Shattered Kingdoms

If a player is truly new, have them auto-rez until Veteran. This will give them time to get to know the game before they die and cannot find their way back.

I have experienced several people that I tried to get into the game and gave up at their first death. No obvious priest around, riddles confusing (if they even know to look for a helpfile on death, or seeking the oracle), no clue how to get back to life so they just give up. I think this would be a huge help!

I always feel bad when I see someone truly new make a super squishy class, it makes me feel they will not stick around, and I tend to never see that name on the who list again.

Just a thought!

How would you differentiate between a truly new player and an old player playing at being new with this feature?

An obvious thing to worry about. But the only solution is that it applies to new verified email addresses.
There is no real way to figure it out. Unless the Imms had an algorithm that runs the history of ip addresses. A similar IP address would flag it as an old use and would be probable cause to call them out. I like the idea in general.
There is potential for abuse. But how many good players die before veteran. If they do, it's what, once maybe twice?

My problem with this idea, beyond the fact that it can so so easily be abused, is that auto-res doesn't help people learn how to navigate death in SK. Yes, it helps with the few Oracle questions that are a bit tricky (most, I'd argue, aren't very hard). Yes, it helps with non-evident priests or those who are unavailable. But you still end up naked, penniless, and on your own to regather your things or start from scratch.

I would rather think through the whole of the issue of newbie death and see if we can come up with something more -truly- friendly for noobs, permanoobs and anyone else who might find the system useful.

I think I really like the notion that someone floated about changing death-quest penalty from increasing LT cost to increasing SD cost. Could have it increment upwards by an additional -1 to all stats per rez after the first one, capping at -5. That'd certainly keep any prospective spam-die-er out of any sort of action effectively, while giving off-peak/unlucky players the chance to get back to life and wait out an hour of SD instead of having to potentially wait many hours in the River.

How could anyone abuse this? If you use another email to "pretend" to be new, you would have to forgo all your loyalty points. What average sk player dies from novice ---> Veteran anyway? I like this idea, but I think they should just extend the auto rez to apprentice or journeyman instead of vet.

There are two conflicting, but perfectly valid, paradigms to approach here. The best way I can communicate them is with an illustration of two mechanics:

Spirit disorientation and CRS victory are example of natural consequences. They enforce the outcome of an event. They are polarizing: failures will tend to fail more over time and winners will tend to win more over time with these systems.

There are "adaptive" systems that lower difficulty after failure. I can't think of any in SK, but the equivalent would be getting a buff if you die to PVE in an "end-game dungeon," had the ability to teleport to your corpse with a short invincibility buff, or some other system that was designed not to enforce the outcome, but to help change the outcome.

They represent very different perspectives on what the intention of mechanics should be. I believe the latter expresses a system that intends to support casuals. I think a difficulty slider of some sort would be interesting, but we would have to implement something not unlike instancing, and I'm very, very hesitant to implement raiding in SK. You simply cannot get a reliable 5-man group in SK, no matter what, without being involved in the kind of coordination that is actively being dissuaded by other policies.

It's an interesting riddle: should the game support casuals completing content, or should it support casuals' completion of content having meaning. Eventually, when taken to extreme poles of ability and other factors, these two goals contradict one another.

The main reason I think this is a bad idea is because there is a drop off cliff at which point you might not know what your in for, basically pushing the problem off until they are vet doesnt help if its still a problem then.

I know this would be a lot of work but could an option for tips be added to SK. If picked there would be some OOC tells sent to the player on important events for example leaving the newbie school. First few deaths. Hints at the area command and how to use a sextet. The first time you hear a language you dont understand. The first time you run out of PE or ME. Seriously there is quite a steep learning curve to SK itself not to mention the learn curve on MuDing. It could extend into first time entering a nation or its capital. It wouldnt help with the current mentioned problem but it would go a long way to advising the player of the standards of SK.

This is extremely true and, in my opinion, an appropriate perspective to evaluate the low-level experience.

One of those nifty red text sentences popping up and telling you about help death and help resurrection/death quest/reincarnate when you die the first time would be pretty awesome. I know the first time I played I just went WELP and reincarnated until I Con died until someone slapped my hands away from the keyboard and told me about priests.