Newbie Friendly Suggestions

[Athon]

Marty has put some great work into FK the past few days trying to open up FK to the world and expand the player base. One of the issues he cited was making FK more "newbie-friendly." He suggested the concept of hometown-based guilds which I am 110% behind and love. But I've got a few other things I'd like to throw out there that I personally believe would make FK more attractive to newcomers:

1) Reduce the XP requirement for levels 1-25.

These are your foundation levels and right now it's tough to make it past 25. The 25-35 range seems to be the 'magical' range where FK shifts from lowbie quests to being able to do most things in the game. However, getting to 25 is a rather lengthy and (sometimes) difficult process, especially for a newbie. This time commitment has kept me from retiring some of my older characters and making a new "main."

2) Reduce the XP lost when training spells.

This one could be done instead of option 1, but certain classes, especially rangers, priests, and wizards have loads of skills/spells to train and these quickly drain your XP. Another consideration is reducing how many times you have to "train" it from a trainer to get to apprentice (would reduce cost).

3) Implement a feat refund process.

Certain classes are VERY dependent on feats (fighters and rangers) and some classes need few aside from the "usual" (metamagic feats for mages, clerics). Seeing how newbies are forced into playing a warrior class, it seems a bit counter-intuitive that FK's policy is very harsh when it comes to training feats. Messing up your feats early on can really limit your characters potential in the endgame, to the point that you might have to remake your character. Implementing a feat refund process (at a glory or coin cost) would really help.

[Mask]

Hi Athon!

Some good suggestions there - but I think that I would characterise it differently. Recently, the biggest problem I have seen is when a newbie starts and 'asks' a question but there is no-one around to see it (I am almost always logged on, but equally, I am almost always AFK and miss the opportunity to give assistance where it is needed).

I would suggest some modifications to our 'ask/answer' system as a more fundamental reform to provide assistance to newbies: allow anyone with 100+ kismet to answer questions? Perhaps also providing some way for the person asking the question to provide some feedback to the answerer.

Rather than reducing experience requirements, I would suggest adding more areas for people to do things in - there was a great initiative to make some new lowbie areas on the Bardic Circle recently, but it hasn't yet resulted in new areas. I will start a new thread for people to discuss lowbie areas for whichever hometowns we choose to use for the hometown guilds.

[Selveem]

I would suggest some modifications to our 'ask/answer' system as a more fundamental reform to provide assistance to newbies: allow anyone with 100+ kismet to answer questions? Perhaps also providing some way for the person asking the question to provide some feedback to the answerer.

That's actually a really, really good idea. I would suggest, however, the ability to opt-out. It might be too much for some players who simply want to play the game.

Rather than reducing experience requirements, I would suggest adding more areas for people to do things in - there was a great initiative to make some new lowbie areas on the Bardic Circle recently, but it hasn't yet resulted in new areas. I will start a new thread for people to discuss lowbie areas for whichever hometowns we choose to use for the hometown guilds.

Waterdeep has the most amount of quests in the entire game of any area, doesn't it? I think a big problem for newbies/lowbies is revenue. It would be nice to have a function for people of your said positions to assign quests to people under level 20 that grant no glory reward, but monetary value that doesn't have to come from their own personal piggy bank. Maybe like the faithing system where you can:
quest inquire <player name>
quest grant <player name> "Details of quest" (from the quest giver)
quest accept <player name>
quest complete <player name>, quest reward <player name> (from the quest giver).
Using Quest Grant should be required to provide details of the quest and place temporary details inside the quest log. After using Quest Reward, the details of the entry should be wiped completely from the player's quest log (so it doesn't get ultra spammy) later on.

What do you think?

Reduce the XP requirement for levels 1-25.

Agreed; before then, you're pretty weak. One false step on the world map and you find yourself Troll/Hill Giant food. Though, I would like the experience requirement lessened at least a _little_ for the levels 26+.

Reduce the XP lost when training spells.

Agreed. I'm not sure why training skills/spells even costs experience (remnant stock feature of SMAUG?), but I wouldn't mind it as much if it was lowered by a considerable amount.

Implement a feat refund process.

Agreed. Maybe only available for higher levels or something, but not available for all feats. For instance, Mind Over Body shouldn't be refunded as it has a lasting effect on the character for the rest of their lives.

Here is my reasoning for my responses to Athon: the bulk of players who come to play our MUD are generally not new to MUDs altogether. A looooooooooot of MUDs are hack and slash or have a generous helping of PVP. I came from MUDs with both of those backgrounds (though, I had played D&D before). Had the MUD then, at that time, had such a large variance on the time to experience ratio, I hate to admit I probably wouldn'tve stuck around. I don't know if it's just my experience, but it seems people these days are busier than when I was younger and had all the time in the world to play MUDs for long periods of time. Right now, we're a very time-intensive MUD. Though that's great once players are on the MUD not realizing how many hours they've spent, it's not so great for the players who don't have a lot of time to go dungeon delving for hours to get the experience needed for that next level or just to train up that skill/spell they've wanted.

Additional idea: We need more Imm interaction with players, again. I know we used to have the RP Council who could create special characters to interact with players and make up quests, but it seemed many of those required an Imm to help along/provide restrings/etc. One of the major things that drew me to this MUD was my positive interaction with the Immortals such as the ex-player of Sune who went out of her way to make sure she interacted with players (and helped my stupid butt out of a hole I couldn't climb out of and was starving to death).

[Athon]

Marty,

Are quests in FK rewarding experience as a reward? If not, is that something you'd consider possibly adjusting?

[Atraos]

Sorry about the format, i am adding this from a phone.

The thing i always felt most difficult was finding someone to do things with. A lot of the quests take 3 or 4 people. The times i used to play there was maybe 3 or 4 people on. With FK being so large the chance of bumping into anyone and forming a group of similar level was slim indeed. I didn't find the first ten to twenty levels difficult. I always thought there was plenty out there for me at that level. Its was 25+ wher i became bored as i couldn't do any quests without help. There also seems to be a lot of quests based on wisdom or charisma. Unless this is stated at character creation then i would imagine most new players will bulk up on str dex and con. This potentially closes off a few quests.

[Mask]

I think that that 'match-making' facility will be provided by adventuring guilds (see my other post on the topic).

I'd like to use this thread to discuss how opening up question answering to anyone who has 100+ kismet might work? What would the 'Player Council' do in that case? Would it be necessary for everyone to see the questions/answers to try and ensure that the 'asker' is being given correct information?

[Briek]

in that case if everyone with 100 kismet or more can answer questions, just turn the entire player council into a bunch of supervisors
to check for that very thing?

[Selveem]

That's pretty much along the lines of what I was thinking, too, Briek.

It'd be nice to have the PC still available in case we don't have the correct answer immediately. Maybe even give the PC the ability to take over a question's answer if the player who originally grabbed it is not answering the question in a correct/friendly manner. After all, the question channel is there to provide the right answers and everyone wants a friendly response.