Oh, and will there be a notice when the intro is nearing completion? From what I've seen in this thread, there were quite a few things that were still on the to-do list, and I'd rather test the complete version instead of the general-idea version.
The game should probably give some indication of how to find finks yourself. Or wait for you to pause in a room for more than 1 second before ushering you off to the next. The game should probably prompt you to move through the Golden Portal instead of doing it for you. Likewise, the reeds should actually cause bleeding if they're going to do that in the real game. Likewise, the game should have you get the stone out yourself during the crystal quest. The game should not announce you to the guild until you've done READ JOURNAL.
It's hard for me to put myself in the mindset of a true newbie, since that was like twelve years ago on Achaea, but I'll try.
The first things you encounter in these games, if you're brand spanking new to MUDs (and openminded) can have a profound impact. Everything seems necessary and important and immediate. The first time I saw a custom emote for instance (a blind character touching my character's face), I was amazed.
So what this intro lacks, for me, is any sense that what your character is doing is significant. You click-click-click your way from one objective to another (do you have to type anything at all until guild selection?), everyone tells you exactly what you're supposed to do. What's a fink? Why do we care about their war? Is Lolliprin important? Why do I need a lava stone and what's a talking ant doing here?
It feels like instead of raising these questions about the schizophrenic Newton quest, the intro should be playing up the mystery and power of the Portal of Fate. That's like the thing that allows mortal life to exist in Lusternia. Instead, it feels like a kind of weird, hurried shuffling from place to place with not a whole lot of actual information about what the game and its lore are like. I learned how to click bright red links.
Some concrete observations:
- nothing is said about balances or curing. The latter is covered by the collegium, but you take a lot of damage during the intro
- when you pick your race, it says <guild> instead of <race>
- selecting your city at the beginning of character creation, and your guild and race at the end doesn't make sense to me. These are big character decisions that are being made without any information
I am honestly sorry that everything I've had to say about the intro revamp (in this thread and others) has been negative. I just really don't like the direction you guys took. Making the Fates hand-holders of newbies, making human the default race, glossing over the importance of the Portal... Just feels like a different Lusternia.
Instead, it feels like a kind of weird, hurried shuffling from place to place with not a whole lot of actual information about what the game and its lore are like. I learned how to click bright red links.
I just really don't like the direction you guys took. Making the Fates hand-holders of newbies, making human the default race, glossing over the importance of the Portal... Just feels like a different Lusternia.
I couldn't agree more, but here's to hoping the discussions and woes have an impact. Really I like the end goal, streamlining the tutorial a bit so it doesn't drag on and become more confusing than it needs to be, but stripping it to bare bones and removing the elements that make it Lusternian, removing all of the information that might seem trivial, but should actually have relevance to a novice, isn't my cup of tea either.
I'm sure it will get better, though! Maybe!
Crumkane, Lord of Epicurean Delights says, "WAS IT INDEED ON FIRE, ERITHEYL."
-
With a deep reverb, Contemptible Sutekh says, "CEASE YOUR INFERNAL ENERGY, ERITHEYL."
Some reason person sends you a tell, there is a nice prompt
to tell you how to send a tell back.
This intro is a lot more speedy than the previous one.
No shadow problems!
Drawback:
When hunting the bandits, it is not telling you to pick up
the bandits
Didn't talk or even give me a backpack.
The red text really made me want to just speed along and not
read anything.
I ran this in my normal client so may be different using
nexus:
CONFIG PROMPT STATS - this was missing from the last intro
as well and I feel is very important no matter what client a person is using.
CONFIG MAPVIEW ON - again, this was skipped over in the last
intro but was a part of the one previous, this should be hit on before PATH
WALK is ever talked about.
Bugs?:
I only hand to hand 3 finks to the king, not 10 like it said
I would need.
Questions:
At the portal, I only had to pull the lever once and it auto entered me?
Why, when I put the stone in the lava, does it auto pick it
up instead of telling me to do it?
The soft, hollow voice of Nocht, the Silent resounds within your mind as His words echo through the aether, "Congratulations, Arimisia. Your mastery of vermin cannot be disputed."
Regarding the questions as to why some things are slightly different from the normal quests (e.g. the lever or the pool): this was necessary to allow the intro versions of the quest to run parallel to the vanilla versions of the quests, without interfering with each other. E.g., we can't really open the portal for realsies if it's already open, etc. When coming back to Newton after the intro, they'll work as normal, and the hints that were added to all the Newton quests some time ago will still be there to point out the differences.
