Do we (awaits the beatings) need a n00b school?

[jmordetsky]

:ducks the barrage of stones.

Okay, okay...before I'm slaughtered by the wolves. I don't mean your normal sort of n00b school.

But what about an optional place in the hall of kings where a n00b could learn the ins and outs of the emote engine, be force fed the "what you would know" docs and generally get an idea of whats expected of them. I would also personally include an OOC lecture about what the crim code is.

Might help up the player base?

On a side note, what kind of stats do we have for the ammount of new accounts that are generated and go idle verses created and remain active?

[captjak]

The idea of a Noob school would be alright, as a possible 4-? rooms where you would get examples of how to emote, and other simple commands like that.  But it would also be one that if you are on your 10th character you shouldn't really need so you wouldn't have to point at it.

Two sid.

[Crazy Hakhim]

IMHO, it can be a good idea, there's nothing bad about a little intro that lets people into the world a little more smoothly.
Personally, however, I'm not certain it's necessary - Even though I'm hardly the most active player, I've yet to see a newbie mistake that seriously impaired my enjoyment, and, being newly weaned out of novicehood myself (Probably not entirely yet, either), I don't feel I ever had a major problem with the game syntax/mechanics/what-have-you.
Then again, I often have a feeling I went over the helpfiles before starting to play a bit more than is natural.

That said, if people feel a newbie school/intro/experimentation zone will help them, I don't have anything against it.

[Laeris]

This is a project that a group of us are discussing and brainstorming at the moment.  In my opinion, it's a worthwhile addition for new players if only because of the often complex syntax of Armageddon's various features.  I know that when I first started playing about ten years ago, and there were fewer features then, I was often overwhelmed.  Something to eliminate this confusion before it has a chance to occur could only enhance the gameplay once someone makes it into the game.

[Trenidor]

One thing I don't like about N00b schools is that you tend to get the feeling your doing things in vain. On other muds (ones I have long since abandoned because of this) they have noob schools that you do things and learn commands, but it makes you think that the whole world is about practicing commands, emoting silly stuff, whatever.

Although I put down kill him and burn him, I can see it being an extreemly good thing if it was run by PCs specifically.
If you were new, would you rather have NPCs show you how things worked, or have PCs show you the ropes? I personally would pick PC anyday over a NPC, but there's a problem with this...

No one is going to hang around all day waiting for n00bs to come along just to show them the ropes. If although, we did get this, I could see a conversion effenciency of 98%

[EvilRoeSlade]

If you were new, would you rather have NPCs show you how things worked, or have PCs show you the ropes? I personally would pick PC anyday over a NPC, but there's a problem with this...

And that is why we have helpers.

[Trenidor]

Why not just have experienced players volunteer to spend say...and hour a day in an area composed of 4 rooms, just to help n00bs learn the game?

I for one, would volunteer an hour or more helping out n00bs if it were made avalible in this way.


A seperate character would have to be used for this so when the noobs get in the game they don't RP out that they know your character  (but you could always teach the that before hand)

[jmordetsky]

Why not just have experienced players volunteer to spend say...and hour a day in an area composed of 4 rooms, just to help n00bs learn the game?

Logistics. Much tougher to have a player available. Though, that said at the end of the school a feature could allowing a n00b to ask a help questions. Through something like wish...

[Trenidor]

If you were new, would you rather have NPCs show you how things worked, or have PCs show you the ropes? I personally would pick PC anyday over a NPC, but there's a problem with this...

And that is why we have helpers.

I don't think helpers are sought after as much as we all would hope they would. When I was new I don't even remember us having them, In fact I didn't even know about this untill like last year and they poofed out of thin air (Did we have them longer than that???)

[Trenidor]

Logistics. Much tougher to have a player available. Though, that said at the end of the school a feature could allowing a n00b to ask a help questions. Through something like wish...

A channel?? MAn I hate those things...


If you want something like that put down a board with a list of all the helpers.

[EvilRoeSlade]

I'm all about easy access, so I think that the link to the helper list should be put up on the main page as well as mentioned in the game itself when you log on (maybe it is already?).

But doing nothing for an hour a day, waiting for a newbie that probably won't even show up, and if they do are more likely to skip the n00b rooms than do anything else?  No thanks.  I want the newbies to come to me, and I suspect that you'd get tired of that really quickly, despite what you say otherwise.

It is far too inefficient, and I can't imagine very many people volunteering for it and sticking with it for long.

We have helpers and quite frankly, I can't think of an improvement on this system.

[The7DeadlyVenomz]

Once upon a time, we had second characters, designed specifically for the Arena system. This option is still available, but there is no longer an arena system.

If staff would allow us to log onto our characters and our arena characters at the same time, our arena characters could become our helper characters. Those helper characters could then be online in the noob rooms even while we played our normal characters. When we were heavily involved with our normal characters, we could simply change our helper characters' long descriptions to say we were afk.

If we go the route of having a newbie school, I think that this would work fine.

[amoeba]

I marked good but I'm going to qualify it heavily.  

