More players

[zakhennahr]

Anyone have any idea how to get them, or what we can do to keep the ones that just started? Not yelling at them is an easy one, but I want to get a discussion started on other things we can do to keep them interested. One of my personal favorites is to mention that if they play longer, they get to see even more cool things and strategies you can do within the game.

[Caladbolg]

Teaching them the harder stations while accepting they wont be perfect is a good way to go. teaching Power to a newb might make him understand a little more of the metagame

[WhyteDragon]

I fully understand that typically being a nicer with noobs is going to be much better in giving them incentive to play.

That's -precisely- why I avoid captaining with noobs. It just doesn't mesh well with me most of the time.

[Caladbolg]

Im on the same boat as whyte... put me in a smallships with newbs and I'll be fine but... dont make me captain.

[zakhennahr]

So then a large issue is reaching an agreement between the more experienced players and the new. I've found that explaining to them why you want them to do X and how it helps out your team makes them much more willing to actually try to do X, with the exception of a few possibly-trolling new players. However, this is difficult since one can only type so fast, and it is sometimes not enough to overcome the new player's silliness and expectations that this is something like Hero Attack or Elite Whatever Forces 4.56x2TURBO.

Disagreeable new players may even be something you can catch in the lobby if you know who will be the captain next game, come to think of it. Hold an interview with the new player and see where they stand on teamwork and listening to their captain, see if they can hold a conversation, and all of that stuff. Then we can balance the newbies that don't listen or play well together between the teams.

However, how do we keep these new players, good and bad? I won't lie, I want both admirable and trollish players playing CC, since the former will provide many fun games, and the latter will provide endless satisfaction upon victory.

[WildCat]

A guide to most of the more difficult roles perhaps; that we can point them to to give them a basic idea before throwing them under the bus?

[Meanme]

That would be good. I'm also assuming that we've already gone trough our friends and everyone else we know of to try and bring people into the CC world?

[Puddlejumper]

Yeah. I would like to try a game of this it is really interesting but there's not anyone online either teamspeak, SC group, or just falling into a game.

How about a standing newbie gametime or something so people can find each other.

Also... any clan want a reasonably mature/competent player on an occasional basis?

[Red-Rocket]

right now Cruiser Command is nearly dead, very few veteran games go on and almost no pub games.
Usally how Cruiser Command can gain attention is that whenever Siretu releases a patch Cruiser Command will start popping up on the spotlight page.
If you do see Cruiser Command on spotlight, be prepared to teach alot of new players on that stuff. But i like that sort of thing

[Puddlejumper]

Actually we had a game with 12 players last night that I thought went well (if a little bit of a blitz). Also found another game a couple days ago of smaller but still enjoyable scope. All it took was resourcefully finding players through groups/teamspeak.

So I wouldn't call it dead at all. In fact calling it dead is the quickest way to kill it. The problem is in the marketing - really getting a game started requires a matching system beyond what Bliz gives since you need to find somewhat trained players.

Teamspeak is not marketed in a clear way to new players as a way to connect/find games in addition to communicate ingame - also the SC2 "Groups" have some use but once they get too large you can no longer see the members to PM them when they are online to ask if they are interested in a game.

I think all this game needs to be quite sustainable is a better matching system or way to notify if players are online / available to play. Then market it well and put that procedure into the tutorial and game info. Teamspeak may not in itself be enough.