I was just thinking that beyond level ten, the complete newbie can't benefit from the newbie channel. If you think about it, the channel breaks off right when PK begins, a whole new realm barely addressed by the academy except to say that once you leave you won't be safe anymore. Are all of the elements of PK and other lowbie learning considered beyond the rudimentary meant to be discussed on the Newbie channel? If not, then I see no reason why the channel shouldn't be extended, say, for people who have selected "yes" on the newbie question at char creation.

I know this is somewhat less important than the other issues on the board, but its just a random thought, y'know. Toodles.

>I was just thinking that beyond level ten, the complete
>newbie can't benefit from the newbie channel. If you think
>about it, the channel breaks off right when PK begins, a whole
>new realm barely addressed by the academy except to say that
>once you leave you won't be safe anymore. Are all of the
>elements of PK and other lowbie learning considered beyond the
>rudimentary meant to be discussed on the Newbie channel? If
>not, then I see no reason why the channel shouldn't be
>extended, say, for people who have selected "yes" on the
>newbie question at char creation.

It's worth thinking about. Good suggestion.

If a character is clearly a newbie, it should be possible to toggle the newbie channel on or off after level 10 by immortals.

Making it exclusively a manual immortal toggle excludes the helpful people after level ten, and also requires more work on the Immortals behalf. Allowing the player to voluntarily toggle it on and off make much more sense. Now, I can imagine that it is already possible for Immortals to manually tweak what channels a single character has access to, but if we're considering allowing any post level 10 characters onto the newbie channel, then I don't think that manual immortal toggling should be the sole method of doing so.

>>I was just thinking that beyond level ten, the complete
>>newbie can't benefit from the newbie channel. If you think
>>about it, the channel breaks off right when PK begins, a
>whole
>>new realm barely addressed by the academy except to say that
>>once you leave you won't be safe anymore. Are all of the
>>elements of PK and other lowbie learning considered beyond
>the
>>rudimentary meant to be discussed on the Newbie channel? If
>>not, then I see no reason why the channel shouldn't be
>>extended, say, for people who have selected "yes" on the
>>newbie question at char creation.
>
>It's worth thinking about. Good suggestion.


Is people will leave the newbie channel on so they can see who the newbies are and specifically target them because they are newbies. If there was a way around that it would be a good idea.

This is already a problem with the newbie channel as it stands today, to an extent.

Also- while some people may target known newbies, others may cut them some slack, or not go after them for other selfish reasons. Namely, they're not likely to have anything worth taking. So it may balance out.

The only way I can think of to prevent this altogether would be to have the newbie channel be like "pray" but heard by all immortals. Responses would be heard by the player to whom the imm is responding and all other other imms (to prevent redundant responses).

The downside to that setup is that newbies can't benefit from hearing the answers to -other- newbies' questions.

I think an easy solution to that would be to have anyone asking questions on the newbie channel show up only as 'a warrior' or 'a necromancer' e.g. " A warrior: How do I use the newbie channel?"

Just have the channel only heard by people who picked
new to carrion fields.
some would take advantage of it, perhaps, But I'd like
to think more folks would help rather than hunt.
maybe I'm deluded there.

That wouldn't prevent someone from lying and saying they're new, just so they could listen to the newbie channel and identify new players to pick on.

nt

Why would they sacrifice the uber-l33t rolls their autoroll is gonna give them just to hunt lowbies? Like I said below, if the extension of the channel was limited only to those who answered yes to the "Are you new to Carrionfields or Mudding in general" question, then it would eliminate those people OBVIOUSLY not new to the game, i.e., most people using autorollers, and cut down on the idiots who would just listen for targets.

I wasn't aware that answering "Yes" to that question nuked auto-rolling. Shows how much I know.

Well, an autoroller is going to answer "no" to that, automatically. In order to get a "yes" answer, you'd have to turn off the autoroller and input it in manually. But most people aren't going to want to risk giving up their perfect rolls just to do that and hunt newbies. It's a combination of lazines, inconcvenience, and impractibility that would keep autoroller users from answering "yes".

It's pretty trivial to write a roller that just does the rolling part of it. That's what I do. So, for me, there's really no cost to answering "yes" to the newbie question, other than getting stuck with "brief" on for a while.

Still, I would hope this sort of thing wouldn't be the norm anyway.

I stated that I felt there were fewer of these people
than it seems from the way people talk about it.

and yes I'm aware I could be totally wrong. Maybe
I just like to think well of people in general.
:)

I very much like this idea. It might still be possible to figure out who asked the question based on the particular mix of newbies online at the time, though. How about this:

Imms get the question-asker's real name, mortals get "Someone". That way they have no idea whatsoever. The person could still give away their class by virtue of the questions they're asking, but there's nothing to be done for that.

This would also make newbies less afraid to ask questions.

>I think an easy solution to that would be to have anyone
>asking questions on the newbie channel show up only as 'a
>warrior' or 'a necromancer' e.g. " A warrior: How do I
>use the newbie channel?"

>>extended, say, for people who have selected "yes" on the
>>newbie question at char creation.

This solves that problem. People who are going to be targeting newbs are probably also using autorollers for their characters, in which case, they're always answering "no" for that newbie question. Whereas a real newbie, while he may also answer "no", he may just as well answer "yes", since he probably won't have the autoroller.

The newbie channel is a bit of a dread to maintain as is but very useful, I a reminder to go to the Newbie Q & A forum should maybe be echoed every once in a while on the newbie channel to direct people there. I can just sorta envision a flurry of angry bitching over the newbie channel about deaths. That would, in essence, be detrimental in that it would worry other newbies and cause a semi chain reaction. I think it would be better if pk is handled on the forums.

I'd go even farther and suggest that anybody be able to leave it on. The knowledgeable and polite players who answer newbie channel questions when they happen to be playing a sub-10 character don't suddenly become unhelpful and impolite when they hit the 11th rank.

Most people will turn the channel off. Those who need help, or want to give help, could leave it on. The staff should feel free to yank priveleges with little hesitation if someone steps out of line.

I would have to disagree somewhat with this idea. It can be hard to separate the player from character often enough, and it just makes it harder if (for example) you have Zorszaul being friendly and helpful on the newbie channel, and slaughtering people otherwise. I could go with letting it be left open for all up to 20, but not much beyond that. Also, you'd have to add in the consideration of possibly having watch over many more players to keep the newbie channel in line.

That's a good idea... a complete newbie might need this channel well into the teens. Maybe the limit should be raised to level 20, or should simply be toggle-able by everyone... until it becomes uncontrollable.