I'm just going to reinforce what Estarra has said that the cities and communes are more central and important to Lusternia than the guilds are - which is the opposite of how the other IREs operate (to my knowledge). It has always been the administration's view that guilds are more subdivisions of the central community (the city/commune) than independent communities of their own. In short, city/commune identity in Lusternia should generally trump guild identity for the average player.

Further, I can speak from personal experience as a Patron that there are very often novices whose questions or requests for help go unanswered - not because they are ignored by their guild, but simply because there are no guild members around to help them. The guild members are not on other planes - there are just none logged on. Until Lusternia's playerbase grows drastically, which is unlikely to happen in the short term, guilds will continue to be too small to effectively assist all their novices. This is especially true in off-peak times. As an example, yesterday the Nihilists had 3 novices on, all of whom were asking questions on GNT, and nobody else. Fortunately I was there to alert the city that they needed some help (which they received), but this situation is not uncommon.

I've seen a lot of great arguments in this thread about guild sovereignty, and integrating novices into their guilds. I agree wholeheartedly that the guild provides a unique sense of direction for a player that distinguishes them within their larger community, and it would be a shame to lose that. It is, as always, in your interest to ensure that people do not linger in the novice period. However, let's assume for a moment that CNT comes into play and GNT is removed. What could be coded in conjunction with this (if anything) to help promote a stronger sense of guild identity?

Bear in mind with any suggestions that we are not looking to increase automation in guilds. Guild tutors won't teach novices, tell them to read help files (ugh), etc.

I think CNT would increase the available pool of people who can work with novices. CT/CWHO really is not for novices and it doesn't lend itself to interaction with novices who need help. Generally important and confusing things are being talked about on CT.

I agree that novice training has gotten excessive. Any time it takes an hour to introduce someone to the basics of the game, we've gone beyond basics. How to kill, what to kill, what skills you need to kill, how not to die, where to buy food, and how to ask for help. Is there anything else a novice really needs to know? They don't need to know a lot of skills or what they do. They just need to know what not to waste their lessons on. We can save the rest for when they actually graduate out of novicehood. Saves time on our part as well as we're not dedicating an entire hour or more to every person that pops their head in to check out the game. I usuallly have 15 minutes or so to meet with new players and get them going. It's extremely rare that I have a whole hour and I imagine most people are the same which is why we see such a low participation rate in people willing to do it.

CNT gives them somewhere to ask questions where chances are good someone will actually be around to answer. It also gives them a wider pool of other novices to group with. And forcing us to K.I.S.S. is not a bad thing at all.

Catarin has a point. Some of us really like to work with novices. A lot of us don't. When undersecs (like me) run and hide in a manse or something whenever a novice appears because we don't have the time or it's mind numbingly boring, we have a problem. On a tangent, I hate it when you go to teach a novice and like, half way through they idle or disappear.


Hm, a lot of this stuff has already been said! I feel redundant.

I think having a city novice aether would be beneficial, but at the same time I don't want to see GNT go.

Novices are treated differently in every guild in order to foster some sort of roleplay, and while everyone should be very helpful, there can be a different atmosphere in terms of how they help. I also think it may be confusing for novices because they may be asking guild specific questions and have other people in the city simply guessing at a solution or giving false information, which will only make the novice more lost/confused. Having a CNT available would be very helpful for general novice help in the city (ie: how do I sell rats, where should I hunt now, where can I hunt after I'm out of newton,where can I find vials, etc.) but I don't think GNT should be taken out because if the guild wishes to contact their novices only they won't be able to without sending them individual tells, or if a novice has a specific guild question they will encounter the things I mentioned before.

I understand Lusternia focuses more on the city, but some guilds do enjoy having their own identity as well, and I think this will only force what the administration perceives the role of guilds to be onto the guilds.

In addition, I like the idea of having some sort of set automated message that perhaps could go off either automatically all of the time (set by the Guild Admin), or when no one else (ie: secretaries, GA, GM or undersecs) is available (I don't know if that would be possible or the best solution). I also think that guild tutors should be able to interactively teach their novices as a last resort in case no one else is around/available to teach. It will add to immersion and help them learn more about the guild. Perhaps the leaders of the guilds could work together with their patrons to script out the teaching, and it would be fairly basic and give them the bare minimum in terms of what they need to know (ex: how to learn, guide them through learning, pointers/tips). Of course in some cases tutors would have to be moved or novices given access to them (I know that Geo novices can't get to ours).

And yes, GNT should be heard on all planes and not take into account anyone's current plane when speaking on it. There HAVE been instances when I've been around that I haven't heard novices and it was no fault of mine.

