11 Jan, 2015, dracmas wrote in the 1st comment:
Votes: 0
Just what the title is asking. I'm considering doing away with a tutorial area
and just throwing the player right into the storyline. Add in a tips channel
that's easily switched off, and put a more in depth manual on a website.

Your thoughts?
11 Jan, 2015, Rarva.Riendf wrote in the 2nd comment:
Votes: 0
My thought is if someone cannot be bothered to read instruction before actively play a game where you mostly read, then as an admin, I don't want this player.

Most players I had through time time skipped the tutorial and newbie area.
Then complain about stuff they would have known if they actively did them.
Most cannot even be bothered to type 'commands' and look if what they need would be in it.

You have the old player that thinks that he knows it all and since it is a based rom game, it will act exactly like ANY other rom game (though I cannot really blame him….most do because of peopl running stock rom as soon as they managed ro launch it while not even understanding how it works)
You have the new player that needs to be spoonfed.

You have the minority of players that dont really "need' a tutorial but will happily do it because a well done tutorial area wlll save them a lot of time of experimentation.

The in depth manual on the website is something else that can be done whatever your choice in game anyway. Make it dynamic though. Nothing more annoyng than a help that is no more accurate cause you changed it in game but not on website.

No, I do not do any of that, I am way too lazy! :p (but thats on my ever expanding todo list)
11 Jan, 2015, koqlb wrote in the 3rd comment:
Votes: 0
It is helpful for some, liker new MUDders, it can be a pain to remove the newbie areas. However, it can also be beneficial in
some ways. And while there are some MUDs out there that don't have one, I say go for it. Just because my MUD doesn't
have the MUD school removed (for the sake of oldschool Rom feel) doesn't mean you shouldn't.
And since your MUD is from what I can tell by your to-the-point message a storyline themed MUD, then by all means,
just throw the players into the story (like oldschool D&D truly is), and then for the sake of Newbs, give them a backpack
with newbie gear or something.
11 Jan, 2015, Rarva.Riendf wrote in the 4th comment:
Votes: 0
> it can be a pain to remove the newbie areas.

Just don't connect them to the main world. Some of mine are only accessible through a specific portal in the school area, and not teleportable to.
11 Jan, 2015, quixadhal wrote in the 5th comment:
Votes: 0
I've spoken on this topic before. My opinion is that a traditional "mud school" is a horrible idea. It misleads the true newbie into thinking the game will be like this throughout, and it bores the ^%#! out of anyone who's played any kind of text mud before.

My suggestion is to have players start in a city, and have NPC's there, right at the beginning, who can offer new players basic tutorial functions. That is, they can give them quests, they can guide them on tours of the city itself, and they can answer basic questions via a dialog. Players who already know how to play, or who want to figure it out on their own can just ignore them. Newbies can do the quests and follow the tutorial, but they're free to stop doing it at any time and just strike off on their own.

More importantly, they become part of the world right away. They can talk to other players, and they aren't off in some isolated area that's out of sync with the game.

In games that have rigid class structures, it's pretty common for people to have "alts", so they can play different styles and (if the game has enough content) explore alternate storylines. Nothing annoys people more than having a forced tutorial they have to run through on every character.
11 Jan, 2015, dracmas wrote in the 6th comment:
Votes: 0
Quote
and then for the sake of Newbs, give them a backpack
with newbie gear or something.


Yeah, was thinking maybe add an in-game manual object with chapters for explaining how to play as an alternative to reading from the website. Not so much the gear though. I'm working on quests so the players would earn silver to buy gear at the shops.

Quote
ust don't connect them to the main world. Some of mine are only accessible through a specific portal in the school area, and not teleportable to.


Tbamud (continuation of circlemud) has a wealth of dgscripts and examples in their areas so it'd be silly to remove them all from the game when I can review them when needed. Just going to change the recall (starting) room and change where the boards and donation eq are located. So it'll be on the mud, but inaccessible to players.

I want there to be enough information for the player to be able to dive into the story, but I don't want them to be wondering what the heck am I supposed to be doing and quit either. I've also tried muds before where I've gotten frustrated while still in the tutorial area and quit before even being able to enjoy what the game has to offer.
11 Jan, 2015, KaVir wrote in the 7th comment:
Votes: 0
I wrote an article about replacing newbie school with a passive tutorial mode - it was a submission for Imaginary Realities, but as that project seems to be dead I'll just post it here: What Do I Do Now?
11 Jan, 2015, dracmas wrote in the 8th comment:
Votes: 0
Quote
More importantly, they become part of the world right away. They can talk to other players, and they aren't off in some isolated area that's out of sync with the game.


