At some point while reading half the threads on these forums I go either "Oh, great, another Exarius vs. Verithrax" or "Oh, great, another Daganev vs. Verithrax". This falls into the former.

More reason to never doubt the power of the spoken word.

Ahem. Back on topic.

Truth is, the newbie experience is really inconsistent. Some newbies have a jolly great time overall; some get kicked into crying. I've given my suggestion regarding newbie intros. My other one is simply to expect people to train novices, and do it well, particularly if they don't contribute to the guild; my policy regarding GR1 people has always been, "If you're sitting on GR1 at the age of 25, you're doing something wrong." (IE, nothing at all). There's a lot of apathy regarding training novices in the game, and that means that the people who do care burn out much faster.You don't have to train novices, but I think that everyone has to contribute, if they want the benefit of being in a guild, and training novices is the most accessible, and arguably one of the most rewarding means of contributing.

That isn't a good thing, Verithrax.

My experience as a novice was asking questions and not getting answers. To be honest, had I not played other IRE games I would have been put off and have left the game. Instead, I left the guild, then only because one of the novice aides came to me, asked why I left, then took the time to explain things I had questions about.

I'm sorry, but "it's a war" is not a good reason to not help novices. Have one of the guild novice aides, or someone knowledgable in the guild, stay behind. Even if though being left behind is sad, it's still very important to have someone to ask questions.

Just my two cents, though.

I think it would do wonders for the sanity of novice trainers and for the novices if we all took an idea from the Moondancers and expanded it. In the Moondancers, novices are given an intro, and then when the novice is five hours from graduating, given a more indepth explaination of things like covens, power, skillchoices, and all those other things they didn't need to know as novices. If they don't get one of these "pre-graduation talks" before they graduate, they're given one when they graduate. However, I feel that the Moondancers explained a bit too much in the initial intro and still overwhelm many novices.


I think it would be wonderful if the intiial intro just covered the absolute essentials in the initial newbie intro. We think these things are the best to learn. Learn them unless you remember enough to disagree. This is your bashing skill. Here is how to find a rat/weevil. Here is how to probe it to see if it is loyal. Now, kill it to prove you know how. Here are our newbie rules (do not go over the long and involved guild/city rules yet, just compile the ones relevent to newbies into a ghelp). Here is how to get to the Newton Caves.

Then you ask if they would like to talk more, and talk more to them if they want, or give them the option to go to Newton.

When they near graduation, or when they graduate, you have someone pull them aside and explain to them: Guild rules. City/Commune rules. What not to hunt if anything (fae/kelpies for Seren, angels/turtles/merians/kelpies/dolphins/aslaran/kinswomen/etc for Celest).

Then, the person asks the novice if they want to talk more, and if desired, explains: Power (drawing, using, quests, policies). Politics. Paintings/Rifts. Highly useful skills they didn't learn in the novice intro (teleport, insomnia, etc). Skillchoices.

I think this would make for a much better newbie experience, personally.

I'm wondering a few things actually.

Were all the guild's novice introductions tested? Were they all tested only once. or multiple times? Were any guilds doing really well? Is there any guild that is doing well enough to offer advice to the rest of the player base?

I am all for improving this aspect of the game, but offering the blanket statement that "the novice expereince needs to improve." doesn't give a whole lot to go on. Improve from what? to what? "Do better" is much easier to achieve when we are given what good looks like. If you're looking to spare people's feelings by not mentioning which guilds were poor and which were good, I think you're missing an opportunity to see real improvement.

And truthfully, if the Shadowdancers suck, I'd like to know. I personally spend a TON of time with novices, Shadowdancer novices especially. I cannot be logged in 24/7, and I cannot monitor the treatment of novices when I'm not present.

So what guilds need work? I'm glad to put the effort in, if I'm given a real goal to work towards. And if something my guild is doing can help a guild that is struggling, well, I'm happy to do that too.