Have NEWBIE on, and do READLOG (ORG). It's what I do. I was training a Nihilist novice the other week that was asking a bunch of questions on NEWBIE, and began to train them, thinking no one was around. Someone was around, and refused to teach because of what her GM/GA told her so. I was kind of annoyed and frustrated - I used to have files on hand (oh noes gaming the system), of the Ur'guard and Nihilist guild novice scrolls so I could help people when the occasion occured. Revan got the Nihilist to teach the novice, but she began to deliberately tell them the wrong things. (And if it was not on purpose, why would you tell a novice never to learn from Ardrak?)

We don't need this CNT thing, we have NEWBIE (just pay attention and honours them to see if they are from the same org), and GNT. The main concern here is a lack of caring or available people. Or benefits, considering that sometimes a newbie you've spent a number of collected hours helping doesn't ever come back again for whatever reason (it happens, not always from a lack of trying). You can't expect all players, who come on to PLAY, sometimes right after they get off work, to TEACH/BABYSIT... some of us enjoy helping, some of us ALREADY HAVE A FULL TIME JOB.

Bharain was implementing a system where novice scrolls or something from each guild was available on a city training clan, the Lyceum. I liked the idea, since it will make it easier to at least give the novice their basics if no one is around.

We've got that with the Shadow Envoy already, actually, so I can access the scrolls and help a novice of another guild if I need to (and I have needed to).

I have to agree with what Shamarah posted a few pages back. I play this game to have fun. I don't mind training novices from time to time (*)and I usually always answer questions on GNT when I hear them.. which admittingly isn't often since I'm usually off prime or generally in an aether bubble. I think having GNT (or CNT whatever) work without plane restrictions would indeed help a lot.


(*) It would be great if training novices only took 20 minutes, usually however it does not, simply because the learning of lessons takes longer. Also, sometimes I'm just in the middle of doing something else and sorry but I don't see how I can be expected to drop everything to help a novice as soon as they step out of the portal.

Something most people also have overlooked here... by far not all novices -need- and exessive training of 1+ hour(s). Not everyone is new to muds or ire. What most people need is a short guide to start them off, some even prefer to learn on their own and go out to do what they want as soon as they're done. Having someone give you an extensive training can be bothersome too.

Personally, I'm wondering if a -short- and simple scroll stating A) Where to go What to learn and how to learn C) some information about Newton D) links to all kinds of other scrolls that can be useful (including guild rules, what to use your gold on etc) and especially E) strong encouragement to -immediately- ask on GNT (or CNT) if something is not understood OR if the person does want a personal training.. might not work as good or even better as people would not get burned out as much. Novices can still be given a longer personal training once they graduate to make sure they fit in with the guild RP.. and that would by far not be as many novices as come through the portal and the 'reward' for the trainers would be there as well as the chance for the novices to actually stay would be much higher by then.

In regards to Estarra asking how we know who's teaching novices:

Why don't we have a post-graduation registration process: I mean, you have to go through a registration process nearly right out of the Portal, yes? We should ask novices a few questions once they graduate to GR1, too. Questions like "What did you guild do that helped you the most" "What would you have like done" "What could we have done differently" "Identify the people who really helped you get started".

Deliver the answers to the GM or GA, or patron, or city leaders, or whoever. Now we know who's helping people and what needs to be changed, yes?

Tell Randomnoob1 Hi! If you write my name in that post graduation form I'll give you x gold and that delicious cookie.

Tell Randomnoob2 You don't remember who gave you your novice intro? Doesn't matter, just write my name!

As I said before, relying on a newbie to diligently answer who 'helped' them would probably not be a very objective method.

I think it's a given that some people hate teaching novices, some people really enjoy it, and some people don't mind occasionally helping. No one here is suggesting you are "forced" to help.

As far as a short intro, I hope everyone is aware of HELP QUICKSTART. That's meant to at least give the most basic syntax to get started.

Again, the city/commune novice channel would help build community in the city/commune which the newbie channel itself really doesn't do. Novices from different guilds could get together to hunt, or ask advice from anyone in the city/commune. I think its great to have certain guild help scrolls available to everyone in the city--maybe we can hardcode that.

What's wrong with waiting to get into the policies and politics of the guild until after one graduates? Why not let the first 24 hours be a time when the novice bonds with the city or commune?

Teaching a novice today. Either a brand new player to Lusternia, or someone who can act really well.

