Why Lusternia isn't retaining novices

by Verithrax

Back to Common Grounds.

Unknown2007-03-15 01:11:58
QUOTE(Sylphas @ Mar 14 2007, 06:30 PM) 390864
Now that I think of it, this is actually one of the reasons I've been looking at Imperian more and more. I really don't like the focus on aetherbubbles and other planes. Maybe it's just me, but the world feels pretty small.



Isn't Imperian the one with the horrible death place type thing? I spent an hour trying to get out of that place. After I finally made it out, I QQed and never went back.
Unknown2007-03-15 01:18:30


Imperian just feels incredibly dry, boring, and uninspiring from my attempts to get into it, vast and many as they've been. Quality > Quantity in that regards. And Lusternia wins out there in my opinion.


Unknown2007-03-15 02:49:48
Imperian is actually quite nice, and I've found the notion of their playerbase being "elitists" and "extremely mean" to be rather false. True, I haven't visited the forums yet, but the people in the actual game are very nice. The only fault I can find with the game is that their backstory, and the history of the different organizations is so very pale when compared to Lusternia. I just started playing a Wardancer yesterday, and I'm hooked - the major factor stopping me from switching over is the lack of a system for sale (and I love the Shadowdancers way to much).

As a novice in Imperian, I found two things to be extremely appealing:
The skills are given automatically. You gain your first two guildskills upon creation, and then your third automatically when you graduate. None of that skillchoice stuff. Dramatics and aethercraft really should be included as basic skills (rather than having to select them, causing yet more confusion for novices).

The guildhelp files are organized in a very clear manner, at least in the Wardancers. Everything is outlined nicely, and you know exactly what's required of you, and how you can do it. Granted I had IRE experience, so it may not be as easy for a true novice.
Unknown2007-03-15 19:14:21
I agree with the above. Some other things I thought of... (sorry if it's been mentioned already)

Instead of GHELP INDEX, GHELP by itself could show up the list of contents (do novices even know about the index command?). And if there is somehow a way to code it so GHELP looks like the HELP file, that would be awesome. I know the other IRE games do relatively fine with the current system... but a few pretty aesthetic touches wouldn't hurt smile.gif

Lusternia has some unique 'common' skills that other games don't, such as aethercraft, planar, influence, and free trade skills. These are not necessary for a novice to invest in, but then they'd be missing out on some of the most exciting aspects of Lusternia. What you'd get is either a novice with moderate level in their guild skills but no experience of the other fun stuff, or a novice with small investments in a bunch of different skills but stuck with low guild skill rank. I had an alt who influenced instead of hunt, and for influencing to be useful against worthwhile mobs I think it's safe to say you'd need at least wheedling. And he also got teleport in planar. So as a result he has very low skill in his guild specializations, and is boring to play anymore at level 50, and even with a small amount of credits too. Sure, good incentive to buy more credits, but not everyone will invest so much money so soon.

All right, point of the above paragraph? Possible change: Give 10 lessons per level and 15 bound credits at the intervals. biggrin.gif
Unknown2007-03-15 19:26:48
Taxis, 1-man ship rentals or standardized fighters all sound good to me. The more accessible the game is to people who can't afford such things the better, there would still be an advantage to owning your own I would assume.

EDIT: I'm a pretty regular Imperian player, play it more often than the other IRE muds (I go Imperian, Aetolia, Lusternia in order of time played), and the single biggest thing I like more about Imperian is the fact that if I want to bash or quest, I use my mapper to walk there. I target something, it disappears when I get my exp out of it. Here it's find the rift, transverse five times, bash until the afflictions have added up too much, hope the way back isn't cut off... or influence and have stuff not vanish when you're done with it.

The single biggest improvement I could imagine for Lusternia to appeal to me would be if when I influence a mobile, and it's successful, the ego attacks would automatically target the next one I haven't influenced yet that is in the room so that I don't need a monster system. It would make it easier for lots of people to get into the ego battle part of the game.
Unknown2007-03-15 20:19:35
As a noobie who has played other IRE games, I found it really hard to start off with the way my guild's ghelp files were organized. If you want to keep novices in the guild, please, please lable your novice file something that stands out. In the Harbingers the novice file was labled Murmurs. How is a starting player with no one on the guild supposed to know to go to that file not knowing the guild ranks?