The problem is that during the fight, you don't know who is leaving the realms or staying - you can't see who is on prime from Ethereal, or from Celestia. If a novice joins, you have no way of knowing if they're getting help or not. They can't hear you, you can't hear them. You also can't necessarily get down. In the spam of a fight, you don't always even notice the stepping through the portal message.

I'm with Shayle on this one. Perhaps contacting the Administrators of the guilds you've said were not doing well would let them know of the problem. I personally don't see a problem with training novices in the Serenguard, like Shayle with the Shadowdancers, but I also am not around all the time. It may very well be possible that my guild is the worst in training novices, but we don't know if no one tells us. A lot of us do our best to make sure all newbies get trained, but we can't be everywhere.

What's the phrase.. Quoted For Truth.

I asked the same questions earlier. Well, not all the same questions. The one there about how many times and what times the audits were done is a good point. But yes, it'd be really helpful in the improvement process to know more details.

You know things like Guild A was very prompt in speaking with the auditors but the information was too overwhelming. Guild B waited an unacceptable amount of time to greet/speak with the auditor, but once they got started, their intro lessons were very well handled. Guild C never contacted the auditor or answered their questions. That way each Guild knows exactly what areas to work on, where their novice training cirriculum needs rehauling.

Also, the times the auditors were testing would be helpful as well. It might be something as simple as getting a better spread of Undersecs and teachers so that newbies who come in at odd times aren't left out.

These reports could be targetted to and individually submitted to each Guild on the Guild's news if the admin don't want anyone guild to feel picked on or whatever.

So perhaps there could be a summit or somethin' to have leaders of communes/cities gather and speak about what needs to be done or suggestions to make things better? Or the gods could become newbies in each guild and try them out?

Let the GAs know of specific concerns. Better yet, give them logs.

I'm not the GA of my guild. I'd still like to know.

And on a totally unrelated note...

Last time I made a novice I was absolutely blown away by how many things scrolled past me as I stepped out of the portal (if you haven't done this in a while, check it out, it's crazy). I actually delay my hellos now to new novices, so it won't get lost in scroll.

Not sure what you're talking about... -every single- Moondancer is told to do initial training as much as they are able, and seek our protégés. It's only the graduation prep (which most novices never get around to for whatever reasons) which is regulated by people who have had training in it.

I'm also not a GA and I'd like to know.

That may be, but as gnt channels are not game-wide at the moment, if I'm in a fight to the death, it's going to be on ethereal, and I'm not even going to hear them at the moment.

The thing about our system is that happy newbies require happy older people, which require a tad of freedom. It's going to be awfully hard for a Blacktalon novice when over half of its leadership is on strike and the last one isn't exactly thrilled about the state of things herself. Newbies are like art--they require leisure time and a conducive mindset to even develop artists, and even then, work isn't going to be consistent except in the case of the greatest ones. So...you leave things to players who are not even volunteers who themselves might not be in the greatest of moods. This thread isn't really the place to air my complaints on non-newbie things, but...perhaps reports and auditors are the wrong way to go about this.

Double standard: If when there's a raid, everyone is expected to get up and help, why isn't everyone expect to train a newbie when he comes?

I don't think that's the case in most places. It hasn't been for a while. Furthermore, do the admin come in and critique your combat performance?

On yet another related note, Estarra has invited me to go ahead and create a map of Ethereal to match the other ones I've made. Because Glomdoring in general and Shayle in particular are so dead set against anyone from the outside world setting foot in their territory, I thought to do this by just creating a novice that I could train quickly up to ethereal travel and get the mapping done without wasting anyone's time.

After I'd trained as far as I could without leveling, I went to Newton to do some of that as quickly as I could manage. Shayle contacted me and said my skills were all wrong and I needed to come back and fix them. While I was still considering the proper response, she threatened me with outguilding for ignoring her.

If I had been a real newbie, I would NOT be coming back to Lusternia, I promise.