2:13 Start
2:20 Skills selected (After discussing the difference between totems and hunting)
2:23 First lesson started (After discussing how to learn, number of lessons maximum, etc.)
2:25 Finished 30 lessons of Knighthood, started Athletics.
2:26 Finished 13 lessons of Athletics.
2:27 Started Totems.
2:30 Finished Totems
2:31 Bonded to Squirrel and Bear (Discussing the use of AB to figure out what skills do).
2:34 Started learning Planar (Took longer due to trying to skillchoice select it)
2:35 Finished learning Planar.
2:37 Put 20 coltsfoot in rift, started learning Combat.
2:38 Finished learning Combat.
2:39 Started learning Discernment.
2:41 Finished learning Discernment
2:42 Started learning Discipline.
2:43 Finished learning Discipline.
Asked how to determine the lessons remaining.
2:45 Started putting remaining lessons in Knighthood. (During this time, I spoke about Newton).
2:48 Finished learning lessons! Started discussing how to read Commune/Guild helpfiles.
2:52 Began to read a short scroll.
2:54 Greeted the Commune.
2:55 Arrived at the Wyrdling.
2:57 Entered the Wyrdling,
2:58 Reached Bomani (stopped to read room descriptions).
2:59 Gave an axe to the Wyrm.
3:01 Wyrm wielded axe.
3:02 Wyrm had no more questions, ready to go on to Newton! Done!

This was about 50 minutes of teaching. Not quite an hour. I perhaps overestimated slightly when I said my average time for new players was an hour-- now that I've actually timed it, this novice time was about my "average". As you can see, the actual lesson time itself was a huge bulk of the overall time spent. 7 minutes on skillchoice selecting, 3 on how to learn, and 25 on the actual lessons themselves. The final 12 were spent on things that I also feel are important-- learning how to read help scrolls, getting an axe so you don't have to kick and punch (meeting Bomani is just part of me getting an axe from our weaponsrack).

I really wish the vast majority of Lusternia seemed to be on the same page as Estarra here. Most the guilds I've tried seem to seem to go by the, "You're an ant, do this this and that, then do some more. -Then- you can bond with us." The cities are even worse about being stand offish towards new players.

This might be hard to comprehend, I'm rather tired at the moment.





But CT or TELLing someone can.



Which the current bashing/questing system is not designed for...



Again, they can use CT, GNT, or just TELL someone.



Make new CHELP scrolls or an informative clan (which do exist, for those who want to learn). Still no need for CNT.



Because if all they do is bond with the city we'd end up with graduates, "fair game" according to griefers and raiders, rather inexperienced in terms of levels and combat. Keeping GNT lets them be informed and they can ask questions about their guild and its combat/policies, which are usually the most relevant questions. I know I've never had a question about Magnagora that wasn't answered in a scroll, but many combat-related questions could only be answered by a guild member (GNT). CNT still sounds like it would hinder more than help.


In summary: What you're saying is that it's important for novices to bond with their city/commune. What I'm saying is that they can and do already do that, it's not very relevant to novice retention, and that CNT would take away vital guild bonding. I think the main problem is that you don't seem to know why we're losing novices, which doesn't happen if they're properly (skills AND guild-related roleplaying) introduced. Once again, I suggest you focus on the problematic cities/communes/guilds and leave those of us that are doing a fairly decent job helping your business out of it.

The problem with further integrating the guilds into the larger community is that at some point, guilds start to lose meaning. They're vastly watered down already, compared to the rest of IRE, which I like. But I also like them actually mattering. If they're to survive further integration, they really need to step up the RP and truly forge some differences between guild members. Too often it's just a choice of skills (and I'll freely admit that Sylphas has just become a Seren who happens to pick skills he likes), which cuts off a lot of great RP.


Sure they are. There are many times that no one is on who wants to help, but someone will suck it up and do it because you can't just ignore them without a damned good excuse. I gave a year or so of IRL time to help novices in Achaea; I'm done. I rarely find it fun anymore, and I'd almost rather log off. And yet I feel guilty if I do that, because novices are the lifeblood of the game. It's a vital job, but most of the time, it is just that: a job. I don't play a game to do work, I play to have fun.

To be blunt, I don't feel it should be up to us to do the hard work of teaching the basics to total novices. We can, and should, help them out, but it shouldn't be our fault if the game doesn't get new people because we were busy playing it. Open more guide applications, have a god do it if you want, or an ephemeral. But people who log on to the play the game should not be expected to sacrifice their own pleasure for someone else. (If you love to help novices, and take joy from geting them started, that's wonderful, and none of this applies to you, of course.)

