Helping new players

[NaMorham]

Since I was away for so long I'd forgotten a lot of what I knew about the mud and particularly the locations, items and mobs in it. One thing in particular is trainers, other than jak finding a trainer would almost require a brand new player to type prac everytime they see a new mob. One possible solution would be to have a trainer introduce themselves to the player the first time they meet (would ideally be stored on the player somehow). As I play around as a mortal a bit more I'll add some more to this topic.

[Valind]

http://www.mirrorsmud.com/forums/viewto ... ?f=13&t=16 lists the trainers of the major skills ingame. What would be more useful would be if when the player first entered the world, the mistress send them a tell informing them of the forum's location, and directs them to the help forum to get basic information.

[MercTheMad]

I have to say, something that grabs the attention like a tell guiding new players to the forums would likely be pretty effective.

[Maxim]

Please don't take this as dissing the forums, because I'm not trying to...

The forums are great for discussion. I don't think that they're where all the information about the game should be found. I think that information should be found in the game.

As for the practice mobs.... I could do something along the lines of what we did for the questmaster mobs. If you don't know, the questmasters show up with a ! at the front of their line when you look at a room. I can add another symbol to highlight the practice mobs.

[Itrana]

The thing that makes the forums better for information imo is that getting it only in game means you have to copy paste stuff into text or word files to keep it handy. Esp. when using telnet, that info gets lost or spammed off the screen in no time. If information is posted on the forums its very easy to keep it handy and just switch back and forth between the windows as needed.

And how are the newbies supposed to know what the "!" and other symbols mean in front of mobs without having someplace to go to look that kind of thing up? Something in a familiar format that they know and are comfortable using, such as the forums, would be a great place for that.

[Shawnyve]

I think thats a good idea Maxim. Though having a bit more expanded info on the forums would be good as well. I don't really want a massive list of where each one is and what it teaches floating around. But a list saying The Caemlyn trainers are deedle dee and deedle dum. Or Caemlyn has trainers for bash, survival, swords axes etc.

One of the jobs we can setup for every city is to find those mobs to give them each a message.

[NaMorham]

The main reason I suggested the introduction is that it is a bit more IC. Ideally training should be something you pay for (trainer's day job?) But anything to reduce the load for a new player. It is that first impression that stays. It's why when I first started mudding and logged into star wars mud and saw a storm trooper with a bronze broadsword in midgaard that I never went back.

In addition, the forums while usefull add an extra thing for a new player to keep track of. I always feel forums should be an extra help rather than a primary resource.