I think there are a couple of things to think about here.

1) Short-term "fun" won't suit the game unless steps are made to think of the long term. MUDs are already a niche market right now. If the game doesn't grow, the game dies. Now, I think players want to be playing this game for years, so growth is considered an option. That's why the admin are asking you about this.

2) Having responsible roles are important to "player government". The other thread complains that players don't have enough control over their governments. Playing devil's advocate--If the players aren't willing to grow their governments, one could argue that the benefits of power might need to be taken away--if you're gonna force the admin to do all the work, then somebody could argue they should take away player-controlled cities, make them all NPC controlled, and use elements like autoclass, and even shut down the "low population" communities (Glomdoring), because if you aren't willing to do the work, why should benefits be given.

Umm, the only admin I see expecting hard annoying WORK and not being compensated are the admin who themselves are VOLENTEERS and do hard annoying WORK without being compensated.

However, I do plan on making a thread with an objective means to rewarding guild teaching.

We get it, Shamarah. As I've said before, I KNOW not everyone likes to work with novices. Apparently, you are one of those. I have absolute ZERO expectation that you would do something you consider hard annoying work. You probably have GNT turned off, so really none of this discussion should even concern you. Sheesh.



Aiakon, I think you are really unfair to say we are posting this thread to "rubber stamp" a foregone conclusion. I've been discussing it with admin as well as other IRE producers and am not "charging" forward to implement something no one wants. Obviously, there are people who think this is a good idea, and we are weighing many of the good arguments set forth against it. However, the "poor us" argument that the admin are going to "ram this down our throats" just seems like the old and tired knee jerk reaction to justify your point of view.

I'm going to have to disagree with Morgfyre's assessment of novice skills. One of the first things I look at when I play a MUD is how innovative it is mechanically, and the single biggest part of that is the assortment of player skills. If someone told me to dump 15 lessons into Nature for barkskin and talisman, then off hunting, I may or may not stay--bashing is just not that dynamic.

If you really want to cut down on novice teaching time, I'd suggest speeding up the actual lesson learning process itself.

Ack, I didn't mean to sound that nasty. If I did, my post came out in the wrong tone. Sorry! :S

My point, though, was that teaching novices really isn't much fun, and a lot of us (ie. me) would much rather do other things, and I can't see CNT solving the problem of not enough people wanting to help novices especially given that only people from the same guild will be able to do intros adequately for the most part, and that's the area where there's a problem.

And if the delay is there for balance purposes, maybe have it not apply if they're below level X or have invested less than Y lessons total?

I personally do not think this idea will help solve the underlying issues.

The issues with novices in Lusternia are as follows:

1. The game is very, very, very complicated, especially when compared to other IREs. There are so many nuances, and pvp combat is really impossible on Nexus, which many novices use.

2. I know you like the novice tour, Estarra, but it just isn't enough. It doesn't give novices any sense of how the game works, nor any sense of what you can do in the game. It doesn't give them any explaination of the multitudes of things they need to know. It doesn't even give a list of terms. It also doesn't give the newbie any sense of if they would enjoy the game or not.

3. Novices get "ignored" at times, either because they check GWHO and see no one there because everyone is off plane, or whatnot. Most of the time, this is far from intentional, but newbies have no planar, and thus cannot be heard by people who aren't on prime, and can't hear people who aren't on prime.

4. Spam hits novices really hard. Having PORTALS lead to the nexuses, the loudest place for any org, is both a blessing and a curse in this regard. Also, the default colours could really use a bit of work. I remember them being very hard to distinguish, and being mostly gray for GNT, CT, GT, and so on. I could be remembering wrongly, but they should both have useful defaults, and somewhere novices should be pointed to CONFIG COLOUR.

To help novices, I recommend the following:

1. Update GWHO and CWHO and WHO to show the number of people who are off prime. Update HELP (org) to show the novice aides who are off prime. Too many people check WHO and think the game lacks players when in reality we are just off prime often.

2. Make GNT work like ENVOYS, that is, on any plane period regardless of anyone's planar skill and without the complication of giving what plane the speaker is on, even if people are, say, on aetherbubbles. The only problem with this is that then the GMs have to police the channel a bit to make sure that people aren't using GNT to circumvent the intentional communication complications inherent in aether travel. However, novices shouldn't suffer from this complication - if a novice joins and I am hunting in Xion, I should be able to say hello and answer questions, even though I'm far, far, far off prime. Just make it clearly against the rules to use GNT for anything other than helping novices.

3. HELP DICTIONARY should be updated, it's missing a LOT of terms, heck even the extremely important words "manse" and "demesne." You might also want to seperate out the terms from the proper nouns, or seperate out the OOC terms from the IC terms, or something to make the scrolls smaller and thus easier to read through.

4. HELP DICTIONARY should be referred to in the novice tour somewhere.

5. The novice introduction should be completely reworked to be more useful and informative. Players should get a sense of what the game is like, and if they'd enjoy it, before they enter the game. The player should be able to have more control during it too. Imperian's intro is a good example, in my opinion.

6. Making the problems with novices the problems of more players doesn't solve the problem that it isn't really the player's responsibility to keep novices here. It's the admins/guides. So, expand the powers of guides. Make guides interact with the novices more. Give them more novice-interaction freedom, and let them wander around newton checking up on novices. Give them a more RP-based role and have them send tells to novices checking up on them. And so on.

A concern of mine about expanding the novice journey, is simply that not everyone takes the journey.

