New Dueler's Perspective
Posted: Fri Jun 10, 2016 4:36 pm
There are discussions going on in two different places now, but neither of those places seemed appropriate for this post.
Almost exactly a year ago, I drafted what I called a "New Fighter's Rant." I was too afraid to post it. I was still new in the community, and the one time I had spoken up on the boards on an OOC matter, I had been swiftly rebuffed by veteran duelers. But reading it over, now, all of the same issues are still there and relevant, and have been raised in the other threads. I’m still afraid to post this now, but I’m going to try and hope for the best.
Primarily I was concerned with: 1) the difficulty of improving and advancing when I could not get a variety of regulation duels and was constantly facing the same few people or their alts; 2) the feeling of being exploited for wins or activity duels; 3) that mentorship was offered as a false solution (since no one actually wanted to put in the time to teach OOC); 4) feeling unwelcome in team events; 5) that low ranks tournaments intended to help new duelers were heavily attended by alts; and last, and really most important was 6) the constant dismissal of my frustrations by veteran duelers.
Since I wrote about the above problems, only two things have changed for me: I've been mentored by someone who was actually interested in OOC helping me learn and grow as a duelist and I have massively improved as a result; and also, I'm now significantly better at identifying alts so I rarely fight people without knowing the player behind it which saves me from the bad feelings that came from finding out who it was later.
But I still feel the same way about pretty much all of it. I have no new perspective, even though I’m now two years into dueling and much better at it than I was before. In fact, the sense of futility I used to feel has now solidified. I see no reason to pursue titles when the same few people seem to be trading them over and over. And if I want to have fun and support other duelers during sparsely attended regulation, I can’t be precious with my own rank (I just barely reached Emerald for the second time a week ago).
So in the other thread, Kheldar asked if I had ideas to help the situation. Here are some ideas:
1) As a community, stop denying our individual roles in making new duelers feel exploited:
You want to fight as a low-ranked alt cause it’s more fun for you. That’s fine. But maybe you should consider giving a heads up to the new dueler who has lost to you five times under your more titled names. Because that person is eventually going to find out about your alts, and how many times they have really lost to you and it’s not going to feel good to them.
This is not something that I alone experienced, but an experience that was repeated to me by others, including friends on the RDI side who tried dueling and gave up.
2) Ask that no alts attend the low-ranks tournaments:
I know people think that no one will attend the low rank tournaments if alts aren’t allowed. But people have stopped attending them because they know they’re just going to face a bunch of Warlord or Emerald alts. I also don’t encourage my RDI side friends to participate because it’s not truly a low-ranks tournament (see above). Plus the advantages the low-ranks tournaments offer to help low-ranked fighters sometimes disappear when they're earned by an alt who stops showing up for regulation once the tournament is over.
I know that this is not how it was when you were coming up and you might feel that you should be allowed to participate in any tournament you want to. I understand your feeling of unfairness, but the community is struggling now and I’m asking you to make this sacrifice to improve the new-dueler experience.
3) Let fighters keep their wins from the PC tournament.
Tournaments are now one of the rare heavily attended nights, and this is an opportunity for new duelers to fight people they might not have faced before and pick up some wins that could help them with their record. Improved records are encouraging and make people want to keep showing up.
4) Save a spot on your team for a new dueler.
I know it’s fun to fight only with your friends in team tournaments, but you never know if that new dueler with potential could be your next new friend. Instead of seeing them as a drag on your team, maybe see them as someone you can teach and whose success you can share in.
5) Demonstrate your interest in new duelers.
Show up to regulation. Roleplay. Do more than get in your activity duel to maintain your title. IM them and ask them how they’re doing OOC. Offer encouragement.
6) A leadership presence from the coordinators.
I know we ask a lot, A LOT, from coordinators. I’m sure I don’t even know what a quarter of the issues facing the coordinators are and how much work you do. But back when I first started dueling here, I posted asking about keeping my wins from the PC tournament, and the only people who responded were other duelers. It would have been great to get a response from a coordinator, even if the response was ‘no.’ ‘No’ can be encouraging when it’s validating. For example, “We know ranking up is hard but keep at it. This is not a change we’re planning to make right now, but we’ll keep it in mind for the future.”
Plus, like it or not, people look up to coordinators to emulate their behavior. Your presence in the room adds a certain validation to the room that no one else has.
7) Help snowball regulation. HELP REGULATION.
Sometimes all it takes to build a dueling crowd in regulation is a few people coming into the room. You don’t have to fight if you don’t want to, but if you see a slow regulation night and you can at least lurk on it while you do other things, give that a try. It might work and it might help.
