Newbie Land

[btown]

Newbie Land: For un-skilled very new players.

I think a place like this is needed to help grow this game.  Solace is "ok"  but for a super newb its still difficult to understand what you are doing until you get the hang of it.  Alot of times people will quit before that point.  Back in the day people played many text based games, now the new generation is not so used to it, maybe give them a kickstart.

  What if there is a Newbie Land,  when you log in to create your character you select "newbie"  you have your choices of class you pick.  But instead of going to solace where it takes newbies  "i have been playing for 15-20years and still get lost in the sewers"  it takes you to Newbie Land..  It is very hard to die in Newbie Land for the mobs are just newbies also.  You have guildmasters, Inn,  Potion shop,  but make it very basic so getting to level 10 is not so bad.  Once you hit level 10 you will get a BIG MESSAGE  and maybe a portal that will take you to the real world.. 

  Also in this Newbie Land you have computer mobs who are triggered to respond like a real player..   "Computer mob" says 'hi newbie,  follow me im going to kill some grasshoppers!! hurry type 'follow computer mob!!'    ok so you follow that mob and depending on your level it walks you into the very basic zones and is like  "Computer mob" says 'kill grasshopper hurry!'  a little bit later...  "Computer mob' says 'all this killing is making me hungry for some newbie ham!  gives newbie food/water.  "Computer mob" says 'hurry eat that ham and drink that water so we can continue!'

  You can change it how you like, but i think the newbies now days need alot more help then what is currently offered. 

P.S.  Main reason for this post is i have 13year old brother who tries to play,  but i have to do waaay tomuch coaching.  he will be stuck hungry/thirsty no vs  lose his eq to rent, log back on dead 1hp no vs.. and R.I.P. new player, your game is over!  New players should not get hungry/thirsty untill they get use to the commands.  Also if they die maybe they shouldnt lose all their training eq?  also maybe make rent free.. ok i ran out of time that is all.  thanks aristox and hoss!  i really think this could help alot.

[Aristox]

That is an enormous undertaking for the creation staff given the very few players that would use it in the way it was intended.

You are talking several months of creation work, plus some coding time on my end, for a system that would be used 98% of the time by seasoned players to avoid being pk'd while rolling and 2% of the time by new players.

The situation you are trying to solve could be solved by players being more open to letting "unknowns" survive and even answering their questions from time to time.

More of our level 31 Heroes should probably be put on the help-a-newbie-tip, which might alleviate some of that problem as well.

[muddeer]

P.S.  Main reason for this post is i have 13year old brother who tries to play,  but i have to do waaay tomuch coaching.  he will be stuck hungry/thirsty no vs  lose his eq to rent, log back on dead 1hp no vs.. and R.I.P. new player, your game is over!.

Yap, that sounds like Tim.

[btown]

If you want you can make me a creator and i will create this zone :-).  I have dabbled some on renshai mud back in the day!

or better yet  make Ilya do it,  he is far to lazy immortal

[RaVaN]

  Let me ask you this, how is what you just described not Solace besides the porting to a newbie_only area?  The biggest problems true newbies have about learning is the massive amount of HELP file reading they need to do to learn basic commands.  The next thing that is hard is learning how to apply those commands and finding out commands not referenced easily(Example being it took me a full wipe before I learned I could type buy 8*bread instead of buy bread...mind you this was with telnet!)  Some of this was removed by helpful Solace guildmasters as well as the Newbie guide.  (Once again, to those who revamped Solace to be newbie town...Great job!)  I don't know a good fix for this since YOU HAVE TO READ or have some nice older brother/friend coach you, a lot.  The next thing is that there isn't instant gratification to be the "Hook" for a true newbie that is an ingame mechanic. 

  I remember my first time on this game very well in 2000-2001.  I had eaten up all my food/water before finishing reading all the HELP files I thought pertained to my character.  This took me from struggling newbie to Tarsis DT/ Fountain held/silenced/blinded newbie.  I grouped with a lowbie like me and then learned surprise surprise I could duel wield. 

  Now, I don't hate this idea at all, but I think it could be simplified and expanded to be more useful.  Anything that makes life easier to adjust for newbies I am all for.

[RaVaN]

  I thought about it a bit, and really the Tutorial is pretty well done on the Main Site as well.  I would like to see a better tutorial of the Character Creation process though.

[snax]

Great topic.  I don't know if we'll see many new players this wipe, but every now and then the game does see a few.  Perhaps getting blatant (yes, stupidly blatant including slightly annoying ansi colors) for a few core aspects of a Y to are you a new player are merited.

You are hungry --> becomes You are hungry.  EAT some food.
You are hungry --> every other tick becomes You are hungry.  Type inventory to see what you might be able to EAT.

similar with thirsty.

also, every 8 or ticks maybe the guide or a magical mouth (ooh, daltigoth love there) says "have you read HELP NEWBIE" if level < 8
alternate for "have you read HELP combat" "....HELP consider" etc

annoying changes to implement, but would go a bit further to ease the transition to a text game.

[Alecto]

everyone should recruit one friend to play arctic this wipe.  We could double the playerbase and have like 12 players (with bots more like 60).  And regening moves and hp is overrated anyway: don't eat, just use the tell command and think of this as the world's most elaborate IM...

[btown]

If you have never played this game you have to be really bored to go thru the current help files to learn to eat bread!

[gulca]

It is more efficient to start off newbies with a mud client and a set of triggers, than to have an in-code newbie land.

So if someone creates a newbie trigger file, just have them load in and start playing. Food/drink/fill/buy can be taken care of easily. Game tips etc can be triggered based on level and alignment and the rooms around town, with speedwalk etc.

[btown]

we dont want to train everybody to be bots gulca!