The other thing that I might suggest, tentatively, is some sort of centralized newbie village that is actually a part of the Basin (not newbie-only but protected) that goes along with a pre-guild phase of learning the ropes. I don't know how that would really work on a game scale though.

It's one thing I think could be improved - the sense of what the world is like to a really new player. Before they even step into it, they choose an organization and guild on very limited information. Unlike some other IRE incarnations joining a guild has a lot of other role cues that go along with it, and they're really hard to understand if you haven't read the histories in their entirety. It means that regular players are not only introducing the basics of working in Lusternia to a newbie, they have to imprint those beliefs as well, which often is not what the newbie had in mind for their character.

I suspect that if there is informed choice AFTER getting a feel for the various organizations and factions, the task of encouraging 'good' RP might be a little easier.

I know I'm not explaining that well, but I can't think of how better to do so. Being born into a role lets you say, "Well, I'm just an individual and I can interpret my history however I like." Choosing a role, IC, has a little more weight to it. If you don't want to act like a Moondancer, you shouldn't choose it.

Edit: For example, a very limited implementation might be an added section on the end of the novice introduction that was a small area the new person could walk around in and meet different representatives from the various guilds, each giving a quick snapshot not only of their skills and what they do, but how they view the world and what their unique characteristics might be as well as maybe a few demonstrative spells/skills. Then you could do a simple quest to decide which of them you really used to be, ("Aha, you chose wisely, the test is complete!") and go from there. Rather than -just- having a helpfile (that might say, 'they work with forest and like deer' ) and asking them to choose this guild thing that seems a lot like a traditional class (and isn't!) even before they learn how to LOOK.

I think the newbies here would benefit from mentors, because Novice time is advanced on its own time I believe it makes the mentor system less used. Perhaps if there were more benefits to the mentor system IG benefits such as If you agree to mentor a novice, that novice always see's his mentor in a certain color, the novice can reach his mentor no matter what plane they are on. The Mentor can assess their novice with diagnosis. I think this would make the mentor process would provide a more fun incentive to interact with them.

Oh, and race stats should be visible in the creation process.

Actually, the race stats are all on the website. Maybe it could just point them towards the website as it is way more detailed then the help files given when choosing.

Edit: Or maybe it can give what is shown on the website during the choosing.

Could revamp the entire intro system. Have them remember their name, age and race firstly with descriptions describing stats, bonuses, penalties. Then go through the normal tutorial we have now, then they get to select an org/guild, and go through a specialise tutorial for that, and at the end of it, they have the choice of changing the org/guild if they dislike it, and going through the new tutorial for that. The aim is to let them see what the basic skills of the guild can do, what is the guild about and what the organisation they are joining is about.

Rogues are another matter, maybe someone can think of something. There's also the option to bypass the whole thing for alts of course.



Sounds alot like the old newbie island on EQ2, was a brilliant idea by them but sad that they scrapped it.

I would, but I've been waiting for three things. One, to be sure that I can do it and still play, while being at college. Two, to see a news post asking for guides. And three, to get the hours needed to apply.

When I guided on another IRE game, I loved it.

Took me a while to get through the whole thread... Erk.

I've been teaching novices for quite a while now. It's something I've enjoyed doing since I've stopped becoming one myself.

2 cents worth (in point form!):
-Some of the people willing to teach may not exactly be the best people to ask eg. Too fresh out of novicehood to give accurate info; has horrible habits of yelling at them etc.
-I find no problem that people refuse to teach novices. It's a game, they're players too, they should be allowed to enjoy themselves. I'll only have a problem if they're hindering the process eg. disturbing the tutor/novice. You can't really get any benefits from teaching novices unless they become protoges and buy credits or actually BE ACTIVE, which discourages us when they just go off and be inactive after we've spent time on them.
-Not everyone can be a Fate Guide. Some who are interested don't make it because they don't qualify because of some reason or other. I wouldn't think of applying myself because I'm not confident enough in my abilities (who's to say you're good? There's no way to assess this, really) and guiding is like some strange part time job that takes actual time from your real life. Everyone knows it's sucky to have someone sign up for anything but then they start to become less active or stop showing up completely.
-20-30mins is impossible if you have a real newbie on you. Allowing the novice to lead the length of the intro is a bad idea too, since many of them say that they have all the time in the world. If a novice wanted to jump straight to skills, I'd be a little torn about what to do about it, since I'd get into trouble for not teaching them about the guild/commune properly and stuff.