The last couple days have been busy, but today and tonight I'll be pounding away at updates, and will post the list of changes once they're in.
I have to say that I like this one MUCH better than the last one. There are only a few things that should be changed/added, in my opinion.
1) If newbies use only the 'path walk' commands without knowing to 'look' when they reach the destination, they miss out on quite a bit. I didn't notice any hints that suggested using the 'look' or 'ql' commands.
2) I know that you already said that toggling the mapview on would not be an option for the new tour, but it would really help out newbies.
3) There should be a hint to turn on the prompt sometime before they start bashing finks.
Most of this has already be said, but adding another opinion can be useful. Thanks for this new intro - the last one was absolutely horrible.
- The beginning of the tour will now mention that typing is the primary interface with Lusternia, with some clients allowing point-and-click in certain circumstances/situations.
- I've changed the command colour in hints to be cyan (colour #6 on CONFIG COLOUR) rather than boldred. It is still visible in the line, but not as glaring/alarming as the red.
- The hints for finding finks in the Atropos section how hint at attacking the finks, without explicitly giving a MXP link. Depending on feedback from higher-up, this may have to be reverted.
- Combat hints (including info on attacking, balance, stats, prompt, healing) have been added to the greet dialogues of Clotho and Atropos during relevant segments of the tour.
- Exploration hints (including movement, maps, various types of looking) have been added to the greet dialogue of Atropos.
- Players are prompted to ask Clotho about combat info after receiving Cranky's quest.
- Upon entering the battlegrounds for the first time, players are now prompted to greet Atropos and ask about exploration, &c.
- The delay between tour segments has been lengthened.
- The HINTS command no longer functions during the intro.
So, I made another novice to test the live version.
The novice is -still- not told about vitals before being instructed to attack finks. Nor was I told anything about balance or equilibrium. When I was finally prompted to drink health, nothing was explained about potion balances.
The intro goes from -click click click- through the prompts, then very abruptly stops prompting you as to what to do. My suggestion would be to have the first fate guide have the clickable prompts, the second have the giant red prompts, but not clickable, so the novice has to type, and the third one not have the prompts at all, and maybe only pop up with the prompts if they don't do anything for a while.
Novices are still not taught about how to LOOK or PROBE, nor are they taught about STAT till after Newton and its presented in order to see lessons, and not the many other things the table lists, and SCORE is not mentioned at all
When I typed in a command that was unrecognized by the system, it asked me "Did you perhaps mean namechange, concentrate or godfeelings." When I did it again, I got "Did you perhaps mean godfeelings, stand, or portals?" The first three are introduced with no context, or further explanation. And when I typed in godfeelings, I got the blank "You are:" with nothing else. I feel that this is confusing and should be removed, or more information given.
A whisper from the trees and a frosty presence tells you, secretly, "But you are strong, little
flower, and wise." The voice shifts and expands, becoming more real. "And everything you just said
in the ritual made me feel safer. You should, too."
I don't mean to bash the current set up, and I'd like to note I haven't actually made a new character to test any of this out (I just don't like making new characters), but I have an observation that's starting to annoy me and a few others.
The -real- newbies that are coming through, and being placed in the actual game to finish out their tasks are somewhat becoming a little more confused. They don't understand that they're suppose to stay on track with the newbie instead of diving into city life. Is there either A: An option to opt out of the fate stuff, or B: Can we put them back in their own little space again?
Well, letting them opt out of the fate stuff is probably the best option - if there is someone who is around and willing to help newbies, getting a real player to guide them would be more comprehensive, though not neccesarily faster, but more fulfilling.
The guide dismiss option should already put the fate guides away, though, so that's already in, unless the fate guides pop up again on their own or something.
Can we put them back in their own little space again?
I really think this would be best. Tons of games have an on-rails tutorial section that can be used to great effect in establishing not only the controls, but the setting and story of the game. In a game with as many basic necessary commands as a text RPG, there's a load of stuff to cover and it's not being handled by the Newton quest.
But as I understand it, IRE is mandating these changes, the idea being that newbies will see how awesome the game is if they're plopped right into it.
I've always disliked the idea of having novices be in their private little world where they can't be (and should not be) touched, spoken to, interacted with etc until they are done "learning" their stuff. There's very little advantage to the things that can be taught in that manner and there's nothing that absolutely requires such an environment to be taught properly.
Can we please have a reincarnation grace period, where the novice can freely reincarnate for a little while to try out different things, instead of getting stuck with their first -probably uninformed- decision?
