after I've played a few rounds" to look at it *before* they play those first few rounds.

People who have no intention of ever finding out information for themselves will never actually go and do it.

I'm sure you've installed a program that "forces" you to read an EULA by not allowing you to press NEXT during installation until you've scrolled to the bottom of the EULA window? Yup? Did you read it? 'Cause I never do, and I have no intention of ever reading any EULA that's longer than my gene sequence.

On the other hand, "quote me a section of the manual" coding has, on occasions, taught me a few things about games that I wouldn't've found out until I'd played for a fair while.

Then again, I'm the kinda guy who'll read the manual looking for tips when I first get a game anyways, as usually I'm so shockingly bad that I need any edge I can get lol.