How the New Player Island shoots LOTC in the Foot

[Unwillingly 11306]

I found something to b*tch about again

Earlier today I decided to check out the tutorial island, as I hadn’t actually seen the new one since it was rebuilt a couple of months back. You can check out the island for yourself at spawn. You’re led through a chain of floating islands, each of which cover the following subjects in order:

-Basic chat commands
-Soulstones

-Terra (resource gathering, nodes)

-Bank, Auction House, and shops
-PvP timer (explaining that LOTC makes use of the 1.9 swing cooldown)
-/lock

The build is great, the information is bad. Let me explain.

We all know that many new players can be young, timid, and have a very limited understanding of how they’re meant to navigate their RP experience upon being whitelisted. Some are able to get the hang of things pretty quickly and consequently stick around, while others need to be given information in the most simple way possible and will be far more difficult to keep interested.

My main gripe with the tutorial island is that the shot completely misses the target. A new player is taught mechanics and commands as opposed to how they can stay engaged with our server, how to find RP, and how to get comfortable. Don’t get me wrong, a new player should know their commands, but things such as /lock, explaining the swing cooldown, and nodes should absolutely not be at the forefront of our tutorial island.

Instead, they should be taught server culture — things us established players understand and are familiar with as concepts. This includes:

-Server wide peak times for LOTC
-Peak times for individual nations and communities
-How RP differs from nation-to-nation
-How to get involved with a community

-RP will not always come to them 

-Getting involved or creating a narrative or storyline takes time

These are key factors that a new player should understand if we want our noobs to stay engaged. The reason new players don’t stick around is because they don’t understand why they can’t find anyone in a city, why they aren’t getting RP, why their experience is so underwhelming compared to the grand spiel the forums advertised to them —  not because they don’t know how to lock their chest or buy things from the AH.

My advice would be to alter the new player islands in a way that explains pertinent information (such as the above), and instead move chat commands and mechanics information to a book that can be summoned with a simple command, similar to relinquishing and reclaiming a soulstone. This allows new players to move at their own pace instead of being overwhelmed with a million things they probably won’t even need to know for a few more weeks, while additionally giving them the option to re-read commands whenever they need to.

Fun fact: a new player I’ve recently been talking to has been writing everything they need to remember in an entire google doc.

The reason I would highly advise against expanding and cramming the two subjects (mechanics vs server culture) onto the same chain of islands is because new players, upon joining, are being tasked with absorbing loads of information, commands, and text all at once. It’s a mess, they have zero idea what the heck they’re doing, and the sheer information spam alone can be enough to make them never want to log back in.

Please, help our new players understand what they actually need to know as a new player. Tackle the cause of why many new players log out after 15 minutes or get bored after 3 days, if they even make it that far. Help our noobs. 

[Ryloth 4316]

9 minutes ago, ᴜɴᴡɪʟʟɪɴɢʟʏ said:

-Server wide peak times for LOTC
-Peak times for individual nations and communities
-How RP differs from nation-to-nation

 

I support all of this, but you and I both know well that nobody will update these after two weeks and some new nations crop up. Kind of like how the Wandering Soul warp to Oren put you suffocating inside a wall for about two weeks (might still be there, I reported it up to CT), how the events board at CT is never used and makes the server look inactive, or many other things.

 

There's a lot to keep track of. Many staff don't even realize some of these things are there to track and update, because they're one-man passion projects that get abandoned when XYZ staff is removed or steps down in their own personal greatest blunder.

 

IMO, the staff-only command that allows you to view how many players are presently in a tile or nation in general should be an accessible command you can run. That'd help a whole lot.

 

Then too, @HogoBojo is brand spanking new in his spot, so maybe after he's acclimated after Merry Chrysler with some things some good change/updates will happen, cus up until now it's been Joel doing fifty things at once and it's probably a burnout.

[Polysemic 798]

Hi. I'd need to chat about this with the rest of CT, and I'm currently on hiatus, so take this all as my opinion and not that of CT or staff as a whole.

