Friday with Means - March 6th, 2009

[Disodoctor]

[*] Make the default GUI have 2 chat windows. One for all the battle spam and one for everything else. It's sometimes hard to talk to a new player if they haven't figured out the chat system enough to make their own new chat window. No new player to a game wants to spend their first 30 minutes setting up their GUI, they want to kill a few things!

Superb idea, and a key one as it really is something that confuses new players.

[Tiralee]

The last time I was on newbie island I was pretending to be brand new to the game, to see what help a new person would find. I noticed that the link to the manual from the Help button was broken. It would be really nice to fix that.

[Kaitlain]

To the one particularly uncharitable person I met while on a low account this week:

"You didn't fall...you were pushed!"

oO

That was me, I think. OOC clan OA channel?

To be fair, you need to work on your subterfuge skills - I actually do help out newbies quite a lot, if this was me <-> you, I smelled a rat For the record, I helped a couple of real newbies out - the first with his/her first set of imps, nanos and how to pull mishes, another with a semi-decent set of symbs [level 142 MP who'd just gone fr00b -> SL, and was having trouble adjusting to it all / getting teams. S/he'd spent time getting fr00b friendly stuff, people just forget how hard-core the initial RK -> SL difficulty curve is these days. Yes, SL mobs a growly compared to RK ones ].


[Edit]

Unfortunately the ancient thread in suggestions over newbie isle has gone, I think - however a lot of these have been suggested before, esp. chat channels. When you log in, the default is both confusing and ugly.

[shadowgod]

The last time I was on newbie island I was pretending to be brand new to the game, to see what help a new person would find. I noticed that the link to the manual from the Help button was broken. It would be really nice to fix that.

last time i rolled a n00b when a friend wanting to try the game again after many years of being away..

i was utterly lost and confused. you spawn on some coastline with nothing in your inventory. i was bitching on irc cause i thought there was a bug. then they were like "talk to the guy with the blue colored name". and here i am trying to figure out, how the hell am i suppose to know this?

course.. now that i think of it.. aoc ripped off ao's current new character spawning... your ship wrecked/crashed, and you've washed up ashore. though, in aoc its the npc that talks to you first.. heh. (kinda like how the ao crash sequence use to be.. some nurse was right there beisde you).

the first-steps of sequences new users go through need so much rewriting its horrible. and yet, this current incarnation FC tell us is "less confusing than previous methods".

[IHaveHugeNick]

the first-steps of sequences new users go through need so much rewriting its horrible. and yet, this current incarnation FC tell us is "less confusing than previous methods".

I think the problem generally was with the Arrival Hall, not with the Island itself. Why the Island got changed, i have no idea.

[Boltgun]

course.. now that i think of it.. aoc ripped off ao's current new character spawning... your ship wrecked/crashed, and you've washed up ashore. though, in aoc its the npc that talks to you first.. heh. (kinda like how the ao crash sequence use to be.. some nurse was right there beisde you).

What he said, you should bring that nurse back. You should spawn on the shuttle again, with the water not deep enough so you can walk there.

I rolled a shade recently, SL start is pretty confusing too. You should have a scientist instructing you too.

That said, bring back the shuttle crash sequence. It really get the player hooked.

Edit : The arrival hall didn't make sense in the current scenario, but when I first started it was okay. It really helped me and wasn't confusing.

[Insane666]

,,,
That said, bring back the shuttle crash sequence. It really get the player hooked.
,,,.

i still remember a hillarious quote from OT OOC from a few years back, went something like this:

WTF am i doing wrong?? i rerolled my first toon like 15 times already, and each time my ****in shuttle crashes lol! how am i supposed to prevent this?

[Mastablasta]

[*] Just give new characters monster/human map upgrades by default. I liked the AO map/map upgrade system when I joined AO, but AO was my first MMO. Now that I've tried a bunch of other MMOs, I realize how confusing not having player/monster dots on your mini-map is. Leave the side/machine/arrow upgrades as they are (although I'd LOVE to see a "lifts" upgrade) but just automatically give all new players monster/human. I truly believe that once someone joins a team in AO, they are WAY more likely to stay with the game, so let's make that team experience good one... which sort of requires being able to see your teammates on the map!

While I don't disagree with the suggestion, then I don't know which MMOs you're playing that show other people on the minimap? Out of all the ones I've been playing, having this ability seems almost unique to AO. Some games allow certain classes this, but for example World of Warcraft does not...

[lizor]

i still remember a hillarious quote from OT OOC from a few years back, went something like this:

WTF am i doing wrong?? i rerolled my first toon like 15 times already, and each time my ****in shuttle crashes lol! how am i supposed to prevent this?

I lawl'd. I remember reading that quote way back when newbie isle was first introduced =D

[Deskclerk]

Another week in the trenches!


To the one particularly uncharitable person I met while on a low account this week:

"You didn't fall...you were pushed!"

Have a nice weekend everyone!

The sad part is this toon probably does'nt read the forums and will never see this.

[harkness]

While I don't disagree with the suggestion, then I don't know which MMOs you're playing that show other people on the minimap? Out of all the ones I've been playing, having this ability seems almost unique to AO. Some games allow certain classes this, but for example World of Warcraft does not...

hmm, I only played the trial of WoW, but I've played both Tabula Rasa and Pirates of the Burning Sea the last year and both of them had it. Also an alpha I'm in the play test for has it.

[Kaitlain]

The sad part is this toon probably does'nt read the forums and will never see this.

Scroll up oh... about four posts, you'll see she does. (I think).

What gave it away for me was that AO once did have fall damage. Only an oldbie would have made the comment "oh, noes, I fell off something" - a newbie would have done it a few times on the island and totally ignored the issue due to the fact it has no game impact at all. Newbies only complain if something raises a "WTF"

A genuine newbie "WTF" would probably be: "WAA. How come I haz no monaies, I just clicked on this thing with a M on it". [I did this on my first toon >.< ]


Newbie island could do with a tutorial on maps / upgrades: then again, few oldtimers know that you can reset all your maps and get a sided set at any time from various NPCs. The problem (of course) is with a tutorial on it, newbies will be tempted to put IP into navigation - which is about the only permanent mistake you can make as a new player. Catch 22 there!!

[Ebondevil]

Newbie island could do with a tutorial on maps / upgrades: then again, few oldtimers know that you can reset all your maps and get a sided set at any time from various NPCs. The problem (of course) is with a tutorial on it, newbies will be tempted to put IP into navigation - which is about the only permanent mistake you can make as a new player. Catch 22 there!!

INCOMING!
Macrosun is making Map Navigation resetable.

Not quite as much of a permanent mistake soon™ at least hopefully