How to re-introduce the Guides to the community

[Bengosha]

After much brain storming among the guides, an idea finally struck!
I propose a set of additions be made to the new player experience that helps point out the Guides Of the Lotus programs ever extended helping hand.

New players would receive an inbox message explaining what guides are and how to find us.

"'Guides of the Lotus'
Tenno,
To help you understand the world you've woken to, I have special agents in place to help you along your way.
These agents can help with a wide array of subjects and can be found through your communications listing."



Then once they have access to move around, this special chat tab is readily available where a list of guides from that region can be found. This listing is accessible to players of all ranks, as guides are also valuable to returning players as well.

In addition to this, the automated chat bot will give a message periodically reminding player that this list is there, in order to make sure everyone has access to the help they need as they need it.

"Kickbot: If you need help, be sure to check what Guides are available to assist you by pressing the Lotus icon in the bottom right of chat"



Additionally, a clickable link to the chat rules so everything is in one organized location :D


Note - This whole idea was hashed out between players, this does not have any promises attached to it. 

Now then Tenno, we would like your input on this. Do you feel this will be a valuable addition to the new/returning player experience?

Edited March 13, 2018 by Bengosha

[Azzu-nyan]

^ If you click [In-Game Chat Rule] it will open this:



(The rules are more or less the guidelines on this forum, and obviously place holders... ^^")

Edited March 13, 2018 by Azzu-nyan

[Phailberry]

This is great, i'd love to see it ingame

[Jeahanne]

At the very least the rules idea is great. This is awesome though :D

[(XBOX)Aflem1]

Tobiah
some of the things vanthenos and i dug up when talking to people was
- Glyph
- Terminal in Cetus to "phone a guide" that gets you in contact with a guide
- [gotl] or [guide] thing in chat
https://forums.warframe.com/topic/917417-guides-ofcetus(edited)
had a nice chat with peeps there
Br4tWuRsT
I feel like we talked about 3 dozen approaches to this and none of it has had any results.
- tags for gotl in chat
- different text color for gotl
- emblems above our warframe when in relay
etc.
the list goes on but there always is a (more or less logical) reason why something doesn't work
0RI0N7
I have some suggestions that could help in the visibility of the guides in the forum and ingame.
Identification in the forums:
We could have a profile similar to the profile of the moderators, but with the lotus sigil and the guide ID.
So players will know who to turn to when they have questions or need help.
Better visibility in chat text:
Change the text color from moderators from purple to gold or green, keeping in mind that guides use purple to identify them!.
Bengosha
loading screen reminders, in-chat upon entering reminder, all relays and cetus, clearer in-mission and in-chat identification
(XB1) DarkHart1
Advertise, advertise, advertise
GOTL is a best kept secret because they get no coverage or rarely spoken about
People love & listen to DE, Meg, Reb & DevStream
(XB1) SwagScapegoat
Has anyone proposed an emoji that we can only use?
(XB1) DarkHart1
/guide command to have a special  at beginning of chat entries
/unguide command when not guiding
Vanthenos
@(XB1) DarkHart1 i would prefer a
/guide <your text here>  the answer to your question is
Bengosha
i wonder if a unique lotus icon on the mini map would be useful
like "player.. player... npc.. oh guide.. player"

All Great Suggestions.  and options for more Visibility.  

[(XBOX)SwagScapegoat]

Great shorthand Mr. Aflem as always.  

As Guides we are the humble helpers of the new tenno.  

IMO we do not need anything pretty or anything that will cause any player envy.  

We just need some way of easily letting a tenno in need know that we are capable and caring helpers that can be trusted.

[(PSN)MarkFitness]

Maybe DE can do something at Tennocon to showcase the Guide program.

Definately mentioning the Guide program in Devstream, Prime Time and console streams would give the program exposure.

[iPathos]

I'm a big fan of the majority of these suggestions. As always I'll throw in the suggestion that Guides could opt-in to having access to Region chat in-mission (or have it by default, if that was easier). I feel this would make their help exponentially more available, as they would have eyes and ears at all times, rather than only when idling, in relays, in lobbies, or dedicating time specifically to Region chat.

[xXDeadsinxX]

Would love to see a lot of these additions into the game, would definitely improve the in-game chats!

[Vanthenos]

Spoiler

Spoiler

extend the content of [Guide of the Lotus]

 

---

or just a simple GotL only Glyph

 

 

Edited March 13, 2018 by Vanthenos

[Phailberry]

You remember the Grandmaster Founder list that is near the ceiling in any Relay you visit? An alphabetical list of members that are Founders, yesh.

I would think of having something similar in Relay's showing information/names on GotL, but the problem I might foresee is that Guides that have beginning letters near the start of the alphabet would probably be seen first and then PM'd by the viewing tenno, leaving those at the further end of the list less likely for such interaction.

