Lately, there has been a lot of noob rage caused by mobile users who cannot get /givemoney "Dr. Lecter" 100000 to work (or so they claim). When asked about "Give Money" buttons when targeting a pilot, they're clueless. Half of them claim there's no TAB key on the mobile keyboards so they can't autocomplete the name. The rest claim they're typing the whole thing right ("Dr. Lecter") but still not getting it to work. I don't own anything mobile beyond an iPhone, so I have no clue what VO looks like on any non-PC platform.

So far today, one guy got it figured out after dying a few times. Another guy logged off (allegedly forever and ever and ever, amen) because he supposedly kept getting "INVALID AMOUNT" when typing the command. He claimed he had the credits to pay, and his levels/ship choices seemed to suggest it as well.

All I know is neither I nor other pirates are likely to take "sorry, can't figure out basic game commands" as an excuse/go on yer merry way unharmed card. Some people are getting awfully fucking frustrated by the outcomes of that (stuck in a station at their own capital, dying a half dozen times in a row, losing an Atlas every time).

Something to look at.

There is a huge lack of tutorial information that newbs should have and don't which may be contributing to the lack of retention.

This could most easily be solved with a simple alias/bind combo set by default in the game client. If it can prompt for an amount or just have a default value is the only real technical concern I can see. Yes I know there are plugins that do this but a dialog prompt should really be in the game client as there are many non technical newbs confused by typing in /commandhere stuff while trying to play a game.

They should buy PC's

Hoban is right. The only reason I know the more obscure / commands is because I took the initiative to read the vo wiki, but I doubt that you can expect that kind of forethought from everyone. An easy fix is adding a bind button to the touch interface.

Thank god you're here to dispense such sagely wisdom, Mi5! What would the devs do without your expert advice! (Seriously whats with players alienating an entire subset of the game?)

We need classibot back for this kind of stuff

I don't think putting it in the tutorial would help. I know I wouldn't have remembered it. Since I actually read the tutorial, unlike most newbs, I'd have remembered it existed, but not the exact spelling and parameter order.

The invalid amount message was probably due to forgetting the quotes. Perhaps the /givemoney command could be updated to not require quotes around names? If it receives more than two parameters, it could assume the final parameter is the amount, and then it should join all the other parameters by spaces into one name. That would fix one of the main things newbies tend to screw up besides just misspelling the name outright.

A bigger solution would be to have a naked /givemoney command pop up a dialog listing each player visible on the sector list. Click one of them and the graphical give money dialog would pop up for them to input the amount. This avoids the need for the mobile user to figure out how to target the possibly-"friendly" pirate and access their character page (or the pirate having to know how to do all that on mobile and explain it to them). All they'd have to figure out is how to type /givemoney.

Or we could do this:

https://www.vendetta-online.com/x/msgboard/3/26170

+1 Rin... I seem to prefer Rin's suggestions over Savet's suggestion in the other thread.

I do want a version of /requestmoney as well, but the suggestion I made above avoids any of the exploity concerns that the various /requestmoney suggestions have had, and it doesn't require tracking active payment requests either. So it's probably easier to implement. (But maybe not, since it involves gui-work.)

The two suggestions could dovetail nicely though if both were implemented, since currently active /requestmoney entries could be listed in the dialog that /givemoney would pop up. That avoids the concern about multiple payment requests, at least when used in gui-mode.

+1 Rin
+1 to Savet's as well

As Rin said, they could dovetail quite nicely.

+1 to classibot

A possibly better solution would be an interface enhancement targeted at mobile users that would allow them to respond to prompts (e.g. invites) without an intrusive popup getting in their way.

I actually have an interface plugin that is probably about 75% done that the devs could use as a starting point if they wanted. Of course, this would still rely on a requestmoney command or standardized money request messages to work. http://i.imgur.com/Xa4emgw.png
This picture shows an early response dialog when it's open. When a request comes in, it only triggers an icon on the HUD to flash. The user could then tap the icon to open the dialog and respond to the request.

there isn't a tab button on the mobile keyboard? what have I been using to autocomplete names, then?