So much this! I've also wondered why basic channels are locked on some muds before a certain level. Not only is the player drooling at the mouth trying to get through the tutorial, but can't socialize with everyone while doing so.

KaVir,
One thing in particular that stood out to me in that article was the "what now command" you wrote about. I've been through the same situation more than once on different games where I'd get out of the tutorial, only to not have a clue where to go from there. No quests to help out, no goals, and no idea where the right area is to start leveling up. It basically ended up being other players that showed me where and how to start off after mud school, when having just enough information available would have been a huge help.

So basically I think I'd rather have the player knowing what all they can do and let them do their own thing, rather than a tutorial that has no storyline progression in it.
11 Jan, 2015, KaVir wrote in the 9th comment:
Votes: 0
dracmas said:
So much this! I've also wondered why basic channels are locked on some muds before a certain level.

I believe it's usually a response to people logging on newbie characters for the sole purpose of flooding the public channels with adverts or meaningless spam. There are of course much better solutions that don't involve throwing out the baby with the bath water, but blocking the channels is easy to implement, and some people don't really think through the consequences of their design decisions.

dracmas said:
KaVir,
One thing in particular that stood out to me in that article was the "what now command" you wrote about. I've been through the same situation more than once on different games where I'd get out of the tutorial, only to not have a clue where to go from there. No quests to help out, no goals, and no idea where the right area is to start leveling up. It basically ended up being other players that showed me where and how to start off after mud school, when having just enough information available would have been a huge help.

So basically I think I'd rather have the player knowing what all they can do and let them do their own thing, rather than a tutorial that has no storyline progression in it.


Well yes, a good tutorial is obviously better than a bad tutorial, I think that goes without saying :P The "what" command is only as useful as the information it provides, but useful information alone isn't much good if the delivery system is poor.
11 Jan, 2015, plamzi wrote in the 10th comment:
Votes: 0
I have never seen a MUD whose tutorial or help system didn't assume that the player has played other MUDs before. Since I got back into MUDs five years ago, I have been working on various ways to address that problem, not just for my own text game projects, but for other people's as well.

To this end, the web app framework on mudportal.com currently supports gameplay which, instead of assuming that the player knows what to type in a command input field, only assumes that they have basic browsing skills. It is now possible to create a username and your first character by only having to type into simple labeled form fields and pressing buttons or clicking on links. After you enter the game, whether there is a tutorial or not, key actions can be shown as clickable MXP elements so that complete novices would not have to wonder how to do even the most basic things.

One of the biggest challenges confronting a complete newbie is communication. If they can figure out how to communicate, they are much more likely to stick around long enough for the fog to start lifting. So, a recent addition to the Mud Portal chat plugin is the ability to define communication channels that are then made selectable from a dropdown:



I think it's entirely possible to achieve a text-only UI that teaches people who are completely new to MUDs how to play without making them read help files (they may not even know how to get to those help files). Just because a game is text-based doesn't mean that you shouldn't work on an intuitive way for a PC to attack an NPC–something that in most MUDs would be fundamental to know how to do.

If most common actions are available via clickable or toggle-able elements, you can use them to teach the principles so that soon your new players will understand enough of the game logic to know how to do more complicated stuff like giving the third blue key in their inventory to the second sentry in the room.
11 Jan, 2015, Ssolvarain wrote in the 11th comment:
Votes: 0
Just make an interactive tutorial if you're going the storyline route. I personally prefer those over mountains of text to crawl through. I think the original ROM mudschool works well, however, because it's fairly minimalist.
12 Jan, 2015, Ssolvarain wrote in the 12th comment:
Votes: 0
On the same topic, while it's not the newbie school exactly, I have been considering a quest that leads the player sequentially through the various newbie zones, rewarding people who "complete" them (Or meet whatever goal I choose to consider "complete"). I think this would result in a lot less people running through (clear marked… >.> ) portals leading to level 10 mobs and then experiencing difficulty. Plus, people like quests, right?
12 Jan, 2015, Hades_Kane wrote in the 13th comment:
Votes: 0
Quote
I have never seen a MUD whose tutorial or help system didn't assume that the player has played other MUDs before.


