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I've had characters poking around much of the current novice experience overall within Aetolia for a couple of weeks now. I don't want to play my old stuff anymore and I just want a fresh start. I'm not entirely new as I have already said, so I have a measure of familiarity that goes beyond what a true newcomer would have.
Some things I've noticed from recent weeks:
- Depending on where you start, you are going to have an entirely different experience. My time in Enorian I have to say has been the most fruitful and dynamic. I have to give players there a very big pat on the back. They are active. They are engaging. They make the game interesting. However, many of the other city-states I can not say the same thing for. One of my biggest pet peeves as a MUD player is lack of interest in newcomers. Regardless of your personality and the feel of an organization, you absolutely have to engage newcomers! It is the most important thing you can ever do to retain members. Sadly, much of what I find wrong with Aetolia at present is that a lot of the player base is always "AFKing". Which I feel is the biggest problem for any would-be newcomer to the game. It is problematic. It is discouraging. It is frustrating. Especially so if you are so unfamiliar with the game that you don't know what is going on. Aside from being new, it is also problematic for the morale of players in general. Joining an organization like a House only to find that no one is around, or that they are largely just laying in their coffins for most of the time, is really really annoying. So I feel like this really should be addressed.
- Another thing is inconsistency in the lack of information. My example of this is that sometimes help files do not even include relevant information to modern mechanics. I sometimes have to mess around until I find the right syntax for something because it simply isn't listed. Or better yet a help file hasn't seen an update since 2015! -cough- Bahir'an... There is also occurrences like this from today, HHELP EMBRACE - "To earn the chance for the Embrace, you must complete one of two sets of tasks, one set by the House, and the other set by the Dominion. We encourage everyone to pursue the former. Those who choose the latter will face certain restrictions on their future advancement within the House. Both sets of requirements are listed below." ... WHY!? Why would you even have two sets of requirements if you are going to threaten to penalize someone if they choose to do one over the other? It makes no sense at all!
Anyway, I am posting this because I generally do enjoy Aetolia. It has always been my favorite among the IRE games. I also do care about making the game better. I have gained much enjoyment from this game for some number of years now.
As to the Dominion stuff, it can diaf as far as I'm concerned, but that's a bit OT. It adds nothing and demands much from my POV.
Valkyrior system
Thank you for your feedback! We definitely want to retain newcommers, I can confidently say that for the administration team and for the community as a whole, I believe!
A lot of your feedback above seems to surround the Dominion which, not-so-recently but still semi-recently underwent a MASSIVE overhaul in the way mechanics work surrounding the bloodlines and the organisation itself. This includes how Houses interact with it. I would definitely encourage you to bring this feedback to those leaders, IC, too as the new system allows for a fluidity in progression. It's definitely something that needs some coordination and teamwork to iron out, but it can be molded into something exciting! There is a lot of freedom to take advantage of.
One of the most common questions I've run into from noobies is "how do I use these class skills" while they are still novices and not yet in their organizations. Enorian has a decently (at least when I was last there) well put together "here's basics on each class's 'how to bash/how to fight' as well as 'where to put your skills' and other newbie basics". Bloodloch's is very very lacking. This means that newcommers to Enorian are far less likely to get frustrated by not knowing how to use the basics of their skillsets and bail than Bloodlochians.
However, the fact that this information is ONLY contained within CHELP / GHELP etc. is that those players are left in a serious bind if there is no one around to tell them to look at GHELP / CHELP. Sure, when they first started, they probably got a wall of text and 2-5 CHELP reading suggestions, but by the time they get to trying their skills, what are the chances they remember to scroll back in the onslaught of introductory information to have caught them?
A lot of new players realize they can search the HELP system, but there is no obvious reference anywhere to tell them that they can do CHELP and find another unlisted set of documents. And the fact that this relatively-vital information is completely nonexistent in the HELP system has got to be very frustrating for any novice unaware of how Aetolia's help files are disseminated.
While typing this, this problem came up over the newbie channel. Aaahhh, timing.
Edit to add:
Another inconsistency problem: is CNT OOC or IC? I asked over Discord, and it seemed Eno, Spines and Duiran all treat it as IC-light, but in Bloodloch, I've heard Vyxsis say it is intended to be strictly OOC. However, because none of the other cities treat theirs as OOC, the older players in BL don't necessarily realize it is OOC and talk ICly on there and I can imagine that is very confusing to novices. Heck, this was confusing to ME as a long time player when I joined BL recently and people started giving blatantly OOC advice.
It makes perfect sense for it to be an OOC channel, making it a place for novices to ask questions that are more city/class specific, but no matter which way it is taken, this should be consistent across organizations and clear to the non-novice players so they aren't acting IC on an OOC channel (or the other way around!).
I think what @Zaila says about learning that there are other HELP files to access might be a good thing to add in as a hint (several times throughout novicehood maybe?).
As for the CNT, I've always treated it as OOC with an IC-light twist, since questions can come up about computers, code, triggers, and whatnot, or general "What am I doing here?!" questions. However, if they ask for help because they broke their legs and don't have the cures, my character can run out and help because she would know of it.