26 Feb, 2013, Arithorn wrote in the 1st comment:
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I was wondering if anyone else had considered the idea of creating an smallish area entirely separate from the main mud with the full range of Mob levels. Then, create a set of High Level player characters that log into that area and reset after 20-30mins. i.e. No persistance.

The idea is to allow people to experience life as a high level character before they go through the "grind" while ensuring that it does not impact on the greater game. A great way to see what the game is really like rather than "here is a newbie school."

The major issue with this that I see is people just using these characters and duelling each other, but that could be limited by number of logins per day or something.

What are other things to think about/consider before implementing this?
26 Feb, 2013, Jhypsy Shah wrote in the 2nd comment:
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I can say that MUD schools are a big turn off for me, anything that looks like old stock and the schools tend to be really dull. If a player is familiar with the controls and commands, I don't see any reason not to throw them into some action. It seems common to wander around somewhere with very little conflict/adventure for several levels.

Personally, I like the idea of small MUDs better, even if it's just an area that ya are tinkering with. Sounds like it could be interesting, curious what ya had in mind. XD
26 Feb, 2013, Rarva.Riendf wrote in the 3rd comment:
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>The idea is to allow people to experience life as a high level character before they go through the "grind" while ensuring that it does not impact on the greater game. A great way to see what the game is really like rather than "here is a newbie school."

Well…I dont think having a high level character out of the blue will show you anything but: you don't know what you are a doing…
26 Feb, 2013, Nathan wrote in the 4th comment:
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The "mud school" idea is nice, but I figure it works best if it's basically a real in-game academy/guild. So, you aren't isolated from the game or required to stay, but you have the option of learning in a safer environment than the wilderness. That also lends some immersion to the system. Fightable NPCs for practice would be cool. Instead of 'train x', you can apply the 'gain skill by use' paradigm by actually sparring with an npc and seeing skill gains based on how what you used. You could add a ranking mechanism or specific NPCs that if you can beat them (or other players),you can get some money. Offering reduced prices inside for healing and basic equipment,etc could be used to encourage at least some initial sticking around.

What you are talking about exists in some MMOs, but I'm not sure it really is worth anything since it dangles a carrot, but offers little but foaming at the mouth over the stuff you can't get yet.
26 Feb, 2013, Arithorn wrote in the 5th comment:
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What you are talking about exists in some MMOs, but I'm not sure it really is worth anything since it dangles a carrot, but offers little but foaming at the mouth over the stuff you can't get yet.


The foaming at the mouth would be the main point of it. I was also thinking if I implement Account logins, I could keep stats on what people do - have some kind of top 10 lists for this part - a minigame?

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Well…I dont think having a high level character out of the blue will show you anything but: you don't know what you are a doing…


I don't have a great plan for how to overcome this, except for (non blocking) TIPS in each room tailored to the role you are playing. And a progression of Mobs from level 1 (explode it with a fireball?) to Level Player+1 to create a fast? progression of knowledge. I'm implementing crafting/gathering/questing as well, so there will have to be parts of this to it.
27 Feb, 2013, Igabod wrote in the 6th comment:
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My problem with mud schools is that all of the ones I have seen except a few rare exceptions were just a bunch of rooms with a lot of text in the description that you could easily ignore. Most of the time you learn nothing beyond how to move around and look. But if you look at console video games tutorials, a lot of them start off with giving you quests immediately which end up teaching you everything you need.

So with my idea, you would log in and immediately be given a quest or mission. Lets say the first quest is to follow the path to the tavern and register at the counter for a room. This would take care of char creation. Then the tavern owner or whatever would ask you if you could go to the blacksmith 4 blocks west and deliver a message. There you would deliver the message and the blacksmith would ask if you knew about weapons and you could learn from him if you choose. Then once you learn from him, in conversation somehow he brings up that if you are looking for work he has a few odd jobs around town for you. Then he becomes a sort of quest master sending you on small errands and after a few of those he sends you to the baker or whatever, where you learn other skills and necessary info. Then you are sent to another quest master in another part of town and so on till all the tutorial info is covered.