So if we ever did have that List totem in a place, it might not be best to be alphabetical.


Also, Vanthenos' idea to have a list in the [Guides of the Lotus] ingame chat linkable would be great, in my opinion. Easy to deliver to anyone and they read through it as necessary.

[BlackHawk185]

I for one wholly support the idea of having a user-list tab dedicated to online guides. It would greatly increase their influence and meaningfulness. It also would not hurt for DE to implement a way to sticky messages in addition to rules for players to read.

[VertegrezNox]

This is good idea.. But why not simplify it by having a Chat Tab Specifically for GOTL? Would be much easier than adding a list somewhere that a new player will likely never see.. And might be less code than adding Icons and changing Chat colors to indicate someone is a guide. Besides a new player wouldn't see these icons or chat colors until they've already interacted with a guide. Whereas I imagine they are already being helped (being that's what a guide does) by a fellow Tenno regardless of their Name's highlighted color. 

Ps. Would be cool to see an "Ingame bug report tool". The forums and Zendesk work just great for me but WF could get even more feedback if all players had a simple streamlined path to bug reporting. 

[(PSN)RusStarik]

Hello! Here's my simple idea.

In public places we can see a name of the player's clan under his nickname. Why not just add a "Guide of the Lotus" line above player's nickname or under it, instead of player's clan name (just hide clan name)? Maybe even add an option to turn on and off this line in settings, for cases when GotL wants to appear "off duty".

Oh, and prohibit to use "Guide(-s) of the Lotus" as a name of a clan, if it is not yet prohibited.

Edited April 22, 2018 by (PS4)RusStarik

[(XBOX)xXDEADxXGAMERXx]

Having /help go to Guides Of The Lotus so it can access a chat tab with all the guides in ( on the platform) When a guide /OP it will bring up the chat in till the guide /DEOP (s) when players do /help in any tab it will auto locate them into the guides chat for them to ask as much questions in till they're happy to go on in their day or in till they switch tabs or exits the tab, then it will delete the tab for them so it wont cause clog up, I only say /help because /? and /help is the same thing. 

if the /help was implemented an inbox message will go out warframe wide no matter the Mastery, so everyone knows we're there for them to answer any question, when new players come into the game after the tutorial mission an inbox message should play "welcome to Warframe Tenno, you have much to learn and I have some trusted people you can talk to" and after that little video plays the command is there for them to access whenever they'd like ( not good at photoshop so cant do little screenshots of what it would look like)

The chat tab should be able to be opened in mission aswell as in ships/relays/dojo

[Bengosha]

On 2018-04-20 at 3:08 PM, VertegrezNox said:

This is good idea.. But why not simplify it by having a Chat Tab Specifically for GOTL? Would be much easier than adding a list somewhere that a new player will likely never see.. And might be less code than adding Icons and changing Chat colors to indicate someone is a guide. Besides a new player wouldn't see these icons or chat colors until they've already interacted with a guide. Whereas I imagine they are already being helped (being that's what a guide does) by a fellow Tenno regardless of their Name's highlighted color. 

Ps. Would be cool to see an "Ingame bug report tool". The forums and Zendesk work just great for me but WF could get even more feedback if all players had a simple streamlined path to bug reporting. 

The guides used to have purple text as well, and that seems to have already led to a confusion between us and the moderators. So that is sadly not a wise idea these days. As for a separate chat tab, that would require moderators to be busier with another chat and we are aiming to make it ease of access without being a hindrance on others. While it is great that others step up to help out when we don't catch it, we want it to be known that there are dedicated people that want to help and are willing to without the wait or negative feedback that is region chat.

 

On 2018-04-22 at 4:58 PM, (PS4)RusStarik said:

Hello! Here's my simple idea.

In public places we can see a name of the player's clan under his nickname. Why not just add a "Guide of the Lotus" line above player's nickname or under it, instead of player's clan name (just hide clan name)? Maybe even add an option to turn on and off this line in settings, for cases when GotL wants to appear "off duty".

Oh, and prohibit to use "Guide(-s) of the Lotus" as a name of a clan, if it is not yet prohibited.

This would work great, aside from the relays and other public places hiding people that are idle from view of people that just entered the public space. To add to it, many of us aren't able to idle in relays and still enjoy the game and be helpful. I for one prefer to stay busy 🙂 A symbol in chat next to the name or even just a highlighted name would be plenty for me. 

I don't mean for any of this to come off as negative or shooting ideas down. But the easier it is to implement and the less moderation it needs; the better. A separate chat wouldn't be ideal for that. The suggestions are appreciated though ^_^

Edited May 4, 2018 by Bengosha