Very well laid out Bane.
A lot of this has been along the same lines as what I have wanted to do with the Mud School and newbie areas for some time now. Let me also hit upon your recap points listed and add in my own take of how I think mud school and that which follows the most effective. (It’s a long post, so bear with me)
1. Changes casters starting item to an about item, Could call it {cb Mystical {cx cloak. Give it the same stat as the glasses make it an about.
Thank you Molly, this was a needed fix. Don’t gypsies start with an earring item? I’m not at a computer right now I can check if that’s the case, but that’s what I seem to remember. Maybe this was changed since you pick only Fighter, Caster, or Rogue now? Instead of starting within a class? Because I thought the cape of the squire was warrior only, so if Hunters get it now, I wonder what they used to get? I think there may be some equipment that got lost with that code change that could be relocated to somewhere in the school potentially.
2. Start them all out with the standard issue vest, waterskin, note that is found in the backpack on the ground before lionel
As Molly said before, since it is coded it is best not to do that and just use her suggestion of placing the items in the chest near Lionel.
3. Remove the travelers backpack before Lionel.
I think the backpack is a great item personally. It’s a container that can be worn. I find those types of items to be very beneficial in keeping your inventory clean and leaving more room for potions etc. Perhaps just change the wear location and add some stats to it.
4. Remove the about item found in Lionel box.
Reasonable. This will certainly avoid the confusion of choosing too early on in the teaching.
5. Have Lionel walk casters through manifesting an item, either he gives them an item or start them out with an item to manifest.
I agree with this; however we will have to have the newbies gain at least 1 level by now so they have practice pointes to train manifest in order to actually manifest the item. So they’ll have to be taught training, practice command, score command (if not already learned), skilllist class command, and spell info command. The last two can be taught at a later time but those first few are definitely important early on. The whole teaching aspect of this is what a lot of my idea of how the school should work revolves around. But I’ll get into that later.
5. Remove the flint and moccasins found in prehistoric area.
There is also a squirrel skin which is a decent neck item in a burrow in prehistoric so with your recommendation of adding the bandana to be neck item may add confusion. I’ll explain a potential fix to that later when I get to that section however.
6. Remove the sword from the squire and change his description in the medieval area
I agree the sword should be removed, perhaps a piece of equipment added. The squire could be great for explaining the challenge system I proposed in another thread. Where using the challenge command you would throw your gauntlet at their feet and your opponent is given the option to accept or decline, if accepted, both are whisked away to the arena, similar to the immortal run arena. But perhaps a bit smaller, like the tournament yard in size. Of course he would explain after the mini battle that you can’t go around challenge other NPC’s in the game like him, but you can challenge any other player. This is a recommendation and something that would be nice to see and give the squire something to teach.
7. Give them a reward for the maze.(Money, Exp, Earring?)
I too agree there should definitely be a reward for the maze, I think it is interesting that the maze is there, and they aren’t really taught about how to properly solve mazes until the quest academy. I think a little teaching should be involved and the quest academy maze later on should be a little bit more difficult. I think this maze is harder than the quest academy as is. I’m not certain what old west earring you are referring to, but I believe one of the newbie arena zones, there is a sonic amplifier or something similar that is an ear item. But in any case we do need another, perhaps relocate the old gypsy ear item to the maze?
8. Move green banana to a neck slot so it doesn't interfere with the face mask slot.
I think the bandana could be the first multiple wear location item earned. One to get the bandana the newbie is fairly well skilled already since a lot of inexperienced players miss the quest area for it. Which leads to two… that because of that experience teaching them about multi wear location items is certainly reasonable. The teaching will involve reiterating how to identify it, since this is the first time they’ll have to identify an item, being the first choice of what item to wear. Then pointing out to them that the stats on it are better than the stats on the squirrel skin, and telling them to wear bandana on neck. Since just wear bandana would wear it on the face. This way we can teach identify and multiple wear location items in one go. Thoughts?
9. Is olive branch adequate enough for casters? 1.44 multi. Seems more for melee fighters with the 10d10 and 25 max hit. reg stats are :
The olive branch was originally chosen because it points you in the direction of the real olive branch which is supposed to be stronger and have better stats. Which is reasonable but he olive branch isn’t a good caster item, because casters don’t need strength items since they have the spell strength. This is also something they should also be taught. I recommend changing the Helper rewards dependent on the players class, because right now I think they are fairly underrated. It can also honestly be scripted rewards, it does give a small duty for Helpers to do, but it is really unnecessary. The idea behind it was so you couldn’t do the quest on alts, but how are we supposed to know if someone is an alt if the imms won’t tell you who is ( which I understand) or the imms don’t check the board to see if the players are cashing in on multiple alts? Really the reward isn’t a big deal for that to even matter there are plenty of other tokens that are earnable through real quests that people can just repeat on alts, so if that really was the decisive factor… personally I don’t think that’s a reason.
10. Discussion of adding a identify script on to the seeker feather.
I'd rather we add a small quest in Future for an item with a script to cast identify, restricted for first remort.
(The feather already has too many scripts on it).
Also I have my doubts about the grenade in future, since grenades don't seem to work in the present code.
(Either remove the grenade or fix the code).
I agree with both Bane and Molly on this. I believe I have a solution to it as well. Regardless of the item it is that allows them to identify, they have to receive the item fairly early on. At least get it right before the bandana choosing, or maybe even at the same time as it. They of course have to be taught how to use it, I’d recommend it being identical to a scroll of knowledge/identify, perhaps a scroll that replenishes in your inventory after you use it. With the fair warning of after their first remort they will use it any longer, and perhaps make it poof if they try to. This is something that I should be able to script fairly easily.
