Making chargen newbie friendly
Posted: Thu Apr 04, 2013 2:47 pm
This is first post in my line of "how to keep new people in TI", based on my own experience.
First thing on the roast - chargen.
I am pretty sure that most new players who suffer through chargen, will be tired by the time they get out of it. For me it took over an hour to go through it (and I made my first character couple months ago, although it didn't last long) and that included skipping a lot of content it offered.
My suggestion is to introduce alternative chargen - one only for trully new players.
It will be much shorter. Simply - give them the cliff-notes of the lore and game and make and link them to a helpfile which will explain "You have been given a cliff-notes, enough to just start playing, but if you want to learn more details about the world, checkout the following helpfiles: xxxx". And then let them pick a PREMADE character (with set stats, skills and so on) and for the love of all mighty, regardless of his origin give him Lithmorran on at least 36, but prefferably 46 (it really creates a lot of confusion for new fellas, if someone later on wants to create a character without it, he can use the advanced chargen).
Ideally character creation should not take more than 15-20 minutes, which includes writing his own description and organizing his gear. This step could use a lot of improvement - let us browse "gallery of descriptions" taken from killed/deleted players (it really helps a lot to have a template of sort) and then just pick gear that suits us, instead of restringing out own (new player doesn't need to know what a restring is).
Essentially this would break down chargen to three rooms:
1. Read the cliff-notes about world in general, if he decides to be latent mage make him confirm it 3 times that he is aware of consequences and that he will most likely be burned. (This should be optimized to take no more than 5 minutes)
2. Pick one of premade "classes" with predefined rp goals and ideas. (This should not take more than 3-5 miuntes, so let's not give them too much to chose from)
3. Write your description, set your height/weights, pick up the gear you would like to start with and move on. (up to 10 minutes).
People who come out of this chargen would be cyan, while people who come out of the advanced one would not. This way when you see a cyan player, you know for sure that this is a begging player and a lot of leeway should be given. I would also suggest that for those players we make the cyan phase last a lot longer, until they get into a guild (or reach some very huge amount of experience).
I would also vouch for giving them much more starting silver, currently the 50 you get barely allows you to get tools for your trade (for example an axe to cut down trees is about 30 silvers, so you are left with money for a not-so-tasty meal), not to mention leaving place for when they get hit with a learning curve and dump their money on useless item.
I really believe that with those changes, new players will have much easier landing into TI, and more of them will stick along. One thing I would also add is to make a public message when a new player moves from chargen into the world, so someone will move and interact with them. Maybe even offer some sort of "tour guide" system, where player would be rewarded for touring new players about the city and working as their guides for duration of that trip. This sort of interaction allows to answer all common questions, and makes it easier to interact with others.
At any given time they also should be allowed to "reroll" using the advanced chargen, once they understand the game a bit.
First thing on the roast - chargen.
I am pretty sure that most new players who suffer through chargen, will be tired by the time they get out of it. For me it took over an hour to go through it (and I made my first character couple months ago, although it didn't last long) and that included skipping a lot of content it offered.
My suggestion is to introduce alternative chargen - one only for trully new players.
It will be much shorter. Simply - give them the cliff-notes of the lore and game and make and link them to a helpfile which will explain "You have been given a cliff-notes, enough to just start playing, but if you want to learn more details about the world, checkout the following helpfiles: xxxx". And then let them pick a PREMADE character (with set stats, skills and so on) and for the love of all mighty, regardless of his origin give him Lithmorran on at least 36, but prefferably 46 (it really creates a lot of confusion for new fellas, if someone later on wants to create a character without it, he can use the advanced chargen).
Ideally character creation should not take more than 15-20 minutes, which includes writing his own description and organizing his gear. This step could use a lot of improvement - let us browse "gallery of descriptions" taken from killed/deleted players (it really helps a lot to have a template of sort) and then just pick gear that suits us, instead of restringing out own (new player doesn't need to know what a restring is).
Essentially this would break down chargen to three rooms:
1. Read the cliff-notes about world in general, if he decides to be latent mage make him confirm it 3 times that he is aware of consequences and that he will most likely be burned. (This should be optimized to take no more than 5 minutes)
2. Pick one of premade "classes" with predefined rp goals and ideas. (This should not take more than 3-5 miuntes, so let's not give them too much to chose from)
3. Write your description, set your height/weights, pick up the gear you would like to start with and move on. (up to 10 minutes).
People who come out of this chargen would be cyan, while people who come out of the advanced one would not. This way when you see a cyan player, you know for sure that this is a begging player and a lot of leeway should be given. I would also suggest that for those players we make the cyan phase last a lot longer, until they get into a guild (or reach some very huge amount of experience).
I would also vouch for giving them much more starting silver, currently the 50 you get barely allows you to get tools for your trade (for example an axe to cut down trees is about 30 silvers, so you are left with money for a not-so-tasty meal), not to mention leaving place for when they get hit with a learning curve and dump their money on useless item.
I really believe that with those changes, new players will have much easier landing into TI, and more of them will stick along. One thing I would also add is to make a public message when a new player moves from chargen into the world, so someone will move and interact with them. Maybe even offer some sort of "tour guide" system, where player would be rewarded for touring new players about the city and working as their guides for duration of that trip. This sort of interaction allows to answer all common questions, and makes it easier to interact with others.
At any given time they also should be allowed to "reroll" using the advanced chargen, once they understand the game a bit.