Best Of

Saran said:

Coraline said:

For every newbie that sticks around despite the game looking "empty", there are four or five that leave because of the "perpetually empty feeling" (what I've been told by 80% of the people I have tried to get to play). This is despite people helping them and kitting them out etc.

The true newbie experience is very different from newbies who have started new characters after having played extensively before on other characters, and I don't think people who aren't true newbies completely realize this - this is something Sulwh seems to agree with me on as well when we had this discussion privately.

I'd disagree with the last bit about people not realising it. In some ways being an experienced player can make it worse because I look at the outputs from like CWHO or GWHO and tend to automatically expect that all the "X on other planes" are people in manses who are just AFK (unless I've seen relevant conflict chatter recently) and are basically artificially inflating the online numbers. 

There's also a bit of a question around specifics. For example, it seems super relevant to consider if those newbies are actually understanding the player count stuff at the bottom, because if they are then changing WHO may not acheieve much, particularly if they're coming from other MUDs/IREs and comparing numbers. You can also get that empty feeling if your guild or org is well... desolate which who wouldn't really help with because it doesn't really matter if there's a hundred people online elsewhere.

It's also the same with objections really. The concerns about being visible, the desire to avoid griefing, and sometimes wanting to be covert about what you're actually doing, all kinda make me wonder if maybe another way to hit things is to look at how easy it is to actually scry. It's most basic form is available to everyone through enchanting and it seems to only get better from there, maybe there needs to be some work done around that which could make people feel more comfortable being more visible (if that would actually solve things)