As I mentioned, when I answer the first question, it gets me to where I know that I don't know the answer to the second question, so it's pointless. The only thing I can say with certainty is that I'm no longer in the answer to question #1 and therefore have little or no insight into the answer to question #2. The only wisdom I claim amongst my admitted ignorance is realizing the right questions; I don't know the answers at all though.

rika:


Lots of people have told me I'm not helpful enough when novices or less experienced people ask what is going on or how they can help. The problem is I can't really afford to teach every single person who has no clue what is going on and what they should be doing, because these things are complex and they are competitive. Even if I did waste valuable time telling you, you likely wouldn't be able to help, because many of these things require you to have both mechanical experience (ie don't bother coming when you are level 50. You're just going to die instantly) and the experience from playing the game (ie don't bother coming if you don't know how your skills worked because you spend most of your time afk snuggling or afk aetherhunting). I also hardly ever get around to explaining it to them after, mostly because I usually just forget. It's hard enough to keep up with the fight or whatever is going on without having to remember what every single person said.

I haven't read through all the posts here, but I really had to echo this. My experience has always been people ask how they can help during some event, where you really can't afford to tell them. But at the same time if you try to plan something in advance to teach people what they can be doing beforehand, nobody ever participates except for those that need it the least. I don't really know how to fix that, and its really sort of tangential to the main topic I guess, just felt the need to comment.

Edit: Read through a little more. The issue with novices are, some just want to be left alone, and some want help. Personally, I ask Serenguard novices if they want extra help in person, otherwise I'll point to the right files to read and send them on their way to Newton or the Collegium. I'm not going to waste their time and mine teaching somebody in person if they don't even want it, which many alts pretending to be new really don't and its silly to force them.

Enyalida:

IC, there was a period of time where a lot of our tradition and ritual was either intentionally thrown out or forgotten, closely followed by a few mass exodus..es of guild leadership.

I have to agree, but you guys did put good effort into trying to renew things. I especially liked it when Charunites tried to bring their Order back into activity.

Alik:

Regarding point 1. I completely agree. Example: while I was waiting to buy credits for a race change, I created a few novice chars to see how other guilds operate. I created a char in every city and to be honest, I didn't receive help in person from anyone, I was just directed to help scrolls. So it seems the problem with the novice turnover rate is due to the lack of care towards the novice base by the player base.

But what about the staleness that causes older players to leave and can anything be done about this novice issue?

Question: What time did you log in, how many players were there, what did you ask for, did you go beyond simple questions?

:dazed:

Regarding to Alik's statement. That's a problem I've been seeing in every IRE mud lately. Novice turnover rate is pretty bad overall.

I will say that being there to engage and help new players directly can make a world of difference. My first experiences in Lusternia were on several characters and it was just so incredibly overwhelming (I had only played on very small, simple MUDs in comparison) that I just got frustrated and gave up. I only stuck around when on one go I got help from a great tutor who made sure to keep interacting with me.

I'm a little disappointed to hear that a lot of people don't seem to be interested in this anymore and prefer pointing them to a collegium. When I was playing one of my favorite tasks was getting to introduce new players to their home and Lusternia in general. Any ideas on why this has changed?

I am not sure how this is in the other guilds, but in the Blacktalon I have had 'newbies' (not sure if they were real newbies or just alts) who have got annoyed at all the "Do you need any help" questions. I even had a few quit the guild, weither or not it was from being annoyed or not I'm not sure.

That being said, I myself was never helped really when I was a newbie and yet I have been around for the past four years or so. That being said, I don't like helpping newbies all that much, I much rather do 'higher' things within the guild instead.

Nocht:

I'm a little disappointed to hear that a lot of people don't seem to be interested in this anymore and prefer pointing them to a collegium. When I was playing one of my favorite tasks was getting to introduce new players to their home and Lusternia in general. Any ideas on why this has changed?

It's pretty easy to get burned out, especially if you find all the other alternatives especially attractive. I know I've had a hard time and usually need a novice that really engages back to have any fun - more often than not I find a lot of them do not and when enough never show up after the first large chunk of time you invest, this leads to people being a lot more willing to ignore other novices and hope someone else will handle it. I know I can't handle it because then it just starts to feel like work, explaining things all over again and again. And at that point, lots of things become more attractive than Lusternia.

The number of people who do this -all the time- has always been relatively low, and it may just be that the player base as a whole has to do more to acknowledge and retain these sorts of players when they can be identified.

Speaking as someone who used to do the novice introduction all the time... I stopped the moment Collegiums came out. I don't really want to deal with novices in other guilds a whole lot so I never got into the Collegium aspect (I don't have the time for something like that!), and Collegiums took away a novice's ability to even talk or hear me on GNT which just told me that they weren't the guild's responsibility any more, but the Collegium's.

This may not be what was intended, but that's the message that came through to me when the change went in, and I've just never really been able to get back into it.

Novices just aren't a part of the guild in any way, they show on GWHO but there's no way to guild-interact with them besides tracking them down one-by-one, when I was more accustomed to trying to talk to them on GNT to see who needed anything.

There's also no way on GWHO to even tell which novices can talk on GNT and which can't.

Lusternia is becoming Achaea, playerbase wise. That's one reason I haven't come back.

Nienla:

Lusternia is becoming Achaea, playerbase wise. That's one reason I haven't come back.

When people say that, what exactly do they mean? Assume not everybody plays all of IRE Muds.

Achaea is.. To put it as politely as possible...I have not many words for Achaea. An extremely bad experience, that if Lusternia had not come out when it did, I would have sworn off IRE games forever years ago. Almost did. But Lusternia is not becoming Achaea. If it did. I'm gone.