I'm somewhat divided, here. I know that, to be perfectly honest, whenever I make a new alt? CT is usually the first thing I shut off, simply because of the information overload (I generally have spans of multiple months of Not Playing between characters, usually because life has intervened), and also because I feel like I can't really do much for the city yet, particularly since I don't enjoy PvP, which makes my novice behind useless in a raid or city defense. It takes a while for me just to get used to the pace of things and to keep my channels apart despite the fact that I've been playing MUDs for nearly ten years. Logging into an unfamiliar game and being clocked upside the head by lots and lots of scrolling text as soon as you step out of the tutorial (or before, if you were impatient and skipped it under the assumption you knew everything already) is hella intimidating. Half the novices I've trained in the past week or two (which hasn't been that many, I'll admit--my guild is clinging to its feeble Topguilds spot with both hands and all of its teeth) have implied that I'm not the only one who gets shellshocked.

I really would like to see it be easier to connect with one's city. In my past experience, it's usually felt like a Big Kids' Club, in which newer members feel like they're going to get squashed by some level 500 oldbie if they step out of line by daring to ask a question over CT other than "Can anyone enchant an X?" That, or it's nothing but greetings and farewells. Maybe I've just not been online when the awesome people are. Regardless, I generally feel stronger ties to my guild as a player, and only loosely relate to my city for RP reasons.

It'd definitely help if there was a citywide "Please welcome Soandso who just stepped butt-naked out of the Portal" message. Maybe a city-related way to see how many members of a guild are online at a time would cut down on the "Ask your guild, stupid!" replies? So if I'm in New Celest, I could see that out of the current on-plane citizens there's currently X Aquamancers, Y Celestines, Z Paladins, and zero Cantors because we're red-headed stepchildren. It could be a total amended to the end of CW, perhaps?

Figures the moonies would wait till I wasn't security/secretary anymore to announce wages for everyone. I still think it's a shady practice, even if I'm also jealous of those getting up to 15 credits every week and half.

I think I can be objective and petty at the same time.


Edit:Yes, that is a concern of mine too, and one I would hope would be changed by a CNT. Magnagora, for instance, has a clan geared toward that very thing, because you shouldn't be asking questions on their CT.

Because guilds are much more geared towards caring about novices, cities are not. Most city leaders I know tend to ignore weaker characters, they want people who can battle the enemy organizations. No one gave a damn what I said until I could do more than web during a group battle.

edit: This was in response to Estarra's last post... I was on the wrong page...

Bear in mind this is subjective, but I deleted the parts of your tutorial that I feel are irrelevant to a true newbie. A newbie doesn't really need to learn totems/hunting/athletics/planar/discernment/discipline/combat, nor do they need to spend all their lessons. They really aren't going to get enough utility out of any of those abilities to be worth the extra time investment, and confusion, from learning them.

This is, of course, for the average newbie. There will be those newbies who are more interested in roleplaying than hunting/exploring/etc, and they'll be the ones who are likely to engage you in lengthy conversations. Bear in mind that, for the average newbie, this development should occur throughout novicehood - and beyond. There's no reason that a gr1 member needs to be fully and completely trained in every aspect of Lusternia, let alone a level 1 novice.

Lusternia offers a great deal of variety, and has a great deal of history and background. These things are all important, and so it's often difficult to filter through what is truly necessary. However, I think you are setting both yourself and the novice up for frustration by trying to overload them with information at first. You are making their first experience playing Lusternia more difficult and confusing (as there's no way they're going to retain all that information), and you are making teaching them a painful and lengthy process at the same time. Also, if the novice ends up deciding that Lusternia is not for them (this happens often), you will become frustrated that you spent so much time working with them. Why not save this energy for the novices who are repeated players, and return after their first session?

Umm... wrong. They might not need Discernment, but they definitely need Clot (the glassblade reeds). Totems gives them waterbreathe and +1str from Bear, also immunity to fear. The first two are necessary-- the str especially for a Warrior. They need to learn more knighthood to make their weapons more effective, so they need to use a lot of their lessons in that. They need Planar, or their questions won't be heard off-Prime. They need combat for weaponprobe so they can look at their weapons. And... if you think novices can do without athletics...

ab athletics weathering

Syntax: WEATHERING
Your budding control over your body will assist you in weathering the storm of life by increasing your constitution by one point.
(+1 con).

ab athletics breathe

Syntax: BREATHE DEEP
With the increased lung power you have gained from your bodily mastery, you are able to resist becoming out of breath.
^--- this especially is NECESSARY. Without this, they lose endurance SO RAPIDLY. Even with this, they run out at a pretty good clip.

I never had a problem with grassblades in Newton.
I didn't start clotting until PvP.

I didn't start weaponprobing until after I graduated novicehood, when I was looking for my specialization's weapon.

There isn't water except for one tiny area in Newton, so waterbreathe is pointless.

Atheltics is nothing more than convience abilities.

Pretty much, 60 or so lessons in Knighthood and they are ready. (I do use the combatstyles for PvE, they actually help)