As for the grenades Molly mentioned, removal would probably be best for now to avoid confusion, and if and when code is fixed, then can add grenades back in.
11. Removing all of the drop outs in school except one at the start, and telling them how to recall out if they wish to leave the school and return later.
Agreed. I'm all for this.
- Remove all exits down except the first one.
- Add some info about Recall command and Feather in the rooms between each Dimension.
Right with Molly on this one.
12. The newbie donation pit. Is it needed?
- Remove the Newbie donation pit. (It probably doesn't work anyhow).
The donation pit does work, but because the newbie school isn’t accessible at all by everyone, even remorted newbies, it should be removed. Right now it’s about a 50/50 shot as to where the donated items go, so eventually both rooms end up with a fair share of things. Again to avoid confusion it is probably best to keep the one at Recall. This also allows them to be near the social hangout spot and perhaps get drawn in more. But they should be taught that there is a donation pit there, after they have navigated through the school, academy, arena, and mini zones.
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Now that I have hit upon all of those topics, one overlying theme I had in most of my responses is teaching. From my experience and what I remember in the mud school is that not everything is perfectly explained and in the best order of learning, within the school. Something I have seen before and I think really lures people in is having someone help you through the school. When I do this with newbie’s it tends to make their experience better because they have someone to point out things as they are moving through because they tend to miss things. Let me explain with the examples above.
For manifesting, Lionel could signal to a personal trainer to come over to teach you the skill, can teach you how to get one item out of the chest, or all the items at once, how to wear one item, or how to wear all of them. By having a mob talking to them, even though it isn’t a player it still adds some interaction and they can be guided through the school. Being told to follow the rooms to the end as the mob is on autofollow. If the player has to log out, this trainer/guide could be summoned using an item that they could be given ahead of time and the scripts would all be based upon what room is entered. If the newbie has been through the school and runs through, the scripts would be set off, but be terminated if the room is left. Every step of the way, from explaining multi wear locations, identify, mazes, hidden containers, climbing, descending, entering, mounting, etc, can be explained to them or be there to remind them some of these things they learned when they are somewhere, where they made need to use it. Of course if this is bothersome to the newbie because they’ve been everywhere before they can dismiss the guide/trainer and not receive the extra help. This will be a lot of scripts, but overall I think it would make the newbies experience more enjoyable.
Since the school and academy will ideally teach everything the newbie needs to know I think it would also be good to add smaller nooks and crannies hidden throughout the school to give more experienced newbies that little extra thing to find which they couldn’t have known how to find them unless they had experience or went through it again. And again of course, they would be encouraged by their trainer/guide to go through it again to see if there was anything “hidden” that they missed.
Upon completion of the school/academy they should also be directly directed to the newbie arena, perhaps exact directions how to get there from Recall, so they can keep going back since there are warps in every area that bring you to Recall. There is an abundance of gear in the arena and a fair share of quests, so definitely good for learning. For the arena and mini zones, the guide/trainer isn’t needed.
Lastly, I think that everything the newbie does in all of these zones should yield experience. The first remort is the hardest and I think they should be given a checklist of things to accomplish to achieve their first remort just on tasks to expedite the process. The checklist could look like this:
4D SchoolFind the 4D School Zone Flag
Receive the 4D School Diploma
Find all five Helper Vouchers
Quest AcademyWorship a Sun God
Newbie ArenaHelp a Sergeant Major
Help an old man make some clothes
Two more things for the Old West and Prehistoric zones
Find the Newbie Arena Zone Flag
Newbie Mini ZonesHelp a Sheriff –Wanted: Dead, not alive
Find the Newbie Dry Gulch Zone Flag
Help Zera – Find her lost bracelet
Find the Newbie Android Factory Zone Flag
Save the Chieftain wife’s lost son
Find the Newbie Stone Age Zone Flag
To the Castle! Rescue a Prisoner
Find the Newbie Robber Baron’s Castle Zone Flag
That is 17 tasks so if each of these tasks yield enough experience (that can only be awarded once per task) to bring the player close to 50 or remort status. That way the hardest remort is complete and the player can move on feeling very accomplished. Exploring the newbie areas/arena/academy/school is enough work already and time consuming for newbies, if they are continuously rewarded from accomplishing things, I am fairly sure they would stick around longer because everyone enjoys being rewarded.
At this point now they they’ve gotten this far, it goes into something Bane mentioned....A quest hub that sends the newbies out to different areas to find items to improve upon their now complete equipment set they got from the newbie areas.
I would be more than willing to tackle the mud school/academy/newbie arena/newbie zones item modifications, script changes, script additions etc. I would just need those areas moved over to buildport and granted access. I think it’s a fairly easy project, the guide/trainer thing will be the trickiest and will need some testers to go through the school and see how much easier it makes things, and what I would have to add or take away to make it more efficient.
As for the steps from after the newbie areas are completed. Bane if you could compose a list of all the easier quests / easier zones with equipment that can be gotten off of easy kills or just picked up and perhaps a list of directions to each of those zones, that could be beneficial, and I could work on setting up a script for that.
That is all of my thoughts for now. Some things I wrote might not make sense because I just started typing away, but overall that is the gist of what I think will help make the life of the Newbie much easier.