Quote
<starting room>
<north>
Gaspar says 'Hello Vrieth, welcome to the End of Time! I will help you get on your feet and learn the ropes. First thing I need to know is how experienced in End of Time or MUDs in general you are…'

If you are new to MUDs and need to go through the full MUDing tutorial, type: say total newbie
If you are not new to MUDs, but new to End of Time, type: say eot newbie
If you have played End of Time before and/or just wish to go directly into game, type: say veteran
(If you chose the speech impediment flaw, you may use the osay channel instead.)


From there, you are channeled into one of three locations. In all locations, the room descripton gives a basic outline of what that room teaches you, giving as basic and minimilist (but still helpful) info as possible. Then each room has a mob in it that teaches you more and more about the concepts in the room. You "talk" to the mob, he gives you some info, and you can "talk" to him again and he gives you more info, etc. It's all a "learn at your own pace" kind of thing; I think throwing too much info out of the player's control is going to overwhelm. They are free to skip rooms or talking to mobs if they want.

Total Newbie funnels you west where you learn what typing "west" does and how you "train" stats or "consider" a mob, and progressively get into less basic concepts.

EoT Newbie funnels you east where you are informed that on End of Time, you can train stats anywhere instead of just a trainer, that you can used the "learned" command to see what you know, that "learn <mob>" is how you check a teacher for skills, that "trains" and "pracs" are a single "AP" stat and that it takes 10 AP to increase a stat and 1 AP to increase your skill % a teacher. As you can see, it specifically starts out detailing the differences in EoT and a typical Diku/Merc/Rom based game. As this path progresses, it gets into less basic "differences" and more EoT specific systems.

Veteran funnels you north, skipping past any and all tutorial. The other two paths lead here as well.

Once you reach here, you have a healer/teacher/shop mob, while north leads to several portals. Three of them link to hometowns (so literally, someone can create, say veteran, and be within the game world as everyone else within 30 seconds), another link to the ROM style "newbie arena" where there are three tiers of increasingly strong newbie monsters players can grind on, while the remaining 6 portals lead to self contained, full-on areas, most of which containing quests or some sort of aspect of the game that allows the player to get more hands on, like the synthesis system or whatever. These work as more "hands on" tutorials, offering hints or tips along the way in some instances. These areas are a little easier than what you'll find in the "real" world, but they serve as a good example and a helping hand on how a player should expect to interact with the world once they are well and truly out there in it.

So yeah, there's that…


I've considered, like the OP, perhaps eliminating much of the "school" aspect of our starting zone and throw everything into these self contained newbie zones, doing a bit of a hand holding through tips, quest type scenarios, etc… but for the most part, what we have seems to work pretty well (even if most people just pick veteran then spend the next 30 minutes asking questions). But, I'll also eventually get around to condensing the tutorial information into a "newbie guide" item they are given and also putting all of that up on the (eventually redesigned) website.
13 Jan, 2015, plamzi wrote in the 14th comment:
Votes: 0
Quote
I have never seen a MUD whose tutorial or help system didn't assume that the player has played other MUDs before.


Quote
<starting room>
<north>
Gaspar says 'Hello Vrieth, welcome to the End of Time! I will help you get on your feet and learn the ropes. First thing I need to know is how experienced in End of Time or MUDs in general you are…'

If you are new to MUDs and need to go through the full MUDing tutorial, type: say total newbie
If you are not new to MUDs, but new to End of Time, type: say eot newbie
If you have played End of Time before and/or just wish to go directly into game, type: say veteran
(If you chose the speech impediment flaw, you may use the osay channel instead.)


Like I said :)

You're doing a better job than most, but the bottom line is most of us can't even step into the shoes of a total newbie anymore. Here's some food for thought:

1. What does a total newbie need to figure out before they can even get to the screen you're showing? For instance, downloading a client, figuring out your game's address, figuring out how to create a user / character, figuring out how to enter the game with their first char, etc.

2. How many non-mudders do you expect to read through this much text in their initial excitement just to glean the commands they need to type next?

3. How many non-mudders would even know where to type these commands?

4. What assumptions are you making when you tell people to "use the osay channel instead"?

5. Do you really need 4 choices here? It seems that 2 choices are enough: do tutorial, skip tutorial. Every time you add a choice, you add confusion. This is especially true for the choice that makes new players wonder if they should have chosen the speech impediment flaw for some reason :)