Similarly, can novices be allowed to change guilds/orgs during the intro? It's causing issues already, and seems like an unnecessary bit of hand holding. You can very quickly realize you've made a mistake, and instead of suiciding and restarting again, it would be nice to just be able to use your freshman novice powers to swap.
Feyda asked me to post feedback on the introduction here, so here I am.
It's terrible. Just awful. It possesses few qualities that could define it as a game, fewer qualities that define it as a text adventure and is overall unhelpful.
I'm rushed around through meaningless rooms (meaningless in that I don't stop for even a second to look at or interact with anything at all, and that none of the rooms or the travel seems to have any significance) following prompts (which were at times misleading) to perform repetitive actions that I was ultimately unprepared for (I had no way of keeping track of my health until other players intervened, revealing that I was half-dead from scratches that appeared to be nonserious as described in combat).
Despite intending to be a mage-type character, I was equipped with a claymore, which felt jarring and insincere. I also seemed to have four vials of I-don't-know-what on me. Once I became critically injured, I was prompted to drink a healing potion, but it seemed like too little too late.
After completing it, I was directed to TELEPORT NEXUS to get to the city safely, but was unable to do so where I was. Apparently, there is a policy on immersion - no out of character talk. As it was never raised in the introduction, or in early textdumps, and didn't seem to apply to the NEWBIE channel, I went and asked about where the next inevitable prompt was going to tell me to go and made a nuisance of myself.
Without the three or four people working with me, I would be -dreadfully- underprepared for the most basic task.
Thank you to Feyda especially - what I've seen of Lusternia so far has been less than interesting so far, it's felt more like an early draft. At least some of the people are nice!
Additionally; it isn't remotely fun to sit through. I didn't -do- anything, and that lasted for a very long time. I haven't really seen anything worth sticking around for so far.
Additionally; it isn't remotely fun to sit through. I didn't -do- anything, and that lasted for a very long time. I haven't really seen anything worth sticking around for so far.
Thanks for posting Hadulph. As I tried to explain in game my feeling is neither the admin or the player base are really capable of seeing the game as it appears to new players.
I really do hope the admin listen to you.
At one point the call seemed to be to get away from a linear tutorial has that decision been reversed?
Hadulph also bought up the valid point of the planar collegium task being really a failure. Too early, too much, too off putting and all collegium tasks need to be able to be completed by someone new to the game without help.
Lusturnia is also very much in need of automated novice advancement. Jump up and down all you want screaming people should be there to help novices, but the reality is they often are not and a good part of they time they have to deal with someone who isn't putting the best face on your company.
It's a relief to hear that non-linear is no longer the intention - I was adequately shocked when you mentioned it in game, Steingrim. I think you must be right in that established players or admins have trouble with providing a fair assessment of the introduction, but I'm still skeptical as to how many people would have to have been thoroughly overlooking it for it to be accepted and published.
Just... Just start a new character and go through the process. Follow the prompts to the letter, since those are the only things a newbie could possibly know to do. It was confusing and unhelpful in the extreme.
Well, we're aware - and we're not the ones who write or control the intro!
Many of the problems you point out were pointed out earlier in this thread, some more than once. Missing prompt issues, Linearity issues, and most of all, the "clicking through mindlessly" problem. We agree with you! The issues described here were brought up (For the most part) before the new intro went live. The players commenting only knew about the issues because they did start a new character to go through the process, and many of them did just follow the letter of the suggestions and prompts. All of this, a solid week before the Intro was released to novices, most of the comments are on the 16th or 17th of December, the intro wasn't opened until the 23rd!
As far as I'm aware, most of the issues mentioned (and a few more) have been recognized by admins and some kind of fix or 'point one' version is in the works. In the mean time, we need to figure out how to more gently 'catch' novices coming out of the intro as players, and where common sticking points are, so that we can supplement the intro with timely advice.
Obviously I need to do the intro myself, cause I'm just as good as a novice.
If I get confused, we need a rework!
0
EveriineWise Old Swordsbird / BrontaurIndianapolis, IN, USA
Went through the new intro myself to see what people were talking about. Some of this is repeating, but since it's not fixed yet, might as well repeat it. First, the good points.
--It is much shorter than the "old" new intro. Good! It no longer takes an hour and a half to get through. It feels more streamlined. --The directions are clearer. I was using an external client, so I had to type everything, but I still was able to understand what was being asked of me. The next steps made sense. --I didn't encounter any shadow bugs!
Unfortunately, I still don't like it.
