AltiUniversity

[MagneticDuck`]

The forum has a great amount of material for any interested newbie to sink their teeth into (and same goes for more experienced players), and is testimony to the depth of altitude strategy, at micro (1v1), macro (team play) levels and everything in between. This mass of material is result of a long history of hundreds of great players and countless clans and competitive games, and prospers in the competitive play that exists, yes, even still today x). The recent mass influx of new players into the pub servers gives us a great opportunity to share this knowledge with a new generation of potential competitive material; all that remains to harness what could be a great driving force into a new age of altitude is an active link between the history of altitude and the n00bs of today.

So, I propose an initiative to teach newbies (who have achieved lvl 60 and are able to communicate effectively) the ropes of competitive play. I've already done a few 1 on 1 coaching sessions with newbies who have showed interest (I've already done a few in the context of a duel; played randa vs randa with only warp, explained some strategy tips about usage of shots, moved onto bomber vs biplane, explained why corners are a biplane's best friend...). We might eventually move onto group classes, with multiple teachers (hopefully more experienced than me ^^) or spark discussions on the forums... presently I don't have any concrete picture of what this would embody, but the first step is to get newbies and experienced players interested in something of this nature.

This might solidify into something (let's call it AltiUniversity because giving it a name will hopefully help it solidify). For the moment though we could use this thread to organise coaching sessions, reference good tutorials, let up-and-coming newbies name themselves and see how many good players think this is a good idea.

What daya think?

[Kafka]

This has already been done..... and failed

[MagneticDuck`]

Originally Posted by Kafka

This has already been done..... and failed

Perhaps it would be best to not give it a name; that way, it cannot fail.

My vision at this point is really just to make a structure / network of players to facilitate all kinds of teaching. I don't see how that could fail, existing people like me who want to teach and newbies who want to learn.

[JWhatever]

In uni, you usually get a 100 page handout on the topic of the course.
It's pretty much the same thing here except that all of the pages are scattered across the forums. There are a lot of bullcrap between good posts.

If someone is really up for reading all of that content, it's a bit of a mission. Most of the good posts are deep within boring threads like patch notes or AH clan thread or whatnot.

Most of the stuff can be learned by playing the game. You can't teach someone how fast a plane can throw ball or how many hits they can take, it's something you got to learn by yourself.
You got to have a basic feel to the game before you get into super in depth stuff. Or that's how I feel. I could be, and probably am wrong.

If you really want to pull this through, gather those good posts into one thread. Make links to posts with appropriate headings and subheadings for each subject.

Also, it has been done successfully in the past, although that was years ago when there were about twice as many players as now.

-J

[MagneticDuck`]

In the interest of organising the nature of advice that would be included in the kind of curation of guides referred above, I propose a general division of material as follows below:

First, we distinguish three main areas of study
micro-game: micro strategy, pertinant to achieving short-range objectives in a game situation
macro-game: macro strategy, pertinant to the well-functioning of teams and completion of long-range objectives
metagame: meta strategy, pertinant to the strange land of meta-analisis and strategic tendencies

You talking about how to aim bomber spam, or how to use it to stall an enemy bomb runner? Micro-game. Using spam to secure map area and assist in breaking the enemy defense? That's more macro-game oriented. Finally, discussing recent tendencies in competitive bombers, and how repair and HA reflect / decide a player's strategy? Metagame.

Because of the convenience of further categorisation need to satisfy my fascination with the number 3, I propose a further partitioning of each of those subjects into three sub-branches:

Micro-game:
topology: the study of positional play;
dynamics: the study of movement, energy management, and the like;
decision: game theory, unpredicability, and LATENCY;

Examples of topology: locking down opponents, controlling AoE (area of effect), analysis of maps and effective usages of the their characteristics, understanding positional risks and tradeoffs, and the presence of gravity
Examples of dynamics: effective afterburner usage, strategic effect of the turbocharger and ultracapacitor, proper usage (and non-usage) of reverse thrust, and when and when not to hold a shot as a randa
Examples of decision: breaking standoffs, fooling your opponent, psychological interaction, understanding LAG and how it's dealt with in altitude, being unpredicatable, and anticipating your opponent's moves

Macro-game:
control: map control, fighting as a team
coordination: being there and alive when necessary
combination: team compositions in player style and in plane setup

Examples of control: locking down space, identifying important targets, analysis of maps in the context of team play, etc
Examples of coordination: coordinating pushes, holding defenses, identifying optimal times for both, escorting the bomber, etc
Examples of combination: importance and roles of the various planes, discussion of their combinations

Meta-game:
I haven't thought this one through yet, but I think we could include things like dicusssion of good players and their methods, some history of altitude, general altitude culture, the like

This is the structure of my idea at the moment, ideas / commentaries would be great.

[Soneji]

Interesting the way you've segmented the various types of information. How do you propose this would be collected/presented? A thread with links to helpful posts? A wiki?

[MagneticDuck`]

I think I've decided to go the route of video tutorials.

[MagneticDuck`]

http://youtu.be/xw4H_M52n48 is a video promo I made for this operation.

I need teachers, people really good at certain planes, playing in competitive situations and etc to make videos of. The idea is to compile a good bank of videos with which newbies can learn by example -- a lot of newbies have never seen altitude played well, so we're here to show them that. Let's see what happens.

[Kafka]

How do you plan on sharing these videos with newer players once completed? Obviously they're not on the forums. Many don't even know how to use chat, let alone will take the time to copy a link to a video you post in-game.

[MagneticDuck`]

I'm not targeting newbies who aren't interested in learning the game; if they don't want to take the time to look into a thing on the forums / my youtube channel after it's mentioned to them in-game, I'm not going to go hunting after them. In my experience though there are quite a few newbies with capacity to communicate and interest in learning coming onto the pub servers, and those are the kind of people I am making this for.

[Mango777]

How will people sign up for it? From what I know, there is a limited player base who use the forums regularly, so it will be hard to spread the news.

[MagneticDuck`]

Word-of-digital-mouth in-game mostly.

Also, I'm thinking of changing the name and going a slightly different route: please welcome ShotWarp, the super-exciting TV-show-like-thing for Altitude. Working on an intro and theme music at the moment =P

[Woofy]

You said that you were targeting players that are already interested in learning the game, and need resources to help them to advance. Good idea. But don't waste your time making cute intros and theme music. If you really want to help them out, start with the actual content imo.

Also I'm willing to help with whatever