Here is an idea for the newbie school.

It might take some coding, but I think would maybe be worth it?

How about some part of the newbie school that simulates a pk situation? A tracking mob that spawns and chases the player if they flee some, could be under the auspices of an arena fight or something, not sure exactly how it would work, but when it happens, some mob could talk about how some one will try and kill you eventually, etc.

I think the fact that you can group in those ranks is a double-edged sword. If you're a newbie and pick a class that can't tank and can't do damage, then you're going to be stuck below 10 for a long while, get frustrated and delete. Especially as a shapeshifter. (Or, more likely since you won't know about the delete command by this point, you'll probably just stop playing the character and roll a new one.)

In the same vein, if some mage/AP/Bard grabs you and either gives you a stash of warrior gear he's hauling around or runs you around briefly without telling you ####, or even just makes you be The Third as a replacement tank or healing dude, you're going to hit 11 in no time, be in danger and have no newbie channel and no inkling of how to get a basic set of either HP or hit/dam gear.

I think a bigger thing to address would be:

Further lowering costs of the Lore mob for items below level 10-15 or so. Newbies obviously shouldn't be able to put together a set of 200 HP, but learning to gear for 100 HP if it takes all their equipment slots with the lowbie gear on their own, is reasonable. So is 10-15 hit/dam.

Along those lines, put a few quests in the Inn that would direct lowbies to areas to collect certain pieces of decent unlimited gear and bring them back to the lore thief (skull rings, sandy browns, Troglodyte gear, Seaport gear, Tabershaw gear, Loch Grynmear gear etc., old staples and shiny new replacements along the lines of primarily +HP, +hit, +dam, +str, +int, and a tiny bit of -svs spell gear for thinking about fighting mages, skip para and breath for now, since those are what you should worry about most as a new guy, whether mage or melee.) and lore them for the lowbie free of charge before taking them. This helps them get on their feet faster after the OUTFIT command in their guild and expand their knowledge more quickly. If you have the price jump for items above 15 you also keep lore from being stupidly cheap. Items below level 15 or so should cost no more than 150 cp (as I understand it the prices are pretty low as it is but I personally believe the quests and price range could be for the guy that is about 9-12ish, mobdied and had his newbie quest 5k copper looted, and only has about 350 lying around from regearing/selling, if that. Another solution is to allow lowbies to barter an item for similar value to the one being identified for level 15 only, i.e. give the guy two or three gold broadswords and get one back, sort of like a comparison dealie.)



I know that the semi-safe haven issue with the Inn is already largely problematic. However, the fact that you can gain levels too quickly before 11 and not learn anything is still a good argument for advertising the Inn more heavily than in the 'help newbie' helpfiles. It's directions that should probably be available in the Academy, and directing the flow of new guys to here will also as a whole:

Give them an oppritunity to learn better RP quicker just from watching others converse, (assuming there is anyone to converse with)

Letting them ask for gear and advice from the people next best equipped to help them with that sort of thing, that is Heralds who generally as a whole are going to be able to have a better sense of humor about being asked these types of questions because cabal raid responsibilities aren't a chip on their shoulder. They are also neutral and their job is generic knowledge, history and record keeping. A little knowledge about gear for lowbies wouldn't hurt coming from Herald's mouths, either and keep the lowbies off of the backs of the Acolytes who, not only have their hands full already, but pretty much because of the rest of the cabal raiding aren't always nice. Heralds are generally terribly bored, giving them an excuse to hold someone's hand might even help them expand their own gear knowledge themselves because fully half of them will have access to some type of identification themselves.

Directing lowbies to the Inn increases the chances of Immteraction ICly with the Imms who chose to be there, which lumps in with the RP thing.

Also during rolling, reccommend bards more heavily to new players because of the perfected lore. Svirfnebli MIGHT be a decent reccommendation with the new inherents now + detect invis, but I doubt it, blunt vuln hurts lowbies too much when everything punches.

Anyway, those are my thoughts, and there is a snowball's chance in hell all of them would be implemented at once.

Anyone that actually wants to have these generally uncaballed lowbies dead will probably be more than capable of working out some kind of workaround for the bouncers anyway.

"I have to admit I hate pretty much all of these ideas. :)" - Nepenthe, on New Ranger Skills

One of the more common things that comes up on the newbie channel is "I can't find a group!", and I usually try to find a way to point out that I think it's better not to group at first, since you can learn at your own pace. The even better scenario is for the newbie to hook up with an experienced player who is willing to walk them through stuff, but we all know that doesn't always happen.

I think if you level to 11 under your own power, you're one step further from being Eastern Road Decoration. But to get there, I think you need to do it by overcoming a few hurdles, rather than turning levels 1-10 into the Special CF Olympics where no matter how you do stuff, everyone gets a trophy. You're trying to teach newbies how to play, and it's not a given that making things strictly easier is the best way to do that, especially when the 11+ game doesn't also get easier.

It's an open question as to what those hurdles should be. For example, we've tried to make navigation a lot easier with signs, tons more helpfiles, and more maps in stores. What all of those things have in common is that no matter how much information we've given you, you still had to walk from A to B yourself. If we just gave you a command that teleported you to the entrance to those areas, you'd really be screwed when that command stopped working.

Some specifics:
Also during rolling, recommend bards more heavily to new players because of the perfected lore.

The flip side to that is that bards are more group-oriented, lack concealment, and have a lot of area-effect offensive abilities, which can get you killed. But otherwise, they have a lot of versatility, good melee defense, and at least average HP, and that plus Lore is probably worth adding them to the standard recommendations.