What I liked in another IRE game ( I think it was Achaea or Aetolia) Is they had default novice scrolls by class that you were told to read *In the Intro* labled help guildnovices that explained everything you needed to start. Having a system like this put into the game I think would really help the guilds with low numbers retain novices since they'll actually have a much better idea what they need to do.
Gwylifar2007-03-15 20:48:19
There already is HELP GUILDNOVICE , it's just rarely used for that, partially because it's a lot harder to edit. Or at least was, not sure if it still is.
Unknown2007-03-15 21:03:38
Yeah, editing that file starts with a blank template, so you need to write it in a separate editor and keep it saved, then copy and paste. I don't think -help guildnovices ()- is mentioned much, and the other day I looked at the files for a few guilds and sometimes all they give is background info, no directing to scrolls or anything. Like the Harbingers, I thought we could re-name the novice scroll to something more in theme with everything else, but these kinds of complications arise.
Gwylifar2007-03-16 16:10:31
Maybe all 16 guilds could just agree to a single uniform name for the "hey, you're new, read this" GHELP instead of the hodgepodge of names they use now. Like GHELP WHATNOW or GHELP INTRO or something similarly generic and non-guild-specific.

Or HELP GUILDNOVICE could be made so it retains its contents when editing like a GHELP does. But even so I don't like this. It's so much longer to type, for one thing. But more importantly, your GHELP new character scroll is probably just part of a set of related ones, and it only makes sense they'd all be in GHELP together.
Daganev2007-03-16 16:49:24
GHELP NOVICES anyone?
Morgfyre2007-03-18 02:50:33
You've probably noticed we made these changes:

CODE
ANNOUNCE NEWS #759
Date: 3/17/2007 at 6:10
From: Morgfyre, the Legion
To  : Everyone
Subj: Newbie Changes

Newbies who pass through the Portal of Fate will now notice that they
have some extra equipment at the end of their journey. This varies by
archetype, and includes the following:

All Newbies
---------------
- A health, mana and a bromides vial

Warriors
---------------
- A 2-handed claymore

Bards
---------------
- A lute

Additionally, all guilded newbies will begin with their primary skillset
selected for them (e.g., Knighthood for Warriors, Nature for Druids and
Wiccans, etc.). This does not apply to secondary skills due to the
divergence in skillchoices. Likewise, Aethercraft and Dramatics no
longer require selecting for newbies and will appear with the rest of
the Common Skills.

Also, when a newbie steps through the Portal of Fate, their arrival will
be announced over CT (in addition to GNT) if they are a member of a city
or commune.

Note that the vials, lute and claymore are substandard, and all of it
(vials included) will decay after only 5 months in Lusternia - so as not
to steal business from our player merchants. This equipment is meant to
make the starting process for newbies faster and easier, so they can
begin fully exploring Lusternia.

Last, you may have noticed that cwho and gwho now indicate how many
members are on other planes. This is to help facilitate a greater sense
of community in Lusternia's organisations, and help players realize when
they're not alone - even if they are the only one on the plane at that
time.

Enjoy!

Penned by My hand on the 8th of Juliary, in the year 171 CE.


What are your thoughts or feedback on this?

As a note, I'll definitely look into having GHELP and CHELP with no argument return the index, as well. I'm not sure off-hand about the guildnovices being wiped, but if it's an easy fix then I'll do that as well. I would encourage all guilds to use their HELP GUILDNOVICES file rather than a ghelp pupils/murmurs/etc. because it's standardized.
Xenthos2007-03-18 02:52:53
I think newbie claymores really should last longer. 5 days isn't really all that long a time-- and even 30 days on a newbie claymore won't really interfere with PC business (not much profit on novice weapons, anyways). The "profit" is more on the higher-end weapons which they will have to upgrade to anyways.
Anarias2007-03-18 02:58:25
10 or 15 days on the weapons doesn't sound bad at all.