Solutions?:
-I agree with Ialie that mentors should have a few more special benefits with their protoges. After all, you have a sort of special bond with them.
-Automatically paying undersecs and secs is not an effective idea. Not all who teach are ranked and not all ranked people teach. If anything rewards should be decided manually and personally (maybe random presents from a spying Powerful Person? Make a Newbie Divine! Heh). Not all of us do it for reward, but this would encourage people to take an active role in it (and be more serious about it when doing so).
-How about making a feedback form for the novices? It can come up as a prompt at the end of novicehood (or as a reminder throughout the whole process, like registration). The form can be sent to the IRE admin and/or to the appropriate GM/GA/whoever was given the power to receive them. That way, the leaders will be able to know who's been interacting with the novices and/or the IRE admin will know if there are specific people making novicehood hell on purpose.

Eep, that was longer than I hoped it'd be. :/

You also can't tell if you don't have a high enough Planar ability to hear everything goin on on the GNT. Like me. Noola's only got up to Teleport and last night I had Celestia melded cause Ethelon kept poppin in and out (I was all "Ethelon's entered my demesne!" and then two seconds later "Gone now!" over CT every five minutes for a little while! It was fun in a way!) and I got the "So-and-so has joined the Aquamancers Guild as a freshman novice!" message and I said "Hello So-and-so!" over GNT but I don't know if they heard me at all - and I couldn't tell if anyone else said anything to them or if they said anything back or anything.

I couldn't leave to find out cause you can't see what's going on in your demesne if you're off Plane and just about the only thing I'm good for is sounding an alarm and leaving the Plane means I can't even do that.

Maybe the GNT channel really should be made to work on all Planes no matter what? Apparently others have said so in the past or there wouldn't have been the confusion regarding it I read about in earlier posts on this thread. And that way, even if everyone is off Plane cause of a raid or something if a Novice has a question, they can get an answer?

It's apparently supposed to be like that but bugged.

See, GNT didn't use to work off plane AT ALL - and I've had broadcast since almost the start of the game. So, I guess we all just assumed that the part where it worked like any other channel was the "fixed" version. (Oh, and it's the case that they can hear me, but I can't hear them when I'm far enough off-plane for that to matter )

Greetings Estarra!

I only know the Serenwilde, but the leadership of the guilds there have made a habit of chastising those who aren’t “official” newbie guides when they interact with newbies fresh from the Portal. So, if there isn’t a guild-guide on when someone appears, the rest of the guild can be hesitant to help him/her.

I have not only been told about it, but experienced it myself. Even though I had previously trained newbies when the guild leadership was busy, I stopped after being repeatedly told not to “bother” those fresh from the Portal.

Also, I have been yelled at for talking to a newbie who signed into the room I was in. I had no idea when I asked if she needed any help with anything that she had previously signed-out half-trained.

As for getting good feedback, a lot of newbies I talk to are scared of the player-gods and so may be loath to offer their complaints. I would recommend a write-only newsboard (like the Plots one) where players can offer up their newbie experiences – both the good and the bad – for you to read.

It would work best, in my opinion, if the posts were either anonymous (unless they choose to sign) or only non-player admins read the raw data.

I hope these thoughts help.

Rhosyn’s player

I got zero help way back when I started out, which was actually fine with me. One I'd trained some skills with the guild tutor, I wandered off to Newton and started kicking and punching and begging my way through, oblivious to the fact that I had nature curse the whole time.

I had fun, and I appreciated nature curse all the more when I finally learned I had it.

Skills are not the important part. Getting swept up in the guild is not the important part. Just being friendly and interacting with newbies is the important, even if that means letting them make their own mistakes.

I really agree that newbies should be sent off to Newton as soon as they feel ready. The bare essentials of teaching a novice are:

-Explain AB
-Explain GHELP
-Teach guild skills, while explaining what they do.
-Explain GNT and mentors
-Explain novice advancement program (Your guild does have one, right?)
-Explain the news system
-Teach the ground rules (GHELP ETIQUETTE, GHELP LAWS, GHELP NOTBEINGAJERK, etc.)
-Ask if they have any questions and answer them.
-Send them off to Newton.