--It was "grafted" into the existing Newton, but it makes no attempt to explain what's happening. Why in the world do I have to have an Ant Queen take me to the top of Smoke Mountain? What are shroomies? Why are the gnomes and finks fighting? What's going on? Even the original intro in Shallamar immersed me in the lore better than this one. Further, after finishing the intro and moving on to guild and collegium tasks, why would I want to return to Newton? Didn't I already do everything there? That's the feeling I got. --PATH WALK. What do we have against walking anywhere anymore? Every single step, excluding "exploring" to find finks, was accompanied by being able to type PATH WALK <place> and get everywhere automatically. Boooooooooring. --Claymore. Just let me punch and kick. It doesn't make any sense for everyone to get a claymore. --Too many missing things. The "old old" intro, in a very short time, taught me how to walk around, look around, speak, use a shop, use a pack, identify item numbers use vials, see my vitals, probe things, and get started in the world. The current intro does none of this (see bugs below). --Default race human. Even something like an "undefined" default race would be an improvement. --BUGS/INCORRECT DIRECTIONS -----2 packs, 2 tunics, 2 trousers, 8 vials. No idea what happened there. -----I was told to GET MENDING FROM PACK, only to find out that neither of my packs had any vials in them at all (they were all in my hand). -----Any GET PACK command was directed to my empty pack, and even I, as an experienced player, had trouble dealing with that. Unfortunately, I did the intro last night, and can't remember what else went wrong.
So, better than the old new intro? Yes. Much. More purpose, better direction, and shorter. Better than the original intro? No, in fact, much worse.
Everiine is a man, and is very manly. This MAN before you is so manly you might as well just gender bend right now, cause he's the manliest man that you ever did see. His manly shape has spurned many women and girlyer men to boughs of fainting. He stands before you in a manly manerific typical man-like outfit which is covered in his manly motto: "I am a man!"
Daraius said: You gotta risk it for the biscuit.
Pony power all the way, yo. The more Brontaurs the better.
I only discovered yesterday that you can and should in fact return to Newton to kill things. Since I was rushed through and told to go to the city, I didn't know that I was actually supposed to be training in there - "I did everything, why should I go back?" was my thinking.
Even so, after my experience there, wild rocs couldn't drag me back. I'd rather kill raccoons until I'm the right level than return to that awful, boring place.
Comments
The game should probably prompt you to move through the Golden Portal instead of doing it for you.
Likewise, the reeds should actually cause bleeding if they're going to do that in the real game.
Likewise, the game should have you get the stone out yourself during the crystal quest.
The game should not announce you to the guild until you've done READ JOURNAL.
Estarra the Eternal says, "Give Shevat the floor please."
-
Props:
Some reason person sends you a tell, there is a nice prompt to tell you how to send a tell back.
This intro is a lot more speedy than the previous one.
No shadow problems!
Drawback:
When hunting the bandits, it is not telling you to pick up the bandits
Didn't talk or even give me a backpack.
The red text really made me want to just speed along and not read anything.
I ran this in my normal client so may be different using nexus:
CONFIG PROMPT STATS - this was missing from the last intro as well and I feel is very important no matter what client a person is using.
CONFIG MAPVIEW ON - again, this was skipped over in the last intro but was a part of the one previous, this should be hit on before PATH WALK is ever talked about.
Bugs?:
I only hand to hand 3 finks to the king, not 10 like it said I would need.
Questions:
At the portal, I only had to pull the lever once and it auto entered me?
Why, when I put the stone in the lava, does it auto pick it up instead of telling me to do it?
The last couple days have been busy, but today and tonight I'll be pounding away at updates, and will post the list of changes once they're in.
Players will be able to turn it on, and I'll mention it as part of the updates-to-come, but it won't be defaulted to on.
- Various typo fixes.
- The beginning of the tour will now mention that typing is the primary interface with Lusternia, with some clients allowing point-and-click in certain circumstances/situations.
- I've changed the command colour in hints to be cyan (colour #6 on CONFIG COLOUR) rather than boldred. It is still visible in the line, but not as glaring/alarming as the red.
- The hints for finding finks in the Atropos section how hint at attacking the finks, without explicitly giving a MXP link. Depending on feedback from higher-up, this may have to be reverted.
- Combat hints (including info on attacking, balance, stats, prompt, healing) have been added to the greet dialogues of Clotho and Atropos during relevant segments of the tour.
- Exploration hints (including movement, maps, various types of looking) have been added to the greet dialogue of Atropos.
- Players are prompted to ask Clotho about combat info after receiving Cranky's quest.
- Upon entering the battlegrounds for the first time, players are now prompted to greet Atropos and ask about exploration, &c.