It's also worth noting that new players frequently don't give a crap what class you tell them to play. :) It's a much bigger priority for me to try to make more classes "good newbie choices" at the low levels, and that's at least part of my motivation for the various low-level skills we've been introducing. At the least, we want all classes to be able to contribute to a group, and do some flashy things that will get a newer player excited about what that particular class "does".

However, the fact that you can gain levels too quickly before 11 and not learn anything is still a good argument for advertising the Inn more heavily than in the 'help newbie' helpfiles. It's directions that should probably be available in the Academy, and directing the flow of new guys to here will also as a whole:

Well, it's on the roadsigns and the helpfiles. I'm not sure how additionally helpful directions in the Academy would be, but it's probably worth more heavily emphasizing the role of the Eternal Star as a central gathering place.

valguarnera@carrionfields.com

Bards might have abilities that get them killed, sure. But pre-10 would be the best time to learn this fact anyway, and lack of concealment is a problem for a ton of classes. Heck, invis isn't even really 'concealment' once you hit 20, and sometimes not even before that depending on who is hunting you and knows where even just crappy yellow flowers are.

I know one of the biggest things that confuses me to this day is taking a break for a month or two, and then forgetting all the nifty pieces of non-limited gear to go gear with as I advance into the higher ranks. Once the newbie even figures out that he can venture out on his own and find something considered 'half-decent', Identify and Lore are vastly more valuable to a newbie. Because, in the most extreme case, even people stacked with shiny limited stuff doing oblits in melee can be assassinated with a practice sword. ;)


You're probably right about the Inn, but I think it still would be a good idea to send people, especially evils/neutrals, on quests to go kill popular regearing mobs and figure out what their gear is for. Reward the newbie with something tangible like food or a little more gold instead of 3 or 4k exp, and you don't compound your original problem. Regearing is the biggest hurdle, because the quicker you learn to get back on your feet, the less you care about dying. As compared to a vet, who have lost characters due to con loss and might be upset by a death or two for the death itself as well as having to spend a half hour wracking their brains for stuff.


Bards are generally useable solo through the low ranks just because second attack and enhanced damage don't help all that much compared to 15-20. Panhandling will be godly to a newbie who can figure out even just where the three protected cities are.

None of these suggestions get down to the nitty gritty though where we have to find a way to discourage at least the absolute greenest players from grouping, while not flat denying the group command to people in the low levels at all. I think the other problem is twofold:

Different people learn differently, this is both gearing toward walking around solo with a sack of food and water and loring random ####, as well as the guy that groups, chatters and then says, 'Hey, you do alot of damage, how can I gear to do that?'

Sometimes newbies don't know what questions to ask other players. The academy can only do so much, it can't educate people on who to ask about for further information, that pretty much implies that they need to pick the brains of whoever is walking around at faster than a snail's pace. Usually they'll be happy to answer, especially if they're a mage, because as long as they're killing things it doesn't change the speed of the conversation.

We should probably put a note somewhere that actually begging for free gear is rude, the same type of rudeness as asking who 'An Immortal' is. This might put a damper on idiots asking level 51 paladins to be their snow worm bitches when the paladin knows either the lowbie is a vet who is mooching, or a lowbie who will die horribly and be naked the next day if he's given that sweet hp + dam.

I wonder if we just agree on the majority but disagree on some of the minor points in how to go about it. I think you want to keep up the direction you've been going with edges, that is, every character is as customizable as a Rogue-type game and that should be what makes the game addictive at least to newbies until they get better at open combat and RP. There's a difference between revelling in versatility and planning to powergame, and most newbies don't plan 'combos'.


"I have to admit I hate pretty much all of these ideas. :)" - Nepenthe, on New Ranger Skills

What if you could lore mobs? Maybe most mobs are generic and wouldn't offer much knowledge, but what about mobs like kobolds where lore could tell you that fighting a group is particular more difficult because they inspire one another, or that they're tactics are often dirty (ie, sucker punching, kidney punching, etc) or maybe some mobs that might have venomous bites and such.

Might also be helpful for a newbie, but it would also be a nice flare for RP. Perhaps higher level would reveal weaknesses and resistances of said creatures.

Shadow1ife

We've been kicking about 'improved consider' for ages. About time we got it.

The idea is, it would let you tell a mobs race mainly. For those that are unclear. It might also divulge their 'skills' (transmuter, invoker, warrior hand spec, shaman, etc) and vulnerabilities (knowing which undead are vuln to electricity is handy, most are vuln to fire but some aren't)

Maybe something to edge?

Yhorian.

>Here is an idea for the newbie school.
>
>It might take some coding, but I think would maybe be worth
>it?

I think this is a good idea, the only problem is that there are a lot of mechanics that differ between mobs and players. E.g. level matters in PvM fights much more than in PvP.

For this to work you'd have to treat the mob like a player, and also give it similar stats; Mobs usually have a lot more hitpoints than a player of similar level will.

You'd also need to do something about making the mob merciful, which also means you'd have to make sure they can't gain skill percentages fighting it.

You'd also have to scale it by charater class. For example, a level 10 fire AP is way, way tougher than a level 10 elven shapeshifter.

These things are all surmountable with a certain amount of work. The real problem I'd suggest is just that it's hard to learn that much. Most classes at don't really have many combat options in the newbie ranks, so the fight is just going to come down to gear.

I think it's an interesting idea, but it seems like it would be an awful lot of coding time to make anything worthwhile out of it.