Depending on how smart the newbie is, this can take from 10 to 30 minutes. If they ask about player or organization background, all the better; tell them, but make sure you're entertaining while you do (Use illusions if you can).

Truth is, it's hard to do scripted newbie teaching; you have to play by ear, since each newbie is different. Some are totally new to MUDding, some are MUDders, some are IRE players, some are alts. Some are really smart, some are common, some are particularly... er, non-smart, and some are, well, Faytte. Some will take orders, be eager to learn, and take in all the knowledge they can. Some will want to run off to Newton. Some will act like idiots.

I must have taught 30 or 40 newbies, and I must be a bad teacher because not a single one stayed past novicehood. That's a hundred percent miss-rate. So for the sake of Lusternia, I just stay away from them.

I know the moondancers have the Moondust Coterie who are "the novice teachers" and they have that requirement of getting to the tower first. I remember also being told to wait a few moments for greetings and the like before getting novices to read through the ghelp file.

However...
The hartstone guild leaders were doing all the work, this was not because it's guild policy but because there was the attitude that it was someone elses job. Now I try to ask for a teacher mainly because if I we're to teach all the novices comming through as opposed to getting others to learn how to then suddenly we get back in a situation where everyone starts assuming they don't need to be helping novices.

As best I can tell, one of the biggest problems for novices in Lusternia is that the conflicts are at once completely polarizing and nigh inescapable.

Lusternia relies on the guild system to bring new players into the game, empower them, and make them feel at home, but the system breaks down because the guilds are more intent on furthering their own conflicts and role-play missions than on making a place for new members, and newbies wind up treated like some commodity who should exist for no reason but to further the mission of the guild.

I personally have received a great deal of hate from veteran players for my wilingness to stop and help newbies, engaging them in converation, offering them aid and a little light role-play. They site various reasons (I'm "harassing" them or "scaring" them or "interfering with their training"), but it all comes back to them being more concerned the novice will grow into a loyal follower than that the player will enjoy his stay and keep coming back.

And in the words of a friend who wishes to remain anonymous, there's a...


In short, the guilds as a whole treat newbies like property. a commodity no other player has a right to get involved with

If you want to keep BOTH new players and polarizing conflict, I think nothing would be more helpful than to insert another level of introduction between Portal/Newton and picking a guild.

A tangible solution off the top of my head: "Avechna's Village", a neutral community where players can choose an archetype and learn low-level skills, but which has no guilds, no shops, no power nexus, no ability to influence villages... Perhaps a minimal player-run and admin overseen government to keep order. There are a lot of rogues who're rogues not because they're antisocial, but because they couldn't be comfortable role-playing any of the existing extremist options, so you'd have a core of experienced players who might still hang out at such a place and make themselves useful. Plus you might end up with guilds sending representatives to court newbies instead of taking them for granted.

This is just a personal opinion, but these two are probably unnecessary. There's nothing wrong with a novice spending the full time as a novice if they're new to the game. In my experience, most etiquette files could be more easily explained by the tutor, or as they start using the guild channels. Most guild laws files are also extremely long, will be exceedingly confusing for a true newbie, and probably won't pertain to them at all.

Newbies come here to play a game - not to sit around reading boring help files. Just give them the bare essentials they need to get started and let them start exploring and experiencing Lusternia. They'll make plenty of mistakes along the way, and that's just part of the learning process.

I tend to say "you do need to read suchandsuch scrolls in the while before you graduate, but there's a lot of them so you might want to go and experiment with things in Newton first" as a rule.

Hrm,

I must have been one of the few novices who actually enjoyed reading all the material, pointing out mistakes in said material, and then read it again.

You don't need to make them read the scrolls, but make sure they're aware of them. I think it's really easy for some newbies to get bored of novicehood and want to advance without waiting, so making them aware of newbie advancement is important.

I talked to Estarra about this, and I might just be smoking crack and making things up because she wasn't sure if it were supposed to be that way or not. I was under the assumption that novices could be heard on any plane (only on gnt) regardless of their planar skill, but higher level players were still restricted by the planar skillset when it came to talking on gnt (to prevent abuse of gnt).

Soooooo, I may be eating my words here. When was the last time you tested it though? The change would not have been a recent one. If it's not supposed to be that way (and thus I'm just insane and making things up) then I'm sure Estarra will beat me with her sparkling high heel and tell me to get back in my cage!