Greetings,
As many of you know, I'm taking a Gamification Course, which has suggestions on how to "think like a game designer".
The reality is that only a handful of the items suggested neatly apply to TI, but I've had a few ideas come from the course that I think are pretty good - for example, giving players a 'progress update' in chargen so they can see how much of their new character is complete.
One of the things that TI is really about is the social relationships between players. When doing up my assessment of TI, its playerbase, etc, one of the things that jumped out at me is how important it is for new players to find friends, etc, quickly to stick around.
In that vein, what do you think about, rather than an Aide system, a buddy system, where old players can be assigned to new players to assist them, etc? The idea is to facilitate the 'taking of new players' under the wing of older players and trying to build social ties quickly, ensure that new players have someone to RP with off the bat, and trying to get them socially acclimated quickly.
Questions to Answer:
- Do we have the appetite for something like that (ie, a buddy system for newbies)?
- What would it take for you to want to become a buddy?
- What would you be happy to do as a buddy, and what do you think are the pitfalls of setting up buddies for newbies?
- Anything else we ought to consider?