I 've made many characters in the past and was usually quite overwhelmed by it all and then quit, until one day... a great tutor came and took the time to help me get to really know the game. I don't know where people get, "Oh, most novices get frustrated when people ask them questions on whether or not they need help, so why bother?", but that's a really dangerous generalization.

Xenthos:

There's also no way on GWHO to even tell which novices can talk on GNT and which can't.

There is, actually. If they show up as COL, they're a collegium student, and can hear GNT but not use it themselves. If they show up as NOV, they're a guild novice, and can use GNT just fine. Novices are the guild's responsibility, and collegium students are as well, since the guilds run the collegium.

Nocht:
I'm a little disappointed to hear that a lot of people don't seem to be interested in this anymore and prefer pointing them to a collegium. When I was playing one of my favorite tasks was getting to introduce new players to their home and Lusternia in general. Any ideas on why this has changed?

I really haven't seen a change like this in Serenwilde but I'll admit I haven't been as involved. When I was involved it was S.O.P. that you give them precisely as much guidance as they would like. Students who prefer just reading on their own, can, and students who don't, you work with. That's still what I do (just did a lengthy one-on-one the other day).

But if there is a change like this happening, I bet one contributing cause is that alts are a larger proportion of the "new" players now than they used to be. When I've made an alt, I have always made sure that my teacher didn't feel obligated to waste time teaching me as if I were a real newbie.

Personally, when I started Lusternia, I got frustrated and couldn't get into it, though I tried repeatedly. It wasn't until a certain mentor guided me and taught me and got me set up that I really got into the game, and while some people grasp the mechanics quickly and are "self-starters," Lusternia is incredibly complex and we need to be wary of how daunting it can be for a new novice, especially for one who has never touched an Iron Realms game before.

When I see a new novice come into the Realms, I don't like to just throw them to the Collegium. Sure, I give them the starter reading, but then I check back up and see if they need further help. If they're a Paladin Page, I usually offer an orientation where I take them to the good ol' Aegis Keep, sit down with them and have them learn their lessons while I try to tell them what each skillset actually does for them. Our Paladin help files say the usual "25 in Discernment, 7 in Discipline," etc. but don't really give a lot of information on the why or how. Planar, when I started the game, was especially a mystery to me - I had never heard of such a skill, yet it's intimately tied with Lusternian life.

I find it important to try to make things special for the novices, though this is easiest when you are a member of their own guild and can really instill into them your guild's natural philosophy and culture. If you can get them excited to be a Paladin, or a Cacophony bard, or a Pyromancer mage, there's a chance you leave an imprint on them that'll make them come back. Novices that I do full orientations with and keep active with, in my experience, tend to stick around longer. It still brings me pangs in my heart when I lose a protege, though, to dormancy, because I feel like I might have done something wrong. Still, it's great fun to try, and roleplaying a (to the novice) wise teacher can be great fun, as well as healthy for the game. Just try to make it a memorable experience, and hopefully they'll want to return.

GealbhanBheag:

Achaea is.. To put it as politely as possible...I have not many words for Achaea. An extremely bad experience, that if Lusternia had not come out when it did, I would have sworn off IRE games forever years ago. Almost did. But Lusternia is not becoming Achaea. If it did. I'm gone.

I recently started playing IRE games again, and for activity reasons, I jumped into Achaea first before popping back into Lusternia. I created a number of novices, and I've gotten help from housemates almost immediately. Even if I was the only member of the class online, someone else in the house knew what to do for introduction, and they'd help me. The intros also took about an hour of IRL time each, so I could tell that they were taking time out from bashing or whatever else they were doing in order to help. The only time that didn't happen was when I happened to join a house that had no one else online at the time. It's not as bad as you claim it to be, although that may be a direct result of a higher active playerbase in Achaea vs. Lusternia.

Lendren:

I really haven't seen a change like this in Serenwilde but I'll admit I haven't been as involved. When I was involved it was S.O.P. that you give them precisely as much guidance as they would like. Students who prefer just reading on their own, can, and students who don't, you work with. That's still what I do (just did a lengthy one-on-one the other day).

But if there is a change like this happening, I bet one contributing cause is that alts are a larger proportion of the "new" players now than they used to be. When I've made an alt, I have always made sure that my teacher didn't feel obligated to waste time teaching me as if I were a real newbie.

I feel like the coded tutoring system that the collegium gives is too complex for someone truly new to the game to handle without guidance while still being too trivial for someone who's making an alt to go through. There seems to be a lot of alts (especially since the Iron Elite membership went through) that take person-to-person teaching for granted, and they may be indirectly responsible for discouraging teachers from teaching newbies.

Gaetele:


I recently started playing IRE games again, and for activity reasons, I jumped into Achaea first before popping back into Lusternia. I created a number of novices, and I've gotten help from housemates almost immediately. Even if I was the only member of the class online, someone else in the house knew what to do for introduction, and they'd help me. The intros also took about an hour of IRL time each, so I could tell that they were taking time out from bashing or whatever else they were doing in order to help. The only time that didn't happen was when I happened to join a house that had no one else online at the time. It's not as bad as you claim it to be, although that may be a direct result of a higher active playerbase in Achaea vs. Lusternia.

It likely has changed over the years, for the better. But due to said experience which I'd rather not elaborate on, I would absolutely not touch Achaea again even if someone paid me all the money in the world.

Lately I have been offering to assist new arrivals that I see, however it is completely their choice if they wish to take me up on it or strike out on their own, I can't force them to take my advice.

One thing I would like to see is instead of dumping a new arrival at the portal of fate, maybe they arrive at the newton caves or at the nexus of the city/commune they chose, there is not always a fate awake to assist brand new people with enquiries they may have.

I had forgotten that it can be rather fun to just sit around with a novice and teach them the ropes