Shattered Kingdoms

I did a little experiment today, since i have been hearing all kinds of complaints about new players being killed or harrassed or finding the world of SK tougher than the rest of us.

So i created a new character, does not matter what kind. I started off trying to think like a new player. This is what happened.

In will summarize the event in a few lines.


Now then, this did not seem very newbie friendly to me.
I know my noobness around the mud and i can get from point A to point B.
Were i the new player, after such an incident i would leave.

I have a ton of suggestions on how to make the mud more newbie friendly, but i would actually want some replies if anyone is interested in my views.

This is the newbie section. If you wish to flame, link this and post in GD. thanks.

I, personally, wouldn't mind hearing your views. But this is not how newbie life generally is. ... That is why I am still here.

I do agree with you. Players have differing views on what a n00b should do, which would make life more confusing. I do agree with the fact that spiders sometimes still manage to kill n00bies on the road. I also don't like the growing trend of placing newbie schools outside of the city for problems like this to be made even worse.

While you've made a few good points, the effect of your post was killed by your exaggeration.

sleeper

I just made several new chars recently, and had practically none of the experiences that you had. I'll go through point by point and make comments/suggestions.

Waterskins have been implemented, but yes a *real* container would definitely be nice. The sack you get barely holds bread and money.


My recently made char with 11 str and average dagger skill did all right. Not sure what your problem was.


That's some [REDACTED] advice there, but not everyone is willing to take the extra step for newbies.


What spider are you talking about? The normal annoying breed all through uxmal doesn't track, and i've never encountered one on the road. And i've killed a lot of spiders while pking. You might have fled from one spider into another.


Never had that happen to any of my chars. I wonder if I just look like less of an easy target than some of you guys...


Pets can be out of stock?


That's why I think the starting PE base should be much higher, and simply have a slower PE gain over levels.


They don't [REDACTED] track.


That's not a normal experience for me. I've walked into the inns before and asked for money/items and i almost always get them.

As a true Newbie who has gone through the same sort of firestorm, I wouldn't still be playing if it wasn't for this forum. There is only so much frustration anyone can handle. Online I found when I was with a group of more knowledgeable players they all wanted to help me at the same time, which only made things worse (confusing, couldn't follow the multi-conversation, overwhelmed with too much information). I've found this forum or getting someone within SK alone much better overall.

I certainly do want to make it easier for newbies to get into the game. I've already addressed the water skin issue. While I agree tinder boxes are relatively useless, I think the sextant has potential. I also agree that the trend toward moving newbie areas outside cities has been bad.

Ultimately, a lot of your problems can't be addressed in any effective way except by advice from other players, which was why we added mentors.

The hard thing about making the game "newbie-friendly" is that there are different levels of newbie. You have the true newbie who has never played a mud before; the newbies who have played other MUDs/MUSHs but are unfamiliar with SK mechanics; the newbies who have played other MUDs with similar commands to SK; the newbies who sit down and read the help files; the newbies who read room descriptions and respond to the newbie-friendly hints/guidance provided by NPCs/room descriptions during the creation process; the newbies who want another player/immortal to guide them by the hand; the newbies who want to jump in and learn it all in a trial by fire.

All these newbies will respond differently to their SK experience. You can only provide so much automatic "newbie-friendly" help without giving the entire game to them on a platter. One thing that I enjoyed about SK when I started was the challenge of learning a new game. If you make things too easy for newbies, you risk making it boring or setting up the newbies to expect too much reward for too little work/play. What's wrong with letting newbies BE newbies for a while? Having to scout out where to buy/find real containers, torches, etc? Or letting them meet other lowbies or mentors to help them with these things?

There's a lot of 'magic' to being a newbie on a game like this. It only happens once, after all. And once the newbie world is gone on SK, bitterness can creep in awfully fast. Personally, I have received a lot of roleplay and assistance and mentoring from complete strangers with Timmil. And in turn, I have done my best to return the favor for any and all lowbies/newbies I have come across- sometimes more successfully than others. If you have suggestions to improve the newbie experience, then share them. But we shouldn't make things so easy that our newbie system encourages the recruitment of lazy players and leaves ambitious players bored and looking elsewhere for a decent challenge.


Post-Dulrik Edit: Tinderboxes are only useless without having torches/lanterns to light them (for races without infravision). A lot of torches/lanterns in cities are hard to find and then are usually too expensive for a newbie's budget to bother with.

One idea that I have seen in another mud is allow the newbie right after creation take a "quest" that is actually a tour to the basics of game mechanics, with a friendly guide-mob by his side. Maybe this would be a nice option for SK too?

OMG I hate those quests, they make me all ancy I just want to get started. Oh an most newbie aeras have them right befoer the area. The guards at Kytar, boards in other kingdoms, the teachers in Krychire. But you can bypass them if you want.

Quests like that can be nice, but they can be very boring as well. If something like this would be implemented, I would suggest it only being offered if someone answers yes when asked if they are new to SK when creating and making it an option there as well.

Stuff to learn the basics alerady exists!

There is a series of rooms with boards or NPCs at every school
who explain it all already.