This menu is a very good example of something we could have gotten right at least a decade ago. If you are presenting the player with a choice between 4 specific options, why make them type out long commands? Make the options clickable / selectable by number and usability will be improved by orders of magnitude.
13 Jan, 2015, Hades_Kane wrote in the 15th comment:
Votes: 0
1) If they made it to my game, then they know how to download a client and figure out the address, unless they either connected through MUD Portal, the telnet link on our webpage, or through the TMC MUD client, so I don't really concern myself with that. The first real barrier is character creation. If they can't figure that out, I honestly don't want them as players. Regardless of anything, there is at least a base level of "figure it out yourself" that is necessary in a game such as a MUD. If I could more or less figure out Gemstone III as a 14 year old AOL member who thought that the AOL home screen was the entirety of the internet, there's no reason anyone else can't make it this far. But once in game, there is one room they are welcomed into the game with a very brief description (not even 4 full lines, don't want to assault them with a wall of text), followed by a brief explanation of the look command, the help command, and telling them to type "north" to proceed.

2) If a few lines of text is going to turn off a prospective player from playing End of Time that's never MUDed before, I don't want him/her as a player. MUDs are very text and "having to read" intensive, and if that is going to be a turn off for them, go find a graphical game. I don't feel like I've lost anything there.

3) If they can't figure out that a big white box with a blinking cursor is where you type in commands, then I don't want them as players. MUDer or not, in the age of social media and web forums being ancient by now, someone unable to grasp where/how to type in a command to a MUD needs to stick to candy crush.

4) I'm assuming they have the brain cells necessary to figure out that if they are typing "say" and their words are coming out altered as a result of the speech impediment flaw, and it is recommending something called "osay", that they might type "osay" instead. If they can't figure this out, then that's weeded out a player who won't be able to grasp the higher concepts of the game later on.

5) Where are you getting four? I'm counting three… total newbie, eot newbie, eot veteran. And yes, three choices are necessary, because the number 1 reason MUD veterans skip over a newbie school or tutorial is because they don't want to have to go through learning how to "consider" a mob or what "score" does… They've known this for years, and even if it's just matter of skipping over rooms, it's annoying. Besides, having an EoT specific version of the tutorial that skips over all of the basic stuff allows it to be a lot more tailored and brief in ways, such as being able to say "We've eliminated pracs/trains and have converted them into a single point system called AP." That's gonna be greek to a total newbie, but a MUD veteran doesn't need to sift through "AP is how you increase a stat. In order to increase a stat, you must type train strength. Strength, or STR as it is commonly abbreviated, is the stat that determines how much your character can carry, how much damage s/he does" blah blah. Any MUD that has anything resembling a traditional newbie school/tutorial area that doesn't offer the three options for a total MUD newbie, a newbie for their game specific, or to skip over it entirely is, in fact, doing it wrong by my estimation, unless they just have no interest in even giving any consideration toward someone completely new to MUDs and they have just eliminated the total newbie scenario. If three options are too confusing for a newbie and they leave? Sweet, it just weeded out another player I don't want.

I'm not trying to "catch 'em all" as far as players go. End of Time is intended to be challenging and cerebral. After the player has been a little bit eased into the scheme of things, they are presented with some quests that they really have to think about and do some real searching and looking around in order to solve. This has weeded out players as well, because if they have trouble with quests most people have no trouble solving, and especially with various tips and hints popping up throughout, the rest of the game is just going to be an exercise in frustration. And I'm perfectly fine with that. Sure, I'd love to have 50 people connected at all times, but I'm a bit more concerned with the quality of player than the quantity.
13 Jan, 2015, plamzi wrote in the 16th comment:
Votes: 0
Hades_Kane said:
1) If they made it to my game, then they know how to download a client and figure out the address, unless they either connected through MUD Portal, the telnet link on our webpage, or through the TMC MUD client, so I don't really concern myself with that. The first real barrier is character creation. If they can't figure that out, I honestly don't want them as players. Regardless of anything, there is at least a base level of "figure it out yourself" that is necessary in a game such as a MUD.


You have to admit that this doesn't sound like a dev interested in targeting people who are new to MUDs. If you were, you'd be concerned about how to make it easier for non-mudders to first find and connect to your game. As it stands, I have to wonder why you would even have the "say total newbie" option.

Yes, MUDs are complicated. But that doesn't mean that we shouldn't look for ways to expose more people to the game and to ease the learning curve for those who do try it out. It's much too convenient to say that the difficulties new players would have in finding the game and creating their first character or any gaps in the flow along the way are all part of some kind of carefully-crafted test.

I understand the sentiment fully and I know where it's coming from. It's much more interesting to design elaborate game mechanics than to spend endless cycles improving your reach or tinkering incessantly with the first five minutes of gameplay until they are as polished as most players have come to expect.
15 Jan, 2015, quixadhal wrote in the 17th comment:
Votes: 0
Why does everyone equate "new to MUD's" as "can't figure out text commands"?