Simply put, new duelers can’t improve if there’s no one to fight. And they can’t feel good if they keep losing to the same veterans over and over again.
8 ) No more sacred cows.
I know you all have been here forever. But the hands down, hardest part to being new is expressing frustration and being told OVER AND OVER that it was the same or worse for you. That is not encouraging. Encouraging, is "I know it's hard, but you can do it. The PC is coming up soon, you should try for that!" or "Yeah, I know it can be hard to find fights, but we're really working on ways to bring in new people. What would be fun for you?"
It is hard to make suggestions about how the system could be improved and be told "they'll never make that change." Or the thinly veiled equivalent of "quit your whining." This is reinforced when veterans come out of the woodwork to answer you and tell you why it was decided not to do that in 2005 or 2012 or 2014, when you've never seen these people in play before. I don't need to hear how much easier it is now than it was when you were starting up. I get it. Wins are zeroed out now. But were there more duelers when you were fighting?
You may all be right, that it was just as hard for you as it is now if not harder. But that's not a helpful thing for a new dueler to hear. It's not encouraging. You can say that new duelers shouldn't be so sensitive all you want, but what you wind up with is a selfish dueling culture that is driving away people who show interest.
So dueling is down overall. There are two parts to addressing that problem, one being how do we attract new players to the site to begin with. I’d love to participate in that separate but related conversation, (advertising externally, etc.). But the other half is addressing problems new people face once we get them in the door. Those are the problems I’m talking about here.
I don't even expect any of the suggestions I'm making to actually happen. There may be truly excellent reasons why they shouldn't. But I hope people will at least be able to acknowledge where I'm coming from and that these are experiences and concerns shared by a lot of new duelers. I can't stress enough how important validation is. I am bracing for everyone to jump in with their big old NO and their arguments for why it shouldn't be this way or why these things aren't a problem. All I ask is that you at least acknowledge that this is how I feel about it, that these feelings are shared by others, even you wish I and we did not feel that way.
Are these the reasons why we’re not converting high league participation to high regulation participation? I don’t know. Over the past two years, I’ve made my own efforts to support and recruit new duelers to regulation, with admittedly little success. In part because of the issues above, but probably for other reasons too. I’d like to keep trying. And I’d like to hope I’m not trying by myself.
Almost exactly a year ago, I drafted what I called a "New Fighter's Rant." I was too afraid to post it. I was still new in the community, and the one time I had spoken up on the boards on an OOC matter, I had been swiftly rebuffed by veteran duelers. But reading it over, now, all of the same issues are still there and relevant, and have been raised in the other threads. I’m still afraid to post this now, but I’m going to try and hope for the best.
Primarily I was concerned with: 1) the difficulty of improving and advancing when I could not get a variety of regulation duels and was constantly facing the same few people or their alts; 2) the feeling of being exploited for wins or activity duels; 3) that mentorship was offered as a false solution (since no one actually wanted to put in the time to teach OOC); 4) feeling unwelcome in team events; 5) that low ranks tournaments intended to help new duelers were heavily attended by alts; and last, and really most important was 6) the constant dismissal of my frustrations by veteran duelers.
Since I wrote about the above problems, only two things have changed for me: I've been mentored by someone who was actually interested in OOC helping me learn and grow as a duelist and I have massively improved as a result; and also, I'm now significantly better at identifying alts so I rarely fight people without knowing the player behind it which saves me from the bad feelings that came from finding out who it was later.
But I still feel the same way about pretty much all of it. I have no new perspective, even though I’m now two years into dueling and much better at it than I was before. In fact, the sense of futility I used to feel has now solidified. I see no reason to pursue titles when the same few people seem to be trading them over and over. And if I want to have fun and support other duelers during sparsely attended regulation, I can’t be precious with my own rank (I just barely reached Emerald for the second time a week ago).
So in the other thread, Kheldar asked if I had ideas to help the situation. Here are some ideas:
1) As a community, stop denying our individual roles in making new duelers feel exploited:
You want to fight as a low-ranked alt cause it’s more fun for you. That’s fine. But maybe you should consider giving a heads up to the new dueler who has lost to you five times under your more titled names. Because that person is eventually going to find out about your alts, and how many times they have really lost to you and it’s not going to feel good to them.
This is not something that I alone experienced, but an experience that was repeated to me by others, including friends on the RDI side who tried dueling and gave up.
