Hey all,

The newbie tower in the past is going to be revamped, and possibly the one in the future (the place where you begin the game). I need your ideas. I've been doing research on newbie areas, reading posts, writing down notes… but the person who really knows what we need in our newbie zone is YOU!

Please ponder and comment on any of the following:

What works well about our newbie zone? What do you not like about the zone, and why? How do you feel about the 'character creation' process, and is there anything you'd like to change? What is the point of a newbie zone? How could the newbie zone connect with the storylines on Calidan? How could the newbie zone make the newbie feel like part of the story? Should class be chosen after character creation? Should we use a family line? Previous professions? How can we give newbies a cooler way to create a background for their character? What is a great newbie zone? What are your newbie zone ideas, no matter how outlandish? What uniquenesses about Tempus should be considered for the newbie zone? What would you like to see?

Thanks for your time and your thoughts,

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How about having weapons and stuff be loaded with the replicator? That way they dont have to spend 2 hours trying to kill the sandwich :P

the weapon dont have to be great… just something like a 20d20 with +125 damroll and +125 hitroll….. Either that or something equivilent to a sharpened calculator.

They can never find food. Or the mobs to kill. And they never really know about the return command. These need to be put into their heads and easier to find. also they never do enough damage to kill the mobs naked so it takes forever. and how do you expect them to get eq from the mobs if they dotn have anything to kill them with? at least load them with a weapon =) make it flow better also so its easier to find things and it takes forever to find the way to go up to the future, i always use the VR arcade but its hard to find cause the search and such. I liked the old newbie tower better personally. and i still like the idea about having recognized newbie helpers that newbies can ask questions to. Just my little imput =)

Why don't you just make the tower a simple town. Nothing fancy… but shops with simple eq and weapons that newbs could buy off of newb earnings. Maybe even a shop explaining simple commands that everybody needs to use… like responding to tells, inventory, etc. Obviously not all newbies go through the newbie training area. Only NVZ's are shops, everything else goes. That way when they get out of the tower, they sorta now how the towns work a little. Just an idea.

supports luc's idea

How about a pet/cell phone/talking rock, that would respond to what happens to the newbie? say they see the sandwich, the pet whispers "type 'kill mob' to kill the sandwich" or explains the functions and commands used in a store, where they are in the newbie tower?

Gab

i actually really dig Lucidious's idea. we don't need anything fancy for the n00bs… just straight forward "here's how you do it" kinds of things. i like the pet giving the player suggestions… but… i could see that getting really annoying after a while… especially if they've already experienced certain suggestions a few times. a possible modification to the pet idea would be to keep the pet… but have it such that the player could ask said pet questions instead of it automatically whistpering all the time. i definitely like the small village thing… n00bville or premodrian. those weren't actually serious name suggestions, just goofy things that came to my sleeplacked brain. =P

We actually have a pet mob that will respond to questions. After testing by me and Drom, however, we couldn't get newbies to ask the pet anything, even if the pet explicitly said that they could.

Very sad.

I concentrated on the past newbie zone specifically the new to mudding area and how well it functions as a whole and it's rooms. As a whole, It covers all the necessary commands that a new to mudding person would have to know to be able to understand the mud.
Great job overall, but there are room specifics that you may want to work out.

More about Rooms when mentioning exits maybe adding the option to autoexit.

Room of the Closed Door when entered there is no return to the room you were last in and the instructions about the opening of the door are not needed when the door is already open. Might want to reset the door to closed when entered. I was a bit disoriented when reading all the references to the east door and there wasn't one.

Room of the Key Again the door was already open. Please Reset when is_char(ch, dir, roomflag) == Reset hehe j/k dude.

Room of the Locked Gate a room reset should make the go back west and pick up key necessary.

Your Character's Traits Mentions Alignment but default traits doesn't include alignment for barbarian. I don't know for other classes at this moment, I guess it would be useful to either include alignment in all classes default traits or mention how to get alignment displayed or just mention that if your character doesn't have this trait displayed it doesn't apply. Hope this is helping.

Training Room No training robot loaded when I went in. Also, you might want to purge the room when someone leaves just in case their just passing through you don't get a pile up. This is a good time to introduce them to wimp. I would place a special graduation ceremony mob handing the diploma with a handshake. A pretend crowd cheering could make someones day.

(to be continued…)

Dude! That rules! Keep it up!

the newbie at start of char creation needs a newbie kit, get all newbie kit wear all with food water and light included, now the newbie zone is cool but at the end of it there should be an arena area say a basic box of 8 x 8 zone with newbie mobs to kill and upon reaching lets say lvl 6 they get their diploma either from the ultimate newbie monster who loads it or a newbie master who hands it to them after discerning that the newbie is in fact lvl 6. the newbie tower should not have an exit to the cruel world that is easily accidentally entered. that room should have a big warning in red saying go this way you are exiting the newbie zone, as it was i left newbie zone at lvl 2 by accident and couldnt find it again. newbie zone should have basic shops, food, water, wpn, armor so they can learn the basics. also a heal room, a wizard room who spells them up for short durations.

Thanks Azimuth! Btw awesome Realms you put together. :) I went back to the newbie zone in the past and looked to see if any ideas came to me that would help in improving the experienced mudder section, but alas I have none. The experienced mudder section is in good order. The coliseum is trashed and could use a janitor if keeping it tidy for first-time players is something you would like to see in the newbie area. You can add a room off the side of the entrance for newbie donation room and have this janitor drop it there. My idea of how the script can do this without going into the code to make him donate to that room only: Entrance Room Load Janitor if he's not around, because someone killed him, purged or reboot. Check his pockets for goods. ;) you know those sanitation engineers always find stuff. Send him east to start his rounds. Each room sees him come in and forces him to get all with the usual gripe and groan that the Tempus janitors do that I still find amusing. Then send him to the next room along the path. He's probably going to have to be super strong to carry all of it, or he can come back for it. When he ends up at the room he started from check his pockets again and if he picked anything up send him into the donation room that makes him drop it and go back to the entrance. One of those awesome signs I seen the other day in HS can let the player know there's stuff in the next room.

When I went in there someone had just went through it and killed everything, but it was a mess because of all the equipment I found on the floor in almost every room.

I know this could be done much more simpler by just having the rooms do all the transporting to the donation room, but this way the player can kill the janitor and get all the gold he's picked up and the equipment.

I guess I'm trying to inspire some more scripting to bring some irl aspects to the mud not necessarily AI, but some activity from the mobs. I remember I freaked out the first time I heard Priestess of Lloth talking to her whatever about Duke Araken. It took me a few seconds to figure out it was a script running an act, but still for few seconds I felt a small degree of realism and understood the characters a little better.

I hope this is helpful in creating a better newbie zone that makes a great first impression. Something that really helps hold the newbies interest so that he continues to learn more about the game.

(to be continued)

response to arial's post: the holodeck is an awesome newbie training area, i don't remember if you get a weapon, but when you activate the programs, i think there's 7 or 8, you can find food, weapons and what not. the only problem i have with it is the last two or so programs really aren't newbie oriented, more like a 15ish or something, which is useless because a newbie can't kill that stuff and can't go back to kill it after lvl 10 or so. maybei ts geared towards the not so "newbies" ::shrug::

The newbie zone should suggest places to go when done with the newbie zone. Heck, to be honest, it should just tell them to seek the advice of other adventurers to find a better place to fight, and we can tell them ourselves.

Merriam

Thanks for the replies everyone!

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