1. I don't want to see a mandatory, you have to pass through this school to continue, type of place.  One of the greatest features of Arm is the heavy RP.  A n00b "school" is the antithesis of what the spirit of this place is about IMHO.

2. I do however think that an optional "training room" that a player could choose to enter at anytime could be useful.  I see it something like typing "newbie" will put you in a quiet area to practice and learn your skills.  I would not like to see multiple PC's in the "room" , just the person honing up thier skills.  This way if a person was seen to be lacking in RP ability they could either choose on thier own to go there, or be .. ahem.. encouraged.  Even some mildly experienced players might want to pop in and refresh on the ~,@,#,% skills as an addition to the very good web emote emulator.

3. Newbie channels, or channels of any kind: not just no, but hell no.

[Meatwad]

A room you can enter anytime by typing newbie?  Sweet!  I'm gonna attack a templar, then quick type newbie!  Oh and we can practice skills there too?  Awesome, I'll be the best backstabber ever in no time once I've "learned" how to do that.

Something in the hall of kings, that's obvious, and optional, seems best.  Perhaps a tavern type room so they can practice emotes with objects and npcs targeted in the emote.

[Trenidor]

Mojo's Tavern [north west east south]

This tavern is chock full of people, drinking, smoking, and relaxing at
various places of the room. Several tables and chairs are found
throughout the room along with a bartop at the northeast corner between
two doorways to differnt rooms. Noise of brawls and bettings take place in
the room east of here. To the north is a large gambling hall, lined on the
walls with differnt colored torches. The western section of the tavern is
open completly into a broad flat area without any furniture. At the end of this area is a stage platform. South of here is an addition to the tavern where several shops stand selling things. There are no windows or openings in this building except for the doorway where a bulky man stands.
There is a Information Board here. [Look board to see what's on it]
There is a fake board here.

When you come into the hall of kings, it has a line added on the bottom that says:

[TO GO THROUGH NEWBIE TRAINING TYPE: ENTER TAVERN]

When you do that the bulky bouncer takes your money and replaces it with sand piece coins.

On the board there's a general note on top, along with several topics that lead to the help files.

The general note would look like this:
Here you can read up on the documentation of armageddon. Thanks for
creating a character and please read through some of this stuff if no one
is here to assist you through the newbie school. The following are the
topics you can choose from, to see what they say, type: Read (#) for
example, read 1 will tell you about how boards work.

1] How boards work
2] bla bla whatever normal boards have only with topics about arm

Then on topic one put down that reading is illegal, and that the boards you find on arm are not actually around in the game. and put down that how to use a real board (commands, as well as how you should format a post)


Then the fake board would be a practice board for when they want to actually write stuff.

There'd be a bartender that you could buy junk off of with sand coins, and then you go south and can buy stuff from the other shops.

To the north you can learn how to use fighting skills, there'd be no brawl code in there. When you come back to the main room you can practice the brawl code.

And there could be a jail in the southern room that they lock you in if you attack someone in the other places.

then to the west you could practice all your singing and music playing. several general instruments could be there in a chest or something.

and to the east is a gambling den where dice and cards are handed out freely. There you could practice betting and crap.

On the info board you can put down a list of helpers as the second toppic, and what to do if no one is around in mojo's tavern. (go practice any skills they figure out)

Make sure you keep the board short cuz a lot of people hate reading more than a small paragraph of text.

When they try and leave, it takes all their belongings they got from the room, and the sid is given back to them. Then the bouncer says something and your back in the hall of kings.

[Stroker]

A newbie school? Why, we have the Byn! No, I'm kidding .... or am I?

[Sanvean]

If you have played other RPI muds, and liked their newbie system, could you post what it was that you liked? I'm also interested in things that you -didn't- like.

[Trenidor]

oh oh oh, I hated having to go through certain tasks in a row. The funner ones would let you go around freely.

[Linedel]

This isn't directly "mudschool" related...  but while re-learning command syntax etc., while most of the basics are coming back to me, a few subtleties aren't obvious.  It might be nice to have a "verbose emotes" option for echoing the "TO_ROOM" version of social act commands to the player in addition to the normal self version.

And then there's the ones that give no echo to the user at all - such as "north (slapping himself on the forehead with an arcane tome)".  All you get is an "Ok."  Does this go to both rooms?  entering room only? what exactly does it show?  etc.

I'd turn this on for a while at least...

[Bestatte]

What I didn't like about MOST newbie schools I've seen:

1) Big complex newbie schools. Meaning - mini quests that take you through a dozen room to get the key that take you to the secret room where you kill the dragon who drops a set of greaves you can wear as your starting gear.

2) A kajillion combat rooms, each of which have shimmering phantoms and ugly thieves and law-abiding citizens and hungry dogs you can kill, loot, and "sacrifice" to get points and coins.

3) NPCs who auto-talk to you the second you walk into the room about things your character may or may not have any interest in or need to know - or campy "Hi, I'm Scholar Susie, and I'm here to teach you how to TALK in the game!" crappola. I'm not a 5th grader - please don't treat me like one.