There seems to be a pervading sentiment here that "total newbies" are all little kids who can't type unless they're texting on their cell phones. Is THAT the audience we should be trying to attract? Why? Wouldn't they enjoy a graphical game more anyways?

Watch one of any number of reality TV shows where somebody is trying to "save" somebody else's failing business. I actually watch Kitchen Nightmares, because I find it amusing and stumbled upon it on BBCA one day. But, they're all similar… and in every single one, the guy trying to help the failing business always says, KNOW YOUR MARKET.

My favorite example was a small restaurant that was serving up fancy french cuisine. It was nestled into a small fishing community, where the majority of the regular clientele were average working folk. So, Ramsey challenged the head of the failing restaurant to produce examples of his best dishes, and offer them up to people on the street for free. At the same time, he offered up simpler food that fit the area (fish and chips, burgers, etc). The simple fare won by a landslide.

The moral of the story as it applies to text MUD's is… maybe people who go out of their way to find a text MUD to try might actually enjoy text. They might not want to move their hand off the keyboard to use a mouse, or have to move their eyes all over the screen to see various graphical indicators and whatnot. I don't think anybody finds a text MUD by accident anymore. Either they were sent there by a friend, or they were actively looking for one.

Earlier in the thread, the idea of clickable links was presented as an alternative to typing in commands for a menu choice. The use of numbers was also suggested. In general, that's not a bad idea, provided the commands can still be typed in as well. However, in the tutorial area, would this not give a false sense of simplicity to the game, and make the user think EVERYTHING in the game will be a simple multiple choice menu? Making them type commands early on gets them used to the idea that typing commands *IS* the primary way they will interact with the game.

Of course, if you are making it so that's NOT the case, then by all means…. but then you're wandering out of the realm of a text MUD, and into the psuedo-graphical genre, which is another beast with a whole different set of rules and assumptions. There's nothing wrong with that genre, but I really don't think it shares the same place that a traditional MUD does.

Personally, I'd rather see a MUD abandon raw telnet and develop a smart custom client that is still text based, but that does all the presentation layer and command parsing on the client side. If some people want a semi-graphical client as well, that can be done, but I really dislike the idea of making the server process everything and then making the client pick it apart and re-process it.
15 Jan, 2015, plamzi wrote in the 18th comment:
Votes: 0
quixadhal said:
Why does everyone equate "new to MUD's" as "can't figure out text commands"?


I'm not sure who "everyone" is, but as far as I'm concerned, the assumption is not "can't figure out text commands" but rather "unlikely to want to figure out text commands, especially in the first few seconds of trying out a new game, when they can easily surf on and find a game that looks more like the hundreds of other games they have played." By contrast, if you try to meet this kind of player half-way, you may just keep them long enough for them to realize that there is nothing "lame" about a game that presents the world in text only. And if that happens, you will have converted an outsider to MUDs, and helped change the negative-sum game for our whole community.

quixadhal said:
There seems to be a pervading sentiment here that "total newbies" are all little kids who can't type unless they're texting on their cell phones. Is THAT the audience we should be trying to attract? Why? Wouldn't they enjoy a graphical game more anyways?


This sounds very much like HK's position. You're giving up the fight for new mudders without even trying to fight it. OK, so I feel like I've made this point a hundred times before but let me make it again. Forget about people who haven't played a MUD before. Let's say that along comes a veteran who has played a very different MUD for twenty years, it shut down, and he/she is looking for a new home. There are at least a thousand things you can do to make the transition to a very different kind of MUD easier for them. And guess what, those same things will make adoption by totally new players easier as well. But if all you are doing is rationalizing why what you currently have is the best way to attract players and why there is zero room for improvement, then really this whole conversation is wasted on you and you should instead take full joy in sinking back in your chair.


quixadhal said:
Watch one of any number of reality TV shows where somebody is trying to "save" somebody else's failing business. I actually watch Kitchen Nightmares, because I find it amusing and stumbled upon it on BBCA one day. But, they're all similar… and in every single one, the guy trying to help the failing business always says, KNOW YOUR MARKET.

The moral of the story as it applies to text MUD's is… maybe people who go out of their way to find a text MUD to try might actually enjoy text.