I think each one of these things would help imensly if done. meaning, if you only did number 3 and not number 6 or 4 but not 2 you would still have lots of improvement. (Numbers chosen randomly)

Though I'm not completely adverse to changing the introduction tour, you may not be aware what a complicated piece of code that is. We'd definitely have to dedicate a coder to such a project for perhaps a month so I'd want to make absolutely sure a rework is truly needed and a new script is ready. But maybe I'm missing what you think should be included. The introduction is the story of what happens when stepping through the Portal of Fate (pretty heavy RP IMHO) and gives directions for the basic commands. We definitely want to avoid information overload--there is only so much a person can retain. The intro should take no more than 10-20 minutes (and 20 minutes only if someone is really slow). It should only cover the basics (how to move, how to communicate, how kick something, how to learn something). Hopefully, newbies can get through it fast and into the game proper in short order. If some things aren't being covered that really should, or some thigns that are being covered aren't needed, feel free to point it out. But, again, the tour is NOT meant as a thorough introduction to Lusternia but rather a fast tutorial on the basics.

If the guides want to submit ideas on powers they have that is preventing them from effectively guiding, I'm all ears (honestly, I haven't heard of anything). They should be able to wander in Newton already, or if not that must be a bug. We can certainly look into these sorts of things.

By your tone and the tone of others, I want to emphasize that I am not trying to cast blame on players or guilds, and I agree it is the admin/guides problem more than anyone elses, but certainly there is no getting around the fact that we do rely on at least some players to help out other players. This is not required and no one is going to get into trouble for not doing it, but we hope it is somewhat human nature for some people to want to help others, just as you may have been helped as a newbie. Thus, if there is a way we can encourage people helping people, we will look into it.

There are two things unique to lusternia that I think should defnitly be in the intro.

1. Influencing a mob, and having them lose ego.

2. An explanation of what Power is.

Actually, I -really- loved those in Imperian. They were a ton of fun, and one of the reasons I stayed in Imperian for quite some time. It was only after I found out how uhm... the player-base is, that I left.

edit: I also liked getting a mana and health vial there. They weren't long term things, and they completely decayed after a few months, but that made bashing a LOT easier until I had enough gold to get my own.

I'm very sorry if my tone was a bit harsh. In the past, problems with novice retension WERE blamed on the players, and I instinctively assumed this was happening again. If this is not the case this time, I do apologize for the misunderstanding.

Oh, and something that will make novices feel more welcome - auto powerblock people who join an org from the Portal invisibly. This way, they don't get the "Your access to the ___ has been cut off." message, which is both confusing to a novice, and rather discouraging since few novices get an explaination as to what it means. Also, have graduation auto unblock people. These two could perhaps be power ministry-controlled options for orgs, but having both of them will make newbies not think they're being discriminated against for being newbies, which is how it works to people who don't understand the game or how power works.

Even if the tour was not meant as a thorough introduction, I feel that there are some things that either need to be present, or scrolls need to contain them and they need to be mentioned to novices.

The following are very important to anyone:

1. Learning. I feel that the learning portion of the tour could use some small tweaks. For one, go through the entire learning text for environment, but speed it up. That way, when the novice learns in the real game, the presence of the learning text does not confuse them (I've had a few novices confused by it myself). Second, mention somewhere the learning 15 lessons at a time thing, and where to see how many lessons they have left, and how lessons are gained. These are simple things that are rather important, especially to novices who choose not to join an org at the moment they join the game.

2. Probing. Mention loyals and probing somewhere. It's kind of important.

3. Power. Mention what it is, and mention that anyone can draw Dross power. Power is unique to Lusternia, a major part of Lusternia, and something everyone should know they have access to.

4. Influence, as other said, is both unique to Lusternia and a major part of it. Have a bit of influencing in the tour.

5. Config is very, very nice to know about. Only config prompt is explained, but other options are very important, especially config colour.

I need to go, so I can't sit here finishing this post : P I'll say more on the subject later, but most of the rest I had to say are about the novice help scrolls.

Also, it isn't just a being able to thing, it's a being encouraged to thing. Also, the guides should joke around with novices, cajole, small talk, make them feel welcome. Having the guides be mostly aloof as they often are is useful for getting questions answered, but not useful for making players feel welcome.

How to handle probing denizens and influence all in one go: someone's run off with a McGuffin, and Lachesis wants it back. When you probe them, you're shown that they're loyal to whatever, thus explaining why you can't kill them (and what would happen if you did), so a little begging later, you've got the thing. Yay!

It could even add power to a mini-nexus if you want to kill three birds with a single stone.

Odd, are the guide rules strictly enforced here? Back when I had spare time I was a guide in Imperian, and although we had rules about not doing small talk, they were thoroughly ignored by both the Admin and the guides.

Yay for good ideas! Boo for using the term McSomething.

Well, I never said it should be called that. Maybe it's a peg of the Loom?

When I guided in Achaea, the guides would sometimes do little quizes. It was mostly silly things, that any novice should know, but it really made some of them feel welcome. The prizes were small, maybe five of one herb, or 100 gold.

I enjoyed it the other day when I saw Spindle and Skein get engaged, was pretty funny. And there was a bit of a chat, for a few moments, about how it's not bad to be small. But, then it went all quiet and I was like 'awww.'

Please note: This was on a little alt I have. I don't make it a purpose to go and bother guides.

I'd just like to reiterate that we're not trying to bash the admin. At least for me, I'm just tired of seeing this issue come up time and again, and I'm tired of being polite about it. Honesty doesn't mean hostility.