Generally the changes look great.
Unknown2007-03-18 03:08:59
Exiting the newbie areas at level 20, and not being able to do elemental easily until level 50 (maybe not that exact level but that's not what I'm getting at), what is there near each city that people in that level range can reach easily and use to advance themselves?

That is exactly how Imperian looked at it when they put in lots of new bashing areas based on geographical location and level. I know I was shocked to leave the extremely bountiful and fun novice areas to find myself ratting for the next many levels. I was lucky Magnagora has spectre isle but I don't know of an equivalent in other places.

I'm not just bringing this up as an argument, but seriously, where do people fresh out of novicehood from city/commune go to influence, bash and quest that is near their home location and easy to figure out?
Verithrax2007-03-18 03:28:27
5 months is very little time (Not enough for most newbies to be able to afford a PC-made lute or claymore). I think 15 or 20 months wouldn't interfere at all with the PC market; most smiths make money out of experienced players, even (Since newbies aren't picky about stats, they can often just buy comms and get someone in the guild to forge for them).

And can guilded novices please get equipment that is customised for their guilds? I know it's low-priority, but it seems like a good idea.
Karnagan2007-03-18 03:36:53
It is a decent idea. I could cook up a nice newbie sword for Dreadhelm pretty much the second someone asks. I'm sure others would do the same for the other orgs.

And agreed: most profit is from the Masterweapons. Increase the duration to 15 months: while I could probably exploit a sword all the way to 5 months, we should make Lusternia more casual friendly. wink.gif
Estarra2007-03-18 03:40:55
Well, these swords really aren't meant to be anything you WANT to keep. Shouldn't they be able to "upgrade" to Bob's wares in 5 months? At least, they should want to!

We definitely aren't going to have neat custom swords to be given as newbie freebies. But that's not to say guilds can't create them. In fact, maybe if each city/commune forging cartel specifically earmarks a design for newbies, we can make an exception and give them a low commodity cost.
Karnagan2007-03-18 03:47:56
For the love of God, no! Friends don't let friends buy from Bob!

The reason we say "give newbies cool weapons" is that by and large we are proud of the variety of superior weapons we can create. If you give someone "a bloody darksteel sword" then someone who wants to RP an evil warrior will be more interested than if they got "a crude wooden claymore." You get the idea. Anyways, they'll upgrade to regular weaponry the second they're done with Newton. Mainly because the weapons will only last a few months- make it about 12 months, long enough to get past Newton. When newbies get weapons that obviously had a lot of thought put into them - and the whole newbie intro should have a lot of thought put into it - they'll be more likely to stay. I honestly feel Lusternia deserves the total experience in this regard.
Xenthos2007-03-18 03:49:33
QUOTE(Estarra @ Mar 17 2007, 11:40 PM) 391518
Well, these swords really aren't meant to be anything you WANT to keep. Shouldn't they be able to "upgrade" to Bob's wares in 5 months? At least, they should want to!

...

Bob's weapons are censor.gif. The Ebonguard, at least, created and gave out weapons for free to all of our novices before this claymore bit was introduced-- this was funded from guild credit sales. These weapons are many, many times better than Bob's and the newbies don't have to pay for them.

I was kind of expecting that these newbie intro weapons would be a similar quality to the cheap newbie weapons guilds make. Are they not? And if they're similar quality to ours, they're far better than Bob's.

When I see a wyrm with one of Bob's weapons, I make them give it to me and give them a "real" weapon. :/
Xenthos2007-03-18 03:51:08
QUOTE(Estarra @ Mar 17 2007, 11:40 PM) 391518
We definitely aren't going to have neat custom swords to be given as newbie freebies. But that's not to say guilds can't create them. In fact, maybe if each city/commune forging cartel specifically earmarks a design for newbies, we can make an exception and give them a low commodity cost.

Sorry, I missed this somehow. Anyways, this is a very good idea-- especially if the cost is very low.