- The delay between tour segments has been lengthened.
- The HINTS command no longer functions during the intro.
The guides can still be ordered to kill the guided newbie.
I assume one could ignore the guide, kill finks until 31st and be kicked out of Newton, making them unable to finish the quest or dismiss the guide.
Make CGT default colour stand out more.
Turn on affmessages by default.
The guide dismiss option should already put the fate guides away, though, so that's already in, unless the fate guides pop up again on their own or something.
Estarra the Eternal says, "Give Shevat the floor please."
It's terrible. Just awful. It possesses few qualities that could define it as a game, fewer qualities that define it as a text adventure and is overall unhelpful.
I'm rushed around through meaningless rooms (meaningless in that I don't stop for even a second to look at or interact with anything at all, and that none of the rooms or the travel seems to have any significance) following prompts (which were at times misleading) to perform repetitive actions that I was ultimately unprepared for (I had no way of keeping track of my health until other players intervened, revealing that I was half-dead from scratches that appeared to be nonserious as described in combat).
Despite intending to be a mage-type character, I was equipped with a claymore, which felt jarring and insincere. I also seemed to have four vials of I-don't-know-what on me. Once I became critically injured, I was prompted to drink a healing potion, but it seemed like too little too late.
After completing it, I was directed to TELEPORT NEXUS to get to the city safely, but was unable to do so where I was. Apparently, there is a policy on immersion - no out of character talk. As it was never raised in the introduction, or in early textdumps, and didn't seem to apply to the NEWBIE channel, I went and asked about where the next inevitable prompt was going to tell me to go and made a nuisance of myself.
Without the three or four people working with me, I would be -dreadfully- underprepared for the most basic task.
Thank you to Feyda especially - what I've seen of Lusternia so far has been less than interesting so far, it's felt more like an early draft. At least some of the people are nice!
I really do hope the admin listen to you.
At one point the call seemed to be to get away from a linear tutorial has that decision been reversed?
Hadulph also bought up the valid point of the planar collegium task being really a failure. Too early, too much, too off putting and all collegium tasks need to be able to be completed by someone new to the game without help.
Lusturnia is also very much in need of automated novice advancement. Jump up and down all you want screaming people should be there to help novices, but the reality is they often are not and a good part of they time they have to deal with someone who isn't putting the best face on your company.
Just... Just start a new character and go through the process. Follow the prompts to the letter, since those are the only things a newbie could possibly know to do. It was confusing and unhelpful in the extreme.
--It is much shorter than the "old" new intro. Good! It no longer takes an hour and a half to get through. It feels more streamlined.
--The directions are clearer. I was using an external client, so I had to type everything, but I still was able to understand what was being asked of me. The next steps made sense.
--I didn't encounter any shadow bugs!
Unfortunately, I still don't like it.
--It was "grafted" into the existing Newton, but it makes no attempt to explain what's happening. Why in the world do I have to have an Ant Queen take me to the top of Smoke Mountain? What are shroomies? Why are the gnomes and finks fighting? What's going on? Even the original intro in Shallamar immersed me in the lore better than this one. Further, after finishing the intro and moving on to guild and collegium tasks, why would I want to return to Newton? Didn't I already do everything there? That's the feeling I got.
--PATH WALK. What do we have against walking anywhere anymore? Every single step, excluding "exploring" to find finks, was accompanied by being able to type PATH WALK <place> and get everywhere automatically. Boooooooooring.
--Claymore. Just let me punch and kick. It doesn't make any sense for everyone to get a claymore.
--Too many missing things. The "old old" intro, in a very short time, taught me how to walk around, look around, speak, use a shop, use a pack, identify item numbers use vials, see my vitals, probe things, and get started in the world. The current intro does none of this (see bugs below).
--Default race human. Even something like an "undefined" default race would be an improvement.
--BUGS/INCORRECT DIRECTIONS
-----2 packs, 2 tunics, 2 trousers, 8 vials. No idea what happened there.
-----I was told to GET MENDING FROM PACK, only to find out that neither of my packs had any vials in them at all (they were all in my hand).
-----Any GET PACK command was directed to my empty pack, and even I, as an experienced player, had trouble dealing with that.
Unfortunately, I did the intro last night, and can't remember what else went wrong.
So, better than the old new intro? Yes. Much. More purpose, better direction, and shorter.
Better than the original intro? No, in fact, much worse.
Even so, after my experience there, wild rocs couldn't drag me back. I'd rather kill raccoons until I'm the right level than return to that awful, boring place.