You're going to have elaborate if you want anyone to understand or pay attention. The website, help files and gdb are all pretty "accessible". The walk-through(s), quickstart, and the location detail help pages give plenty of basic information to start the game, as well as having things like Mansa's newb guide(s). It's a helluva lot more than some non-rpi muds have on their websites or in-game.
Don't get me wrong. I'm not trying to be the new guy that shows up and tells people they're doing it all wrong. That said, it's pretty easy to think, once you're familiar with something, that it should be easy to learn, but with all the help files, the walk-throughs, the quickstart, and the location help pages, there were some pretty obvious gaps that took a few mental leaps for me that I don't think a lot of other players would be patient enough to make. I think that's pretty visible by the number of new players that make it to 20 hours of gameplay being under 5%. Given the fall-off in player retention from the first to second hour being 50%, and the second through sixth hours being 0%, as of last month's survey, I'd say the experience of first hour is the most vitally in need of change, and is arguably the only one that can be controlled by the MUD instead of by the players.
Again, I'll say that I'm new here and that I don't want to be an asshole. These are just my most basic, step-by-step thoughts on problems I had within my first couple of hours on the server.
I feel like the character creation system would be much better if it were done forum-side, or with a web-based applet. Anything that gives someone a more familiar text editor is better than the current character application system. Given each app is individually reviewed, I don't think it would really add much workload to the staff once it was developed. Also, there are holes in the help files and web guides. For instance, the walkthrough tells you how to put something in your backpack, but not how to take it out. That could easily be remedied. It resulted in me flipping through and skimming a few pages, plus taking a mental leap or two before figuring out the basics of inventory, shopping, travel, and using my torch.
Just because something is a help file away doesn't mean it couldn't be more easily presented. These bullet points in the original post are a prime example. The help file for light, for instance, is multiple paragraphs long. It really doesn't need to be, since if someone looked up the help file for light, they already know they're surrounded by darkness and can't see anything. They just want to know how to light their torch; something I had to figure out how to do on my own, as the help file was truncated and I didn't know to press return with a blank command line to receive more of the help file, a fact that I had to learn from contacting a helper and waiting a few hours -- as someone who's played MUDs before, MORE is the command I'm familiar with to receive more of a file, which, of course, returned nothing. On the other hand, as someone who's played MUDs before, I used "wield torch," and it worked. That said, a brand new player wouldn't know how to receive more of the help file, or a common command for equipping an item, leaving them lost in the dark in more ways than one. "HELP TORCH" could instead return a simplified help file that covered the basic commands on how to use the items. So could "HELP BACKPACK," a help file that does not exist or redirect to another help file. I may have more suggestions along those lines as I continue to play.
Anyway, my main point wasn't that what's there is somehow broken or bad. It could just be presented in a more-easily digested format. I hope that sounds reasonable, as I don't mean to be anything other than that. If I didn't like what I've seen so far, I wouldn't be here posting my thoughts.
TL;DR - Character creation is a bit alien, and could use a text-editor that's more familiar than stone, a hammer, and a chisel. Help files and web guides need to plug some holes and could do with some simplification. A new player doesn't want to read paragraphs and take ten minutes to figure every little tidbit out, when it could be delivered in a bullet-point format. You hook a new player with some basic accessibility, and then they'll read through all the documentation and lore.
Edited for errors.
Topic: The 3-minute start-up guide to "what you would and should know" (Read 5745 times)