What I do like about SOME newbie schools I've seen:

1) Just a few rooms - one that gives you the opportunity to experiment with command syntax used most often

2) Easy-to-read and readily visible signs/boards that give you specific instructions - example:

Several signs are here. To see what the brown one says, type READ BROWN. Follow the same syntax for all other colored boards.
A BROWN sign is here, explaining the emoting system.
A GREEN sign is here, explaining movement commands.
A PURPLE sign is here, explaining basic combat syntax.
A RED sign is here, explaining your first ten minutes in the game with your character.

The brown sign might direct them to move WEST to a room that has some NPCs and objects they can practice their emotes with (plus include the emote help-file).

The green sign would direct them to try all the exits in the newbie area, and encourage them to play with movement emotes and things like run/walk/etc (plus include the movement helpfile).

The purple sign would have the main combat stuff - wield, ep/es, draw, load, pull, flee, flee self, nosave, mercy - and direct them UP where they can practice these moves on a sparring dummy.

The red sign would just go over what things they should do immediately upon entering the game from the Hall of Kings - put their coins in their pack (and syntax to do this), close their pack, take stock of their inventory, stats, skills, score, looking at themselves, LOOK TABLES, LOOK EAST (for example), LEAVE, reminding them of WISH/BUG/TYPO/IDEA and the helper webpage, suggesting they look for a water source in their first day of playing, and wishing them luck.

[amoeba]

OK to belabor the point, Meatwad's subtle sarcasm notwithstanding.  Yes abuses in a command are possible.  I did not address them as I figured the IMM's are a smart bunch and would put in appropriate safeguards.  Here is why I propose it as a reenterable room as opposed to a one time hall of kings thing.

In my experience newbie schools in most places serve a limited purpose. They tend to only serve the lowest common demominator, that is the person who has had limited, if any, experience with muds.  Every one I have seen exists to teach basic syntax (i.e. walk, kill, flee, etc.).  A number of them also use the newbie school to setup stats and such.  I have been on a number of them that "required" you to complete the school before graduating to the real world.  To be honest I speed through them as fast as possible as they were boring as hell.  (oh on a side note, you'd be suprised at the number of people who never made it through newbie schools, they quit the mud within a few moments).

The problem as I see it is that the concepts we are trying to instil in the new people is two fold.  One, a sense of the world and how it works. Two, how to effectivly RP, primarily emote.  I don't know how the others feel about this, but with the rigid application process, I doubt that we get too many people unable to do basic commands (i.e., walk, kill, flee).  It might however, be nice to have a safe place to practice the concepts and syntax.  As this is an ongoing process of learning, there were times for me when it would have been a nice thing to have.  I like Trenidor's description of the workings, but if it only exists at the start of a character's existance, then I believe it has limited value, as the problem people will just speed through it, thinking "just another newbie school" only to end up on the other side wishing they hadn't.

my 2 sids, now I need to get back to work.

[Barzalene]

What I didn't like about other newbie schools:
Places that force you to learn commands you already know or are intuitive.
Places you cannot leave until they're done lecturing you.
Cheesey fake rp with cheesy npcs.

[Agent_137]

i've said for awhile we need a well done newb school. I'm not going to define "well done" here except by two requirements:

1. Optional.
2. It explains not just how to play the mud, but gives a basic understanding of Zalanthas.

[Teleri]

No, no newbie school needed.  Those who want to learn how to play the game will contact the helpers listed on the website, and try to figure stuff out by themselves and watching what other chracters are doing.  That's how I learned, that's how we all learned.  That's one of the more beautiful aspects of this game, is that there is no IC help for these issues.  

Those who don't learn this way, even though there are plenty of help files organized in a very simple manner and a superabundance of helpers, will either leave or repeatedly fail until they DO learn.  This is how it has always been, and the MUD has flourished as a result of it.  The game is harsh, and the lack of a newbie school reflects that.  Those who don't like that will choose not to play the game or they will just grin and bear it.  

If people are serious about playing the game, they will learn how all of us have to this day.  Trial and error, slaps by immortals, and questioning.  When we give all of this to the incoming newbies, they get lazy and the game suffers as a result of their laxity in maintaining character and keeping up with everything.  Those people who need a newbie school probably aren't serious about playing this game as it should be, and are more about HnS and far too impatient.  I don't think this sort of player should be encouraged to play Arm.  Instead, we need the people who are coming off of worse, wannabe-RPI MUDs like The Eternal City, Aetolia (sp?), ect.  These people will learn as we all have, and need no newbie school.  

This MUD will not run out of players just because it may be tough to get a handle on and they will leave.  Those who are patient and serious about getting past the mechanics to RP will stay onboard.  Adding a newbie school will degrade the high level of quality players (though I see it rapidly degenerating in some cases), and cut down on this game's originality.  I say, keep things the way they are.

[amoeba]

Teleri makes a good arguement.  Can I change my vote to no?