2) Ask that no alts attend the low-ranks tournaments:
I know people think that no one will attend the low rank tournaments if alts aren’t allowed. But people have stopped attending them because they know they’re just going to face a bunch of Warlord or Emerald alts. I also don’t encourage my RDI side friends to participate because it’s not truly a low-ranks tournament (see above). Plus the advantages the low-ranks tournaments offer to help low-ranked fighters sometimes disappear when they're earned by an alt who stops showing up for regulation once the tournament is over.
I know that this is not how it was when you were coming up and you might feel that you should be allowed to participate in any tournament you want to. I understand your feeling of unfairness, but the community is struggling now and I’m asking you to make this sacrifice to improve the new-dueler experience.
3) Let fighters keep their wins from the PC tournament.
Tournaments are now one of the rare heavily attended nights, and this is an opportunity for new duelers to fight people they might not have faced before and pick up some wins that could help them with their record. Improved records are encouraging and make people want to keep showing up.
4) Save a spot on your team for a new dueler.
I know it’s fun to fight only with your friends in team tournaments, but you never know if that new dueler with potential could be your next new friend. Instead of seeing them as a drag on your team, maybe see them as someone you can teach and whose success you can share in.
5) Demonstrate your interest in new duelers.
Show up to regulation. Roleplay. Do more than get in your activity duel to maintain your title. IM them and ask them how they’re doing OOC. Offer encouragement.
6) A leadership presence from the coordinators.
I know we ask a lot, A LOT, from coordinators. I’m sure I don’t even know what a quarter of the issues facing the coordinators are and how much work you do. But back when I first started dueling here, I posted asking about keeping my wins from the PC tournament, and the only people who responded were other duelers. It would have been great to get a response from a coordinator, even if the response was ‘no.’ ‘No’ can be encouraging when it’s validating. For example, “We know ranking up is hard but keep at it. This is not a change we’re planning to make right now, but we’ll keep it in mind for the future.”
Plus, like it or not, people look up to coordinators to emulate their behavior. Your presence in the room adds a certain validation to the room that no one else has.
7) Help snowball regulation. HELP REGULATION.
Sometimes all it takes to build a dueling crowd in regulation is a few people coming into the room. You don’t have to fight if you don’t want to, but if you see a slow regulation night and you can at least lurk on it while you do other things, give that a try. It might work and it might help.
Simply put, new duelers can’t improve if there’s no one to fight. And they can’t feel good if they keep losing to the same veterans over and over again.
8 ) No more sacred cows.
I know you all have been here forever. But the hands down, hardest part to being new is expressing frustration and being told OVER AND OVER that it was the same or worse for you. That is not encouraging. Encouraging, is "I know it's hard, but you can do it. The PC is coming up soon, you should try for that!" or "Yeah, I know it can be hard to find fights, but we're really working on ways to bring in new people. What would be fun for you?"
It is hard to make suggestions about how the system could be improved and be told "they'll never make that change." Or the thinly veiled equivalent of "quit your whining." This is reinforced when veterans come out of the woodwork to answer you and tell you why it was decided not to do that in 2005 or 2012 or 2014, when you've never seen these people in play before. I don't need to hear how much easier it is now than it was when you were starting up. I get it. Wins are zeroed out now. But were there more duelers when you were fighting?
You may all be right, that it was just as hard for you as it is now if not harder. But that's not a helpful thing for a new dueler to hear. It's not encouraging. You can say that new duelers shouldn't be so sensitive all you want, but what you wind up with is a selfish dueling culture that is driving away people who show interest.
So dueling is down overall. There are two parts to addressing that problem, one being how do we attract new players to the site to begin with. I’d love to participate in that separate but related conversation, (advertising externally, etc.). But the other half is addressing problems new people face once we get them in the door. Those are the problems I’m talking about here.
I don't even expect any of the suggestions I'm making to actually happen. There may be truly excellent reasons why they shouldn't. But I hope people will at least be able to acknowledge where I'm coming from and that these are experiences and concerns shared by a lot of new duelers. I can't stress enough how important validation is. I am bracing for everyone to jump in with their big old NO and their arguments for why it shouldn't be this way or why these things aren't a problem. All I ask is that you at least acknowledge that this is how I feel about it, that these feelings are shared by others, even you wish I and we did not feel that way.
Are these the reasons why we’re not converting high league participation to high regulation participation? I don’t know. Over the past two years, I’ve made my own efforts to support and recruit new duelers to regulation, with admittedly little success. In part because of the issues above, but probably for other reasons too. I’d like to keep trying. And I’d like to hope I’m not trying by myself.