This way the learning process isn't just something that takes away from your playing time, it becomes part of the game and you earn experience or qp or whatever for doing it. In fact it could be made into a vital part of the early leveling system. This would work for pretty much every genre of mud out there too, you just gotta tweak the type of quests for your type of mud. Even if it was something like a godwars theme where the players just hack each other to death you could make this type of rpg element work. It would be an easier way to explain how a person becomes a werewolf or vampire or whatever, one of the missions could bring them into contact with a creature of that class which then converts them in whatever way is appropriate. Just have the quest giver give them a choice between missions with an OOC message letting them know that this decision will set their class permanently or whatever.
27 Feb, 2013, Rarva.Riendf wrote in the 7th comment:
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Igabod: a tutorial :) anyway if people cannot be bothered to read, they should not play a mud :)
A forced tutorial is annoying for player making a new character as well.
28 Feb, 2013, Igabod wrote in the 8th comment:
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You dress it so it doesn't look like a tutorial and is just simply part of the game. And you also implement features so that experienced players can skip through conversation that isn't pertinent to the quest itself. You also make it reward enough to compete with just running out to the pixie forest and swinging your sword around with no goal in mind other than slaughtering innocent pixies and earning exp. Or you could just simply make it so that the player can abort the mission and ignore the newbie area and quests all together if they so desire. It just makes sense to give them a more interactive form of the mud school than what they are used to.


Rarva.Riendf said:
if people cannot be bothered to read, they should not play a mud :)


it's not that they can't be bothered to read. it's just that most of the time you see large blocks of text in each and every room of the newbie school which can get a bit tiring and boring to read. So most people when they see large blocks of text just skim it if even that.
28 Feb, 2013, KaVir wrote in the 9th comment:
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Arithorn said:
The idea is to allow people to experience life as a high level character before they go through the "grind" while ensuring that it does not impact on the greater game. A great way to see what the game is really like rather than "here is a newbie school."

I'd actually rather make the newbie experience more enjoyable. There's no reason why playing should have to feel like a grind, or why you should need to be high level just to have fun.

Many of my players actually have unclassed (newbie phase) alts that they use for duelling.

Related discussion: Tutorial mode
28 Feb, 2013, Rarva.Riendf wrote in the 10th comment:
Votes: 0
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You dress it so it doesn't look like a tutorial and is just simply part of the game.


Yeah it could be a special area you cannot leave until you resolve all the quests in it, forcing you to learn and use most of the commands on at a time.
A returning player could just go to the end and say a special passphrase that is given after you completed all the quest to leave right away.
I see some problems though as in a multiplayer game, if two people share the same place some quest may be hard to reset for every player while they are in the same place.
Myabe have an instance for each new player. Having to wait for something easy to do is boring.
28 Feb, 2013, quixadhal wrote in the 11th comment:
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Why put artificial restrictions on things?

Make a character, have it enter the game world. Have newbie-quest givers nearby that are chattering at them, but make it totally optional if they want to accept and do the quests. Let them go. If they want to do the quests, the quests should lead them around the city (or whatever environment you start them in), showing them vendors, teaching basic combat, etc… if they want to run out, leave town, and go find high level areas, why stop them? If they die, they'll learn to stay in the safer areas quickly enough.

If you coddle people, you get people who can't do anything without being coddled.
28 Feb, 2013, Rarva.Riendf wrote in the 12th comment:
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I would agree with you if I did not have experience with people asking the questions that would have been self answered had they not quit the start area and actually looked for more than a few places. (I have most of what you are talking about)
Because they think they dont have to do the school just because my mud 'looks' like a basic stock ROM one. (and kind of react the same at very, very low level).
In the end you end up with no players at all, because the smart people that dont need to be coddled are not that many to begin with.
28 Feb, 2013, Jhypsy Shah wrote in the 13th comment:
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Yeah, I've seen some optional 'apprenticeship' kinda quests around hometowns that I thought were pretty cool, for the first time doing it if nothing else. Geared towards newbies helping an NPC, such as a tradesman or guilds, like a task that a skilled/semi-skilled laborer might do, for example.

I think opt'ing to interact with other fleshed out NPC's like that, gives it alot more life, than obeying 'the signs on the wall', in a pretty much vacant academy. I wonder why some MUDs build rows of shops, guild halls and offices that are basically just empty rooms or at the most, minimalistic shops, limited to buying, selling and trading what's in the player inventory?

IMHO, wandering around a school/starting town with no conflict isn't fun to me, it makes me feel that an adventurer has no place in the story. If there is nothing for the actor to overcome, then I don't feel there is much of a story there. The town may be filled with detailed descriptions that portrays it's history and background in a beautiful way but I think it was Tolkein that said something along the lines of, "there are many a pleasant tale to be told but they're usually not much to listen to."

I don't think newbie schools are a bad concept in and of itself nor do I believe people just don't like to read anymore. I think there will always be best selling novels about some strange academy with vampires or magic or something you would find in a mud but the difference is that they bothered designing those stories with interesting characters, plot, storyline that goes somewhere, synopses, timelines..if that makes sense.

Something I've noticed in MUDs, that I feel hurts the new players, is neglected help files. I've logged into a lot of them and just found them incomplete, inaccurate or just seemed to be missing entirely.

Ironically, the builder academies I've seen set up in an area, never really bothered me.

