New Player help

Started by Lizzie, November 15, 2007, 10:06:12 PM

Zalanthan, it would only be a minor inconvenience, if it wasn't such a common thing lately. Perhaps you haven't run into them as much as I have. But I usually spend a minimum of 20 minutes every single day I play helping a new player who doesn't have the first idea of how to talk, how NOT to talk, how to move from room A to room B, that they are in the city of Allanak at the moment, that their characters couldn't possibly have been cow-herds on a ranch, etc. etc. etc.

When you only have 2 hours one day to spend playing, 20 minutes is a huge chunk of time. Not a minor inconvenience. That is a minimum. I have spent over an hour with new players before, and recently, and it saddens me greatly that a *whole lot* of that time could be spent roleplaying rather than having a full-blown OOC discussion, if only they had known which files to look for, when the received their account approval e-mail.

Edit: When I mention the time spent, I mean the time spent in OOC discussion within the game, and not RPing.
Talia said: Notice to all: Do not mess with Lizzie's GDB. She will cut you.
Delirium said: Notice to all: do not mess with Lizzie's soap. She will cut you.

Quote from: "Lizzie"Edit: When I mention the time spent, I mean the time spent in OOC discussion within the game, and not RPing.

Strangerly, I never ever spent that long time in pure OOC discussion IG. Unless we count setting up a new noble-char with IMMs. Seriously, ceasing RP to discuss things OOCly is, IMHO, not the best solution. I prefer to keep RPing - yeah, point out the syntax they miss or documention which I think might help them, or tell them about the cool Helpers page - but that's all. If you step out the character to have OOC discussion, it doesn't give the "true" impression about the game as well.

I mean, seriously. Helpers are here for a reason. I -like- answering questions about syntax. The newbie you talk to might need more help next day and a bit another day and might expect -everyone- around to keep OOCing to him, which, IMHO, is wrong. There are Helpers even in off-peaks, trust me. Don't make their existence secret just because you think you can handle one or two (or twenty) questions in OOCs IG.

I try to help our noobs when I see and recognize them, and only once do I remember more than a few times of OOC.  One time fairly recenting, I has someone tell me they were having trouble putting a pouch on their belt, and it look me about 5 minutes to figure it out and I've been playing a while.  Not the most intuitive in my opinion.
Vettrock

I feel there is no problem going OOC once, or twice, saying:

ooc: Help communcation, help newbie, help sit, help tables.

And then going right back into RP, to leave no room for OOC questions from the n000b.

When I was a new player, this is exactly what some Northern Templar did for me, and it saved my life (Literally).

A blurb in the welcome email might be nice. Shouldn't be that hard to do.
"You will have useful work: the destruction of evil men. What work could be more useful? This is Beyond; you will find that your work is never done -- So therefore you may never know a life of peace."

~Jack Vance~

When I note a player having problems, I only do one OOC - my username on AIM. That way, I can guide that PC OOCly without destroying my IC fun.
Wynning since October 25, 2008.

Quote from: Ami on November 23, 2010, 03:40:39 PM
>craft newbie into good player

You accidentally snap newbie into useless pieces.


Discord:The7DeadlyVenomz#3870

Yeah, the AIM thing is nice, it's really nice to talk out of the game about it.  That's the way I do things to keep in touch with those I'd like to continue RPing with.