Why did newbie games end?

[Psyche]

I honestly think for you personally this is mainly just a confidence thing. Your play in our recent game at least was really solid and already above in quality over a large proportion of the more experienced playerbase. The strength of your play is plenty enough ground to dismiss other slots' elitism.

Arrogant and/or dismissive players definitely are a dime a dozen here though, and this can mess w the game experience even for non-newbie players. I don't know a good way to address that without messing w game integrity though — convincing people to take you seriously is part of gameplay. And yet there are options. A broad community-based willingness to call out this behavior in our games when we see it happen, and maybe post-game feedback from the moderator.

If we collectively insist on pressuring the people in our games to avoid patterns that make games less fun to play, the site will be a nicer place to be, there would be fewer replace-outs, and so on. Maybe focus on moderator policy itt is obscuring that maybe that's what you're calling for here — more attention and effort around this issue at all levels.

[Psyche]

i know there's already a gtkas thread that's close, but maybe a thread in queue for newbies to pop into for queueing help and especially coordinating opportunities for them to /in the same games together could be a stel toward preserving the newbie queue experience

i can further imagine more dramatic changes like privileging confirmed newbies in queues (so they're in a game faster), welcome PMs that look like those initial IC posts that used to be made, maybe a buddy system for pairing newbies in games with people willing to take on an IC role, and so on.


there really are a lot of policy approaches besides bringing back newbie queue that might help with this issue

[Psyche]

i suggested a fix in that other thread!