Perhaps, to be more on topic with the OP, I don't think what you want to do would be any worse than a vacant building with signs on the wall. I would think it may be a fun way to give a new player an idea about the builds, without having to grind up to the top, only to learn that they did everything wrong and feel that they need to delete and reroll. Sounds interesting if nothing else. XD
28 Feb, 2013, Igabod wrote in the 14th comment:
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quix hit on what I was trying to say perfectly. As for the problem with multiplayer Rarva mentioned, I understand what you mean fully, I've been playing swtor lately and have had to deal with a lot of that "objective stealing" on there in the newbie areas. But I think it could be easily arranged so that objectives only load in the room when a player who has the quest for that objective walks in. It's simple enough to add a quest id number into the player file which is then checked via mprog or rprog. There are many other workarounds for that I'm sure.
28 Feb, 2013, Rarva.Riendf wrote in the 15th comment:
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Something I've noticed in MUDs, that I feel hurts the new players, is neglected help files. I've logged into a lot of them and just found them incomplete, inaccurate or just seemed to be missing entirely.


Yep it is a problem. But being a culprit there, there are some explanations beyond the simple 'helps files are boring to write' (wich is true in itself :p) hence why some people here will just tell to generate automatic (and dynamicly) ones.
I am not a native english speaker, so writing helps that will be read by everyone…ugh…

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It's simple enough to add a quest id number into the player file which is then checked via mprog or rprog.


When the quest is "loot the mob after killing it that is north behind a closed door", it is not that easy without instanced rooms.
Then again…only happens when the place is crowded…not like it happens in lots of muds anymore.
01 Mar, 2013, quixadhal wrote in the 16th comment:
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It is trivial to eliminate objective stealing. Guild Wars 2 did it, and it was such a simple solution that I can't believe nobody else has done it yet. Just make everything shared instead of exclusive.

IE: You have a quest to kill 10 rats. So does the other newbie next to you. If you start fighting a rat and he joins in, you both get quest and kill credit for defeating it. What a concept! Having an actual incentive to work WITH other people, instead of against them!

It effectively makes official "groups" redundant for most of the non-dungeon content. Everyone gets their own instanced loot from anything they helped kill, and the rewards are level-appropriate to the person doing the killing, so smacking a level 50 critter for 1hp doesn't give you anything you wouldn't get from being in your own level area.

The game also auto-scales you down to the highest level the area you're in was designed for… so you can actually enjoy doing content from other newbie zones… it'll be easier than if you were actually a newbie, but not a 100% waste of time like most games, where your level 50 guy looks at a rat and it dies and bursts into flame.

Now, in a MUD, you may not want to go whole-hog scaling on everything… but you can still use the shared-objective idea with a little tweaking to make sure players only get the quest credit, not the XP/loot rewards.
01 Mar, 2013, Rarva.Riendf wrote in the 17th comment:
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I can tell you why: I hate as a player, this kind of solution.
It is a gameplay choice, works for you great for you.
01 Mar, 2013, quixadhal wrote in the 18th comment:
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I have to ask, what do you hate about it?

It sounds cheat, but as a player, I absolutely love this in Guild Wars 2. It really does encourage people to help, rather than standing back and waiting for you to die so they aren't accused of kill stealing. I also forgot to mention that resource nodes are instanced, so there's also no rushing to get a copper node before someone else ninjas it while you,re fighting next to it.
01 Mar, 2013, Rarva.Riendf wrote in the 19th comment:
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>I have to ask, what do you hate about it?

About the scaling: it feels like you never really progress.
About the giving quest to someone not part of your group: it prevents gameplay features like 'I actually want to steal your quest' (or whatever loot etc).

I do not consider the whole leveling to highest level like a grind as well but like a tutorial to the end game.
Some skills at a time to 1: be forced to use them as you only have those 2: learning one after another to get the time to find combo without being overwhelmed by everything at once.

But I am more into PK. Hence why I dont feel like 'easy and automatic cooperation' is needed, on the contrary it is not wanted. (just group if you want to cooperate…)

That is why I do understand why those features are not implemented as a 'solution' as they are only a solution if you consider if there is a problem to begin with.
01 Mar, 2013, Nathan wrote in the 20th comment:
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I have Guild Wars 2, and honestly I think the auto-grouping is a pretty good idea, not that it doesn't have it's drawbacks. The game wants to encourage cooperation rather than solo adventuring. It does take the selectivity aspect out, so you could get people hanging out for the experience and only helping minimally, but there's a medal/rank for your contribution (not quite sure how that works). I'm guessing they've tried to balance that out.

Admittedly, it is kinda of unfriendly to emergent gameplay like taking the the quest items and stockpiling, selling them, but I think most of us think that's evil anyway. There isn't really 1v1 PK in the main game, so I guess if you like that it's not the game for you.
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