New player race choices.

[Dakota]

I don't think this is that much of an issue. My first PC was a half-elf. It just gave it an excuse to be emo.

I would love to see dwarves and C-elves made 1 karma.

C-elves as 1 karma? They're already hardmode. It's the best race but also easily the hardest of the pickable races.

[BadSkeelz]

Warnings and more support for C-elves (maybe documents and some tribes...) is probably enough for them; honestly I can't recall that many "obviously floundering newbie city elves." The ones I do recall were just newbies - slow responses, going OOC to yell about their God-given American rights when my soldier is accosting them, etc. - and not really going way off the document rails in their behavior. I like to think because Armageddon's races are so different from the fantasy norm, the people who don't read the docs or clearly just don't get it often don't make it through character generation.

Dwarves, though. Dwarves I wouldn't mind seeing at karma 1. Again, I don't feel like many newbies play dwarves, but I hope a karma-requirement might encourage more people to think outside the "Git gud" rough circle with them.

[whitt]

Warnings and more support for C-elves (maybe documents and some tribes...) is probably enough for them; honestly I can't recall that many "obviously floundering newbie city elves."

Sometimes I think the problem goes the other way.  New players of humans don't know that elves are not friends.

[Dresan]

Just for the record, I could care less about how a new player is RPing their character. At least they have excuses for not quite getting the RP yet, unlike some elitist people with karma roles that don't really do that much better than they do. I'm more concerned with making sure newbies have the best chance to get into an environment where they will come to see the merits of the game, as opposed to just hitting those RP walls that comes with playing half-elves/elves, without the needed experience to surpass them.


After all it takes time to properly learn the game, and the best way to learn is to be surrounded by RPers who will tell them why they shouldn't be kanking elves, instead of rolling their eyes and ignoring them as if their own shit don't stink. When they play humans its just much easier to give them that experience.

Again I agree restriction is not the way, but would love to see a warning for guild/races that make things harder for them. Also, considering we are now talking about mentioning skill in guild helpfiles, perhaps in the future we can consider offering suggestions on race/guild/sub-guilds to newbies too, with an explanation on the benefits of playing any combination of human ranger/crafter or human warrior/riding subguild.

[Dunetrade55]

It doesn't take too long for them to figure out that elves aren't friends though, Whitt. Elves aren't  as bad as Zalanthan society regards them, and definitely have their good points, but few, if any characters that are non-elven, will ever see the good side of an elf. Some will see it and change over time, there's nothing that's always or never. The difference between elven and human mindsets are enough that their sinister reputation will easily be upheld in the long term without additional outside efforts. What might seem screwed up to you as a human being is just one of those things that doesn't really matter to an elf. What you may take as an innocent gesture, however, the elf may take extreme offense to and retaliate.

I don't think new players should be encouraged by the documentation to view elves as shifty, dangerous beasts, as this can be learned quite easily ICly. Putting in the help file "Elves will most likely screw you over" would simply discourage new players from interacting with elves at all and experiencing exactly WHY they are treated how they're treated, and in effect not giving them an example of how elves act should they ever choose to play one. The fact is, elves won't ALWAYS screw you over, and when they do part of the time it's going to be mild and simply because they don't know you well yet.

[Raptor_Dan]

Is that what we're talking about? Putting, 'Elves will most likely screw you over' in the helpfile?

[nauta]

Is that what we're talking about? Putting, 'Elves will most likely screw you over' in the helpfile?

It's sort of already in the help files:

All elves have a cultural bent toward both wandering and thievery. Among elves, theft is not a crime, per se, but more of a test of courage.