That is certainly one moral of the story. There are other morals as well. For example, if you are catering to a fishing community that is vanishing and being gentrified, you may consider changing your menu. That is unless you are able to move your restaurant to a thriving fishing community close by. And you probably shouldn't double down and change your menu to actually appeal to whalers only (say, the 5 people in the world who would only play a game if it's playable with just typing), who are an even more dying breed.

quixadhal said:
Earlier in the thread, the idea of clickable links was presented as an alternative to typing in commands for a menu choice. The use of numbers was also suggested. In general, that's not a bad idea, provided the commands can still be typed in as well. However, in the tutorial area, would this not give a false sense of simplicity to the game, and make the user think EVERYTHING in the game will be a simple multiple choice menu? Making them type commands early on gets them used to the idea that typing commands *IS* the primary way they will interact with the game.

Of course, if you are making it so that's NOT the case, then by all means…. but then you're wandering out of the realm of a text MUD, and into the psuedo-graphical genre, which is another beast with a whole different set of rules and assumptions.

There's nothing wrong with that genre, but I really don't think it shares the same place that a traditional MUD does.


Here, you are taking some reasonable points and turning them around to argue that a game playable with clicks somehow becomes pseudo-graphical? I don't know how you got there. I just know it's a form of an essentialist debate that I find rather pointless. Again, you seem to be arguing for the status quo, and for doing nothing.

quixadhal said:
Personally, I'd rather see a MUD abandon raw telnet and develop a smart custom client that is still text based, but that does all the presentation layer and command parsing on the client side. If some people want a semi-graphical client as well, that can be done, but I really dislike the idea of making the server process everything and then making the client pick it apart and re-process it.


Not sure I understand your idea fully. But in general, yes, it's a sound design choice to keep presentation layer decisions in the client and not the server. And yes, you can have text-based keyboard-only clients happily co-existing with all kinds of other clients. To use the earlier analogy, you can expand your menu, and with that, your target audience. But you can only do that if you stop rationalizing why it's best to add nothing, change nothing, try nothing.
15 Jan, 2015, Hades_Kane wrote in the 19th comment:
Votes: 0
Quix:
"There seems to be a pervading sentiment here that "total newbies" are all little kids who can't type unless they're texting on their cell phones. Is THAT the audience we should be trying to attract? Why? Wouldn't they enjoy a graphical game more anyways?"

That's pretty much the sentiment I'm expressing. I don't want that kind of player, because the need for hand holding will likely never end.

plamzi:
"There are at least a thousand things you can do to make the transition to a very different kind of MUD easier for them."

That exactly the idea behind "eot newbie" which you were previously suggesting eliminating. As I said, someone who thinks they know how to play a MUD has no interest in going through a tutorial teaching them how to type score… the best way to help a MUD veteran new to your game make the transition is to present only the information they need to know, and often presenting that in a way that, when possible, merely highlights the differences in what they are likely used to vs. what the game they are in now.

Generally speaking, I'm interested in new-to-MUD players, I'm just not interested in practically abandoning the whole of the game by exhausting the time and effort I have in focusing heavily on the first 5 minutes of the game and on trying to develop reach outside of the game itself. No matter how many hours I spend making a website, advertising outside of the community, none of that is going to make the game itself better, just flood it with people who may or may not decide that this type of game it something they might be interested in.

As it is, End of Time is a niche within a niche anyhow (being based on any specific theme does that), and so I have little confidence that it would do EoT any good for a good chunk of my development time/effort to be spent trying to draw in brand new people to MUDing, because already the whole "this whole game is text!" is one significant barrier to get through, and then you tack on "and this one specifically is based on video games dating back no more recent than 15 years and reaching as far back as 28!" and well, that's a lot to overcome.

I'm completely content and do well enough focusing on trying to draw in fans of the series, and MUDers who are looking for something different, unique, well constructed, and deep. That's my market, that's my target audience, and not only do I think it would be a waste of time and effort to try to specifically draw in brand new players, it would make the game specifically less for those that are my market because I'd have much less time for doing those things that appeal to them.

I do my part to make EoT accessible to new players… I have client download links, I have a telnet link, etc. and I have a version of the tutorial specifically geared for them. But I also give them the benefit of the doubt to be able to figure out what to do from there, and if it takes an immense amount of hand holding for them to figure it out past that or an immense amount of hand holding in order to convince them to stay around "long enough for them to realize that there is nothing "lame" about a game that presents the world in text only", then I have serious doubts that such a player would end up sticking around anyhow or be able to evolve into a contributing player to the game. They will more than likely expect that same amount of hand holding throughout the game, and whenever they finally come up against something truly challenging… good luck holding on to them past that.
0.0/19