 

That being said, I don't think it's important to teach a new player mechanics or server culture at all. Sure, they should know they basics, they should know how to enter RP chat and LOOC, as well as some of the things people do on the server. But other than that, the most important thing is getting the player involved with a community. CT can't help every new player, we can't explain every mechanic to everyone; And new player island will never be clear enough either to leave a new player with no confusion.

What we can do is help them find a community they might like, and allow the players from that community to guide them along. Hell, I'd even go as far to say it's counterproductive to work on new player island - And instead make it easier for communities to reach out to new players, rather than the other way around.

[argonian 12844]

lol just make them spawn in with a little booklet of basic commands and info that isn't likely to change

 

the new player island is the dumbest idea ever. who tf is gonna actually walk around there listen to all of that shit? clearly not even the people who designed it, seeing as it's never updated and was outdated like literal days after it was made.

[riorr 1794]

1 hour ago, argonian said:

lol just make them spawn in with a little booklet of basic commands and info that isn't likely to change

Yeah. It’s accessible at all times and new players won’t feel pressured to retain the information.

 

From being on CT and working on the first tutorial island, I’ve witnessed most new players just want to jump right into roleplay, a lot are even resistant to monk guidance because they are eager.

 

9 hours ago, ᴜɴᴡɪʟʟɪɴɢʟʏ said:
-Peak times for individual nations and communities
-How RP differs from nation-to-nation

I don’t believe this would work as it requires constant updating. Unless staff were committed to keeping it relevant. The references to nations on the first island were very quickly outdated and would spark more confusion. 

[Unwillingly 11306]

3 hours ago, Rioling said:

I don’t believe this would work as it requires constant updating. Unless staff were committed to keeping it relevant. The references to nations on the first island were very quickly outdated and would spark more confusion. 

I don't see how it would require constant updating as long as the information is kept vague and less applicable to individual nations or communities, simple fix. Not like the peak server time constantly fluxuates, or the means of getting involved with a storyline or community

could be as simple as informing new players that different communities and nations have peak activity, so there won't always be players in a city

[monkeypoacher 6993]

IMO peak times for nations should be integrated into a plugin that occasionally announces:

"The Kingdom of Urguan - 17, The Holy Orenian Empire - 24, Elysium - 19, Haelun'or - 11 ..."

and so on for every nation/settlement. Our competitor last year had this and it took the guesswork out of finding RP and directing new players to settlements. You always knew where other players were and you never had to wander around in search of RP.

 

I also like the idea (from someone else I forgot) of giving each new player a number of "soulstone charges" - a charged soulstone can warp to any capital pillar on the map - so no one is stranded at the cloud temple and has to navigate the roads to find RP. You get multiple to start out because it's hard to tell where is where.

[argonian 12844]

1 hour ago, monkeypoacher said:

IMO peak times for nations should be integrated into a plugin that occasionally announces:

"The Kingdom of Urguan - 17, The Holy Orenian Empire - 24, Elysium - 19, Haelun'or - 11 ..."

and so on for every nation/settlement. Our competitor last year had this and it took the guesswork out of finding RP and directing new players to settlements. You always knew where other players were and you never had to wander around in search of RP.

 

I also like the idea (from someone else I forgot) of giving each new player a number of "soulstone charges" - a charged soulstone can warp to any capital pillar on the map - so no one is stranded at the cloud temple and has to navigate the roads to find RP. You get multiple to start out because it's hard to tell where is where.

it's the first 10 mins that are most important imo, so unless that thing was spamming it wouldn't be sufficient. imo there should(in addition to announcements?) be a command that tells you how many people are in each of the nation capitals, with this command being conveyed to new players by way of a message upon joining, as well as being in the booklet or whatever /help commands we have.

 

now the objection: would this help meta, i.e "zomg there are 100 gorillion people in helena; must be something big going on there!"? yes, absolutely. but if you were some nefarious ne'er-do-well and big shit was going down in helena, you'd find out from discord anyway. at least this way, the "holy shit better check that out!" impulse would apply to all players, and not just discord overlords with their tendrils spread into every server. it'd be reminiscent of the /broadcasts we used to get about cool events in earlier years of the server, which yes were meta'd, but provided a more even playing field than this current stuff where meta'ing huge events is only a-ok if you learned about it in a private-ish disc server.

 

the upsides clearly beat the downsides here