New User / Ottoneu "Skills" Tutorial

In addition to new player and strategy discussions on the forum and accessibility to the Slack community, I think it would be helpful if there was a link on the dashboard for a short scenario-based tutorial that new players or players looking to “brush up” on skills could use to better understand the Rules and general format.

This would be meant to address the more prevalent problems that new users tend to have when understanding the Ottoneu game design and to highlight some of the more important and interesting Ottoneu features while reducing the need for these customers to take the extra step of exploring community options.

My thought is a “quiz” of 10 or so questions regarding different scenarios/rule applications. Some examples:

  • A player in your RP slot makes a spot-start for his team. Will he score points for the day?
  • True or False: Every player added to a roster remains on a team’s payroll until the end of the season.
  • True or False: You cut a $3 player for a $2 cap penalty; 30 days later his cap penalty may be reduced to $1.
  • You trade $10 in player salary to another team for players with $80 in salary and a loan of $70. What is your salary cap? ($330, $400, $470, $480)
  • You add a player which gives you 41 of 40 roster spots used and $400 of $400 cap space used. You then cut a $1 player. Is your team in a valid state?
  • Your team has 38 of 40 roster spots and $398 of $400 cap space available. You add a Free Agent with for a $2 cost. Is your team in a valid state?
  • Yesterday you had 41 of 41 players on your roster, including one player on the 60-Day IL. Today the injured player was activated. Is your team in a valid state?
  • Your team logged 1490 IP of the 1500 IP limit before your pitchers combined for 20 IP on the last day of the season. How many Total Season IP did your team end the year with? (1490, 1500, 1510, 1520)
  • “Lottery Tie-Breaker Generator”: select the number of teams that have tied in their bid for a Free Agent and indicate the nominating team, then hit the “Tie-Break” button to see which team-rank in the standings wins the player according to the alternative Ottoneu tie-break system.

I realize these are pretty basic and are mostly detailed in the rules page, but people may find it more helpful to have an interactive resource to be indoctrinated into all that is Ottoneu without having to ask questions or learn through experience.

Any additional ideas for issues/details/features that might be addressed in this way is encouraged!

I think there is a lot of value in the various posts on RotoGraphs, some by members of this very community.

Having a daily quiz for stuff the site shows you, like if your team is in a valid state or what your cap space would be, seems a little patronizing. There is probably some value in having the site show more of this stuff, like a reminder after 30 days that you can re-auction a cut player.

I’m going to repeat myself since you seem to keep repeating your false premise: this is not finalized or implemented in the least.

I’ve pushed a change to the team roster page that shows players that can be re-auctioned (cut over 30 days ago) in green.

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This is great, thanks!

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While I’m not sure a quiz is the best format for this; I do think a New User Tutorial in the form of videos or walkthroughs is a pretty good idea. I found that it was hard to wrap my brain around how ottoneu worked without just jumping into the mix. As the price point has increased it may become harder to bring new folks in without showing off some of the game-play up front in a curated and approachable way. It was hard to convince my Yahoo owners to jump at the previous prices and one of the reasons was the seemingly formidable complexity without much in the way of guideposts.

Sure, you can jump into team pages and league pages, and even rotographs and the community, but it can be hard to conceptualize how the gameplay works at a glance because pages and functionality change so much throughout the year. And ultimately rotographs posts and this community helped me pull the trigger- but it still took 2.5 years of consternation about whether my league would survive the move and enjoy the style/site, before we moved.

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This feedback resonates. Having an introduction series that espouses the virtues of the game seems really great for attracting the large population of potential users who are intimidated. Might be worth putting together a new pass at Ottoneu 101 with some of the questions ballnglove82 suggested as a final exam. I’d love to figure out how to commission this from someone… Will continue to give this thought.

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Thank you @Dahdscear for better framing what I was aiming at.

It was not at all my intention to propose anything “patronizing”, just something simple and not-time consuming to develop. But I agree that videos/walkthroughs are better (with or without a quiz at the end).

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This is a small be terrific change. Thank you

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